Do you hear the tick tick tocking thundering away? That’s the sound of my self-imposed deadline quickly approaching for Queen Takes Rook.

I’m honestly nowhere close to being “done” yet. It’s going to be a mad scramble to finish, and I’ll have to hope my editors, beta readers, and formatter can fit me in quickly to make the deadline on the 17th. I won’t put out a book that’s not edited, so have no fears in that regard. But I’m definitely going to be cutting it close.

And it’s so frustrating because on paper, I had plenty of time. But there’s more to writing than just getting the words down. On top of the business aspect (ads, giveaways, takeovers, etc.), some books require a lot of thought. I’ve been pecking away at Rook for weeks now, and it’s been a slow chiseling process. It’s still mostly a giant hunk of shapeless stone. Though I can see what I want just beneath the surface, and I’m tapping a little quicker on it now.

In the past, I would have given up by now. I would have picked up another project because it was easier. I would have decided to work on another series (for my other publisher), or start a new idea, and goddess, yes, I’ve been so tempted. I even have a trilogy set of covers in the works with exclusive photography on a new series that’s only in my head. I have a spinoff “dark queen” cover I bought from a different designer, and two others I’d like to commission her to do that will match it.

Not to mention the other ten or so covers I’ve bought that caught my eye, or were cheap, or just spoke to me somehow.

It’s taken me years and years, but I’ve finally realized I have to just finish this series. No matter how hard it is. Now matter how shiny something else is. I have to finish it. Now. Not in six months or a year. That will stall my momentum again.

It’s a marathon right now and I’m at the part where my fingers feel like hunks of concrete and my brain feels like slogging through quicksand and I wonder if I’ll ever even see the finish line. I’ve got the pedal pushed to the floor, engine whining, tires spinning…  I’m barely moving, but I am moving in the right direction.

Eventually, the tires will hit solid ground and I’ll accelerate to the speed of light and finish in a rush of glory that will leave me giddy for days.

Goddess, let it be soon.

(reference from one of my favorite movies, The Hunt from Red October)

So it’s been a crazy few months. I went from barely writing anything in 2016 through May 2017, to finishing 5 books now (Mine to Break, Queen Takes Knights, Queen Takes King, Queen Takes Queen, The Treasurekeeper for Shamrocked). Even better, I’m on track for finishing three more by July of this year (Queen Takes Rook, Queen Takes Checkmate, Queen Takes Jaguars).

One series, started in October, and complete in less than a year. That’s my goal!

I finished The Treasurekeeper for Shamrocked: An Anthology of Irish Shenanigans and got it sent off in time. It’s probably one of my funnier–but still very sexy–books, a bit shorter under 40K, but still some meat to it. I left it where I could write more in that world/series if I want to. It features a gargoyle, a leprechaun, the four Irish treasures, a curse only the heroine can break, and some demons/dark fae including a kelpie, some imps, and a couple of pookas.

I also sat down and finalized the publication schedule for the rest of Their Vampire Queen this weekend. Part of my brain is like “but but but we can do it QUICKER!!!” and maybe I could. But I also need to sleep more than four hours a night and I’ve got to get our taxes done, and the house is a pit. So Sherri talked me down off that cliff.

So, to the best of my knowledge right now, here’s the release schedule for the next 3 Queen books.

P.S. Queen Takes Knights is free this week and Queen Takes King will be a Kindle Countdown deal for only 99 pennies!

See part 1.

Continuing a series of posts about how I’ve been using the Tomoe River notebook for my writing, this time I’ll show how I plot at the highest level. I’m not the kind of writer that wants or even likes having every single scene listed out in gruesome detail. I really only need a roadmap to keep me on track. I need to know the main points – and I can capture enough to guide the story on two pages in my notebook.

