A view inside my current state of mind

Yeah, you probably really don't want to read this. However, I think it's important to put on the record some of the (utterly) ridiculous things that can go through an author's mind when, it would seem, everything should be honky dory cause they have achieved the dream.

It's been two months since I turned in Rogue Gadda (book three). In that time, I had some editorial feedback and made the small number of adjustments requested. Now, I'm just waiting for the copyedits.

Next week, Power Unbound (book two) goes to print, ready to be delivered to the bookstores just before Christmas (even though it's a January book – trying to deliver books in the first week of January when the publisher is shut for holidays has in the past proven problematic and so it's done like this now). It's two months away, which didn't seem long for the first book. But when the first book was released, I was editing Power Unbound and writing Rogue Gadda and so I didn't have time to sit and think about it being two months away.

In the meantime, Secret Ones is out there in the world. The feedback to me on it has dried up – no more reviews, no more "oh my god I loved your book"s from family and friends because they've all read it. It's kinda in this strange limbo place – I guess things are still happening, but I don't know.

So the Dream of Asarlai trilogy is, to all intents and purposes, done and apart from a couple of weeks of copyediting, there's really nothing more I can do for these books. That's sad, and a bit scary. Oh of course, there's marketing and publicity to do, but that's really not as big a deal as actually writing them. All the marketing in the world won't sell a crap product. Not without tens of millions of dollars :)

Amidst all this is the overseas sales of the trilogy. HC have the world rights and I don't doubt for one moment they're working on selling them. However, my silly little brain has convinced itself that all that should be happening around now, and that I should hear any moment now, and so every time the phone rings my heart skips and I'm constantly checking emails.

Then there's the writing I'm doing at the moment, and I'm wondering if I made the right decision to work on Battle for Odana first. There's so much writing happening, it's taking longer than I thought. My plan was to have it ready for submission by the end of the year. Instead, I'll be lucky if it's ready for the Beta readers by then.

Maybe I'd be better off focussing right now on the sequel for Dream of Asarlai, because it could be the easier to sell. Except if the trilogy tanks, it won't sell at all.

The result of all this – I am slowly, but surely, going mad. I'm so much in my head, and there's so little there that's certain, that I've become grouchy and whingy and bitey and all the other not-good-ways-to-treat-the-people-you-love stuff.

Nor can I at the moment see a way out of this predicament - so much of it is caused by things that are out of my control and realities of the publishing industry. All I can do is keep ploughing ahead, try to be nicer to those around me and hope that they'll forgive me when the madness clears and I feel on a direct course again.

So, there you have it – my head at the moment. Not pretty is it?

You should try being in here :)