I don’t know why I’ve become blog-phobic lately. But I thought I should check-in here a wee bit.

1. Promotions/Sales

Some of my stuff is taking part in the Smashwords sale. It’s over in a week. Lots and lots and lots of books by other writers are up  there, so it’s worth checking out. Soul is free pretty much everywhere right now. Most of my freebies are really old now. I’ve  written a lot of books since Thirst, for example, so I felt like I needed a fresher representation of what I do. Soul is long and  new(ish), and I’m really into Chaos this year, so it seemed appropriate.

2. Editing Slots

A brand new Ava Delaney book is in my editor’s hands right now. I’m trying some new things, and I don’t want to give release dates  or promises. I’m just seeing how this goes. If it works out, it won’t be like the original series. There won’t be a big arc that I need to  wrap up in a final book. It’s hard to explain exactly what I’m trying to do, but I’ve been working on a number of stories in Ava’s  world, and I felt like I needed a story with her first to set up the timeline. It won’t change any of the original series, and there’s no  desperate need to read this one (I mean, unless you really want to) to find out more about what happened in the old series. I’m so  ridiculously bad at explaining this. Full disclosure: I cancelled an editing slot this summer, so my projected release schedule is once  again out of whack. When I figure it out, I’ll update.

3. What I’m writing

I’m currently writing some Peter and Val words. I meant to finish this thing a lifetime ago, but it never happened. It’s just a novella, but if it works, it’ll be the first in their series. If. I hope it does because Val keep surprising me. It’s in third person, and I’m terrified of writing in third person (or in a male voice), so it’s one of those make myself as uncomfortable as possible writing scenarios that I like to punish myself with so much.

4. What I’m Editing

Chaos #4 is my editing punishment right now. I thought I would send it to the editor this summer, but I wasn’t happy with it and sent Ava instead. Now, as I’m editing, I’m all, what’s so bad about this? So the ending must be horrible. Mostly, I needed a break from this series. I cry while I’m writing it, cry while I’m editing it; it rips my heart out and shreds it into pieces. And then I have to take a breather or I’ll die. I’m spacing out my editing a little better, so I don’t get crushed over and over again on the same day.

5. What’s next

Weeell, I’m not as sure as I was. I know I have to write Break You, and I’m excited about that because it’s the final book, so I get to go out in a blaze of glory. I have to write Chaos #5 which I’m still thinking about. The order of events is so important that I can’t screw it up, so I’m going to be planning this one hard. And I’m a pantser, so outlining to the extent I’m planning is going to really suck. I have to finish the Chaos #4 edits, obviously, mixed in with editing another book that I haven’t quite decided on. Maybe the second Ava book. Maybe. I figure my brain will be more cooperative once the kids are back to school (and my baby is starting playschool so no kids in the mornings in September!)

6. Life

I stopped repeatedly getting my phone fixed and got a new one instead (I really hate change), so I’m a little more connected to the outside world. My eldest is away from home right now, so the rest of us are in a state of mourning. The other four are slowly taking pieces out of each other. They’ve been on holidays forever. I mean, really. They’re so intent on wrecking each other’s heads that their verbal battles are almost poetic. It’s hot. It’s so hot that it’s hard to remember to wear clothes or do anything but melt into puddles. My office is the coldest room in the house, and it feels like an oven. But we’re still getting rains and floods, so Mother Nature’s having a lot of fun.  Oh! And I’m super mega uber pissed that Dragon Age: Inquisition has been delayed again. I can’t think of anything else that’s been happening. Yes, we really are this boring. No wonder I don’t update much. And now I need to get out of this oven and spend time with my kids, so farewell. Have a good week (I have no idea what day it is)!

Aaaand here we go again. If you’re interested, I posted on year one, two, and three. This year I missed it by a week, but that’s pretty typical of me.

Four years sounds like a long time, but it feels short. In last year’s post, I mentioned that I wasn’t sure if there would be another indieversary. I’m still here, clinging on to the dream, but will there be a number five? Who knows?  I’m not overly concerned. What’s meant to happen will come, and if it doesn’t, then I probably didn’t deserve it anyway. (And according to a certain little twin, I’m a mean mom because I work all of the time and never let the kids have McDonalds. AND! I don’t give them sweets every day. The three-year-old called him a sidekick and a suck-mucher though, so I feel like we’ve even on the slurs around here).

