Already a week into May, and this is my second post. April business seems to have spilled over into May, but things are calming down a bit.

Over the past several days no new writing has been accomplished, but quite a bit of brainstorming has been going on. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress open for submissions until the middle of the month, so I’ve been focused on getting the story “You are My Brothers” ready for the big time. It’s a fantasy version of the Siege of Bastogne, with a group of all-female knights playing the part of Patton and riding in to the rescue only to discover that a worse threat faces them if they do not act on it in the next few days. I imagine the final product will be around 7,000 – 8,000 words.

Another story I’m hammering out the finer points on is “For All Mankind.” This will be a retelling of the Apollo missions from a militaristic, alien-invasion standpoint while attempting to remain true to the technology of the time. Some artistic license will be taken, but I want to try and keep a realistic tone to the whole piece. Likewise, this story will be on the longer side, at around 8,000 – 12,000 words.

Lastly, a friend of mine and I were brainstorming on how we could turn one of those “You’ve won an all expense paid vacation to Mexico!” robocalls into a story in and of itself, so I expect there will be some developments on that in the next day or two.

• Blog Posts: 285
• Planning and outlining: 1,200
• Short Fiction: 000
• Novel Fiction: 000
• Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 5,500

Total Salable for Month: 3,500

Total Fiction for Challenge Year: 134,977

Total Salable for Challenge Year: 36,034