Discoveries, the next book in the Sad Girl series, is off to the editor!
That means I can focus my full attention on In Plain Sight, which I expect to be the conclusion of the Sad Girl series, at least for now. Then again, I never expected this to become a series in the first place!
It came in at just over 80,000 words or about 320 pages based on an old publishing “rule.” In contrast, The Sad Girl came in at almost 88,000 words, and the print edition stood at 316 pages according to Amazon. That means that “250 words per page” estimate is just that – an estimate.
I expect Joy to have the book for about a month. After that, I’ll take a couple of weeks to go through the edits, and then a week or so to get it formatted. I’ll use that time to work with my cover artist and get the cover set.
In theory, that timeline means I could have the book out by the end of May. I think I’ll aim for a release date of June 15th for now. I’ll adjust it as needed, and if you’re subscribed to my email list, you’ll get that news a little ahead of everyone else.
I’m using the same cover artist who did the Booktrope cover for The Sad Girl. Yosbe was just fantastic to work with when we were with BT, and I’m so looking forward to seeing her treatment of Discoveries.
This is an odd moment for me.
I’m sending my third book off to my editor.
I’ve written three books. That’s three times as many as a lot of people in the world.
How come I’m not more excited, or nervous? I might work on unpacking that in a future post.
And is it really my fourth book, or my sixth? Years ago, like in the last century, I started two other stories. I scribbled a few dozen words here and there for other ideas, but I got a few thousand words into two stories. They’re both trunked, and one will certainly stay there, because it doesn’t make sense to write a book about a global war that happened in 2000 if we’re eighteen years past that, does it? The other one, that I called To Keep and Bear, might find new life in my next series though.
Next series?
Yes, I’m planning another series. Haven’t you been reading? {smile}
It’s been in the back of my mind for about four years now. I once styled it as “Hill Street Blues meets COPS, with a sprinkling of Law & Order for flavor.” All the stories will be in Oklahoma, but they’re not all going to be about Tulsa or Oklahoma City or Norman or Muskogee. Three million people live in Oklahoma. Over three hundred law enforcement agencies across the state protect them. (That doesn’t even include all of the feds!). I’m not all that great at math, but that works out to something north of a bunch of stories. At least I hope it does.
At any rate, starting tomorrow, those time blocks in my calendar marked “Writing/editing” are going to turn into “Writing/fiction” time as I focus on the next story. Maybe I’ll put up a teaser from Discoveries to tide you over. Would you like that?
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