Brief Interlude: Summing Up the Last Few Weeks

So, it's been awhile since I last posted. My life is such a whirlwind of fun, excitement, and intrigue that I just haven't found the time to write! Yeah, no. Mostly, I'm just too damned tired at the end of the day and would rather sleep an extra half hour. So, like I said, a whirlwind of excitement, nonstop and action-packed. Shall we do a list to cover everything? Yes? Well, I agree.

1. Most important development: my husband has returned from the land of sand and sun. He touched down on US soil yesterday and I hope to have him home again finally after about 14 months apart. We are now exiting deployment mode. Nobody said life as a military spouse was easy.
2. Work on the WIP is going quite well. It's sitting at about 88k words as of close of laptop this afternoon. I realized that this one is going to be much longer than I originally planned. My novels are usually ginormous, but I've been consciously trying for more compact stories (compact for me would be around 90 to 100k). My NaNo story is about 93k and it might stay close to that after edits. I was hoping for something similar here, but I doubt that's going to happen. I'll shoot for no more than 120k and hope for the best. I can always slash words later.
3. I completed and proofed both synopsis and query letter for the latest novel, which means I'm ready to shoot out another round of submissions. I HATE THIS PROCESS. Cannot stress that enough, but it's necessary. Step one on the road to getting published. Goddamn, is it a long, lonely road (burn of the week: I'm currently reading The Kite Runner and the main character writes his first novel, gets an agent immediately, and then gets a publishing contract a month later; for a moment, I was insanely jealous of a fictional character).
4. I proofed a few of the shorties I wrote several weeks ago as well. After I submit to agents, I'll shoot these stories off to some literary magazines. Should be fun to get a different sort of rejection letter, huh? I've also had a crap ton of ideas for future short stories. Can't wait to get on some of those.
5. I'm about to finish The Kite Runner (which is amazing, btw) and afterwards, I plan to start Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. It's supposed to be a groundbreaking series so far as steampunk goes. We'll see.

Remember all that stuff I said about my life being interesting? Yeah, well, I lied. I read, write, eat, sleep, and run. That's about all I've got. And speaking of reading...