Short Story Update: First Draft is Complete!

Alrighty, so I’m done with my first draft of the short story, “Poisoned Plums,” that I’ve been working on the past few weeks. Well, maybe a month. I forget when exactly I got the idea and began brainstorming how best to turn that idea into a story. How long I've been working on it isn’t important lol. What is important is, now that the first draft is done, I can take a short break to work on something else before diving back in for the initial round of revisions and rewrites. The story is pretty tight as it is, considering I was trying to keep the short story, well, short...but there are probably some areas that could use a bit more description and other areas that could be a bit tighter. There always are.

But that’s a problem for future me to worry about.

Current me is going to wade back into developing book 3 in this dang series that has been consuming my soul since May 2025. I finished up the plot outline for book 3 months ago and started working on scene summaries, until I got distracted editing book 1 for the 900th time. After that, I got distracted making an initial round of rewrites on book 2 and sending that out to beta readers. THEN I got distracted editing book 1 again, because I am obsessing that there’s some tiny little fix I can make which will get me an agent...but alas, here I am. Still querying. Anyway, then I got distracted some more receiving feedback on book 2, and then hounding the beta readers who haven’t gotten around to reading it yet (cue judgmental face).

My point is that I’m overdue working on book 3 again. There’s a lot to do still in my process, since all I have right now is the skeleton (outline) and central nervous system (core concepts) built. The rest of the body—scene summaries (vital organs), dialogue sketches (all those muscles and tendons), and actual prose (the skin holding everything together)—are still pending. Why yes, I am incapable of writing without thinking of myself as Dr. Frankenstein and whatever I’m writing as Frankenstein’s monster, however did you know?

Since the working title for book 1 is The Night Chemist, and the working title for book 2 is The Blood Alchemist, right now the working title for book 3 is The Sorceress Khatun. Much as I love these titles—and agonized over each one for weeks, trying to come up with something that suited my FMC and her journey—whenever publication time rolls around, they very well may be different. Potentially, very different. But for now, we’ve got TNC, TBA, and TSK, and that’s what I’m going to stick with until future-future me is ready for an official epic title and (fingers crossed) even more epic cover reveal announcement to make. But current me? I have no idea if or when that will ever be, because if I don’t get an agent for TNC by the time I’ve finished drafting the final book in the series, I’m going to shelve the whole project and pivot to another.

I would pivot now, but I’m one of those weirdos incapable of moving on from one project until I’ve finished the current one. So I’m basically stuck living in Karanlik (the world where this dang series takes place) until such point in time as it’s complete. At least, until the first draft of that last book is complete; I’ll be capable of shifting gears while that first draft marinates for a month or two (gotta take time off in between drafting and revising, otherwise I’m just too close to the material).

All for now. I’ll be back in a few days for the next installment of my Slavic Warrior Women series, pt 3: When Women Go to War.