Exciting New Cover

I was thrilled to find the German publication of WITH HER LAST BREATH in my mailbox. Love the cover, but loved the original, too!

Juggling Career and Life

With 3 books in various stages from now until June (one to promote, one on the editor's desk, and another to write), I'm balancing time. Some people think I'm organized. I do workshops on writer organization, but this has truly been a season in which I need to take my own advice on Novel Interuptus.

January and February are usually my hard work months, where I pretty well stick to the computer and my stories. That has been difficult to do lately.

The Midwest has just suffered a terrific disaster. Ice everywhere, people going to shelters, and just south of the line by 10-15 miles, we escaped the hit. In our warm homes, we could only watch reports of the ice-covered trees, the sagging and downed powerlines, and ache for those hard-hit. During this time, motels with heat filled up, generators fired up, the National Guard was called in.

Then, a few days later, I drove through some of it and was shocked at the sagging powerlines, coated with ice, the broken trees everywhere, the fields of ice. Yesterday, power companies were at work in the rural areas, and some people have been without power and phone for almost 2 weeks.

Generally, work/writing settles and anchors me. I've hard other writers speak of such a feeling, that they want to be writing and in their stories. Yet while watching (and helping) others caught in this disaster, it was difficult to concentrate on my work.

I'm back into a set of galleys for AT THE EDGE, and working on my website and early PR, but hoping to return soon to the novel I've just begun.

Keeping Simple

The bones of my new website look are up, very plain and I'm hoping easy to navigate. But it's going to take a lot of tweaking and building from this point on.

The amount of time that authors spend on promotion is huge. You can write the perfect story, but if the publisher (and yourself) is not out there selling it via media means and appearances, sales can suffer.

What does this cost the author? Writing time. Balancing time and keeping to a writing regimen is one of the most difficult tasks a writer undertakes.

But the offset is that it is very rewarding to hear from readers and to interact with them. This is the writer's fuel. The reward is in seeing that book hit the shelves, the flurry that goes with the pub date.

With an upcoming pub date of June for At the Edge, I'm working on schedules and have yet to begin my 3rd book of a series, also due in June. Right now, I have three books in production, at various stages, and setting up promotion, and learning new website software.

January and February are really active months, and I'm in the mode right now!

Life After

I'm still coming down from the holidays and working on catching up. With a new year and new books in tow, there is a lot to be done. Revamping my website is going to take time, this with new software.

Hopefully, I'll be back to writing soon.