Welcome to this month’s Freelance Article Round-Up! And a belated Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans and others who celebrate the holiday. I hope your travels were safe and smooth, and you enjoyed platefuls of delicious food and good company.
November turned out to be quite exciting, so I’ll start off with the new venture that launched a couple weeks ago.
DIY MFA
This month I joined the staff of DIY MFA for their new column Theme: A Story’s Soul. The ongoing series will explore the importance and wide variety of themes in literature, and how readers and writers alike can think about theme more consciously. Click here to read the column’s introductory article, “What Is Theme and Why Is It Important?”
Tea Time at Reverie (Tea Reviews)
Two more tea reviews went live at A Bibliophile’s Reverie this past month. Here are the links again, in case you missed them:
What’s Coming in December
Currently I’m drafting my next article for DIY MFA, which will cover how to identify a novel’s possible themes by studying the book’s title and jacket copy. My next tea review for A Bibliophile’s Reverie should be online in the next week or so. It’s on a bold, complex black tea that’s wonderful for this time of year. I’ve also picked out my next tea to review, an invigorating herbal / floral blend.
Other Happenings
The fantasy WIP passed 100,000 yesterday! (YIKES.) Now I’m due to write the next Chronicling The Craft – and since this one celebrates another 25,000-word milestone, it means another reveal from the story. 😉 As for the novel itself, I’m definitely going to overshoot my word count goal of 115,000… so I’ll just continue following my outline until it’s done. Here’s hoping January or February will be the golden month!
What else for the blog? I’ll have a new author interview here during the first week of December (yay!), and I’ve yet to start a review of Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina. And since 2014 is almost over, I also need to get cracking on my end-of-year lists for music and possibly one for books. So, I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me this month.
Offline and apart from creative projects, November has been absolutely nutty. Lots of holiday preparations, Christmas shopping (I have to do a lot of it early due to December birthdays and out-of-state gift-giving), and simply trying to stay on top of everything else. I’ll be relieved once the end of the December has come and I can relax a little.
Since New Years Eve will be a busy night, I’ll post the next Freelance Article Round-Up on Tuesday, December 30th. Lots will be going on here between now and then, so I hope to see you here again! 🙂
Sara Letourneau 
Yes yes Seraphina! I can’t wait to read Shadow Scale =)
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*pssst* My review of Seraphina should post on Thursday. 😉
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Exciting! Sounds like everything is going pretty well! I’ll definitely be looking forward reading a bit more about your WIP, and waiting to see your Seraphina review! 😀
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Thanks, Alise! The WIP update article won’t be up until the weekend at the earliest (haven’t gotten very far into that piece), and the Seraphina review should be out later this week. 😉
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Happy belated Thanksgiving! 🙂 Congrats on your WIP! I know, mine keeps wanting to stay above 100k too and no matter how much I cut it seems to wind up right back there.
I only have a couple of people to shop for and I’ve been going crazy gift buying, I don’t envy you. Sounds like you have a crazy month ahead of you. Good luck!
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Thanks, Molly! Same to you. 🙂 I think the approach for Decemeber is to just take things one step at a time without stressing myself out. That’s really the only way to do it, right?
OY. Yes, cutting is going to be a pain, but this story needs a good trim. I already have an idea of which areas of Draft 1 need the most work, though, so I’ve already starting forming a “plan of attack.” We’ll see how it goes come revision time.
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