Frustration! And, uh, what’s the opposite of frustration?

Wow, this cover concept for THE KEEPER OF THE MIST is totally fabulous! Too bad I can’t share it with you all.

MY GOD AT LAST I HAVE WORKED OUT THE CLIMATIC SCENE. Too bad I can’t tell you all about it without utterly spoiling a book that isn’t even out yet.

So, I’ve finished this neat book! Too bad I’m not allowed to even mention it.

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These are all actual, real moments from my life over the last couple of years. The most recent is this *fabulous* cover for KEEPER, my editor just sent it to me, but the thing is, the marketing people have to approve it before it turns into the real deal, and then for all I know Knopf/Crown will have their own notions about how to do the cover reveal. Have I mentioned that it’s a great cover? It’s a great cover. Beautiful, evocative, poetic, symbolic, and clearly the artist read the book (or at least enough of it). I’m crossing my fingers the marketing department loves it as much as I do.

But! What’s the opposite of frustration? Antonyms listed in this handy dictionary I have here on my phone include, let’s see: success, happiness, pleasure, advance, aid, assistance, blessing, boon, boost, help, promotion, support, triumph, cooperation, encouragement, facilitation, satisfaction.

Hmm. I’m not so sure any of those fit all that well, but sure, let’s go with support, triumph, cooperation, and satisfaction.

Because here’s some good news: Saga has agreed that I can self-publish BLACK DOG sequels to my heart’s content, whenever I like and as many as I like. Poof! (Not that this was magic; my splendid agent made this happen.) Anyway, we are now once more moving forward toward the release of PURE MAGIC.

Here’s the plan, such as it is: I will very carefully copy edit the short stories, get someone else to line edit them, think of a title (MY GOD I am so tempted to take a leaf from Martha Wells “Short Stories of the Raksura” and just call the set “Black Dog Short Stories”), approve the cover, do the ebook conversion, and release them. My goal is to release the short story collection in April, ebook only.

Then the same for PURE MAGIC, aiming for May, print and ebook both. For the month in between the release of the short stories and the release of PURE MAGIC, I will be aiming to do a lot of guest posts and things.

Next winter (I KNOW, right? But I have to plan ahead to get things to work out.) I will see if I can write a third Black Dog novel. My ultimate goal is to write and self-publish PURE MAGIC and three more books in this world. I have a basic notion of where the overall arc is going and about how long it should take. I will be working on other stuff for traditional publishers during the next few years, too, but I think I can do both.

So that’s what’s been going on over the past couple of days here! A very promising beginning for February. Now: Must go work on revising that partial for THE WHITE ROAD OF THE MOON.