3 Novels Written

I have 3 novels circling the dining room in a holding pattern.

The first novel is one I wrote AGES ago. It is the first novel I ever wrote. It was written before 2007 when I went back to work full time because I remember writing all day when Kelly was in school. The characters had flip phones. I need to bring it forward at least a decade to a decade and a half. Although It's kind f retro already!

Anyway, Medina was a labor of love for my friend Darlene for her birthday. I labored on it so long it grew to over 400,000 words and became an epic love quadrangle story. A number of years ago I cut it back to somewhere between 165,000 and 166,000 words. More manageable, but still lengthy. I spent the weekend reading the still rough draft. It's strange how I can hear my future voice in the pages of this novel that is twelve or thirteen years old already. I still like the story, but it kind of drags out (although it's sort of necessary because I am dealing with a lot of characters, relationship developments, and things going on. There're also some continuity errors that need to be corrected because I guess I had two versions and ended up combining them, so Medina's back story kind of drifts back and forth between the two versions. Will be working on that in the future.

The Worth of A Woman is done and in manuscript form in the hands of two beta readers. One has already read it, told me it's good, that it made her cry a little (she was prepared to cry because she's a co-worker and had heard how I came into work crying because of an event in the book). She has passed the manuscript on to her 18 year old daughter who has read some of my books to get her feedback on it. Meanwhile, I did my proofreading of the manuscript, and need to do the Word review to catch any other issues I otherwise missed. It will be a slim novel released with no great fanfare in September. I need a cover for it still, and some back cover copy...always difficult for me.

Memento Mori-Garnet & Quella (a tentative title as I may do a series of Memento Mori novels with different paranormal situations...I haven't made a final decision on that yet) is also written and partially proofread. It also needs some bolstering in its backstory because I discovered what was actually going on only when I neared the end of the novel, so need to go back and rake in some red herrings and real clues/unsettling situations that will help give the ending greater impact.

Projects...for a few months (since The Clockmaker's Son, I really haven't written much of anything...and now I have three novels written (well, 2 new, 1 old) and another flitting its fledgling wings against my gray matter....feast or famine, so they say...ain't it the truth!

I also want to get some artwork done-moving from cemetery draped urns to butterflies to lighten up a little!

I just need to mention that I was stunned when I went to do a goodreads giveaway for The Hanging Man and Other Stories and The Clockmaker's Son only to find that it will now cost $119 (that's just the minimum) to have a basic giveaway. Um...self-published authors really don't have large budgets to work with. So, why do I want to pay $119 to have a giveaway AND pay the expense of printing the books, buying the mailer materials, and paying for shipping costs to put my books in a few readers hands when hardly any of those readers have ever posted reviews or feedback?

So- giveaways on goodreads are on hold because I don't have the extra money lying around to do it right now. It's really very disappointing.