Tag: time management

The Best-Laid Plans…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I try to plan in advance what books I’ll be working on and when.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that those plans often get changed.

This is partly on me. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew, so to speak, and plan too many projects in too short an amount of time. That was the case this year, when originally I’d planned to release 6 books. Accidentally deleting my Amazon account back in May and having to republish everything slowed me down. So did struggling to write the first draft of Bring On the Broccoli (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 7), since having to scrap most of the original draft and start the whole book over ate into the time I’d set aside for a different project. Which is why Ebb and Flow, originally intended as a September release, ended up being released in October instead.

Another thing that contributed to the change in plans was that two of the books I’d originally intended to release this year weren’t actually paranormal romance. I wanted to rerelease my Can’t Drag Me Down series, three contemporary romance books originally published between 2013-2016. The series was another example of changes in plan; I’d spoken with my editor at the publisher where these books were being published (Loose Id) and discussed at least two additional books in the series, but right about the time I started working on book 4, I started having panic attacks when I sat down to write anything romancey. Then Loose Id closed its doors, so Can’t Drag Me Down wound up being only three books, each of which follows a different drag queen from a club in Boston.

Book 2 of that series, Last Chance Tattoo, takes place in Ludington, Michigan, but the drag queen main character came from Boston. If I’d rereleased the books as planned, I intended to rewrite Last Chance Tattoo to take place in western Massachusetts instead. I also would have ended up doing some rewrites to the other two books to accommodate Remington Real, the drag queen character introduced in Fill the Empty Spaces. The main characters of Can’t Drag Me Down make walk-on appearances in Spaces, and I’d justified rereleasing CDMD by the fact that the series is now directly tied to Fill the Empty Spaces, which *is* paranormal.

But I ultimately decided against doing those rereleases, at least this year. There were several factors in that decision: First, as noted, Bring On the Broccoli took much longer for a workable first draft than I’d anticipated, which took away time I’d budgeted for doing the CDMD rewrites. Second, CDMD is not a paranormal series, despite the tie-in with Fill the Empty Spaces. When I was writing for publishers, a decade-ish ago, I wrote both paranormal and contemporary romance, though even some of the contemporaries had minor paranormal elements. But when I relaunched as Karenna Colcroft in 2022, I planned to focus only on paranormal.

Also… werewolves.

Fill the Empty Spaces is the only book I’ve released since 2022 that *doesn’t* have werewolves, and even that actually does. (Suzannah Daigle, the Boston North Pack healer who appears in some of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat books, makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance in Spaces, in the scene where Del breaks down in Piers Park. In the original draft of Spaces, there was even more of a tie-in with RWDEM characters, but I cut that out in the final draft because it was bogging down the story.) Of the other books, 6 are directly part of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat; the Chance Met duology is connected to RWDEM since one of the main characters of Chance Met is a secondary character in RWDEM; and Ebb and Flow is an intentional spin-off from RWDEM. Hooch and Howls is now also connected (loosely) to RWDEM because the main character of Hooch is also one of the main characters of Ebb and Flow.

Because I am apparently completely incapable of not creating connections and threads between books, whether I intend to or not.

But the point is that of the 11 male/male romance books I’ve released since 2022, 10 of them have werewolves and are either part of or connected to the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series. Fill the Empty Spaces is the outlier, despite Suzannah’s cameo appearance, and its sales seem to reflect that. (A Fighting Chance, book 2 of the Chance Met duology, has sold more poorly than Spaces, but that in large part is due to it only being out for 10 days before I deleted my Amazon account, so it didn’t have as much time to gain an audience. And I’ve slacked on promoting it since I republished it.) So I’m kind of thinking that I need to embrace the werewolfery of it all and keep my books focused on those characters, either through continuations of RWDEM or books that are somehow connected to that series.

Which rules out Can’t Drag Me Down, at least for the time being. It also rules out Dawn Over Dayfield, my suspense-with-romantic-elements novel, which I’d slated for rerelease in April 2025. Dayfield is also not paranormal, but because of the historical aspects of the story, it *feels* paranormal to me. It’s also one of only two of my books to have won an award, first place in the Mystery category of the 2016 Florida Authors and Publishers Association President’s Book Awards. (The other book to have won an award is, somewhat ironically, Fill the Empty Spaces…) But if I’m focusing on werewolves, Dayfield doesn’t have a place. And also, after I released Ebb and Flow, the main characters Quinn and Malachi started whispering in my mind’s ear about a sequel… which I’m currently working on.

