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!

1/2/2020 Weekly Update

1/1/2020 → Wednesday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

Happy New Year to all of you out there that follow the Perfect Coven, and any of you that don’t, but are stopping by to see what we’re all about!

While it was a holiday yesterday, we decided to go ahead with our monthly meeting anyway, because it seemed like a good thing to do.

As it was the first meeting of the new year, we (of course) discussed our goals and things we wish to accomplish in 2020, both with Perfect Coven and our individual projects. We tend to revisit our deadlines monthly and our goals quarterly, so we try to keep things a bit loose.

That said, we set goals through June, which is when we’re planning our writing retreat. We’re all looking forward to that, and it seemed like a good idea to set that date as a deadline.

So the first thing we need to do is nail down our dates, so we can set our schedules and (in Sid’s case) get travel set up.

So, by June we’d like:

1. to be at a point with the second trilogy that we could possibly wrap it up during the retreat;
2. Be ready to brainstorm the third trilogy;
3. Have the first three chapters of each cozy ready for critique.

However, we do have goals to accomplish before the June retreat. Specifically, we’re working on our query. Mickie should be getting Sid and James the final three chapters of Charlie’s Web in the next couple of days. As it’s only three chapters, they’ll get those turned around and sent back to Mickie ASAP. She would like to have her first round of revisions completed by mid-February.

During our February meeting, we are going to go over our base query package, and make any needed updates and changes.

At our March meeting, we are to have found an agent, a publisher, and an editor (one of each), along with query guidelines to be considered for submission. Sid is also researching indie publication/self-publication, and she’ll talk about that at the March meeting as well. At that meeting, when we choose who to query, we’ll set our dates for sending out those queries.

Then, we’ll wait. And work on the second trilogy and the cozies.

And that’s all for this week. Tune in next week for more exciting updates!

12/5/2019 Weekly Update

12/4/2019 → Wednesday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

Last night we met, we discussed, and I just saw that I did not post an update for our Skype & Write on November 27th (which was cancelled because of the holiday).

So – last night. What did we do? As it’s near the end of the year, we decided on our new blog schedule for 2020, which has Sid writing back-to-back blogs, as she has this month and somehow ended up with January as well. Oops. Oh well, she has it figured out and should be fun to do.

We worked on our staff directory for GLU, and also discussed buying a subscription to Notebook.ai (LINK) in order to keep everything straight, as PCEarth keeps growing and things are only going to get more complicated and entwined the further we get into this series. Sid should be getting that set up this week.

We also did some preliminary discussion of our group goals for 2020. We’ll spend some time making our wishlists, then at our January meeting, we’ll go through all the lists and set group goals and deadlines.

2020 is shaping up to be busy for all of us, individually and as a group. So – onward, and let’s make stuff happen!

10/31/2019 Weekly Update

10/30/2019 → Wednesday Skype & Write

Happy Halloween!

We met last night and actually had quite a productive evening.

Mickie wrote two paragraphs on the October blog, and pulled some more chapters of Charlie’s Web. Her deadline to get the complete manuscript to James and Sid is Halloween (today!) so let’s hope it arrives and she doesn’t have to post the “I Feel Shame” gif!

Sid and James each wrote about 350 words* on the December and November blogs, respectively.

*We know that they actually wrote more than 350 words each, but 350 is the number of words they kept.

Next week is our monthly meeting, so tune in then to see what we discuss!

10/24/2019 Weekly Update

10/23/2019 → Wednesday Skype & Write

We met, and yes, it was a better night.

We spent our writing time working on our final blogs for 2019.

Mickie wrote 3 paragraphs on the October blog, and sent over a new chapter of Charlie’s Web. We’ve almost got the full manuscript, and if she keeps sending the bits, we’ll have it by deadline! Go Mickie go!

James wrote over 400 words on the November post. It’s going to be exciting, and I can’t wait to read it.

Sid finally found her topic and made two pages of notes for her December blog. She knows the gist, now she has to put the words down. Working, working! 

That’s all there is for this week. Next week is the final October meeting. Where has 2019 gone? Anyway, tune in for more updates next week!

10/3/2019 Weekly Update

10/2/2019 → Wednesday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

There was skyping and talking because it was monthly meeting time!