I use a combination of Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey for my plotting.  I’m almost always thin in the middle – which is one reason the middle can take me a long time to get through. I try to have at least one major candybar scene for the midpoint that I really want to reach, and then after that, the rest is downhill. Sometimes a book will have a couple of candybar scenes. Sometimes I’ll be writing a book, and an entirely new, unexpected scene will rise up and demand my attention. That’s all great – that means the magic is working!

I don’t care if things change or I mark out something in this initial plan. I mainly use this to help me figure out how much more story do I have to figure out. I don’t always write it down, either – though I should. I know it’ll go better if I write it down rather than relying on my brain to hold the whole thing, but sometimes I convince myself I don’t need to take the time for this step.  (Don’t listen to my brain and write it down if you can.)

Since I’m on a tight deadline for this story, I sat down and did this tonight. In less than an hour. So I really have no excuse not to do this every single time.

I start with 18 bullet points, basically, on two sheets of paper.  Some of them I don’t care about as much, but I write them down in case it sparks something later. The big MUST DO ones are: Inciting Incident, the Call, Crossing the Threshold, Midpoint, All is Lost, Climax, and Resolution.  Anything beyond that is gravy on top.

My favorite thing to do, though, is the opening and closing image. I love coming full circle. I love reflection. I love the words or thoughts a character have or say coming back in a new way at the end.

[Aside: I tried to do this with Queen Takes King, but ended up shifting the story line around. The line “Merry fucking Christmas to me” was supposed to begin and end the book, and it did, at first. But then you would have missed out on the smokin’ hot scene with Mehen, which I originally wrote for Queen Takes Queen. It made more sense to pull that scene to King (since, duh, he’s the king), but that messed up my perfect reflection. Having a complete and satisfying conclusion was more important to me than a cute catchy line ending at the right place.]

So generally, this is how I plot.

• I know how the book opens.
• I use that image and flip it, so I know how the book ends.
• I figure out the inciting incident. What drives the beginning.
• I figure out what the ending is. What needs to happen to get to that final image.
• Then I fill in the spaces in between.

Below are two images from my TN. One blank, and one filled in. Note: the one that’s filled in may give you spoilers to the novella I’m working on, so if you don’t like to know a complete high-level plot, skip that one!  Though I kept it at a very high level.

Hope this helps! The most important thing I hope you see is that you don’t have to have a ton of information figured out. I’ve only got a few sparse sentences for each of these bullets, but that’s PLENTY for me to write this novella and find the end without wandering around too much.

I have a novella that I’m working on that’s due 2/18 and I need to put it together fast and well so I can write the book.  I’ve had some questions about how I’m using the bujo for writing – and as any good teacher will tell you, sometimes showing other people how to do something helps YOU figure out how to do it better.

So it’s the perfect time for me to capture some of what I’m doing since this is an entirely new world. This will be a series of posts as I have time. Hopefully it’ll be helpful for someone!

In the Beginning

My theme is something Irish or related to St. Patrick’s Day. The name of the boxed set/anthology we’re doing is “Shamrocked.” I already know I want to do a RH so I need at least 3 heroes. I need a story that I can introduce all the characters and the world quickly without a lot of set up – because I only have 30-40K to get the story told. And if I’m going to go to all the trouble of setting up a new world, then I want to be able to write MORE books in this world. So this story needs to be 1). satisfying in a shorter medium but also 2). extendable.

I did some brainstorming and got my premise. I don’t think I’ll go into a lot of that at this point – I’ll keep this generic and high level. As I’m doing my research and brainstorming, I put the pages into my existing bujo. This notebook has a bunch of other ideas, plus my revision notes for Queen Takes Queen.  I keep track of everything with an index at the beginning, just as you would for any other bujo.

The first few pages are just messy notes. Brainstorming. Interesting tidbits that may or may not have anything to do with the story. But eventually I get a better idea of what I want this story to be, and I make a list of what I know or my goals for the book.

