IT IS DONE!

Today, we finished Lily Quinn. After eighteen months of outlining, writing, editing, layout and cupcakes, it… is… done. With help, I’ve double- and triple-checked all of the files for Sealed With a Kiss, uploaded them to retailers and put together the print version for volume 3. Barring any error messages from our booksellers, Lily Quinn is done.

I almost can’t believe it. And to be honest, life isn’t leaving me a lot of time to reflect. There’s a lot of non-writing-related shit going down and I’m exhausted. But I have had enough brain power for a couple of ending thoughts.

First: LILY QUINN WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE!

Seriously, guys. I love writing. It’s been my passion for years now, enough to get us through 26 (!) books now. But Lily Quinn may be the most fun I’ve ever had writing a series. Yes, I know it’s porn and that will always limit the series’ audience, but I love the story and the characters. I’ve quite literally skipped around the house after working on some scene that I particularly adored, giggling and recounting to Aron everything that happened in it. Which, of course, he knows – he wrote the first draft.

Aron and I set out to write something that was pure fun. Our own particular variety of fun, yes, but 100% fun. And that’s what we did. We wrote exactly what we wanted to. Why not? It was already porn. It was already objectionable as fuck and a pure passion project. We knew damned well that we might never make back the cost of covers and editing, but we loved every minute of Lily Quinn so hard that it didn’t really matter.

Not every book can be this balls-to-the-wall crazy. Sometimes, we’ll have to make smart, market-driven decisions. But DAMN, it was fun.

Second: DEADLINES. HOLY SHIT.

We’ve always been self-published, so we haven’t had to deal with very many deadlines. There was one for Sword of Dreams and then Hammer of Time just to make sure I finished them. (This was back before Aron and I had refined our process much.) And there was a little while where The Dead Beat was being published by eFiction… but that was a long time ago and didn’t last very long.

But this was thirteen books, all published on a monthly schedule. We started with five months lead timed ended with about a week. Ideally, we were supposed to finish one book a month, which would have meant completing Sealed With a Kiss back in May. That… didn’t happen. At all.

I’m not one to sit and wait for the muse to strike. I write and work on our books every day, on a more or less set schedule. But that still means we went 20 weeks over budget. And even then, I’m exhausted. I felt those deadlines every day, looming over me with promises of failure if I missed one. (We didn’t, though it was close a few times!)

Traditionally published authors deal with this all the time. The first book in a series or a stand-alone novel might be done when they sell it to a publisher, but then there’s the rest of the series or books purchased on proposition. Those all have deadlines. I’m in utter awe of anyone who does this for every book. You guys are fucking rockstars.

Okay, that’s it. I’m done for today. Have a badass weekend, everyone. I’m gonna get off the damned computer.

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OH MY GOD, WE FINISHED LILY QUINN!

Okay, logging off for realsies now.