I don’t know if all the changes in plans I’ve made over the past couple of years means I need to try harder to stick to the plans I make… or means that I need to stop planning more than a couple-few months in advance. But either way, werewolves.

A Lot Going On…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Over the coming weeks, I might be blogging less often. I have a lot of things happening in my personal life that are going to be taking time and attention, and since I have a finite amount of time and attention, I have to pull it from somewhere. Blogging is one of the things that might get less while I put more into the other stuff that’s happening. In related news, because of the other things happening as well as having paid attention to comments and thoughts from readers, I am likely to drop my newsletter back to once a month rather than the current twice-monthly mailing; I will still have two newsletters this month as I’ve agreed to host another author in the second August newsletter, but beginning in September I will probably do one newsletter per month plus a “bonus” issue for preorders.

In the next few months, I have to find a “day job,” which is a process I’ve been in for several months already with no results. All the people who say “No one wants to work anymore!” don’t seem to count those of us who *do* want to work but are physically and/or mentally unable to do certain jobs. (For example, I literally pass out if I’m on my feet for more than 30 minutes at a stretch, and sometimes 30 minutes is more than I can handle, which means any jobs that require me to stand without breaks–i.e. most retail and food service jobs–are out of the question for me.) But I’m continuing to job hunt and narrow things down to the junction of my skills/education and the jobs I’m physically and mentally capable of doing.

I’m also very likely to be moving to a new home within the next few months. There are a few factors behind this that I’d rather not go into right now, but let’s just say that while I do want to move to a quieter location (I live about 15 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, so a very urban area), *needing* to move and the timeline for moving are not entirely my choice or within my control. There are going to be a number of smaller changes involved in this big one, and in addition to the time and attention it will take, it’s going to take a lot of my mental/emotional bandwidth to handle everything. If you’ve ever moved, particularly from one state (U.S.) to another, you know that it isn’t always a simple process.

Through all of this, I am continuing to write and revise/re-edit and plan releases. I’m currently working on a novel with the working title of A Fighting Chance, which is the sequel to Chance Met (released in March of this year), and hope to have the first draft of that finished within the next couple of weeks; the book is tentatively planned for release in March 2024. I’m also at work on another round of edits for Fill the Empty Spaces, my new novel that is planned for release on October 12 of this year. I’m looking ahead to what I’ll be writing (or rewriting, or at least revising and re-editing) going forward into 2024, and I’ll make announcements about upcoming books as I firm up those plans.

I plan to still *try* to blog weekly, but life–and my mental and physical health–are my top priority. So if a week goes by without a blog post, that’s why.

And for something positive to end this post on, here’s a pair of cats.

Life Stuff

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Cutting this week’s post VERY short because I am working on way too many things, and sometimes I need to set something aside for the sake of my mental health and well-being.

I’m still working on the first draft (which is partially edited) of Fill the Empty Spaces, because the story keeps getting longer and also the characters don’t seem to have a stopping point in mind. I might have to put my foot down. Meanwhile, Trey Damone and his son Mikey, along with Zane Wolfskin, from my Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series and the novel Chance Met, have just made a cameo appearance…

I’m also finishing up proofreading on the re-edited version of Try the Tofu (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 4), which will be up for preorder June 22 and will be released July 13.

And, on the not-writing-life side, I’m working on applications for graduate school. I finished my Bachelor’s degree in 1992 and then let a combination of trauma, life circumstances (including abuse, hence the trauma), and raising my kids keep me from going any further. For over a decade now, I’ve thought about becoming a mental health counselor, and I’ve decided if I don’t make the effort now, I probably never will. So I’m applying to various Master’s degree programs to try to make this my new career. And the application process is a LOT more intensive than I anticipated, so it’s taking a LOT of my time and mental bandwidth. But it will be worth it if I get accepted.

