How My Writing Schedule Works

I'm confusing people.

On Twitter, I mean. Which is understandable as it can sometimes be confusing place in general. However, what I mean is that people are getting confused about my books. In particular, this blog entry is prompted by a response to a tweet in which I said:

Synopsis for new Mystery Book of Mysterious Awesomness is done! Whew! Now I just need to finish chapter three so I can send it to my agent.

To which a follower immediately asked, "Besides Life After Theft and Earthbound?"

Thus, I see that I am confusing people.

To people who aren't in publishing it must seem pretty straight forward. You write a book, a couple of weeks . . . or maybe months later, it's out on shelves. I cannot tell you have many people I have had say to me at signings some variation on, "I can't wait for the next book! Please write quickly!" And then are shocked when I tell them, "Actually, the next book is done."

That's because the actual process of publication takes about a year. AFTER the book is written. When I was writing the Wings series, it was fairly straightforward. I could say, "Well, the next book is written and I'm currently working on edits."

But then I did two crazy things at the same time. One, I started a new series. (CRAZY!!!!!) Two, I decided to publish two books in one year, (EXTRA CRAZY!!!) and close together at that (MAXIMUM CRAZY!!). That means that this summer has been full of me tweeting quotes from Life After Theft (April 30, 2013) and Earthbound (June or July, 2013). But it's not because I've been writing them, it's because I've been editing them.

That means that I've just started drafting a new book that is expected to come out in . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . Summer 2014.

Well, no wonder you all are confused!!!

And to make matters worse, as soon as this one is done I will be drafting the sequel to Earthbound, also Summer 2014. Yes, in just under TWO years. Because that's how far ahead I have to work to not have deadlines destroy my life.

So here's how things are going to happen for the next little while:

Life After Theft April 2013
Earthbound June/July 2013
Mystery Book Summer 2014
Earthbound Sequel Summer 2014

Take all of those dates and subtract 18 months. That's when I'm writing them. Subtract a year, that's when I'm editing them.

That means that, because of the nature of our profession's calendar, we authors are terrible, shameless teases.:D But hopefully now when I am shamelessly teasing you, at least you'll know what the heck I'm talking about!

Ciao!

P.S. If you want to see the quotes you can look up the hashtags #lifeaftertheft and #earthbound ;)