Writing about writing about writing

I've used up all my vacation days at work (mostly being sick -- what a waste.) But even if I took a week off to write I'd still fall short of finishing this book. I'm guessing 2-3 weeks of work yet.

I jumped the gun with a cover artist. Not that I can't have the cover ready to go before the book is finished, but I can't spare the time to finish my repaint so she can clean up all three covers. And I can try to get some readership.

Because my confidence in this series -- and my writing -- is at a real low. I'm just above the line now where I can't face it and I spend the weekend playing Fallout 4 or watching streaming episodes of Bones.

Complete re-work of the inside-the-cult sequence. And this is really telling. I already have a rough draft, I have copious notes; basically this is what I'd have if I had outlined the whole book obsessively at the start. But it still isn't moving at a NaNoWriMo pace!

I still have hopes that with new SEO and covers and all that and the kick a third book will give it, I'll get a smattering of sales. Enough to tell me this is worth continuing. I mean, I still enjoy writing, but it stops being a priority if I'm the only one reading it.

Ah, well. At least in all the Deep Thoughts about series strengths and genre styles and keyword optimization and cover design...and not to mention, rewrites and beta reader help...I've settled my doubts on the Paris book.

Sometimes a Fox is definitely the next book, and it happens in April and is set in Paris. And it is going to be a walk-back from living the Instagram life on someone else's charge card, and ninja jumping out of every shadow. This is cafe culture and art museums. I also have another idea to back away from the Too Much Stuff problem; to have a lot of very minor plot steps taking place, and almost all of it in dialog.

But following that is 20th Century Fox and that one plays with time. Because it picks up when it becomes an Adventure and the crazy really starts, but the groundwork happened months previously. Happened during the winter, in fact -- before she went to Paris!

And this is Space Race and Silicon Valley and probably a Branson-like figure and museum work and restoration. The theme of the new exhibit -- which is also a chance to show how Penny makes rent when she isn't pawning priceless antiquities, aka doing display work -- is The Future that Never Was. L5 Society, science fiction...and of course the Mercury 13. In social context, of course; both the museum and the story.

(Then there's space for up to a half-dozen more adventures before the lockdown begins. She does some serious on-line study when not getting pulled into archaeogaming and a whole story there, and is a grad student getting ready to think about a thesis project when the lockdown ends. With few prospects for employment as a junior archaeologist and the first post-COVID story would be the Bro-Ventures one...)

(But I'll probably be dead of old age long before any of that happens.)