I’ve spent the last month and a half on a hiatus from writing and all things writing related. The reason? I lost a lot of my motivation for it and was feeling pretty down about my writing as a whole. After a month reflecting and thinking about the path that I had wanted to head down, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really missed writing.

With the deadline for the Hot Key Books competition coming up – they announce the long list some time in early November – and me with an incomplete novel, I thought it might be best if I at least finished writing the novel so I would have a finished draft by November whether I get through in the competition or not.

Speaking of November, I’m still contemplating whether or not to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. If I do participate it will be to write the next book in my Ashlyn series which has been troubling me for a while. I’m hoping that by sitting down and really thinking about the series as a whole I’ll have a better chance of beating off my mental cloud and getting some work done for the series.

Hot Key Books have also announced an exciting new ebook section to their company and they’re currently looking for a new writer to write a romance novella for them. They’ve mentioned that they’re going to be expanding it for different genres and fantasy will be the next one in the new year. I’m looking forward to seeing what their brief will be for that story. I’m most definitely interested in writing it for them already without knowing anything. Fantasy is my favourite thing to write for definite.

Another thing that I have been neglecting lately is my promise to review books for other authors. I actually have two that I need to write up, since I got through them during my holiday last fortnight. I’m hoping to have all the books read and reviewed by the end of this month but I have a feeling it could run into November.

Still, I will get them done. I guess I have a lot of things that I need to get done before the end of this year!