I just officially validated my novel, and I am a nanowrimo winner. My total word count as of right now is 50343, and I still have a whole day left. I intend to continue and try to get as many as possible for the month of November, but its nice to officially hit my number and know that I have won.

This month has been very productive, even though I didn't write one novel like you're supposed to for nanowrimo. Not only did I get more than 50k of new words, I started and finished one entire story (still untitled, and below titled as Army Menage). Before I was done with the story, I had an idea of two or maybe three other stories that would go with this one in a series. Unlike some of my other series, this one (which I've labeled Protective Patriots) all the stories intersect in a few key spots, so I intend to write them all at the same time, so I can get all the details right, and hopefully they will all be publish around the same time too.

I also managed to write another 12,000 words on a current story Second Chance at a Cheerleader (bringing the total word count over 40k, which is a long work for me). There's still more writing to do on that story, but 12k is good progress for one month, and also this month I figured out some other scenes that need to go into that work to finish the character arc for Lanie, which definitely inches me closer to that finish line.

I'm going to continue to write all I can for the next day, but I also need to start thinking about what I want to spend December on for my December close out plan. Unlike some years, I don't have as many partial projects hanging around, but I definitely want to get something headed to the publishers to start the year off right.

Current Nanowrimo Word Count: 50,343

Second Chance at a Cheerleader - 12,334
Army Menage 1 -25,836 (Completed)
Army Menage 2 - 1,341
Army Menage 3 - 3,729
Home for the Holidays - 7,103

Dirty Work is now available at Amazon. That means you can now get every book in the Naughty Holiday list on your Kindle device. Being a Kindle Fire user myself, I know how great it is to have all your books available in one mediu

For you nook lovers, its going to be a little bit longer till it will be up on Barnes and Noble's site. BN always takes a little bit longer. But I'll make sure to announce once its available.

Today is my day to blog on Sweet'n'Sexy Divas and I'm talking about the end of a series. Its hard to end a series, and especially one so important to me. I detail how each book of this series shaped my life as an author and how I've learned and grown from each story. Stop by to find out how this series has shaped me as a author.

http://sweetnsexydivas.blogspot.com/2013/11/ending-series.html

I had an awesome day of writing on Sunday. I finally gave into the shiny new idea that’s been playing with me for some time. It’s a, so far, unnamed ménage of two army rangers, home on leave, and the woman they’ve loved and protected for years. It will probably be short, I’m thinking 20k or maybe 30k, but like all my ideas it’s slowly growing into another series. I have a few other ideas of some hot army rangers, but they may just be their own stories and not a series. I’ll have to write this one and see how it goes.

I stuck to my rules on Sunday, and wrote my first 1800 or so words on an older work in progress, and then moved on to the shiny new idea. Between the two I was able to get 3568 words for the day. And I managed to get in an hour of kickboxing once I meet my goal.

Day four wasn’t as good. Monday’s are hard for me any week, but banging out almost four thousand words the night before didn’t help. I was tired, sore from my work out, and I’d already agreed to spend the day in the field for work, a.k.a. spending the day not at my computer with the opportunity to get a few words down between meetings. 

But I still managed to write 1121 words. Not my full word count goal for the day, but not bad. I did however, have to abandon my rules to get them. A lot of these words are on my new work. But since I wasn’t sure if I could even get a hundred words with how tired I felt, I think getting more than a thousand is worth a little rule breaking.

That’s my favorite part about Nanowrimo, how it pushes you to do more than you think you can. It pushes you to make time, focus and encourages you to put your writing before everything else. I couldn’t do it every month, but I’m happy to do it for one a year.

Total Nanowrimo Word Count:

Second Chance at a Cheerleader – 6364
Army Ménage - 2261

Another great word count day yesterday. I managed to write 2119. Once more a little over goal, but not enough to worry about burning myself out. I wanted to get a little more done, but was just to pooped.