Casting. Part of my process is to pretend I’m an uber-rich director and I can hire any actor or actress I want to play my characters.  I find a pic I like and print it out. Then I create a two-page “spread” in the bujo. Really all this entails is the pic (attached with tape or washi), and the information I know about the character. It may be very sparse. It may change. That’s okay. I just need something to start with. I usually have the left-hand page with the high-level stuff like name and age, and then I leave the right-hand page for notes and backstory as they come to me. Note: do a spread for your antagonist if you have one.

Places or World. I do the same thing for places, houses, anything unique that I’m using in the setting.

Leave plenty of white space to make notes or add research details.

Helpful hint:  If you have multiple stories in the notebook, use washi tape to make a little tab in a color that’s meaningful to your story. That way you can flip directly to those pages!

Next: plotting!

Silly me – I don’t think I’ve even shared the cover yet. Tada!

It was a race down to the wire, but thanks to a crazy weekend of sprints and an intrepid team of beta readers who are comma warriors, QUEEN TAKES QUEEN is done and dropped off to the formatter.  She’s usually very fast, so I may have ARCs going out as soon as this evening, and I’m set to meet my KDP pre-order deadline.

Now you may be wondering why I’d put myself under so much stress. I had to grind some huge numbers the last week or so to finish the book. I got about 4 hours of sleep two nights in a row. My hands are killing me.

But there’s nothing like the high of finishing the book and meeting that deadline.

And here’s the thing about my personality. I need deadlines. If I’m left to my own devices, I’ll putter around on five files at once and never finish anything. Then I’ll wallow in misery because I *know* I’m not making any real progress, and it’s pretty hard to write well when you’re wallowing in misery. (Note: see my lack of progress in 2016)

So yeah. Deadlines matter. I’ll continue to set hard dates for myself and keep the pedal pushed to the floor as often as I can, because it’s just me setting these dates now. I know what I’m capable of. I know I can write 70K in a month (The Billionaire Submissive) when I need to and the story is flowing.

I *am* letting up on the pedal a day or two to recuperate.  Though I have committed a novella for a St. Patrick’s Day anthology and I need to have it written and edited by 2/18.  So yeah, another crazy few weeks are just ahead!

I’ve also had some back and forth in my mind about which Queen book to write next. I was tempted to write a book in Mayte’s POV next, and then maybe even Leonie’s, rather than another book in Shara’s POV. I thought if I got into their backstories and really dug into them, that I’d be able to get the final showdown plot easier. Which is probably true – but doesn’t serve THE story well, which is Shara’s story.

However, I dithered long enough that I don’t have an excerpt ready to put into the end of QUEEN TAKES QUEEN like I’d hoped.  So if you’d like some sneak peeks, be sure to join my Facebook group, Joely’s Triune, to get the earliest tidbits of what’s coming next for Shara in QUEEN TAKES ROOK.

I’m hard at work on Queen Takes Queen. A bit behind… but I can make up that bit once my downhill momentum picks up. It will, I know. I just have to trust the process. Eventually those 1k, 2k, 3k days suddenly become 5k, 8k because I want to finish. I was a bit under the weather this weekend with a stomach thing the family had Christmas – New Years, but I luckily only had a minor touch of it.

Each chapter of Queen reveals more cool things about how the courts work and how complex every political situation is going to be. I’m pretty sure I figured out the title for Mayte’s book too. At first I was thinking Queen’s Jaguars, but I’d like to stay with the “Take” aspect, so I might use Queen Takes Jaguars instead. Yes plural. Of course!

I have a lot of cover action happening this week.  I should get Queen Takes Queen’s cover going and I’ve already booked her for the next three months to get the remaining books in the series created ahead of schedule (so I don’t have another unfortunate mishap of not getting the correct cover loaded in time). I also have an appointment on a secret pen name project for the next 2 covers. And… I bought a premade cover last night for an unfinished work I’ve talked about before:  Grotesquerie. I think I may have figured out how to fix it, and then I saw the cover and it was perfect. So I have no excuse now.

Other than time. Always time.