So I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but the last two weeks have been NUTS! Major changes at my day job, balancing new projects and revisions, a dog with bloody urine, Dallas for my mom’s birthday and Halloween…

A fun yet crazy and somewhat strange month. Let’s get down to the #amwriting and #amreading details…

What I Read

GRAND TOTAL:  7

A Map for Wrecked Girls by Jessica Taylor 

The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor 

The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook by Kenaz Filan

Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land 

What I Wrote

I finally picked an idea for my next book… And New Orleans witchcraft and voodoo was the winner! I did a lot of research this month in addition to sketching out my characters and plot. If you haven’t checked out Kristen Kieffer’s Pre-Write Project or Crafting Incredible Characters workbooks, do it now. Extremely helpful to kick your brainstorming up to the next level.

At the beginning of November, I also traveled to New Orleans to get a sense of the city. But I’ll talk more about that in next week’s dedicated post… Speaking of, I know I didn’t post much this month. I am hoping to do better with that this month, and I have a few good topics lined up:

• All the fun things I did and learned in New Orleans
• How to choose between story ideas
• I may even review Taylor Swift’s new album… Who knows.

Coming up…

So I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this month.

It takes longer than you might think to start writing a new project. For me, it takes a few months to percolate. Your first general idea may evolve or change. Your characters continue to develop, and additional research can spark a new plot point or scene. There’s no need to rush it.

So in addition to moving forward with my new project, I have decided to go back and begin revisions on either 700 Main or State of Grace. One is more of a reorganization, the other is a total rewrite. Haven’t decided which to start on yet, but I needed to be actively writing/working on something. My brain was starting to rot, and my fingers were starting to twitch.

On the reading front, I have a few good ones lined up for this month, all recommended to me by fellow readers:

• If We We Were Villains by M. L. Rio
• Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham
• Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• Finish the Harry Potter series (rank them in next post)

For those of you who are doing NaNo, how’s it going so far? Which project do you think I should revise first?

Let me know in the comments below!