It's the middle of the month, time for a project update.

Current active projects:

UK Horror Project
(cowritten with Sarah)

1. Talking Dead
Young adult supernatural adventure. Ghosts, monsters, and killers, oh my. Status: Fourth draft in progress. Fourth draft combines Talking Dead and Monsters & Magic into one book. We generally write one chapter a writing session, and try to have at least one session a week though we've each had to cancel a few sessions, so while this seems like slow going compared to 2014, it's actually moving along quite well.

(Monsters & Magic used to be #2. Young adult supernatural adventure. Flirtatious werewolves and incorporeal monsters.)

2. Supernatural Slumber Party
Young adult supernatural adventure. It's a slumber party of supernaturals, see? Status: First draft complete. Second draft on hold until Talking Dead draft four complete.

3. Wicked Witches
Young adult supernatural adventure. Witches, dude, always with the witches. And the world goes BOOM. Status: First draft complete. Second draft on hold until Talking Dead draft four complete. Second draft combines Wicked Witches and Monster Mash into one book.

(The Monster Mash used to be #5. Young adult supernatural adventure. The world goes BOOM.)

Stand Alone Books

1. Monsters in the Trees
Young adult horror. Friends, makeouts, and monsters in an isolated cabin. Status: Draft one in progress. Slow progress. I need to do some more outlining on paper, I think, before I sit down at the computer again. We'll see if that helps.

2. Winter Cabin
New adult or adult paranormal romance. Flirtations and sexy times while snowed in interrupted by monsters and mayhem. Status: Draft one nearly complete. Though not as nearly as it should be. I hit the end of the outline around the end of March as planned, and then realized there's probably another 15k of story to write. Good times. (This will go under the pseud if it is published.)

3. Monsters and Music
Young adult horror. Ghosts and werewolves, oh my. (witches and dead people and haunted things, too.) Status: Draft two in progress. Had an epiphany about the main romantic relationship, which I think will help structure the story.

Bad mental health = bad writing month. Year. This is an ongoing thing I fight.

Current active projects include:

The UK Horror Series isn’t off this list because it’s complete, unfortunately, but because my cowriter needed to take a break.

Stand Alones
Werewolves in Love
New adult romance. Werewolves, murders, and the constant sea. Status: Outline complete, first draft in progress.

Monsters & Music
Young adult supernatural mystery. Werewolves, murders, and teen witches. Status: Outline in progress, first draft in progress.

Love in the Time of Percussion
New adult romance. Marching bands, rock bands, and snarky flirtations. Status: Outline in progress.

Sex, Love & Drums
Young adult contemporary romance. Status: Outline in progress.

Chase the Sun
Young adult contemporary. Sisters on a road trip. Status: Outline in progress.

Monsters in the Trees
Young adult horror. Friends, makeouts, and monsters in an isolated cabin. Status: Brainstorming.

Race the Drums
Young adult contemporary. Marching band can save a life, if he lets it.

Essays
Nothing currently in draft form, but I’m starting to make notes about a series of essays about my experiences with bipolar.

(Originally posted at www.carlamlee.com.)

Current active projects include:

UK Horror Series
(This series cowritten with Sarah.)

1: Talking Dead
Young adult supernatural adventure. Ghosts, vampires, killers, oh my. Status: Second draft complete and with early readers. Outline for the third draft completed, rewrite well under way. Sarah and I spent awhile struggling with a new chapter from a new POV, but we finally finished it this weekend. Here's hoping the next few chapters go much faster.

2: Monsters & Magic
Young adult supernatural adventures. Flirtatious werewolves and incorporeal monsters. Status: Second draft outlined, on hold until draft three of Talking Dead is complete. Also retitled, because music is no longer an applicable word.

3: Supernatural Slumber Party
Young adult supernatural adventures. It’s a slumber party of supernaturals, see? Status: First draft complete. Editing.

4: Wicked Witches
Young adult supernatural adventures. Witches, dude. Always with the witches. Status: First draft complete. Editing.

5: The Monster Mash
Young adult supernatural adventures. The world goes BOOM. Status: First draft complete. Editing.

