WIP Wednesday

It’s finally September and the release of my next novel is less than a month away. A year ago when I published my last novel, Breathing Ghosts, I was racing to finish line edits and copy edits and formatting, but this time around there’s nothing left to tweak or fix or figure out. Book one is ready to go and it’s an amazing feeling. In addition to writing and editing the rest of the series, the last official business regarding The Girl In Between is setting up the blog tour. I’ve just started sending out review requests to bloggers and the first responses are already trickling in and even though it’ll probably take me a couple of weeks to  send out emails, I feel strangely serene about the whole thing. Not rushed, not anxious, just ready. I’m so ready for people to read this book and for people to experience yet another stylistic evolution from me. It’s a new genre with a new focus and I think it has the potential to have the kind of greater mass appeal that my first three novels didn’t necessarily have. With that said, there is still so much work to do in terms of promotion, as well as when it comes to finishing the other books in the series. If anyone is at all interested in reviewing the first book in the series, send me an email and I can get you an electronic copy in the format of your choice. I’m sure I’ll put a more official call out to bloggers soon to set up some kind of spotlight post for all of the people participating but if anyone wants to get a head start just contact me!

It took almost two whole months but I FINALLY finished the final read-through of book 2 and it is currently off for one last copy edit. Getting through the last read-through of this novel was torture. These books are so much longer than what I’m used to writing so each round of edits took a significant amount of time and when you’ve read something twenty times already, forcing yourself to read it just one more is excruciating. The good news is that after finishing it once more from beginning to end I can honestly say that I still love it. I just hope that other people do to. The OFFICIAL release date for book two in the series is October 31st!

I’m currently working through revisions for book 3. These are also taking longer than expected but that’s mostly because since February I’ve been suffering from debilitating migraines. For some awful reason my 23rd year has been all about inheriting my mother’s many health problems and developing strange ones of my own. I’ve experienced so many setbacks that I haven’t necessarily blogged about, mostly because I’ve spent most of 2014 either at one of my two jobs or in bed recovering from them. The good news is that I’ve made the adult decision to take myself to the doctor tomorrow to get tested for hyperthyroidism so hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon. Once I am, I hope to reignite the insane writing pace I was able to maintain most of last year and maybe that will make up for all of the time I’ve lost.

The fourth book in the series is stuck in limbo right now for the same reason. I’m re-writing the first draft from scratch, which is usually a lot of fun for me because I like treating every scene and every moment as a puzzle piece that just needs to be jiggled into the right place. Once I’m done with revisions for the third novel, which I hope to have off to my next beta reader by mid-September, I plan on devoting most of the rest of the year to getting book 4 just right. I’ve never written a finale before with this much weight. It’s a lot of pressure and I’m still waiting for a really powerful moment of clarity on how to finally put these characters to rest. I just hope something comes to me soon so that I at least have a concept to work with.

August was full of challenges and a perfect depiction of what this year as a whole has really been like. In the moment, the writing of these novels hasn’t felt that much different than novels I’ve written in the past, but in hindsight I realize that I’ve already accomplished much more than I give myself credit for. I’m not sure yet how I’ll celebrate the release of The Girl In Between but I’m making a promise to myself that I will. On September 30th I won’t look back and I won’t look ahead. I won’t worry or wait or doubt. Instead, I’ll buy myself an ice cream cone or maybe an entire cake, I’ll eat the whole thing, and then I’ll take the longest nap in history because I’ve earned it.

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