September 02, 2024

All Right, So We Have a Live One

Welp... there it is. What I said in this post is moving forward in spite of the pile I already have on my plate. And I have rapidly expanding notes in my trusty notebook to add to the other expanding notes for the other future books on my calendar. So here's the cover and title (a title that I've been dying to use for a dog's age now, btw):

I still haven't decided on the setting, but it's definitely a drama, not a comedy, and it might be a mystery as well (haunted items coming from a place of severe trauma make for a great foundation for that). As far as its release date, I have it for February, 2027.

Now that's very much a tentative date because of the current speed with which I'm writing and publishing. I'm way ahead now and in fact expect to finish The Perfect Rochester by the end of October, and it technically won't be out till February of next year. At this rate, I'm back to seriously considering shuffling my calendar once again to move things forward and may release four books, not three, next year. 

As usual, we'll see how things go. I still would rather play it safe and stick to the calendar I have on my Book News page, but I'm also open to bumping things up if there's enough wiggle room for me to follow a more rigorous publishing flow (or something). And as you know, I tend to get swept up in the moment (only if I let myself), and when I'm totally jazzed by how well things are going, I'll run with it.

Stuff like this really grounds home the thought that ditching series books forever and sticking to one-shots is a good move on my part. While it's fun immersing myself again and again in one world with the same characters, imagining what happens next in their wild lives, I honestly would rather be inspired constantly by story ideas that can be explored in a long novella. I can lose track of details when I'm writing a series, and I have a number of older files open (while neck-deep in a WiP) just to make sure I'm not forgetting something or incorrectly referencing an event or place. Plus I'm more prone to bouts of writer's block when I work on a series since there will always be sections in a book that threaten to be fillers, and I don't want that.

One-shots that run 50K words long are chef's-kiss-perfect. 

Also -- boo, hiss to Smashwords for underreporting my books' length. If you check out every long novella I've published, all of which are exactly 50K words each, Smashwords still have them at 49K+. In fact, Voices in the Briars is a little over the 50K mark, but it's still listed as 49K+. Boo, hiss, indeed. But for everyone buying my books from that store, I reassure you you're getting the most bang for your buck. I mean, 99 cents for a long novella? Bargain. 

And hello, September! I'm really, really looking forward to Autumn. Hell, yeah.

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