📖 lisa writes stuff issue 🖋️ #38 jam on the brain

Sprinting my life away

Jun 12, 2024

Dear Internet,

First, TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY! Happy 52nd to me! :)

I got the anthology piece in on time, and it got accepted! My share of royalties, split across all authors, is 8.333%. Here is the blurb for my story, “Love in the Time of Cherry Season”:

Forty-something Zoe has had it with dating but when she meets Ollie at Scoop There It Is, she thinks maybe Ollie could be the person she's been waiting for all along.

Short story long: Zoe is confident except when it comes to dating as she’s been ridiculed about her weight and height for most of her life. She’s fine with sending pictures, sexting, and even phone calls but when it comes time to meet face to face, the fat phobia shines through. Zoe meets man-god Ollie at Scoop There It Is when she accidentally steps on his toes. They have a date, he treats her like the queen she is, and she rejects him. Best friends convince her to give Ollie another try so on date two, things click for Zoe. The last sentence is, “All I want is you.” sayeth Zoe to Ollie. If there wasn’t a word count limit, they would be ripping clothes off on Ollie’s couch. But alas.

(I need to re-read my contract because I think I want to flesh out Zoe and Ollie’s story more and include that hot sex. I’m determined to become a smut queen!)

The book publishes July 9, 2024. A book trailer is available. (I did not create the trailer.)

I told the assistant director at the library I volunteer at about the book, and they want to include it in their Michigan collection! I’m going to reach out to other libraries in the area to see if I can get it in there. Also hitting the local bookstores. With this area being a huge tourist area, hopefully interest will climb.

This will be the second title out in the world that I did not publish myself! My little collection is growing!

I opted to not enter the paranormal fantasy contest as the contest chair emailed me back to say the winner would get a lapel pin and a certificate. A lapel pin. And a certificate. Then what are you using the money for if you’re not giving a cash prize!?

I now have three upcoming calls I want to enter:

· A short (1000 word limit) piece on an art object that is primarily pink (June 30)

· A even shorter (50 word limit) piece (July 15)

· An all queer anthology (2000-6000 words) (July 31)

I’ve had 50- and 100-word pieces accepted but writing short is really hard because each word means something to the piece. Right now, I have no ideas, but I have a month to come up with one.

The art object contest has an entry fee which was the cost of a catalog of 50 pieces of art that is primarily pink. It cost $7 USD so I bought it. I haven’t flipped through it yet but that’s def going to get priority since I have 19 days to get something in.

And for the queer anthology, I have an idea! It’s going to be about a woman who comes out as non-binary to her boyfriend and how they work their way through it. Now to jam that all in under 6,000 words!

When I started writing “Love in the Time of Cherry Season,” I did not think I would hit up 8,000 but it finished at 7900 words, give or take.

It’s a good time to be writing except for the Maeve Fletcher story. See below.

At a local in-person writer’s group last weekend, we did sprints. Sprints are you jam out words for however long the clock is set to. Once the timer goes off, you get a break and the clock resets.

The group was three hours and I cranked out 2600 words on the Maeve Fletcher story. I was setting this up as a cozy paranormal mystery but I’m stuck on what to do after she discovers her boyfriend has been cheating on her for a year. That sumofabitch. She breaks up with him and the last sentence I have is:

“I changed my mind. I don’t want you here while I pack. I’ll text you when I leave. I’ll leave the key in the mailbox.”

And then my brain died.

The outline I have is with the following:

Maeve and Dylan break up
Maeve moves back to her hometown
Maeve starts working at The Crooked Path as a tarot reader

And then?????

I checked my notes and I’ve been jotting them down since early 2023. First it was a paranormal cozy mystery with a romantic element, then it was about a few friends where two are witches and the other two are n3wbs witches and they solve a mystery, and lastly, this now turning into a romantic story?

I don’t know, dude. I’ve still got to research and figure out the magic system in the story if there is a magic system. I need to figure out the mystery if there is even a mystery. Hell, the name of the town keeps changing as I don’t want to fall into the trap that other stories with fake locations end with “falls,” “creek,” or “way.” Hallmark is fine but it’s not my jam for this story.

I’ll figure out something. I always do.

A Most Unreliable Narrator

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