Earlier today I received word back that my short story “Common Cause” did not make the final cut for Third Flatiron Publishing’s Abbreviated Epics anthology, but it was on the short list. That in itself is encouraging. It is already off to a different market, so hopefully we will get some good results from it.

Now, on to today’s work. I spent part of the morning working at outlining “False Seer.” I plan to start the rough draft of that tomorrow. After I finished with that the rest of the morning and the bulk of the afternoon was spent working on the second draft of “Fire with Fire.” I have finished with the first three scenes, but there is still quite a bit to be done, not to mention more editing once the whole draft is gone over a second time. The plan is to finish the second draft tomorrow, and then immediately get onto the editing. This second sweep’s focus has been on adding emotional impact and tightening the language in the action-oriented scenes. There were also a few areas of the dreaded “exposition dump” that needed to be trimmed or worked in better.

Blog Posts: 224
Planning and outlining: 1,718
Short Fiction: 5,840
Novel Fiction: 000
Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 19,156

Total Salable for Month: 988

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 220,783

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 45,382