Another quarter gone! And a much more expected result this time—barely any of my goals met. A true return to form. In my limited defense, April and May are my busiest calendar months, and this time I got to do them while being sick and travelling over Easter. (I walked up Bluff Knoll! The Stirling Range is beautiful, especially when the weather doesn’t rain you out of your swag.)
Let’s discuss what I actually managed to do and where I’ll be picking up next quarter, however:
For next year’s Patreon posting I’ve started revising the Cinderella retelling—if anyone has any idea how to title one, please save me, I’m sitting on Three Day Princess which is just not applicable for this “Prince disguises himself and ends up in the servants mess” version of events. I’m working on a pastiche of late medieval through renaissance era stylings to give it an ‘out of time and place’ energy to go with the lighter-hearted energy of the novella, and the focus on this revision is taking the detail and characterisation I was leaning on in the back end through the front.
I’ve fully outlined the Hansel & Gretel version, but no drafting as yet. This one’s going to be a little more anchored in a specific setting (I’m thinking Brother’s Grimm era Germany, though I’m largely ignoring their version of the tale), and have a much darker tone. Admittedly Hansel & Gretel don’t have so much of the ‘cute romance’ angle going for it, but I’d like to nuance up the relationship with their stepmother and bring a little more softness in with the siblings to balance it.
I’m pushing revision of the Immortal Rose to the end of the year, and hoping to finish the haunted house draft by the end of Q3. Progress on that stalled almost completely while I was ill, so I’ll be doing short scheduling weekly to try and make up time. Ideally I’ll be able to tick off a reading and notetaking session for the Immortal Rose during Q3, but that’s a stretch goal as of now.
I completed a couple of short stories during April, but I’m not happy with either of them, so during July I’ll be revisiting them and trying to shake something fresh out. One’s a short dystopia, and the other’s an implied fairy horror—if I don’t figure out what to do with them, they may very well end up here as an apology for missing a couple of months of updates! Other new projects I’ve started include a couple of general/literary ideas that I’m teasing out into longer drafts and I think have some real legs to them.
In happier news I’ve also worked out a pretty serious kink in Honey Tree, so I’m hoping to finish volumes 2, 3 & 4 over the next year. This is a pretty huge relief for me, volume 1 was always meant to be kind of a teaser for the rest of it, but I was hoping for less of a break between posting periods than ended up happening.
Happy EOFY and I hope it’s a good winter! Or summer, if you’re reading from the northern hemisphere.
Rory Banks 