We’re switching things up–I’m writing this on May 29th*. The sun is rising. My cat is ominously staring at me. And we’re recapping early before the inevitable sads hit me upside the head again.

Monthly Stats:

• 14,294 words drafted
• 58,795 words / 300 pages revised
• 3 projects submitted

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What a month. I’m shocked I made it. There was just SO MUCH GOING ON socially that I’m high-key concerned about the quality of the work I submitted this month. I feel like I just needed it all to be turned in so I could take a proper break because… I was burnt out. Truly. I’d been fighting it, denying it for months, but I finally reached a point where I just ran out of words. I didn’t have any left. I couldn’t write the way I know I can.

April ended with me submitting Adult Romance #2 to my editor. That was indeed the version she wanted to send to production. However, I asked for a few more days (the weekend to be exact) to get some notes from a second reader about a couple of the elements I was nervous about. All went well and my manuscript baby was sent off to production on May 9th.

To say I’m devastated wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate. I want to keep working on it while simultaneously accepting there really isn’t anything else to do. She’s done. She’s cooked. And she’s out of my hands until it’s time for copy edits.

Unfortunately, I discovered some less than optimal news regarding the release date. It’s going to be awhile before I can talk about this book in detail. I’m sorry.

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May 6th I participated in the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, CA. 

Did I take any pictures? No. No I did not. I truly meant to for the blog, but it’s just not something I’m used to doing just yet. 

I spoke on two panels (romance and middle grade, respectively) and signed books for readers. It was a pretty fun day, and while I met a lot of nice people, I’ve realized once again [super personal thing editing!Claire has deleted] which is totally fine! It just makes things hard sometimes. I’ve long since accepted that I don’t do well in social situations, but being isolated for so long (for pandemic reasons) has degraded any semblance of conversational skills I had, which is NOT fine. It’s important to me to be able to talk to people, and specifically readers, without feeling awkward. I plan to work on that this year.

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On May 11th, I submitted a draft of my DBAND proposal to my agent. If you’re new here, please understand I’ve been struggling with making time to get this done since December 2022! A detailed outline! Synopsis! 25k words! It’s what I hope will become Adult Romance #3, but I’ve never written a full proposal before, not like this, so it’s been an interesting experience.

My agent sent me notes on May 25th. And you know, it went about as well as I expected. Very middle of the road which doesn’t work for me.

We ended up brainstorming for about an hour over the phone. The premise needed to be refined and tweaked to make it more unputdownable, as they say. I realized I approached the sample pages with… inefficient intentions. Yeah. That word works. 

I have a better idea of what I need to do to reach my personal goals for the proposal, which I’ll begin working on in June! (And maybe possibly just writing the whole manuscript. We’ll see.)

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Up next, I submitted the next draft of Suitehearts on May 23rd.

This draft was tough because as I previously stated, I ran out of words. SH has two main characters so I work on their POVs separately–I’ll write all of Rose’s POV beginning to the end, then Cora’s, and then a Frankenstein draft where I add in the connective tissue. I had a really difficult time dialing into Rose’s struggles and larger narrative. Cora was easier but not easy. Safe to say, I did not knock it out of the park and am looking forward to devoting all of my time and attention to this next draft.

I also missed my official deadline. It’s always by a day or less. I don’t know what it is, but when it comes to writing things always take me longer than I assume they will. It’s like I enter this time vortex where numbers don’t matter but keep on ticking anyway. I completely lose myself, becoming unmoored in time until I look up and it’s 2:45am PT and my book should already be in.

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Copy Edits for my short story “ Bonne Nuit” rolled in on May 30th. 

I was surprised to find very few changes. It was mostly, if not all, punctuation and style alterations to match the house default. As promised, the anthology has a new title and it is… drum roll please…

WE MOSTLY COME OUT AT NIGHT: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels and Other Creatures

Personally, I love it. I think my story falls under the “Other creatures” part? I guess it could be a monster but I don’t see it that way. I shall let you decide when it releases next year!

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And with that, my busy season has come to an end. Once Suitehearts heads into production, my contracts will all be nearly completed (pending copy edits, pass pages, etc). At this point, I honestly don’t know what’s next for me. I know what I would like to happen (SELL ANOTHER BOOK) and the only part of that dream I can control is the quality of my work and [huge secret project].

So… In addition to working on DBAND, I’m going to do something I haven’t had to do in years. Because I want to see if I can. I want to know where I stand, if I’ve improved as much as I think I have, if I’m the storyteller I envision myself to be. I will also be tackling that HUGE non-writing, but publishing-adjacent project that will take me clear into next year.

The coming months are going to be tough, but the stars have aligned in a way that I can focus solely on these projects.

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June 2023 Goals

• Give Suitehearts #2 my all
• Revise DBAND the way it should be
• HUGE Project
• Passively brainstorm that other thing

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Until Next Time,

Claire ❤

(*edited on June 2nd and not feeling sad! We might’ve beaten the curse!)