Not going to bother with a honeydew update. It’s basically the same as before, except I’ve pecked out a little bit more on my steampunk story. I really want to at least get a submission for Wily Writers together, but my idea for that (even with brainstorming) seems much more tenuous as I poke at it more. I have vast, big concept. No actual plot.

But I do have some other thoughts regarding writing.

One thing I failed to track for my writing schedule is Go Play Northwest, the indy game convention that’s going on this weekend. Which basically blocks out a couple days of writing. I’d failed to track it so spectacularly that I kept forgetting it was right around the corner. So I missed deadlines for offering/signing up for games. D’oh. With a big chunk of my weekend consumed by this, I’m feeling even less confident about squeezing more stories in for this month. I’m thinking I have a good shot of finishing my steampunk story and giving it a bit of polish. More than that…

Last night was the June meeting for PNWA, where they had a guest speaker (Janna Cawrse Esarey) giving a talk about how to do a pitch. Some of it was material last month’s speaker covered (Robert Dugoni talking about “How to Get the Most Out of a Writers Conference”), but there was a lot of good information specific to just doing a pitch.

The thing I hadn’t expected was that she had us actually do some exercises to write a quick pitch for our books. And then we had to get into groups of three and share. I was, I will admit, terrified. I got through it, though, and the other people in my group seemed to think I did a good job. So, out of this, I ended up with a first draft of an elevator pitch for my book.

Added bonus was that I ran into a couple friends there who are also buckling down to get a novel published and we’ve made tentative plans to work on pitches together.

The meeting was at the Bellevue Barnes and Noble. Since I was there I figured I’d buy something to help support the store. I’m a little surprised by what I ended up buying: Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead.

Despite my absurd fondness for Twilight, I would never consider this to be my usual sort of book. It jumped out at me when I spotted one of the sequels (Succubus Dreams) on the Fiction/Literature shelves instead of SF/F or Romance. So I stopped and read the back cover because I was certain that the cover had to be misleading. But, no… it was just what it looked like. I was iffy about the book blurb for that one, but it was also somewhere down the line of books in the series. Still fascinated, I picked up the first one and glanced through it. I was ultimately sold by the fact that it was set in Seattle. What can I say? I have a soft spot for this city and I’m always curious to see it in fiction. Not sure when I’ll have time to read it, but it’s now on my shelf.