On Moving Slowly

I’m writing this in a rush, because it’s nearly bedtime, and I forgot about the blog post until after I got home from the library. Ordinarily, I’d have written the post there, but I was working on the extras for the special edition of The Timbercreek Incident. I’m very nearly done the Dramatis Personae, and will be starting on the research paper extracts this week. I’m really happy to be moving on. The Dramatis Personae took way longer than I thought it would. My own fault. I got struck by an idea fought three quarters of the way through, and had to go through and change and add a bunch of stuff.

I keep feeling like I ought to apologise for taking so long on getting this part done. I’m was hoping that it would be finished quite a while ago now. Alas, I don’t have the time I used to at my other job for writing stuff, so I’m stuck with a brief hour after work, between other things I need to get done.

So I find that I’m creeping along at a pace that feels glacial… Well… glacial before climate change, anyway. I’m struggling to hold back my frustration with the pace, while at the same time, I’m feeling happy to be making any progress at all.

I’m just going to put it out into the universe that I will one day soon (soon, goddamnit), I will be able to spend the majority of my days writing. My dream schedule is working on writing for four or five hours in the morning, doing about an hour of marketing in the afternoon (because being self-published, I have to do that all by myself. Hell, even most traditionally published authors have to do that now), and then work after that on my art stuff. Then I’d have my evenings free to do whatever I want, and not have to work into the evenings as I’m doing now.

Doesn’t that sound lovely?

*sigh*

Alas, I live in this world and not my dream world, so I am moving slowly, and I do feel I must apologise. However, I am very excited to be moving onto a new section of extras soon. I must be patient.

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I’m not good at patience. Like, it’s not anywhere near my lists of the strengths. 

Boy how, has publishing forced patience on me.

Anyway… As I’m writing, I’m trying to figure out the next steps. We all know that The Lioness of Shara Mountain will be going up in serialised form here on Ko-Fi for the subscribers, before being published in book for everyone else. I will be doing that with the rest of my backlist, and also any new books that will be written.

Which is where I’m feeling a little stuck. I did start writing The Bear in the hopes that it would be the next “new” story out. I learnt fairly quickly though is that my inability to contain my own damned stories means that it is shaping up to be a three book affair. I have a rule that I will not publish the first book of a series until I’ve finished the series, so that rules out The Bear for the next three or so years, I’m guessing.

I think I settled on the Three Worlds War series. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am a good bit into the third book (it’s another trilogy). I will need to make changes to the first book to keep everything more consistent, but the changes aren’t great, so it’s very doable.

While the series itself is quite old, my glacial pace with everything else, and the weirdly hectic time I’ve had trying to figure out a schedule that works for my work, has meant that it’s taken forever to get finished.

I will have a couple of years to figure it out, though, as 2028’s serialisation belongs to one of my backlist (Ethan Cadfael), which does need work, but not a tonne. I can snatch away the writing sessions to work on Captain of the Hunt (book 3 of the aforementioned series). If I’m good enough, I can get the first book out in 2029.

That feels so far away. But these timelines are necessary. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into publishing books; and extra because I fully intend to  publish two versions of each book; the regular publication, and also the special edition just for the Ko-Fi subscribers. I’m also toying around with the idea of boxed sets for series, and then there’s the whole book box idea I’d love to get done for each release.

This is, of course, without considering all the marking stuff that I would like to get done, and haven’t yet figured out how to fit into my schedule without suffering from severe burnout.

If ever I earn a more than decent wage, you can bet your arse I’ll be hiring a social media/marketing manager, because I am so unable to get anything out there at present. Which sucks, because I’m supposed to be selling books in addition to writing them. Ugh.

Alright, no complaining. It’s a good thing I get to write at all. I’d go mad if I didn’t have that hour a day to get what’s in my head out. So it’s good I have it.

All of this to say that I’ve been slow in getting this done, and I’m sorry, but I am moving… even if it’s only in inches. At least it’s movement.

Alright, I have to go.

Slán go foill!