Wednesday 10 September 2025: Ten down, two to go

I finished work early on Friday because we were doing the shopping early. Our Saturday was already fully booked in advance and Friday evening was the only chance we had.

Saturday

On Saturday, we were up bright and early to go to another annual fishing contest final. We didn’t get off as early as we thought we would, but at least that meant we had time to have breakfast before we went. It was only local anyway. Or local-ish. We used to live very close to Auckley but now it’s about 20 minutes away. Still local, yes?

There was a good turn out at Hayfield Lakes for the Maver Match This fishing final. I took my laptop and my Kobo with me and stayed in the shiny new car that arrived last week. Last year, we took camping chairs and I sat on the bank of one of the lakes while the poet went for a wander. But it was very, very cold and windy in the shade and the sun was too strong out of the shade. 

I’m more than happy to use the car as an office as it gives me a change of scenery, and the intention was to crack on with Book 10 of the great novella challenge. But the book I was reading was far too interesting, and anyway, the Kobo was easier to manoeuvre in the car than the laptop would be. We didn’t have any internet at home still, so I would have had to use my mobile phone as a hotspot if I finished the story anyway and wanted to submit it. But I read instead.

The poet came and collected me when it was time for us to have something to eat. Then he went on another wander and I carried on reading. I *did* get the laptop out of the laptop bag, so I broke the back of it. It just went back in the bag just as easily.

Sunday

This meant, of course, that I had to work on Sunday. And I sat and worked on my laptop in the living room with my headphones on while the poet watched television. The highlights from the fishing match the day before were on YouTube on his phone, and there was another live fishing final somewhere else that he was able to tune into.

The book was a wrench. Even though I’d switched from Fallen Angel to The Beast Within, it was still a wrench. And I had to miss loads of scenes out just to get it to the 15,000-word mark and, therefore, eligible for the 15,000 – 30,000 wordcount requirement. But I called it Part 1 and I wrapped it up as best I could and sent it off. (Via the hotspot.) I received both a friendly acknowledgement of safe receipt plus a tongue-in-cheek *stern* reminder to try and make the next one fun again. 

Ten down, two to go…

Now I have to decide what to do for Book 11. 

I still don’t feel in the mood for Fallen Angel, but nor am I ready to tackle the next instalment of The Beast Within. I *do* need another story for Stevie Beck and the Horvale cosy series so I have 5 of those. When I have 5, I can publish them in quick succession and then release an omnibus edition. I still have the Lady Mathilda series to start. I have 3 more Whitehorse Farm stories to write, so I have 5 of those too. And I have my time travelling brother and sister Toni and Bart who could do with another story.

I wrote the first Toni and Bart story for a NaNoWriMo challenge. That’s gone now, but I see that ProWritingAid are doing something similar. I’m thinking about joining in with that, just to see how it goes. Especially as my great novella challenge finishes at the end of October and my November diary isn’t yet filled in. But I do worry that they have a product to sell and, of course, they’re AI. However, if I can finish all outstanding jobs by the end of October, then I should be able to do it. It’s 50,000 words in 30 days…Hmm, wonder where they got that idea from…

Monday

Monday started with me having to fix a WordPress post not auto-sharing to BlueSky. Again. This is happening a bit too frequently for my liking, and I’m keeping an eye on it now. I did that over my dirty cuppa. 

Next job was feeding the birds, emptying the dishwasher, and having a quick tidy up in the lounge. I also did some exercises for my spine. This was supposed to be my flylady hour, but I don’t think that’s really working. Perhaps I should just have a faff hour instead, although I do worry that may easily spread into the rest of the day.

Once at my desk, I worked on this week’s diary. And then I thought I’d quickly publish the next book on the list: Ten Short Stories – Wordsworth Shorts 31 to 40. I did have all of the stories in my Scrivener file, moved down from the various previous folders, such as ‘story starters’ or ’12 stories in 12 months’. I have a very set routine for the life of each story. But the first few for this volume weren’t originally in this Scrivener binder, so I’d gone and collected what I thought was the latest version of those.

Because of that, I had to go through and proofread each of them in turn and then make sure the formatting was consistent throughout. I moved my front and end matter down into the same folder, so it all compiled into one document. The end matter is 100% standard now, but the front matter needs tweaking. First of all the title and the subtitle need changing every time. Then the title and copyright information is different for each one on the copyright page. And then the also by… pages are updated every time too. So it’s not as quick a job as I imagined.

