Look, do you know how much braining it takes to make the words go?
I just finished Glitter & Gold. 38.6K words and 8 months after I thought I was starting a short story.
Spellcheck sworn at, search history thoroughly confused as spellcheck and I argued about how to spell words. (It was sometimes right, I was sometimes right, it was sometimes lost on SFnal words, and sometimes it’s British vs. USA spelling.)
Dear FBI guy, yes, that’s why you got the following terms in rapid succession:
Onboard
Counterterrorism
Hunin and Munin
battlespace
noncooperative
sturm und drang
sales flyers
(It was right that hay bale is two words, though. And that I need to remember i before e except in all the weird ways English has.)
Find and replace utilized for two spaces instead of one. (And before anyone thinks that I’m referring to the style after a period, nope, I mean randomly doubletapping the space bar.)
Beta read is out to two subject matter experts. If they don’t find anything egregious, then I’ll clean up their objections and out to beta readers. *crosses fingers*
Knowing them, by the time I’m done, I’ll have crossed the 40K word mark and have a real novel instead of a novella.
And then look at my cover artist and go “I dunno. I wasn’t planning on it becoming a book! Do you have any ideas on what to put on the cover?”
And possibly find a better name than the working title. Or maybe just grin, shrug, and say it worked for me.
I fall over go bed now.
Mad Genius Club 
Congratulations! It’s a book! Or will be soon.
Yeah, I hear you on the random double spaces. I blame my over-sensitive Woke keyboard. Especially about all the double s and w that happen regularly. Could not possibly have anything to do with slouching in my chair with my left elbow on the armrest hitting keys sort of from an angle . . .
That, and the frostbite damage that makes getting my little finger off the keyboard not so easy, so I have to remove all the double-capitals because the finger didn’t stop pressing the shift key… Wish I could blame the keyboard for that one!
Maybe this misreading will make you smile, at least:
Spellcheck sword out-
Re-read that paragraph three times, trying to see what I was missing for an obviously good interesting figure of speech, before realizing the monster was in my mind. 😉
Always happy to hear you’re writing stories for us. Thanks for massively exerting those clever brain cells.
You’re welcome! Hope you’ll enjoy it 🙂
Oooh, that could be a fun fantasy item!
Ah, working titles. I really love it when the title inspired the work and doesn’t fir in the end.
Yeah, I am not good at picking titles. Fortunately, I can leave that until my cover artist clears her throat and reminds me that she needs one to actually put on, you know, the final draft of the cover.
Unfortunately, then I still have to come up with one.
And the cover’s not done until you have the title, either, because long titles take up more space.
Congratulations on the book!
We do have the weirdest most incongruous search histories ever, don’t we?
If I didn’t already have too many mugs, I’d get one that proclaims I’m not a serial killer, I’m just a writer, never mind my search history…
I love mine! And I so worry about my search history sometimes.
This time last year, I was writing 1) a book set in fantasy Pacific Northwest and 2) many many MANY home-decor blog articles. I was reluctant to do all the privacy stuff because the resulting Farcebook ads were so damn funny.
Yeah… At the moment I’m working through a seduction subarc; some girl is trying to swipe another girl’s boyfriend, which, as you can imagine, is something I do not have experience with.
So yeah, my search history is a bit… odd…
I am relieved that 40K crosses the threshold of novel. Now all I have to do is finish up the various plot threads, fill in the plotholes, and it’ll be ready for cleanup and beta.
I really don’t think I brain well enough to do something 100k or more …
The other WIP I’m still working on has just hit 36K and it’s got a lot of book to go. That one’s going to be 60K, maybe 80K by the time it’s done, just the pace it’s at. It might also take a couple years to get there, at the rate I’m writing. I hope not. I’d like to see it out the door, *out of my brain*, and gone off to entertain readers.
Glitter and Gold is one POV. Two points of view definitely makes for a longer book, because you have two different reactions to the information and the plot, and you have to weave them together. Three points of view, even more so.
Also, each subplot, you can count on taking 10K to introduce, enact, and resolve.
That title really needs an “With Explosions” extension or a leading Blood. Anything to signal it isn’t a romance.
Looking forward to seeing it.
Well, there aren’t any explosions in this one. A bit of a radiation hazard, a funeral, more than one shootout, Jenna trying to be polite and eating a bite of pickled herring without knowing what it was…
But yeah, point taken, it does need a signifier of non-girliness. *sinal salute* I’ll ask my Beta readers, once they’ve finished.
Or you can just trust your fans to read it, no matter the title.
All prudent writers look to widen their readership when feasible.
I’ve had so much fun with your prior works, you have entered a very select club. You write it, I’ll buy it and read it.
Even if it ends up titled: “Glitter & Gold with Kippers”
Actually I kind of like that and it sure doesn’t say romance. 🙂
Dang it. Now I want to write “Glitter and Blood” and I don’t even know what it would be ABOUT.
I know the feeling. I’ve got a work in progress going by the name of “Royal Rubies” and I’m not even sure what genre that would indicate.
Much praise. Sleep be had. Worry be gone. Blow kazoo!
When will it be released to general readership? I’m so excited!! I don’t care about the title, but I can see where the working title has a certain feminine flair.