Excitement Building On Multiple Fronts

We're into the home stretch for Round 3 of ROW80. This has brought on a fair amount of introspection, even though I have no time for introspection! Just kidding -- the introspection kinda creeps up on me, even if it isn't the most effective use of my time. I've been thinking a lot about upcoming projects; I swear, I write way too slow and come up with new ideas way too fast! I'm getting my second book in shape for publishing. I also need to do some cleanup to the first book -- for instance, I noticed on the Apple store they seem to have it in the wrong category, but I have no idea how to change that when it's distributed through Smashwords. I also think when the second book comes out I will publish both novellas to allromanceebooks.com; there's a bit of a learning curve there, because I don't know how to make the different formats. I also want to improve on some evolving aspects of social networking (like joining Google+ and getting business cards). So that's a lot of stuff swirling around my tired brain -- a lot of stuff besides actually writing!

Where's the excitement, you say? Everywhere! I hit my stride with the fantasy I'm currently writing. Right now I'm at 3,800 words for the week, after last week's 3,900. I haven't consolidated all of it into my manuscript, but I believe this puts me at about 23,000 total word count. I'm approaching the midpoint, and it feels like it will really come together and possibly be fast to write (?) the closer I get to the climax. (By the way, I can do the math, and I know if I hit the midpoint soon, I'll have yet another short book on my hands. But I'm just writing the draft and not worrying about length, which I believe is trivial beside story.) Also, on Friday what I'd written inspired me to make notes for the second and third books in this trilogy. I already had a general concept for the trilogy, but Friday's work puts me ahead on planning out the next two books -- which is an awesome feeling!

I'm also getting really excited about returning to romance writing. I'm not in a good place with the outline for book three of the Children of the Sidhe series, but I'm sure one of these days my mental firecrackers will be focused in that direction. I definitely want to have book three outlined before publishing book two, Vessel, this fall. I'm on the last three chapters of edits for Vessel, and then I need to incorporate all of my changes into the manuscript and get beta readers lined up.

I also need to strategize about my second release. I feel like the first one went out there into kind of a void... it's out there, but nobody knows it's out there. I'm considering things like advance copies to reviewers, a big sale and promotion of the first book since readers will want to read them in order. If anyone has great advice about making a bang with a book release, I'd be happy to hear it!

Good luck with your final push, ROW80ers!! And to all, a good week!