There was discussion about some personal issues that have been plaguing members of the Authorial Triad. Support and sympathy abounded, but solutions are difficult to fix on in these situations. We just have to keep working at it, and help each other through.

Due to these issues being out in the open, some deadlines were reviewed and reset. We do still intend to query this series, and we are mostly on track to do so, but the timeline has been pushed back a few weeks. It’s disappointing, but necessary. We don’t want to burn out – we still have ten books to write!

That said, query review and polish has been scheduled. We looked over our spreadsheets and notes, and surprised ourselves by finding that we do actually have some thoughts about where to query. So – we  put ourselves a bit ahead there. Go us!

Then we moved on to a bit of world-building and housekeeping, and I’m going to have to be vague here, because these things will be showing up in the stories later. Let me say – we discussed certain aspects of Psi witchery and workings for the world-building part of the discussion. Then, that pesky timeline reared its head again. We need to do some work on that, and have scheduled ourselves some time to do so. It will definitely tie the books together, so it’s necessary. And better to do it now rather than realize we’ve messed it up later on in the series, right?

That’s all the news for now. We’ll be back next week, so tune in then!

6/6/2019 Weekly Update

6/5/2019 → Wednesday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

We had our monthly meeting and much was discussed.

We know that we need bios for the website and for our query, we set a deadline of June 19th to have those completed. We are writing our serious bios. We will be doing more tongue-in-cheek versions for our pen names, but those aren’t as pressing, so we’ll do them later just for fun.

In conjunction with having our bios written, on June 19th we will be pulling our query apart and reassembling it in the final form. We want to actually get a query out instead of just talking about it.

Next year, we are going to schedule a hiatus in May. May just seems to be a weird month all around, and historically, we end up canceling most of our meetings and missing any May deadlines. So we’re going to do our best to get around that from now on.

June is website month. We are planning updates to the site, as well as to our series bible (the two go hand-in-hand). Sid has started a project plan, and she’ll flesh it out over the next couple of days and get it over to James and Mickie. After that, we’ll divide the workload and get to it.

Finally, James has thrown us a new challenge.

Because May is an extraordinarily stressful month, we’ve all been doing a lot of escapist things, especially reading lighter books than we might usually. James has been reading cozy mysteries, specifically cozy witch mysteries.

He  put it to us like this: “In most cozy witch mysteries, the witch and magic are in hiding.  We could do some interesting things in witch mysteries where witchery is a known factor in the world.”

And the wheels began to turn. Oh yes, challenge accepted!

We think we might each create our own little town with our own little mysteries. Being us, they will overlap with each other, and probably with our main series characters as well (I’m having thoughts about Shelley and Jasper’s hometown – well, about a little town adjacent to their hometown). These will be shorter than the PC series novels, and we aren’t planning to query them, but to publish them on the website and on Wattpad as extras for anyone interested in PCEarth.

And that’s a wrap for the monthly meeting. Whew! It was a pretty hefty meeting.

We should be back on our regular schedule next week, so tune in then for an update!

12/7/2018 Weekly Update

12/5/2018 → Wednesday Skype & Write: Monthly Meeting

Wow. This was our last monthly meeting of 2018.

That said, we had quite the lively discussion about our vision for this projects, goals, and the setting of deadlines.

We think we over-scheduled ourselves last year, with goals and deadlines every week. Therefore, we decided on a looser approach for 2019 deadlines, and only two goals for the year.

The two goals are to: (1) send out our first queries to agents and publishers; and (2) complete drafts of the second trilogy.

We have deadlines set to meet these goals, but nothing to meet every week, since we discovered that gets exhausting. We have decided when we want our query packages completed, the drop-dead date to send out the first queries, and a deadline to have a first draft of each novel completed.

Each of us has our personal goals and deadlines, of course, but they’re not included in the overall plan. Again, we discovered that sort of thing creates too much pressure.

We also did decide on a punishment if a deadline is missed. That person shall have to write a self-excoriating essay for the blog about how sorry they are for missing the dealine. We hope to not have to write these, but if we do, expect to be amused!

Speaking of blog posts, we reset our blog schedule, as we like to mix it up every year. The first blog post of 2019 will be from Mickie! Yay!!!!

And that’s all for this week. Tune in next week for more updates.