Tuesday 5 August 2025: Last Tuesday

Well, the weekly blog posts went a bit awry a bit quick there. I did notice in time to change the publication date of the bookazine, so that I could announce it on here without it interfering with the month end/month start regular posts. And then I remembered I was publishing something this week too. But I didn’t realise how far that would push me along.

So…last Tuesday…

First job of the day, over my dirty cuppa, after putting a washload through, was to see if the bookazine was in production yet. I hadn’t received any emails from Draft2Digital and it looked like it was stuck in Google Play Books too. Neither had any error messages against them, though, so I just had to keep everything crossed that all was well. 

Once I was dressed, my flylady hour on Tuesday was the living room and the hallway. The hallway is actually bigger than some of our rooms, so it’s not a little job. I dusted and tidied all of the surfaces, got rid of a few cobwebs, wiped the windows, and put quite a lot of clutter away. Then I moved out to the garden where I hung the washing out, fed and watered the birds, did a walking assessment of the garden, dead-heading and picking up windfalls as I went.

Back in the house I got the poet’s new toy out. A cordless vacuum cleaner. We’re both gadget freaks, whether or not we actually use said gadgets. But he does use this cordless vac a lot. It was less complicated than I thought and much, much lighter to push around than either our Henry (cylinder vac) or the old uprights. I vacuumed the two rooms I’d just dusted and had to stop myself doing other rooms ahead of schedule. No point vacuuming carpets before I’ve thrown any dust at them.

I thought I’d done, but there was still the dishwasher to empty. So I did that, and there was nothing yet to go back in. It was as I was ticking things off in my flylady notebook that I realised I hadn’t vacuumed the lounger furniture. Ah well, there’s always this week. 

Again, I was sweating well, so I got a glass of water and took it to my desk where I started today’s blog post, and ticked off things in the flylady book. 

The only jobs on Tuesday’s schedule were Novella #9 for the great novella challenge, daily competitions, and blog posts. And the poet was doing an online work course thing. I quickly rattled off Wednesday’s publication day blog post and I started the wrap-up post too. Then I remembered I had another publication day coming up on Monday (Monday just gone).

Off I pootled to grab all the files for this new publishing job, but I couldn’t find the latest version anywhere. So much for my very carefully choreographed routine of moving short stories down the food chain to match the Nobo power board. The power board was a bit behind as well. The only part of this system that was up to date was the power spreadsheet. So that’s where I started.

I have short stories in several folders on the computer. The path is master ⟶ writing ⟶ fiction ⟶ short stories. Most of the stories start here in ⟶ 12 stories in 12 months, but some start in the study folders instead, as assignments, and then they move either to the 12 stories… folder first, or straight to the in progress folder:

• (study ⟶ study provider ⟶ name of class/workshop ⟶ …) 
• 12 stories in 12 months
• stories in progress
• words worth reading stories
• waiting to be published
• (either) wordsworth shorts
• (or) flash fiction shorts
• (or) short tarot tales
• wordsworth collections

The collections folder is the last one, then I have a folder for short story admin & finance. Now that The Ace of Pentacles is done, I was thinking of archiving the short tarot tales folder. But I may keep it and perhaps write a backstory for other characters in the series. Either recurring characters, or murderers and/or victims and/or suspects.

Now, the idea is to move a story down through these folders as it progresses. And that meant that The Battle of Stubbins Bridge, which was published on Monday, should have been in waiting to be published, as it had already been in words worth reading stories. And it was. But it wasn’t the latest version. The latest version was still in: words worth reading ⟶ issue three ⟶ done. The version in the waiting to be published folder was an older version.

So that meant I had to go through and check I had the latest versions of each story in the right place. I generally leave them in the respective folders, but it means the latest dated version should also be the latest version. Fortunately, I started to date stories as I saved them a few months ago, so it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. But it’s something I must practice more often.

Once I’d found where everything was, I updated the Nobo power board, which is split into:

• percolating
• planning
• writing
• cooling
• revising
• proofreading
• publishing

And once a story has been published in Words Worth Reading, it falls off the end of the board and, virtually, into the power spreadsheet that follows on from this. The T-card is turned over and used again, or discarded if it’s already been used twice. Then the power spreadsheet tells me when something is scheduled to be published.

At the top of the to be published lists was Words Worth Reading: Issue 4. Then beneath that, the stories that have appeared in this and previous bookazines and any collections that are due out. Such as Ten Short Stories: Wordsworth Shorts 31 – 40. Or Ten Short Stories: Flash Fiction 1 – 10. 

I already had 3 flash fiction collections out, but they were still very short as they only had 5 stories in each, and at least 2 hadn’t been published as Wordsworth Flash Fiction stories as they’re way too short (under 500 words). So I unpublished those and decided to republish them in collections of 10, just like I do with the Wordsworth Shorts. 

As The Battle of Stubbins Bridge is Flash Fiction #15, I was way overdue with the new first collection. Mavis Braithwaite Strikes Again is Wordsworth Short #40, so once she’s been published, I can publish the next collection of Wordsworth Shorts. At the moment, Mavis has 2 short stories, but when she has 5, she’ll also get a Mavis Braithwaite collection. And as The Ace of Pentacles will be published soon too, that will be another collection of 4 Tarot Tales. 

I allowed myself 2 hours for all of this in the end, and I finished up with another publication already scheduled, the one that published on the Monday just gone. I had to find myself another segment this week so I can publish the next one next week. It shouldn’t take as long, though, so I think I only need to find a 1-hour segment.

Before launching myself into the novella, I did indeed find an hour this week, an hour next week, and an hour the week after in which to do publishing work. Theoretically, this should give me more chance of getting my work done and less chance of unscheduled faffing. We shall see. I’ve scheduled this work for a Monday, as that then gives Draft2Digital and Google Play Books a full week to get the book(s) up there.

I also managed to tick off two future blog post time slots from the schedule: last Wednesday’s publication day post and this Monday’s publication day post.

Words Worth Reading: Issue Three came up for pre-order on Google Play Books, but it was still slow coming on Draft2Digital. I didn’t expect The Battle of Stubbins Bridge to show up for at least a day.

The poet made a lasagne for me to put in the oven later. He had band practice to go to and I was to put it in the oven at 7:30pm, so it would be ready when he got home.

I’ve been toying with starting a Patreon, but I wasn’t sure what I could put up there that people might actually feel like paying for. It’s been percolating for a few months, actually. Then it hit me last Tuesday. 

Lots of readers say they get a lot out of my old ‘writers’ ideas’ posts, so I might start with those. They take a lot of time and effort to come up with topical or otherwise interesting ideas and I can’t justify doing it for nothing. Yes, they’re all going to go into a book, but in the meantime…

Not sure when that will happen, but watch this space!

I’d already done ‘tomorrow’s’ blog post (aka last Wednesday’s publication day post), and I caught up on the daily competitions over breakfast. That left just one job to do for the rest of the day. I opened up the great novella challenge master file on Scrivener, and off I went.

This blog was already quite long by the end of the day, so I decided to leave this one here and start Wednesday’s tomorrow. Hopefully I will have caught up by the end of the week.