Usually, I'm on an even schedule. (Like Susan Witsend, I am a maniacal planner).
I write in the morning on my latest manuscript and edit another in the afternoon. So in my writing "pipeline" there's the manuscript I'm drafting, the other manuscript I'm editing, and then a manuscript that's just sitting on my computer, waiting to be edited. (I like to think of the latter manuscript as fermenting, because... wine). Each project - the 1st draft, the editing, the fermenting, takes six weeks, so it runs pretty smoothly.
It works for me. My writer friends think I'm nuts.
But this week, things got a little loosey-goosey. I have a new Riga Hayworth novella, The Chaotic Detective, to edit. That novella didn't take six weeks to write, and it won't take me six weeks to edit.
In short, the gears have slipped.
Maybe I shouldn't have written a novella about chaos magic?
But the scheduling slowdown feels pretty good. It's given me a breath to do some serious work plotting my fifth Pie Town cozy mystery, which will take place around Halloween. (The fourth Pie Town mystery is currently in the fermentation stage, waiting for me to start editing).
And then there's Steeped in Murder, my new Tea and Tarot cozy mystery series.
More on that later.
Here's my current pipeline.
Plus, you may have noticed I've been publishing a title a month since June, and I'll keep up that pace until November. Witch launches August 28th, Planet of the Grapes, book 2 in the Wits' End series, on September 28th, Fey October 28th, and The Gargoyle Chronicles (where The Chaotic Detective appears, on November 28th). There are a lot of marketing bits and bobs involved in book launches, and those take time out of my day too. I also want to start blogging more consistently, and producing more short stories.
If you're a newsletter subscriber, you've been receiving short stories in each email about Riga and Brigitte. This Fall, I'm going to branch out and start sending out short stories about other characters too, like the Doyle witches, the Pie Town gals, and Susan Witsend.
