Contest Winners! and a Proper ROW80 Update

rumroll, please!

Time to draw the winner for my book review contest!

I've decided to have two winners and to draw names from both the contest post and the July Insecure Writer's Support Group Day post (because I think I muddied the contest waters a bit by posting them back to back). I assigned each commenter a number; those who commented on each post got two entries! I rolled the die here, twice!

Drumroll...

The winners are:

The books! Hilary!

The $25 gift card for the e-bookseller! C Lee Mackenzie

I've been sporadic about updating for A Round of Words in 80 Days. I had my main post in January, then an update in May, then one at the end of June (besides all my updates about crafting and knitting and baking!). I also came across this interesting post on Kevin Brennan's site about rules (for life and writing!).

Two of my goals were to take part in CampNaNoWriMo, which I did, and to submit Druid's Moon, which I also did!

Two ongoing projects are to edit my new story and submit to SIWC and copy-edit a short story collection (not mine!) prior to publication

One thing I haven't done yet is to revise the query letter for The Charm of Time and send it out to some new agents or publishers. I should do the same for Captive of the Sea.

Here's an update on my overall goals for 2021, originally posted in January:

Keep up with blogging and thelitforum (plus the reading, knitting, baking, etc.!): I'm keeping up!

Check all "writing to do" and type up all notes on paper and collate all story ideas and ideas from dreams, and all story drafts and research and Save to Scrivener notes in my emails, ideally into my lovely new Kate Davies journal... Organize all Scrivener files: Er, this is moving very slowly

Figure out what to do with the orts, such as the CampNaNoWriMo2015 story The Heathen in the Hold, and others, including items such as this post-apocalyptic story idea I wrote in 2010, based on a dream, the idea mentioned in my 2016 recap, and all other such half-formed notions: This is not moving at all

I'm going to list my overall goals by story, taking up the list of Works Completed and In Progress from the bottom of this blog that I consolidated during last year's review and adding to it (the last few are all ideas, except for the two completed romances; other ideas and completed short stories and early novels should be added to this list eventually, for the sake of completeness – collating all of this stuff is another ongoing project!):

Works Completed and In Progress (most of them!): find homes for these!
• Blackbird’s Song (short story, WWII, George and Alice, written 2018)***: submit somewhere
• Summer Blaze (short story, travel romance, Valentina and Justin, written 2018)***: re-edit and submit somewhere
• The Tattoo (short story, dystopian, Geneva, Marie-Anne and Michel, written 2017)***
• Little Upon the Earth, but Exceeding Wise (short story, murder mystery on board ship, 1493, Rosa and Baha)***
• Where There's Life (short story, magical realism, library card for Alexandria, written 2014)***
• He Ain’t Heavy (short story, 1910s Montreal, Charles and Oliver)***
• Eyes of the Sky (vignette)***
• Late Night, Maudlin Street (vignette, working title)***

• The Byzantine Time (contemporary new adult romance, Alexandre and a murder mystery, written NaNoWriMo 2020): edit on paper
• The Antipodean Time (contemporary new adult romance, Kimberley and Simon, written NaNoWriMo 2019): edit on paper
• A Stitch in Time (contemporary new adult romance, Amelie and Angus, written NaNoWriMo 2018): edit on paper
• The Handful of Time (sequel to The Charm of Time, Christianne and Rory, written NaNoWriMo 2017): finish second round of edits on screen
• The Charm of Time (contemporary romantic mystery/suspense, Christianne and Rory, written NaNoWriMo 2016): re-edit opening and keeping sending queries!
• Mystery at Bertram's Hotel (working title, mystery suspense romance set in WWII Switzerland and France, Phillippe and Milly, written NaNoWriMo 2015): find title! Edit on paper!
• Peter and Penelope (no title yet, romantic suspense, WWII, Gallipoli, written NaNoWriMo 2014): type up! (on backburner)
• Larksong (historical romance, c. 1914 Montreal, Alice and George, written NaNoWriMo2013): keep editing (on backburner)
• Captive of the Sea (historical romance, 1471 England, Magdalena and Santiago, written NaNoWriMo 2012, typed up 2013): review beta notes and submit!
• Druid's Moon (contemporary paranormal, Lyne and Frederick, written summer 2012): collate beta reviews and edit one last time, then submit for an editorial review
• Rome, Rhymes and Risk/Verse, Venice, and Viziers (historical romance, 1493 Mediterranean Sea, Ayten and Devran): keep editing (on backburner)
• Out of the Water (historical romance, 1492 Spain and Constantinople, Rosa and Baha): keep querying (on backburner)
• The Face of A Lion (historical young adult, time travel, Austin and Kedi): keep editing (on backburner)
• An Arnavutkoy Spring (historical romance, 1910 Istanbul, Klara and Sevran): keep editing (on backburner)

• untitled (two new ideas for modern dystopian stories): there are actually more than two. All these half-baked ideas need to be collated
• untitled (new adult romance about Spanish couple)
• A Fredericton Story (long-term small town romance set in New Brunswick, plot bunny during NaNoWriMo 2016)
• untitled (another story featuring Brother Arcturus and Austin and Kedi, set c. 1520)
• The Heathen in the Hold (working title, featuring Brother Arcturus and Austin and Kedi, set on board ship c. 1496, CampNaNoWriMo 2015 and 2016)
• Coliseum (working title; sequel to The Face of A Lion)
• Radio Nowhere (working title; new idea for Scholastic's Dear Canada series, 1930s)
• Indexing Outlander series (volunteer project started by members of OutlanderGathering Yahoo group)
• Bizim Anadolu www.bizimanadolu.com (travel column and book reviews)
• The Trickster in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (journal article)
• Don't Stand So Close To Me (screenplay)
• A Short Album About Love (screenplay)
• Crash! Boom! Bang! (romance, completed)
• Never Is A Long Time (romance, completed)

As you can see, it kind of trails off at the end into items that haven't been touched in ages. But they still stir up feelings of interest whenever I see their titles!

After that wall of text, please have some tea! I love the little slogans on these:

Do you have any long-term projects you can't let go of and wish you were working on?