Lay Me Bare Update

Hey readers! I've got some exciting news for you. With a lot of soul searching and examining the book markets and so on, I've decided the best thing I can do with Lay Me Bare is publish it as a series of novellas. I don't necessarily want to break it up, but with how busy I've been there is no way I'll get it done, as a whole, until spring or later. If I concentrate on it in chunks I can have parts of it out, hopefully once a month, so people won't be waiting forever. I really hope to have part one out late this week or early next week. I'll post here when it has a cover. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading it and hopefully I can stick to my schedule.

Again, I'm really, really sorry for the delays on this book. Writing is hard!

New Book Announcement

Four days into January and I’m already wishing it was May. I’m not really much of a winter person. At least it’s been so cold that I cannot go outside. That means I’ve been writing a lot! Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been editing a lot is more accurate.

First I’ve started editing Lay Me Bare in hopes of a mid-February release date! I’m halfway done the first pass through, but I expect it will be a few more before it’s time to really hunker down and do the proof reading part.

As a more surprising bit of news, next week will bring the release of Instructed by an Officer! I’ve been working on this short since late November and then shelved it to release the first two parts of The Masquerade Affair. I’ve always loved sexy cops in uniform, so why not write about them? It’s probably going to be about 8000-8500 words long, about 50/50 when it comes to story vs. sexy times. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. A cover reveal is planned for this weekend as long as my designer gets to work in good time.

Hope everyone has had an excellent start to their new year!

Faster Than Expected!

This morning I finished my second edit of Awake My Soul. I edited it once already, sent it to an editor, and now I've edited what they looked at. I hope going through it once or twice more will be the last I need before it's time to publish. Probably twice, just to be sure!

I've looked into KDP Select and honestly, I don't think it's for me. The more I hear about Smashwords and the accessibility, the more I like it. So of course it will also go on Amazon, but not on the 'select' feature. 

I'm hoping to reach out to a Romance Novel blog about a cover reveal soon. It would be a nice way to generate some publicity and get the ball rolling. Of course, the cover needs to get made soon too!

In the end, I'm beyond excited about how things are going. I absolutely cannot wait for people to be able to read my book!

Finally, time

I've neglected my blog. Dare I say it, I've mostly neglected my writing and editing, too. Why? Time. As they say, there are never enough hours in a day and lately I've been feeling so overwhelmed that I just couldn't continue.

Don't worry, good news is coming.

Like many writers, a full time job is something that is a necessity and I was sad to say mine was consuming my life. Even when I wasn't at work my mornings before I started were spent not editing, but sending resumes. My nights involved a few glasses of wine and unloading to my husband after a long day's misery and then falling asleep on the couch. Days off were consumed with being depressed at the thought of going back to work after only two days' escape. In short, my job was making me miserable and despite how hard I tried to force myself to get my editing and writing done, it just didn't happen. I was maybe, at most, dedicating two hours a week to it.

Again, there is good news coming

The worst part is, if I had full time hours available to finish Awake My Soul, I'd probably be done in two weeks. Working at it like a nine to five job, eight hours a day, it would be done. That's about eighty hours, give or take. Now take eighty hours and only do two hours a week of work, that's forty weeks. As I said, that's a good week, so it's realistically a year, minimum. At this rate, honesty, I'll never finish.

Now the good news. I'm not longer at said job. Yesterday was my last day. Though things didn't quite go as I planned and I would have preferred to have another job lined up when it happened, I knew for a while it was coming. My position had become redundant and I was the odd man out, so it was time for me to go.

The really good news is now I have time, and in accordance to employment laws, I'm still getting paid. For the next few months I'm getting paid to finish Awake My Soul. This is my first full day of being a full time writer and aside from writing this blog and maybe some puttering around the house, my day is dedicated to editing. So is tomorrow. And the next day. And so on.

In even better news, my husband is a graphic designer and hopefully soon I can get his butt in gear designing a cover that I can reveal here. It was hard to convince him to do the work when I wasn't getting anything done myself. Now I can tell him to do it and soon there will be a reveal. I promise!

I know being let go can be scary, but I'm taking this as an opportunity to do something I truly love. I really hope that I can have Awake My Soul complete and available as an E-book before Christmas, and I hope people will love it as much as I do.

Goals. So many goals

I started seriously writing last year. I'd written for fun until then, but this time last year I realized that writing is what I want to do, despite any Debby downers who told me it wasn't a worthy career anymore. "You can't write money writing!" many people said and I kind of gave up for a while. Then last year I realized that while I may never make a dime on it, I should at least try.

Now that I finished my first draft for my first full length novel, I really need to set some goals for myself!

• Finish first edit Awake My Soul by May 10th, 2013
• Have Awake My Soul edited by an actual editor by the end of June 2013 (this relies on another person, but hopefully she can keep focused!)
• Have cover finished by end of June 2013. I'm having the cover made by a professional designer who is also a friend. So again this relies on another person, but I think this is ample time
• Finish my own final edit by July 15th
• Publish Awake My Soul on July 29th 2013

Why July 29th? I work full time and I'm off Sundays and Mondays. It will give me enough time between finishing my edit to getting the files uploaded to make sure the files are in order and they look crisp and clean.

Of course, these are loose dates and if the other people I'm relying on are quicker than I expect, then I can get the book out sooner. But right now my personal tentative release date is July 29th 2013.

And after that I have some other goals

• Finish first draft of Lay Me Bare, a contemporary romance I'm working on, by August 30th, 2013. I'm about half done now, but my focus now is on polishing Awake My Soul.
• Finish first edit of Lay Me Bare by September 15th 2013
• Cover and professional edit done by October 15th 2013
• Final edit complete by October 31st 2013
• Release by November 15th, 2013 in time for Christmas gifts and gift cards!

I have two other books on the back burner, a paranormal romance called The Demon's Song I've been picking at as the mood strikes me and another contemporary called Home Town Hero that I've just started putting together. I hope to finish those up if all goes well by early and mid-2014.

Of course, a lot of this also depends on work. I do work full time and sometimes struggle to find time to write. My hope is that after releasing Awake My Soul I can make enough money to reduce my hours at work so I can dedicate more time to writing. If I can do that, the other pieces will be easier to put into place!