Sept. 2016 Fly-By Status Report – Super-Charged Summer

*careens into blog, hair flying, adjusting glasses* Whew! Hey guys! How was your summer? Mine was great, and relentlessly busy, including 4 trips in 4 months, getting an additional part-time job, and being in a play! Which, in addition to regular life stuff, means I had no extra mental space for blogging!

I know it’s the last day of September, and I want to get my tri-annual update in to keep myself honest. So let’s see how much I got done that I wanted to do.

Here’s my Summer Agenda 2016 plans from my home page. If it’s crossed out, it means it’s finished, or I’ve edited the original plan, and colored text next to it are my comments:

Long Term

• Doing some hardcore outlining and continuing to edit my YA fantasy novel Sign of the Sparrow (which might also include a title change) in preparation for an editor to look it over. Not only have I been editing, but I’ve decided to change the writing style of the story, to make it more fairy-tale like. So this has halted all endeavors to reach out to agents, since it will change so much.
• Outlining the entire series that follows “Sign” Nope 😛
• Hopefully, I’ll get my book to my editor by the end of spring/beginning of summer, and then after May, I’ll get back to editing, finish that up, send it to my editor, and then I’ll start working on my query letter for agent and publisher submissions Ehhhhh, nope, all tied up with the reworking of the style. But that’s okay, this is an important change I really want to make.
• Finish a new round of research for my series. I’ve in fact started a totally new vein of research that I like a lot better 😛 But series research will never stop! Until the series is finished of course 😛

Short Term

• Update the Dragon Con Tolkien Track site. DONE! Super success!
• Crochet Finny a costume for Dragon Con. Louise Belcher from Bob’s Burgers! Pics soon!
• Get my manuscript edits finished in time for Pitch Wars, which officially opens to submissions August 3! Sadly this didn’t happen. 🙁 See Tweet link below.
• Finish Query Letter
• Finish 1-page synopsis
• Finish edits of the manuscript

• Sadly, based off lack of time to finish my edits (and being out of town), I won’t be able to participate in #PitchWars, which is lame ?

  — Call Me Christina (@puelladocta) August 4, 2016

• Finish a crochet filet piece for Intown Coffee House. Never got around to it.
• Finish my steampunk armband. Ditto
• Help the kids design their movie posters at Camp Flix. Always a blast!
• Do at least one Paint Love event. Nah, but they helped me get some great new photos of myself, and I plan to do one on writing this fall, with a fellow author!
• Organize my art studio. Waiting til it gets colder, so planning to next month.
• Learn to use a sewing machine. Nope. *sigh* Sew well XP

I’m looking ahead to the fall, not just for holidays, but for less time traveling and more time getting life organized before it explodes again. I’m working out a new schedule to hopefully get more stuff done, particularly writing, so we’ll see how that goes. And I do intend to do some vlogs about my travels, and possibly Dragon Con, as things slow down. Hopefully these will not simply be good intentions that go nowhere 😀 I’ll be updating the Fall/Winter AKA Fwinter list of Plans and Plots soon.

See you guys on social media! <3