I did it, though, and that left just one more publication before the next bookazine is due out. The Four Aces is another collection and the next one due out. And then I’ll have caught up with my backlog.

I had to go into TickTick then to add in the work segments for the next bookazine. And that took me on to deciding a publishing schedule to the end of the year. Going forward, I won’t be publishing every week after The Four Aces is published. I just did that to do some catching up so that the stories that have appeared in Words Worth Reading so far are all out there. Apart from a rapid release programme for things like the 5 novellas and their omnibuses, publishing should then go down to maybe fortnightly, apart from when something is date specific, like Bonfire Night.

I’ve already started work on Words Worth Reading Issue SIX, which will be out in January 2026. I’m including Stevie Beck and the Christmas Tree Mystery in that one as I want all of the Stevie Beck stories published before Christmas 2026. So far I’ve already published Stevie Beck and the Body in the Lake and Stevie Beck and the Old Annexe in the bookazine, and Stevie Beck and the Haunted House Hotel will be in Words Worth Reading Issue FIVE, which will be published in October. I’m not sure what Book 5 will be about, but I have a few to choose from.

And that brought me back to the publishing schedule to the end of the year. I have to try and co-ordinate everything so it’s written by a bookazine deadline and then published as a standalone that’s as topical as possible. If it’s an any time story, then it can be published any time. But if it’s, say, a story for Halloween, then it needs to be in the bookazine and released as a standalone in the same quarter/month and preferably in time for Halloween. 

Writing to the seasons is a great way to manage workload and helps me decide when to write what as well. But if I miss a topical date, then it goes back into the machine for next year, and I can’t do anything else with it in between. If it’s topical or date-specific. If it isn’t, then I can do what I like with it when I like. So long as it’s been in the bookazine first. And if I’m writing to market, then it goes to the market first.

(market ➡︎) bookazine ➡︎ standalone ➡︎ collection(s)

That applies to novels and novellas/novelettes too. 

So I decided which stories are going into the bookazine next and, ergo, which stories will be published in the coming months. And then I had to make covers in Affinity for any I didn’t already have. I had them in Canva, but I wanted them in Affinity too. My annual CanvaPro subscription gives me access to premium images and fonts and I do use them. But I want to know how to make them myself too, and I want them all on my own computer and not in a cloud somewhere. (Yes, they’re set to private in Canva, but they’re still in the ether and Canva can still see them.)

It took me the rest of the day, but it’s something I want to keep on top of as I go along now. 

In the future, as I won’t need every Monday to be a publication day post, I’ll use the spare Mondays in between for book reviews. I’m also contemplating a free fiction giveaway in the new year that will only be on the website for a week. One free story every week for one week. I was toying with a Free Fiction Friday but it’s more likely to be Something For The Weekend. Hopefully it will encourage more people to go and buy my books (although they do seem to prefer the collections and the bookazines), and I’ll probably also make it permanently available on a paid Patreon. 

It will also require some solid planning, but at least I have enough short stories for a full year initially. Then it will form part of the publishing process…

(market ➡︎) patreon ➡︎  bookazine ➡︎ blog ➡︎ standalone ➡︎ collection(s)

Newsletter subscribers will also still get their free short story to keep. Which reminds me, I must schedule in that newsletter…

I created the Book 10 graphic for the great novella challenge on Canva, because they’re all on there already and it was quicker to just make a new one. And I shared it everywhere. I created the 10-book graphic too and shared that as well.

Overnight, the edited text finally arrived for the client edit I’d put on hold while I worked on another. Yay! I’ll carry on with the replacement job this week, until it’s finished. Then I’ll get back to the job I put on hold. First thing there is to compare the original file with the new file and make sure he hasn’t also added thousands and thousands of extra words. He has tracked changes, so I may do the second edit on screen, along with the edits I already want to transfer to screen, rather than print it all off again and go back to the beginning.

We had a bit of a surprise when the poet came home from work on Monday. The road behind us was closed off and OpenReach were actually there working on our outage. An entire team of people. We tried the internet, and it was a bit sticky at first, but then it came back in all its glory…well, I use that term very loosely. It was still as slow as ever, but at least it was back. Now we can proceed with the compensation claim before choosing what to do next. 

Hurrah!