As I sit here with my super dark mug of coffee, if feels like it’s been forever since I’ve done my monthly re-cap. Truth is, I am a little behind on letting you know what I did in August. I had some bumps in the road, but mostly I had a lot going on with The Dark Ruler that I had to take care of. Speaking of… At the end of this blog post, I have a pretty BIG announcement regarding The Dark Ruler and its release date. If you just came here to get the news on that, feel free to scroll to the bottom and read that last couple paragraphs. I get it, you’re busy. I won’t be offended if you skip over all of my writing life happenings.
August is a special month for me because my birthday is in August! Wahoo! So, yea, I’m one of those kids that never got to celebrate their actual birthday during the school year. Don’t ask me why, but I used to be so jealous of the kids who had birthdays on a school day. Why?? I also got a lot of pool parties for my birthday since its over the summer. This year I celebrated with my fans by offering The Faintly Beating Heart for only $.99. Don’t worry, that’s not all I did.
My husband took me on a little overnight trip as well. We had planned to do something like this for our anniversary back in May but… you know, COVID ruined that. We did something that our friends with kids would be jealous of; we hopped in the car with some overnight bags, and knocked on the doors of a few B and Bs until we found one that would take us in. It was a really relaxing and fun time. The only downside was that I was quite sick in the week leading up to my birthday, so I still had some lingering symptoms on the actual day, but I pushed through for these amazing pastry’s and for a beautiful hike.
At the beginning of August, I did my final re-launch of my Camilla Crim series books. I re-launched the now second book in the series, The Bear Gap Rebels. I got a nice turn out at my launch party which you can re-watch HERE if you missed it! Back in the spring when I was first toying with this idea of re-launching my books, I had purchased a book about how to do that very thing. It was a good, short read, and it gave me the confidence to move forward with my idea.
Recently, while reconciling some of my business bookkeeping, I saw the charge on my account for that book I had purchased. Six months later I had actually forgotten about it, but for a moment I reminisced about my state of mind at that time. I was still trying to get my writing back on track after the huge life change of moving and getting married, and my lack of effort had left my back library of books to kind of die.
Now, I can see all the progress I’ve made. My books haven’t hit the New York Time’s Bestseller list yet, but I’m proud of how far they’ve come! I’ve said this a time or two in past blog posts, but I pretty severely underestimated how much effort would go in to re-launching this series.
Because of that, I’ve sadly had to push back the release date of my new book, The Dark Ruler. Back in April, when I was first planning out this whole re-launching thing, I thought, okay, I’ll re-launch The Sacrifice of One in June… I’ll re-launch The Bear Gap Rebels in August… and by September I’ll have a whole brand new book to release!
This was a bit of a pipe dream. As with all of my books, the next one in the series is always more complex and physically longer than the one before it. The Dark Ruler is no exception. This book is by far the longest I’ve written in my life. I thought I had my plot down solid, but I’ve had to do some major re-plotting. Then after I did a major re-plot overhaul, I wrote out a very elaborate outline in Excel which I’ve never done before, thinking I’d be able to blast through my next draft since I got all the kinks worked out in the outline.
Although the outline has been invaluable, I’m about a quarter of the way through my next re-write, and I’ve still made a lot of changes to the story. I don’t tell you all of this to be a downer. This is what writing is. It’s a process. Every time I write a new book, I’m coming at it with more knowledge and more experience, so I always think I can bang out the next book in 6 months. When am I going to learn I’m not that fast?!
I’m giving you a peak into the mental gymnastics that happen inside my head when I’m writing a book, just to explain to you why I am pushing back the release date of The Dark Ruler. I have made incredible progress on this book, but I won’t be hitting the original late September release date. Instead, I will be releasing The Dark Ruler in January 2021. That may seem far away! But trust me, with the holidays, it will be here before we know it. I mean, I’ve already scene Christmas trees being sold at Costco…
I will let you all know when I have a specific date in January. (There is a day I’m looking at. Just gotta make sure it will work!) In the meantime, please make sure you you sign up for my email newsletter HERE so that you can be the first to get news like this and also get a FREE copy of the first book in this series, The Sacrifice of One!.
Thank you all for your love and support!
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