Stand Alones
Werewolves in Love
New adult romance. Werewolves, murders, and the constant sea. Status: Outline complete, first draft in progress. I've been struggling with writing lately, it feels like I've forgotten how to tell a story, so I went back to an outline I finished a few years ago, and started a draft from it. If I lose the thread of the story, the outline is already there.

Love in the Time of Percussion
New adult romance. Marching bands, rock bands, and snarky flirtations. Status: Outline in progress.

Sex, Love & Drums
Young adult contemporary romance. Status: Outline in progress.

Chase the Sun
Young adult contemporary. Sisters on a road trip. Status: Outline in progress.

Essays
Still working on figuring out this whole pitching thing. It is not going well, but I will keep trying.

(Apparently forgot to crosspost. Originally posted at carlamlee.com.)

First project list of 2014. It’s going to be a busy year.

( Project List, January 2014 )

Nearly the middle of the month yet again!

( Project List, November 2013 )

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.org with comments. Read the original post there. Comment here or there using OpenID.

ETA Lovecraftian Shenanigans cowriter just messaged me with this blurb for it (complete with DRAMATIC MOVIE ANNOUNCER VOICE!): In a WORLD where HOT DUDES have TENTACLES, WATCH OUT for NUZZLING RAT-MONSTERS!

Bwahaha. And now I can vent to her about this ableist thing I just read instead of blowing up online or being up half the night sitting on my hands so I won't blow up online.

So it's been almost two years since I regularly updated the monthly project updates, but it is time to start them again, because I get a lot more done when I keep track of my writing in a variety of ways.

This month, I thought I'd kick it off with a fun thing, too. When I’m in traffic, to entertain myself, once in awhile I'll come up with blurbs for my fiction writing projects. (I create them for my nonfiction writing projects, too, but mostly those are confidential, so I can’t really talk about them even if you were interested in legal writing projects.) I even say them aloud in a DRAMATIC MOVIE ANNOUNCER voice, sometimes.

(Sometimes the music is up too loud for that.)

So for this month's project update, I thought I'd include some of the recent blurbs. I recommend giving them your own DRAMATIC MOVIE ANNOUNCER voice.

( Monthly Project Update )

So what are you working on right now?

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.org with comments. Read the original post there. Comment here or there using OpenID.

I wanted to have Monsters & Music draft one done by this update, but I'm still a few chapters away. Still, it's the middle of the month and I'm trying to do this regularly, so here's the current project list.

( Project Update )

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth.org with comments. Read the original post there. Comment here or there using OpenID.

So it's been a few months (or seven, WHATEVER), but it's time to start the monthly project updates again. I think doing them in the middle of the month will work best for me, so here's hoping I'll hit the 15th of every month with these.

( Project Update )

I was just talking to sunfire1216 about how I found her posts about cleaning and organizing a little every day very inspirational and I wanted to be back in my apartment cleaning and organizing. Then the conversation veered into positive versus negative thoughts and being the change you want to see and I decided that I think I'd like this year to be the year of me attempting to be more positive and the year of me saying yes to things I'd normally immediately say no to doing. I am very antisocial and prefer being alone, but I think I'd like to try to be slightly more social and say yes to more invitations, especially with the big move in the future. We'll see how this goes.

This comes at the end of a fairly frustrating and disheartening day. I've been editing a complaint to Delta Airlines and American Airlines and I've had to take breaks from it because it was so frustrating and terrifying, the way they treated the passenger and her dogs. I can't imagine having lived through it, especially towards the end of the experience.

I also wasn't able to get into the free clinic. They only had one doctor tonight and were only seeing eight patients. Also, even though I can never get through on the phone and they used to only take people on a first-come, first-served basis, they are apparently taking phone reservations now. I will be glad when I have health insurance again, because that's obviously going to happen before this country gets its head out of its ass when it comes to public health care.

Finally, Mom is not doing well, which is always a downer.

