October Wrap-up

Hello,

Thanks for the likes and follows—I hope we’re all doing well!

October is almost over, and many writers are gearing up for November writing challenges. Unfortunately, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has fallen from grace, and other writing communities are stepping up to fill the void.

Sarra Cannon and the HeartBreathings community are hosting the Rough Draft Challenge, while ProWritingAid has created Novel November. I used to be a member of ProWritingAid and really enjoyed using the service, though I couldn’t afford to renew this year. I’m confident Novel November will be run well by them.

I’ve participated in the Rough Draft Challenge before and haven’t won yet, but I’m staying positive and looking forward to trying again.

A brief format switch-up: first, the media recap. I’ve completed season 1 of Vampire Academy, streaming on Peacock. Unfortunately, it wasn’t renewed. My interest was piqued again, so I started listening to the series on Audible.

Richelle Mead is a great storyteller, and I can easily get back into the series, even though I’m well past the target demographic—I was 30 years old when I first read Vampire Academy. Interestingly, Richelle Mead and I are about the same age, so she was also writing it in her 30s. The TV show updated some of the more problematic elements from the books for modern audiences, which I appreciated.

I also watched the animated series Supernatural Academy on Peacock, which is another book adaptation that only got one season. Interestingly, the show features main characters (Jessa and Mischa) who aren’t even from the Supernatural Academy books by Jaymin Eve—they’re from her Supernatural Prison series. The animation also aged the characters down, which I think affected its audience. In the West, animation is often seen as content for younger viewers, even though Jaymin Eve writes primarily for New Adult audiences. I did hunt down the audiobooks—Supernatural Academy Year One, Dragon Marked (book 1), and Broken Compass (book 4) from the Supernatural Prison series—to compare.

With both Vampire Academy and Supernatural Academy being one-hit wonders, I got curious: why did Shadowhunters manage to get three seasons? That question led me to watch the first four episodes on Hulu and listen to City of Bones to see what made the difference. The best answer from the evaluation is timing and platform. Shadowhunters came out on Freeform, the former ABC Family channel, which offered a lot of YA content—much of which was based on popular books. Peacock was a new streaming service that had to attract an audience and build ratings. They weren’t able to do either. That’s an intriguing topic for another blog. Shadowhunters was released years before the other two shows, and by then, audiences had likely grown up and become fatigued. I believe I was one of them. It has taken me years to look back at them without bias.

Moving on to the writing updates: One of my goals was to write 500 new words daily, but I haven’t found an effective way to track the numbers. I’ve decided to use the gamified writing app/service 4TheWords, where progress is counted by defeating creatures with your word count. I also let my nearly two-year streak go, and my fire wings are gone as well.

Dead Girl Tale 2 will be on hold until November. Next week, I’ll be going through all the DGT2 notes I’ve accumulated since the beginning of the year. In the meantime, I’ve been writing Fayte/Maghnus Monogatari, a collection of connected short stories. Maghnus is a medium, and Fayte is a psychopomp with the mantle of Charon, the ferryman. Together, they navigate a bunch of paranormal hijinks.

My third writing project is an outline for a vampire romance. In this story, a Vampire Prince candidate finds his ex-human wife and demands she give him an heir—little does he know she already had the heir about five years ago. It’s a simple cookie-cutter trope: fated mates and a hidden baby legacy. At first, I wasn’t going to explore it because it didn’t feel like a challenge. Then I realized I’m not a literary gladiator. I like predictable romances, and there’s nothing wrong with writing them when you’re planning for a happily-ever-after (or happy-for-now) ending.

So that’s my October wrap-up—a mix of abandoned streaks, rediscovered stories, and embracing the tropes I actually enjoy. November is right around the corner, and I’m looking forward to diving back into Dead Girl Tale 2 with fresh eyes and seeing where these other projects take me. Here’s to staying flexible with our goals, being kind to ourselves, and others. Stay open to new opportunities—all while finding joy in the process, even when things don’t go according to plan. Thanks for following along, and happy writing (or reading, or watching) to you all!

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