Monday Musings: Not so Fictional Birthday Celebrations

Time for some Monday Musings. 🙂 It’s Monday, July 30th, and today is the birthday of the (wholly fictional) Gareth Flynn, all-round badass and partner to equally badass Jack Horwood. To celebrate the day, I normally aim to finish and/or submit a book. Any book. I even have a secondary deadline in the form of Jack’s birthday on August 14th, in case real life throws a spanner or two.

I’ve done this since 2014, when I needed the kick to stop my inner coward from blocking the way. So far, it has always worked out. Job Hunt got done, then Ghosts and House Hunt, Leap of Faith, and finally, last year, Swings & Roundabouts. This summer, between a new kitchen, family issues, work, and the fact that I’ve not been able to settle to any serious writing since March, I couldn’t see how I could possibly stick to the tried and true and make that celebration.

Then I got an invite to Camp Nano and thought in typical Gareth style: It can’t get any worse than it is. Let’s just hit that.

The fictional Gareth, a planning ace, would have been horrified at my lack of preparation. But rather than wind myself up with plans and schedules, or even with worrying over what to write, I picked a story off my WiP stack, stocked up on coffee, wine, and chocolate, and went to work.

Once I’d decided on Healing Glass as one of my Camp Nano projects, I gave myself one little extra incentive: I booked an editor for August. In the hope it would guilt me into getting something finished to give to her. Because, you know, editors are a bit like cats. Very precious.

And then Gareth and Jack must have joined forces to hold the Muse hostage or something, because the words started coming. There were diversions and excursions, of course. The 95% gremlin made a valiant effort to distract me as did an unexpected summer cold and weeks of heat the likes of which England hasn’t seen in a while. But… the words were there, over 50k of them.

Healing Glass is finished, and a lot longer than I expected it to be.

There’s now a second book, Embracing Fire, set in the same world of craft masters, warriors and merchants as Healing Glass, that’s 25k into its journey.

And there’s even a sexy m/m fantasy story called Sword Oath, all of 7k long, which will get published as a short read as soon as I’ve finished cleaning it up and got a cover for it.

I think even Gareth would consider this a very respectable result for something I didn’t think was feasible. And I’m very grateful for the Nano Cabin crew. Just knowing they were there, all chasing their own writing targets, helped me stick to the task at hand.

The only thing I don’t currently have for my customary celebration is a Jack & Gareth story… but I’ll do my best to come up with one shortly. Until then, there’s a couple more days of Camp Nano left. Can I make it to 60k?