5/17/2024 Weekly Update

5/16/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Weekly meeting last night and it was all about the edits!

While Sid and Mickie did their “says” for the May blog and sent it over to James, that was only the first part of the night. After that, everyone worked on their edits for Charlie’s Web.

Sid and James both made significant progress on their reviews, while Mickie has begun making further edits based on conversations that have come up as Sid and James work on their portion. We hope to have our portion wrapped up soon and back to Mickie for a more intense edit pass.

That was it for the evening, but we’ll be back next week with more exciting updates!

5/10/2024 Weekly Update

5/9/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Last night was a writing night, fingers on keyboards, clicking away!

We all worked on Charlie’s Web.

Sid and James worked on their review/critique/edit of the first half; it’s going well, there’s more structure and we’re getting a sense of how Mickie intends the story to go.

Mickie worked on getting the second half ready to send over to Sid and James for review. She removed some old comments from previous reviews, added and fleshed out some scenes. Hopefully, she’ll be able to send over the second half soon and we’ll have a complete manuscript.

Anyway, that was it for the week. Since it was review and edit night, there are no word counts to report. We’ll be back next week with another exciting update!

5/3/2024 Weekly Update

5/2/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

Last night was our monthly meeting. It was pretty short, as we didn’t have a lot of business to discuss.

As usual, we reviewed the financials, and Sid notified the others that the Perfect Coven domain renewal is coming up in the next month.

Next, we talked about the status of WIPs, marketing, upcoming publications, etc. Mickie sent over the first half of Charlie’s Web for a review/edit pass, and James completed his review of Faded Legacy and returned it to Sid. For more detail about that, see the Graeae Happenings post. 

Finally, we continued our ongoing discussion about social media use. Sid has been more active recently on her author Instagram and Threads sites – she recently discovered that she’s terrible about cross-posting her Instagram posts to Threads and needs to pay more attention to that. Mickie has been cross-posting some of Sid’s posts to the Graeae Pub Instagram, but it’s been erratic and we need to work at making the Graeae socials more active. James is still dealing with health concerns, but is following Sid’s progress and making notes for when he is able to devote the time to upping his social media game.

That’s where we left it for the month. We’ll be back next week, doing the writing!

4/25/2024 Weekly Update

4/25/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

This week’s meeting has been canceled for personal reasons. We’ll be back next week for our monthly discussion, so tune in to see what’s happening!

4/19/2024 Weekly Update

4/18/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Last night was all about series bible updates, project planning, and deadlines, specifically for the Perfect Coven series. We are agreed that we want to query the main series, which means we need to have the first trilogy (Shaman, Water, Bard) completed and the second (Ortho, Siren, Were) underway when queries go out. Last night’s discussion centered on those issues.

We’ve set deadlines for finalizing the first trilogy, and then we will begin working diligently on the second, while we prepare and submit our queries. 

We did discuss timelines for the Ortho, Siren, Were trilogy – in terms of when these stories take place in relation to the Shaman, Water, Bard trilogy – but we’ve opted not to set deadlines until we get the first trilogy properly completed and restarted the query process.

Plus, Sid and James have cozy mysteries they’re working on, Sid is finalizing Faded Legacy for publication, and we all have secret side projects.

It’s going to be a busy summer!

4/12/2024 Weekly Update

4/11/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Last night was a writing night, so expect this update to be short and sweet.

In a nutshell, all three of us worked on Faded Legacy, Sid’s fairy tale retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. We’re getting close to wrapping up this (hopefully) final edit round, and then…publication (more to come on that, of course). 

Other than that, it was a quiet night, as we’re all a bit overwhelmed with work and other life things, because yes, Life Is (still) Happening.

We’ll be writing again next week, so tune in to see how it goes!

4/5/2024 Weekly Update

4/4/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

Last night was our monthly meeting, and we had several things to discuss.

First up, as always, was Graeae Publishing business. Mickie got our annual registration done for 2024 and 2025, so we’re set for the next two years – go Mickie!

We realized that when we did our last series bible update, we were actually supposed to be working on future planning for the Perfect Coven series, and instead we worked on our cozy series. Oops. So the future planning is back on the calendar for April.

We next moved to our ongoing discussion of social media use as authors, branding, all that stuff that goes along with being a writer these days. Mickie is working on designing some promotional reels/posts for Homegrown Murder, and she’s also looking to repost some older Homegrown Trouble posts and some of Sid’s T.L. Sidney author posts to the Graeae Publishing Instagram account (graeaepubllc).

James has not begun setting up his author accounts on Insta/Threads at this time because Life Is Happening and while he wants to do it, he just doesn’t have the bandwidth to devote to it right now. We are hoping that things settle out soon, and we can all get back into our routines, because honestly, Life Is Happening for all of us right now – and Mercury is in retrograde, such great timing! – and some things just have to be put on the back burner until we can make it all work.

(Life Is Happening seems to be the 2024 theme so far. I hope Life eases up a bit, and perhaps starts happening a bit more slowly soon.)

Then we finished off with some worldbuilding, which is always great fun.

We also discussed and updated the Graeae Publishing webpage, go check it out!

That’s it for our monthly meeting. Next week, we’ll be writing, so tune in to see how it goes!

4/1/2024 Weekly Update

3/28/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Oops. Yeah…sorry about forgetting to post the update.

On Thursday, we worked on our series bible, mostly creating character profiles and updating some existing ones. Sid and James worked primarily on their cozy characters, while Mickie concentrated on her Perfect Coven characters. So not a lot to report, but necessary work and well, world-building is always fun.

The upcoming meeting is our monthly meeting, so tune in Friday to see what we discussed!

3/22/2024 Weekly Update

3/21/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Last night was a normal night of writing sprints (now that everyone is feeling somewhat better). We set the timers and did the thing, and this is how it went:

Sid – working on a revamp of Siren’s Secret and realized she needs to work out some world-building issues before she can seriously begin writing.

James – edited twelve (12) pages of Faded Legacy.

Mickie – finished her revision of Chapter Three of Charlie’s Web and revised the first five (5) pages of Chapter Four. She also found a plot hole and plugged it.

That’s where we left off for the week. Next week, we’ll be back and working on our series bible. Tune in to see what we accomplish! 

3/15/2024 Weekly Update

3/14/2024 → Thursday Skype & Write

Last night’s meeting was canceled due to illness. We’ll be back next week, doing the writing, so tune in to see what we get up to!