Lull and the WIP

So for some reason, all the frantic activity for this month happened in the past two weeks and I'm officially experiencing a lull. Now that Halloween madness is over and Thanksgiving isn't until next Thursday, my day-job is a few steps away from being out-right boring. I actually finished my newsletter a few days early, have lined up all the things that need to happen over the next few days, and am struggling not to yawn as I type away on my computer. On the writing end, while I was informed that I have been assigned a line-editor, I haven't gotten the edits yet so there's not much to do but wait. I've been sent the rough draft of the cover art and replied with my impressions (to be honest, I was too busy gleefully giggling over the fact that I have cover art at all, so I don't know how constructive my email was).  In other words, it seems like the ball is rolling on my novella with relatively little assistance needed from lil' ol' me (yay!).

This brings me to my WIP (work-in-progress), which I'm feeling iffy about. The first draft is done, so I'm letting it sit for a while before going over it (will do that later today).  It's the shortest I've ever written, just under 30,000 words, which makes me feel a little weird. I can't find anything that needs to be dragged out or added, but I don't know how the length will go over when it comes time to send it out into the world (the submissions process gives me the creepy crawlies).

See, at the time when I had reconciled myself to a rejection-doomed fate, it seemed like a good idea to create different products and see what sells. Thus far, I have written four works that fall in different romance genres (contemporary, paranormal, sci/fi, and pure fantasy). They are set in different worlds, are written in different styles, and are getting shorter as I go (90k, 60k, 35k, and 28k). The first two seem doomed to obscurity (I didn't bother submitting the first, and the second has yielded a good number of form rejections), but the third is slowly but surely edging its way into existence. (It so happens that the first two were squarely in the mainstream romance heat level, whereas the third dips its toe into the erotic romance realm.)

I started writing the forth before the third got accepted, and it seemed only fair that I finish it. This story is darker, set completely in a fantasy world (as opposed to post-apocalyptic sci/fi), and well ... its my attempt at actually trying to write erotic romance from the get-go (no. 3 was first written with much lower heat, and I ramped it up after the first two rejections). Embracing the fact that sex does sell, I went all-out on the erotic end of the romance on this one, and I'm now thinking that it might be too 'hot'.

Still, I feel like it deserves to be truly finished (especially now that I'm so close), even if it ends up living the rest of its life on my hard drive. I guess I can always decide what to do with it later.