I’ve created two impromptu rules for this November, we’ll see if they hold up the whole month or not. One rule is that I’ll write the first 1667 words on a
current work in progress. After that I can start writing on something new. The point of this Nanowrimo for me is to try and finish up some works in progress, and get a few stories ready to submit for early 2014. Having a hundred works with a couple thousand words on them doesn’t help with this goal. So far I’ve only been working on one WIP, but I expect the closer I come to the end, the harder it will be to keep going with the same story and the more tempting a shiny new idea will be. So I hope this rule will keep me working towards my end goal of new completed works at the end of November.

My second rule is that once I hit my words for the day, I have to exercise. I’ve been horrible about exercising for the past month, and with it being Nanowrimo time, it’s just another reason to not take care of my health. But the truth is, with all this writing I’m doing I do need to spend some time exercising and working out my muscles, instead of sitting on my butt. It’s good for me, for my writing and for my mind. So once I hit my Nanowrimo words for the day, I will exercise. I’ve picked this stopping point in my writing for two reasons. One is because if I hit my words, I can afford to take the time, oppose to being behind. But it will also encourage me to exercise, since most of the time once I hit that many words I’m in the zone and I will want to keep going. I’ll get up and do my exercises quick, so I can get back to my work.

I didn’t manage to work out on day one but I did day two and hope to continue the tradition. During the week will be hard, but I think I can do weekends, and that’s better than nothing. 

Total Nanowrimo word count: Second Chance at a Cheerleader - 3931

This year, since November 1st fell on a Friday, I wanted to take the day off. To start off Nano strong and get ahead of the word count instead of spending the whole month struggling to catch up. The last two jobs I had (and I believe the only jobs I’ve had since my first year participating in Nano) didn’t afford that. I had certain things I had to do on the first of the month, even if that first fell on a Saturday, and I couldn’t afford to take the day off. But my current job, didn’t have these limitations, so I was all excited to take this day off.

Well, best laid plans didn’t work out. Unfortunately by heat broke last week and I had to take the day off to deal with that, leaving me with not enough vacation to take all the time I wanted. That combined with my boss not being in, I had to cover for her, so it just wasn’t possible. I’m still earning my reputation at this job, so I can’t afford to be as frivolous with my time off as I used to. But maybe next year.

I did stay up until Midnight to start, like I do every year, and managed to get in 441 words before 1am (I had to go to bed then, not only was I too tired to be useful, but I had to get up at 5:30, so I needed to get some sleep). I then managed to write another almost 1400 words at work, bringing my total for day one to 1812 words. Not too bad. I meet the first day goal and exceeded by some. Now I just have to maintain, all though it would be nice to do even better. 

My goal for this Nano is just to get as many words down on the page as possible, towards as many projects as possible. I have so many ideas floating around in my head, waiting to be written but I have a lot of trouble getting the time to write them down. This is my time to push through that block and make some real progress. I want to make this competition work for me, and get as much done as I can. I’ll keep a running tally of what’s going on for each project I work on, so you all can see how much I’m working on the projects you’re looking forward to seeing.

Current Nanowrimo word count:
Second Chance at a Cheerleader (Snowedin Fantasy 2) - 1812

I've been interviewed over at Female First. I talk about my writing, how I started, what my inspirations are and the authors that I love. Stop by and see what I have to say.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/books/willa-edwards-363879.html

They also posted a excerpt from Working For Him. Stop by and give it a read.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/sex/willa-edwards-363887.html

I'm over at Normandie Alleman's talking about find motivation and where I discover mine. I talk about the few endeavors I'd done over the last few months, including eating healthier, working out and losing weight. I also talk some about my motivation to give money to The Breast Cancer Foundation, which you can read in the blog below. I hope you'll stop by, and offer some suggestions for how you find our own motivation. I can always use some more.

http://normandiealleman.com/2013/10/willa-edwards-talks-motivation-good-cause/