Resolution Update: November

My goals for this year began as:

• Graduate from college. (Accomplished)
• Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college. (Accomplished)
• Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona. (Accomplished)
• Hug my daughter every day. (In Progress)
• Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube. (Accomplished!)

As I continue through the year, my evolving list of goals reads:

• Hug my daughter every day. (Still in Progress, with modifications)
• Support my daughter as she takes her turn at college. (Accomplished)
• Finish editing The Siege of Kwennjurat and get it published. (Accomplished)
• Reformat all ebooks so they look better. (Accomplished)

The hugs were temporarily stopped during October, as we realized we were passing the flu back and forth. Now that we're recovered enough to consider ourselves no longer contagious, they have resumed.

Happily, The Siege of Kwennjurat was released on October 24th. Of course, if you read my blog, you already know this, because I've talked about nothing else all month. I've been working in this world for sixteen years, and was rather happy to be done with it at last. During most of that time, I have had a hand drawn and colored map of the Ten Kingdoms hanging above my desk. Even though the book was available for sale slightly before the 24th, I had decided to take the map down on the 24th, as a private celebration of the completion of my work in that world, and a symbol to myself that goals can be accomplished, even when they take a long time to materialize.

On the 22nd, I had a dream. Book ideas often come to me through dreams, and the vivid scenes that are the seed for the novel usually remains largely unchanged through the writing process. In this dream, I saw two people meeting in a shadowy place, and speaking in low tones. I recognized one of them immediately as a character from Kwennjurat. From their conversation, I soon realized that the other person had been mentioned in the books, but didn't have a large role. I had thought the second person was dead. They are not dead. I have left my map up. Research and plotting is already underway. There will, apparently, be a third book in the Kwennjurat Chronicles, even though most of the action in the third book will not be in the Ten Kingdoms. Hang on to your hats, this is going to be an interesting ride!

I have two trailers up on YouTube, and ideas are coming for other video projects including but not limited to book trailers. My video camera had other ideas. It apparently decided it didn't have any further interest in living, so further forays into video are temporarily delayed until I see enough books to replace the video camera -- or find the money someplace else.

I always have more than one book project under construction, and at any given time they're in different stages of being written, edited, and prepared for publication. Right now, I have a romantic novella that hopefully will be out around thanksgiving. It's a Christmas themed story, so if it misses its deadline it will have to wait a full year. Because of its length, I plan to release it in ebook only, and for at least the first several months, it will be in Amazon's lending program, which means Kindle only. The title is A Gigolo for Christmas. Yes, you heard right, A M Jenner is writing a book with the word "gigolo" in the title. You'll have to get the book and read it to see if my standards have actually slipped. I've also got a short story collection that hopefully will be out around the first of the year named Bits and Bites. By the end of next year, I hope to have the suspense novel Just a Name, and the fantasy Mind Touch published as well, so there's lots of good news and new books in the pipeline for my devoted fans -- all ten of you. (That's a joke - I hope I have more than ten fans.)

On the handcrafting front, I hauled out my daughter's knitting looms and started a shawl, but that project got derailed because of the dollhouse project I'm involved in. It began as an idea to make a miniature bookshop to use as a set for photo shoots for my website, but has evolved into simply a project to build a miniature bookshop dollhouse with a flat above the shop. Each of the floors has been constructed. My mom is planning on finishing and furnishing the flat, and I'm working on the bookshop. So far, I have built the stairs to go upstairs with, laid down hardwood flooring, painted, and polished it, painted the walls in the office at the back of the shop, and I'm working on creating the wainscoting for the front of the shop. I'm not going to post any pictures until it's finished, though. I'm making it on a budget in half-scale, which means I get to make the doors and windows and everything else completely by hand, because purchasing dollhouse things in half-scale is beyond my budget. Plus, it's fun to figure out how to create it and make it look good when my construction materials are mostly found items already in my craft supplies.

I only finished reading seven books this month, but my page total is 4367. 

~Marie