January 31st, 2019

Overview:

• What's New: 5 Weeks to Baby, Secret Project
• Novel Update: 25k words cut - 25k to go, Extended Snippets?
• January Reads: Empress of a Thousand Skies
• Et Vous?

1. 5 Weeks to Baby: Because my little boy is due March 5, there’s a good chance he may arrive in late February. So I want to let you know in advance, if that happens, there’s a good chance my February newsletter will be delayed by a fair bit. For...what I hope are obvious reasons. 🙃 If you want to stay in the loop, your best bet is to follow me on Instagram (or Twitter). Otherwise, if you don’t hear from me at our usual time next month, it probably means I gave birth early, and at the very latest, you’ll hear from me by the end of March.
    
2. Secret Project: I can’t reveal much about this yet, but I was approached by a fellow writer whom I greatly admire to join forces on a side project. Note: I said side project. It’s not another novel. Publishing book 1 of my adult high fantasy series is still my absolute top writing priority. This is a smaller collaboration I can work on here and there in my spare time, and while it falls pretty far outside my comfort zone, I’m excited to challenge myself. I can’t wait to share more details with you later in the year! 💞

Novel Update

1. 25k words cut - 25k to go: You’d think this would put me at the halfway point of my book edits, right? Truth is, I’m somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 right now. I’m at chapter 30/76, and page 234/618. But naturally, as I continue to decrease my word count, I’m also consistently dropping the overall page count (I started January with 630 pages total).
    
   It still amazes me how many words I’ve cut simply by making my prose (and even my dialogue) more succinct and concise. When editing, don’t underestimate the power of tightening sentence structure!
   
   I’m also starting to accept the fact that baby will likely win this race (that is, he'll be born before I finish this round of edits), but I’m going to keep pushing forward as if I still have a chance. You know why? Maybe I won’t be able to send my manuscript to Beta Readers before March. But if I at least try, I can sure as hell make it happen sometime this spring. And given all I’ve got going on in my personal life right now, I’d say that would be a decent accomplishment.
   
                                                            
    
2. Extended Snippets?: Thanks to some truly heartwarming encouragement from my newly-found writer tribe, I’ve slowly begun to share tiny snippets from my WIP on Instagram. 😶 It’s been both a terrifying and liberating process. Obviously, the tidbits I share on social media right now are subject to change, since they’re all being actively edited, but even so, to say the positive reactions have been uplifting would be a gross understatement.
   
   This gave me a fun idea. What if, toward the end of each month, I host a poll on my Instagram Stories where you can vote between different snippets I’ve shared that month, which one you'd like to see more of? I would then include an extended version of the winning snippet in that month’s newsletter; perhaps even the entire scene, if it’s not too spoiler-y. Would that be something you’d like to see in future newsletters? Let me know what you think! DM me or reply to this email. 😊

January Reads

1. Empress of a Thousand Skies by Rhoda Belleza - ⭐️⭐️⭐️: I haven’t read a recently-published science fiction book in quite some time. This one is a fast read, with great pacing and diverse characters, and it tackles some important representation issues. The plot, for the most part, is pretty generic, and one of the two alternating POV characters bugs me, but the other is rather enjoyable, and I found myself sucked into the space opera drama nonetheless. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but I also wouldn’t discourage you from reading it. It was “nice.” I think I've learned I should read more in this genre, though, because I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the sci-fi elements.
   
   I think part of my 3-star reading streak has to do with my effort to alternate my organic TBR with the backlog of books from my book subscription box of choice, Fairyloot. Every now and then, the box delivers an awesome book, but most of the ones in between are 3 stars for me. Good, not great. And I have SO MUCH on my own personal TBR that maybe I should be pickier with what I choose to pick up vs. what I choose to pass on from subscriptions. 🤔

Et Vous?

I hope your 2019 is off to a stellar start. And if it’s not quite there yet, that’s one of the nicest things about the beginning of the year - you’ve still got 11 months to make it your own. 💕

As always, don’t be afraid to reach out! Whether here or on any of my platforms, I’m always excited to get to know you better.
 

💖Always,
Danielle