On the positive side, Mom and Dad's new dog is this tiny, adorable ball of brown fur. Her name is CoCo and she's so teeny and cute. Dad and I had a nice visit. I've managed to figure out how to end chapter twenty-three of M&M, my current novel-length project, am likely to finish it tonight, and know how chapter twenty-four will begin, at least. (Sure, I haven't figure out the transition scene in the middle of chapter twenty-three, but that's what draft two is for.) I may be working the rest of this week at the glass shop again. I have a giant stein of ice water and a large glass of diet Dr. Pepper to drink. I have the most awesome fingerless gloves ever. Pandora has given me five hours of excellent music in which I have not had to dislike a single song. On the whole, life is good.

Best thing about winter in Missouri is that I can walk outside at night and my eyes automatically find Canis Major. It's too cloudy in Michigan to see it mostly, but I love being able to look up and it being right there. (For those who don't know, I have it tattooed on my right leg. It has meaning for me.)

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Have some links! (I have approximately 500 tabs open, NO JOKE, so I need to stop hanging on to these and post them already.)

Justine Larbalestier talks about cover art.

Maggie Stiefvater talks about her top songs of 2009.

Isabel the Spy talks about how Lady GaGa isn't all that subversive when it comes to ideals of beauty.

Quote: i feel like there are limits, maybe, to how “hideous” an extremely skinny blonde white girl can be considered. and this isn’t a critique of gaga herself because it’s true that she for the most part can’t help these things and shouldn’t (though: she did recently say in an interview that she doesn’t eat, make of that what you will). but i see this argument thrown around a lot and i don’t buy it, because she’s still in that safety zone.

or to put it another way: picture a fat woman, or a black woman, or a Latina woman, or a fat black Latina woman, doing ANYTHING that lady gaga has ever done, and tell me people would still be talking about her as some kind of subversive artiste.

Justine Larbalestier talks about the music she listened to while writing Liar.

Drowning in the Shallow End: Third Wave Feminism.

(NB: I am not yet done reading this article, but I thought some of you might be interested.)

Karen Healey wrote a sweet, funny holiday story filled with warmth and light and family and love: Queen of the Kitchen.

(NB: Keep an eye on Karen, she is a fantastic writer and is going far. OMG You guys my friends are AWESOME.)

Thanks to mattie, I can never unsee Awkward Family Photos.

Catherynne Valente talks about the all-women authors upcoming Realms of Fantasy issue.

Based on this post by Sigrid Ellis about Vin Diesel, I've realized that I basically play a Vin Diesel-esque character in all my tabletop RPGs, except female. And also that I love the do him/be him dichotomy to my love for Vin Diesel.

V Magazine apparently has a plus-size issue this year? I do not know what V Magazine is or anything about this, but some of the pictures are pretty.

Justine Larbalestier asks for recommendations of books which are like her book Liar. So if you've read Liar and have recs, head over there.

For all my Glee hate, I like this fanvid: They Don't Care About Us, Brittany, Mike, Santana, and Matt. (Though the talking head bits drive me crazy.) I also like this Brittany/Santana vid. Maybe the thing to do is give up watching Glee (which probably I have already done) and instead watch transformative fanvids that address the issues I have with it?

Okay, so I got it down under 300 tabs. Jake's still not home from work (two v. v. long days for him in a row), but I think I am headed to bed soon. Especially if I'm working tomorrow.

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Man, I love my cheesy, angry rock SO MUCH.

I just wrote a description for M&M in an email and I like it, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Music & Monsters is a YA paranormal mystery/romance about Sandra Ramos, an eighteen-year-old girl who can see the ghosts of supernatural murder victims, first in her dreams and then elsewhere. When the police make no headway in solving the murders and the ghosts keep appearing, Sandra must solve the mystery herself or risk being haunted forever. She's at least partly driven by her guilt over an accident a few months before the novel begins. Sandra's helped along the way by her chosen family: sister, Joanna; best friend, Lina; and friends, Randy and Dana. Complicating her quest are Anders, Lina's new boyfriend, who is a person of interest to the police because he is sexually linked to all the victims, male and female, and Ben, Anders' best friend, whose easy flirtations with Sandra take on a darker light when she learns his darkest secret.

I am at the writing stage (15k into the writing, the middle of chapter ten) where I love this damn novel so much. So much. I need icons for it, I think.

Now maybe I can get back to sleep soon.

(If you're interested in being a first reader, let me know.)