Firstly, I don’t like this new Blogger dashboard. It’s just not intuitive for me and posting takes so much longer now, and it’s a pain to get from writing a post, to viewing my blog.
Now that little grumble is out of the way, on to the good stuff.
I’ve been hard at work this week, which has been less of a challenge than I expected considering that I’ve just returned from three weeks off galavanting around Europe. I like that word. Galavanting. It’s wholly underused (even in its other variation, gallivanting). I had thought I would be slow to get back into work again but the lure of polishing a book had been chomping at the bit to get to work and it was annoying having to do the whole catching up with emails, interviews, etc, thing that often happens when people return to work from a holiday.
I’ve been polishing Seduce, the next book in the Vampire Erotic Theatre series, and it has been an absolute pleasure. Antoine is really going to make you melt in his story and I think he’ll be claiming a few hearts among you all. Snow shows his true colours, in both extremes, his darkness and his light. It’s a real emotion-fest, full of passion and temptation, and wickedness, and some revelations that will have you aching for both Snow and Antoine.
And now I’ve almost said too much. I don’t want to give away any juicy details but it’s hard because I do love to share everything about my books. I don’t want to spoil the book for everyone though, so I’m zipping my lips. You’ll just have to read it when it comes out in June, but you will get a good Snow fix from this one… although it might just leave you gasping for more and panting for his book.
Next on my agenda is figuring out how to maximise my promotion efforts. I’ve been tinkering here and there with them, but I haven’t been totally committed to my marketing work and have often slacked off in favour of writing, editing, or just procrastinating on Facebook and Twitter and chatting to everyone. I think it’s something all authors suffer. We just want to write write write and play with our characters and series, but we have to do the harder work too, and sometimes it sucks. Sometimes my energy gets so low that I can’t face promoting my books. It’s so easy to get disheartened when you see no comments on posts you’ve made, or book tour stops, or the only time you get people to come out of their shell is when you’re running a competition… and it’s doubly disheartening when you see other authors doing tremendously and being everywhere at once. At times like that, it’s difficult to muster the enthusiasm for marketing. You just want to hide in your cave and write. I’m sure many authors out there know exactly what I’m talking about. We shouldn’t judge our success by measuring it against how others are doing, but we do.
I’m putting together my writing and editing schedule for the rest of the year soon and hoping that I can stick to it by allowing enough time for each project. Normally I underestimate or cut it close to the bone, so I’m determined now to make a schedule that allows for the odd off-day here and there.
One of the positive things I’m taking away from today is that my ENT (ear, nose and throat) appointment went really well and at the moment it looks as though I won’t need another operation on my ear. It’s a relief as I hate being knocked out and my husband hates it too. I think it gets to him worse than it does to me as he has to be awake while I’m in the operating theatre, waiting hours for me to come out from recovery.
I still can’t believe I had an ENT appointment today and still managed to get my polish of Seduce finished today, a whole day early. I guess I have been sitting in Starbucks for 6 hours solid though, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I did reward myself for my stunning focus today (normally I get sleepy drowsy periods every hour where I just yawn a lot and get all hazy… the perils of being a writer and having to focus for long periods, especially when editing, where the danger is that it just turns into reading) and lack of procrastinating by having a skinny mocha. Yum. I don’t need the extra calories but who cares?
Next week I’m going to be working on Enslave, and then the next project is the second draft of Her Demonic Angel. I’ve been writing down editing notes and ideas for both of these stories over the past few weeks, and have plans for how to improve them and really crank up the heat and the tension. I’m on a real high with my books at the moment, feeling really positive because of all the love the releases this year have been getting, and I’m hoping it continues as I write Bewitch and Unleash for the Vampire Erotic Theatre series, and then figure out what needs to be written next for release in 2013. I’d love to get another Her Angel series story out and two more Vampires Realm series novels. Yes, it’s going to be another five releases year.
