Thursday 6 November 2025: New schedule begins

Last job of the day on Tuesday was supposed to be schedule work. Then I remembered yesterday’s entry for 12 stories in 12 months. It’s rare I get this done *before* deadline day, but this time I managed it.

I chose the second chapter of Fallen Angel, the first in a trilogy of short stories starring angel-in-training (who doesn’t really want to be an angel anyway) Gabby Devlin. It came to more than 1,400 words, so I had to chop off the last couple of hundred words. It still worked, but it still had a ‘…to be continued’ at the end of it.

In the trilogy, the first 3 chapters, or the first short story up to 5,000 words, is called Angel Without Wings, but it’s a complete tale in itself. Story 2 is Angel in Purgatory, and Story 3 is It’s Hell Being an Angel. All 3 stories stitched together will be a 15,000-word novella, as they all feature the same main character as she continues and grows throughout her journey. I sent Chapter 1 off to 12 stories in 12 months in October, and Chapter 2 went off yesterday.

This is the afterlife pastiche I couldn’t find the inclination for back in August.

Then I got around to the scheduling, up to the end of the year. I’ve included half-hour slots for pet playtime and half an hour a day for fitness. If I have a client edit in, then that’s what gets done in the bulk of the time during each week and in between I’ll work on short stories. If I don’t have a client edit in, then I’ll work on a longer piece of my own.

The next long piece I’ll be working on of my own is Project Management for Writers: Gate 3. This has been in the diary for months and it keeps getting moved along. I do love being able to move things around on TickTick, but sometimes it’s just a bit too easy. So I’ve scheduled that in to be written during November and December (in between 2 new client edits that came in recently), and proof-read in the new year.

I’m already revising Catch the Rainbow as I go. I broke this down into 3 novellas for the great novella challenge as the story can quite clearly be split into 3 distinctive parts. Does anyone remember 3-part single books? They all seem to come out as Books 1, 2 and 3 these days. But it needs to be stitched back together and revised for continuity as well as improvements before it’s released. 

The Stevie Beck novellas I wrote for the challenge will be revised and then quick-released next year, one after the other. I’m hoping by then I’ll have more idea about promotion. 

The poet came home from work and took over pet duties just so I could say I’d done some work. But neither of the dogs would really settle with just one of us when they knew the other one was somewhere else in the house. So I switched everything off and moved into the living room with them, taking Stephen King and my headphones with me.

Wednesday we were up early. One good thing about having a puppy is that it gets you up early. It might be a bit *too* early for me at the moment, but he’s currently sleeping through from about 11pm to around 6:30am, so that’s not bad. Puppy accidents are definitely getting fewer and farther between and he’s deliberately using the trainer mats indoors most of the time. 

The poet headed off to the midlands and I had my dirty cup of tea with the dogs while I made a few (too many!) corrections to yesterday’s blog post via the phone. I fed the dogs and the birds, and I emptied the dishwasher. 

I moved things around then, though, to suit the mood of the dogs. I was supposed to submit the November story to 12 stories in 12 months first, but pet play came up first, because that’s when spaniel wanted it, and I submitted the story once I was at my desk.

I had my fitness half-hour, trying not to do too much too soon. One of the exercises I did already made me feel a bit sore and I didn’t want to throw out a muscle with 2 dogs to look after during the day.

I had my midday breakfast, then started today’s blog post, grabbing the free image from depositphotos at the same time. This is the same image they sent last week, for some reason. One of the other free images they sent was one I wanted to use before Halloween, but I forgot about it. So I made sure to use this week’s on the day it came in. I only do this if I like the image, and this time (and when it first landed last week!) I liked the image.

Then it was a client edit for a couple of hours. I poured myself half a glass of this disgusting pop we have and cracked on with that until I was ready to eat.

We’re trying to eliminate things from my diet to see what’s causing the rash everywhere. So far I’ve cut out bananas and I’ve started to take collagen. My nails are definitely thinner and my hair is thicker, I think my skin is softer (but still spotty), and my joints are certainly looser. So as it’s inconclusive, for now, I’m now dropping aspartame (artificial sweetener) and going back to real sugar.

Since I started the collagen, my weight has been up and down, and since I went back on the sugar, it’s gone up and then not come down as much as it went up before it goes up again. I’m gradually reducing added sugar, though, so we’ll see how that goes. 

But pop (soft drinks, soda) has artificial sweeteners in it whether it’s no-added-sugar or not, which we really can’t understand. It’s difficult now to find a fizzy pop that doesn’t have artificial sweeteners in it, apart from full fat Coke, and I’m not a fan of pop that can clean your toilet. I’m also not a fan of soda water. I think it tastes vile.

I found a pop online that claims to be natural ingredients, no artificial sweeteners, no fruit juice from concentrate, and I tried their ‘apple’ while the poet tried their ‘rhubarb’…Ugh. It was also vile. Thinking it may have tasted so horrible because I’d had it with a meal, I decided to try it yesterday instead of a cup of tea.

Reader, it was still vile. The apple, the other day, tasted of soda water. The elderflower, yesterday, tasted of grapefruit. And I don’t like grapefruit either. So the poet has agreed to drink as much of it as he can stomach (I ordered a crate of 12 cans when I should have ordered just 4). And the grapefruit/elderflower I had yesterday went down the drain. Yuk!

I did some more research. (Displacement much? Moi?) But I couldn’t find a pop, even a full-fat full-sugar one, that didn’t have artificial sweeteners in. So I ordered a food intolerance/allergy diary instead. We’ve seen a food intolerance test we can both take too. It’s a bit expensive, but we shall see.

The garden man cometh again today. This time he’s building a fence. We already have the posts and the wire. He’s bringing the braun, the staples, and the time. That will be fun with 2 dogs running around now. Wish us luck!