Champing at the Bit (Someone Stop Me!)

Bluebeard by Littlecrow on DeviantArt

All revisions and edits for Nightshade's Emporium will be done within this month this weekend, and technically I've got nothing else to do afterward save for the book blurb and the manuscript's uploading to Draft2Digital. Then I'm free to jump right into The Dubious Commode, which is all but written out in my writing notebook (currently laid out in full outline, I mean). 

And that means I'm really, REALLY tempted to tweak the release dates for this year -- as always going back on my resolution to slow down and take things easy on the writing front, which tends to happen when I'm done with one book ahead of my projected completion date. 

I'm already getting myself set for Voices in the Briars as well (hence the image above). It'll be my return to folklore, and there are so many ways the book can go, and I'm getting really worked up over it (in a good way). It's going to be a retelling of the "Bluebeard" fairy tale, which will also be a ghost story, and so far those are the only firmly established things about it. So many appendages can sprout from the plot, and I think I'm going to have a pretty wild time sorting things out for a solid story. 

Maybe I'm just under the influence of unexpected good luck with Nighshade's Emporium that I'm letting myself get sucked into an energy that might bite me in the butt if I went for it. On the other hand, the rational voice in my head keeps saying the long novella length is the best for me if I want to be productive without messing up my health. Or at least it's easy to make adjustments along the way, and I've learned in the past it's best to adapt to circumstances, not fight them.

My youngest nephew's death also forced myself to look at certain things differently. Nothing in life is ever guaranteed -- I already know that -- and we only live once. So maybe I should take the proverbial bull by the proverbial horns and run with the moment while I still can. I'll be announcing any changes to the publication date here, obvs, so consider this post to be nothing more than me giving voice to my wishy-washiness.  

Or maybe I shouldn't post calendar snapshots for my books since I almost always go against them, anyway, depending on how things work out overall. Well -- at least those calendar snapshots are excellent guides for visitors to my site. You'll know what to expect from me, but it's a matter of when.