Welcome, September! Happy Labor Day to those who celebrate, and happy Monday to those who don’t. It’s the first Monday of the month, so it’s time for some accountability all up in here! As a reminder, first I’ll go over what I planned to do in August and report on how close or far I was from each goal.

August Progress

1) Write the short story prequel for the Harrow’s Finest Five series. Well, I’ve thought about it quite a bit. Does that count? Can I get a half credit, or maybe a quarter, or…OK, this one’s going to have to show up in September.

2) Finalize the covers for the novella and novel 1. This one is in the designer’s hands. The hard parts on my end are done, so hopefully I’ll be approving (and sharing the novella cover, at least) very soon.

3) Deal with revisions per the editing letters for the novella and novel 1. Done. But the novel 1 second editing pass isn’t on my editor’s schedule until October, so until I send it to her, I reserve the right to pick and peck and tweak the story.

4) Continue writing 20+ pages per week on novel 2. Done, and I’m at the halfway point in this story. Yay!

5) Write the copy for my first Nancy Yeager, Author newsletter. This has gone the way of goal #1, and therefore also gets punted to September. But in my defense, I did have to celebrate my birthday, and we did rescue an adorable 5-month old kitten from a tree, and have had to do all the responsible pet-owner things to add him to our household. It’s definitely (as yet unnamed) kitty’s fault I didn’t write my newsletter copy.

This is the time when I’d typically lay out four or five goals for this next month, but I’m not going to do that today. September is going to be a strange and busy month for me – I’ll tell you all about it when I come out the other side into October – so it won’t be business or scheduling as usual in my world. This month, I give you two goals (although the first one involves multiple steps/subgoals, so make of that what you will).

September Goals (which are not at all ridiculous like my August goals were)

1) Finish all the things so I can offer and promote a newsletter no later than Oct 1. This will include finishing and getting reader input on a prequel short story, putting together all the first chapters from books .5, 1, and 2 of the HFF series into a book format with the short story, sending it through a proofreader, attaching the cover I’ve created, and then marketing it in all the places. So just one goal, right? RIGHT?

2) Hand over the next 60 pages of HFF novel 2 (titled Two Scandals Are Better Than One, have I mentioned that?) to my coach. That’s 20 pages per week, with one week off because she’ll be on vacation.

Ta-da! That was quick and painless to plan, although it’s not going to be quite as easy to execute. Now it’s your turn, if you’re so inclined. Anyone want to share? Remember, as I told you last week, the sun is transiting Virgo, so it’s the perfect time to tie up all sorts of loose ends. Or maybe it’s just that it tends to get a little cooler in the Northern Hemisphere as we get closer to autumn. Either way, tell us how you plan to spend the September.