There are other life things going on that I’m not ready to talk about yet. But all of the above plus the things I’m keeping to myself mean that I don’t have as much time or “spoons” as I would like, so I’m going to end this blog post here.

Time Management

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Time management…where what often happens is my time manages me.

analog clock

That’s something I’m working on, but I’m neurodivergent (I haven’t been formally diagnosed with anything, but multiple medical/mental health professionals have said that I am almost definitely autistic, along with living with Complex PTSD which also affects how my brain functions). There are numerous factors that go into my relationship with time and accomplishing things, and some of those factors fluctuate day by day. For example, I have fibromyalgia. If it’s a higher-than-typical pain day, more of my mental bandwidth goes into just being capable of things like preparing a meal or walking to the bathroom; I don’t have anything left over to focus on writing a story or doing paperwork or whatever was on that day’s agenda. If it’s a day I’m scheduled to work at the daycare center where I’ve just taken on a one-day-a-week gig, I have to get up at 4am and probably won’t be able to concentrate on anything by the time I get home at 4pm. (To clarify: I’m not working a 12-hour shift. I get up at 4 because I prefer to have time to ease into the day rather than getting up and immediately rushing out of the house; I leave a little before 7 and have to fight city-area rush hour traffic to get to the center by 8. I leave work at 3 and then have to fight the beginning of afternoon rush-hour traffic to get home.)

In addition to the “do I have the bandwidth today” thing, I also have some issues with executive functioning. I might have a task in mind but not be able to sort out where to start (e.g. do I make the spreadsheet first, or look up the info that goes on the spreadsheet and write it down and then make the spreadsheet, or…), which isn’t a case of “just figuring it out” or “making a decision,” it’s literally my brain being unable to put multiple steps of a process into the most logical and efficient order.  That difficulty also crops up when it comes to determining which task of the several on my list should be done first. I do have a daily “task list” (I hate calling it a “to-do list” because then I feel crappy if I don’t get everything done), but I’ve found that trying to schedule the tasks at certain times of day leads to a further break-down of brain cooperation because I start feeling trapped, which pings one of my CPTSD buttons and can even trigger a full-on PTSD flashback/panic attack. But *not* scheduling the tasks sometimes leads to me spending 5-10 minutes just staring at the day’s list trying to decide what to do first.

This is becoming more of an issue for me because I’ve added things to my figurative plate. I’m still trying to write, though my writing brain seems to be on a bit of a break (I’ve done a couple of short stories recently and hope to start working on another novel by the end of the month). I’m promoting the books I’ve already released. As noted, I’ve started working one day a week at a daycare, and that might not be the *same* day every week; they’ve said they’ll try to let me know the week before which day they’ll want me the following week. I’m looking into going back to school for a Master’s degree in social work or mental health counseling, and yes, I am aware that going back to school with my particular combination of mental and physical health issues along with the neurodivergence and associated executive dysfunction might be a recipe for frustration, if not disaster; meanwhile, I’m trying to organize myself and my time to allow for researching different schools and their requirements and then actually completing the application processes for the schools I choose. (I’ll worry about how to manage the program itself once I’ve applied and been accepted and figured out how to finance it…)

A lot of times when I talk about trying to organize my time and tasks, I get advice like “Use a planner!” or “Just figure it out!” or “If you really wanted to do these things, you wouldn’t be having such a hard time.” None of which is helpful, and none of which even remotely acknowledges that executive dysfunction and physical or mental health conditions are not a CHOICE. I didn’t choose to be repeatedly and relentlessly traumatized at home and in other settings from pretty much birth until my mid-30s. I didn’t choose to be born to two neurodivergent parents (neurodiversity often has a genetic component). I don’t choose to feel trapped and panicky when I try to follow an intensely structured schedule, and I don’t choose to have a messed-up memory that sometimes results in me not even remembering to write things in a planner, let alone look in the planner to follow the plans. I definitely don’t choose to be unable to figure out how to sequence the steps of a process or to take longer to sequence the steps than it ultimately takes to complete the task itself…

Over the years, I’ve learned some accommodations and routines that help, but none of the issues I deal with are choices. I’ve also learned to give myself compassion and make allowances for the things that are genuinely outside of my control.