The past year has been very uppy-downy as my five-year-old likes to say. I’ve just been trying to roll with it. I lost my confidence for a while because of a bad book I couldn’t publish, and that slowed down everything I’ve been trying to do. I’m not sure why I let it knock me so much, but I’ve had this weird fear over my shoulders since. Fade is just waiting on a proofreader, so the editing on that went really well, and that’s kind of unblocked me again. Okay, it’s only been a couple of days, but there’s been less teeth-pulling since then, so I’m clinging onto that as a good sign!

I insisted I wasn’t going to do the series thing until I had a couple of books prepared, but I made a massive liar out of myself for yet another year. I’m juggling too many books again, and I’m cursing myself for it. I’ve even written a couple of new Ava books, but I’m thinking I shouldn’t start publishing those until next year to lessen the gap between books. Chaos is the series I’m most excited about working on, so I’ve made that a priority. The third book is going out to my editor in less than two weeks, so something is working. I spent way too much time last year struggling to finish books I wasn’t in the mood for (while putting aside the ones I couldn’t stop thinking about). Down with that sort of thing.

I think this might be the dullest indieversary post yet. I’ve lost the knack for blogging – if I ever had it to begin with. Imma get back to editing Chaos #3 (because ermahgerd excite!) likely while listening to my three-year-old perform a medley of Frozen songs.

So long, farewell, and have a great March/2014.

I forgot to publish the blog post I wrote last month, so I’m going to ignore that and kick on with this one!

It’s been a weird couple of months. Not publishing Tainted put my schedule out of whack first of all. Then my phone broke, I burned through another laptop, and I thought I figured out a cool new schedule that actually worked for me, but once I realised I would be forced to dedicate February to editing, my enthusiasm kind of died a terrible death. Trying to plan out the entire year pretty much terrified me. My schedule is all pretty and highlighted and scary. I’m not a planner. I know how annoying that is to other people, but plans make my world go very wrong.

Anyway, what’s been going on is that I’ve been writing a crapton. Seriously, I don’t know what that’s about, but it feels good. The only problem is that I’ll write instead of editing all day long. I started a second new Ava book last week, but I’ve had to stop to edit Fade and Make You because time. There is none. Fade is going off to editing next week, so I’ll have to get cracking on finishing editing the third book in that series because that one’s scheduled for late March. Like I said. No. Time. And I still have no idea what I’m doing about covers for any of those books.

I did receive the proof copy of the print version of Soul. Amazon & Createspace did the cover and interior for me for free, which was super good of them. It’s already available on Amazon & Createspace, so that’s a relief! Here’s a small version of the cover (click on it if you want a better look):

My twins are about to come home, so I’ll leave you with a story my 3-yr-old just told me. This kind of stuff pops out of her mouth all day long.

Once upon a time, the dinosaurs caught me, and I escaped on a crocodile.
But then I sank, and I was dead.
Then a teacher saved me and let me eat my lunch.
Now I’m a wiggly worm.

I keep forgetting to update here as well as Facebook.

Bad news: I spent months working on Tested and am not going to publish it. I sent it to my editor who thought it was bad. I agreed. I’m sad I wasted so much time on it, but… shit happens. I may eventually edit it and upload a chapter at a time on Wattpad or the blog. It won’t be good, so it’s only for anyone who really, really wants to know how Jess ended up on Ava’s doorstep.

Better news (maybe?): I took the sequel to Tested, changed almost everything, and rewrote it in Ava’s POV. It’s possibly the start of a new Ava series called Lost Souls. It will be out next year (after Fade) if it’s less bad than Tested. If it goes well, I’ll probably go from the Chaos series (Soul, Fade, etc. Yeah, I finally settled on a name!) to the new Ava one, and back again.  I’m equally excited about both though. I’ve been so excited that I keep pushing Make You on the back-burner to work on them. I’ll try to work on that one for the rest of the month though.

Also: I bundled the Ava books properly. The cover should make it clear what’s in which bundle to sort out any possible confusion. Hopefully. It’s much better value to buy the bundles either way, but I’m going to give the first bundle an extra discount over Christmas.

Next up: I’m spending January working on the third book in the Chaos series. I’m not giving the title away just yet because it’s all kinds of spoilery. In Feb, I have an editing slot booked for Fade, so that should be out by April at the latest. It’s going to take that long to find a cover artist for the series!

If I don’t post here before the end of the year, happy holidays and all that jazz.