Publishing and Promotional Updates

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been mostly absent from the blogging scene lately, other than to feature books by some of my fellow YA authors. There’s a good reason for that. My friend McKenzie McCann blogged about something she calls “One More Thing Syndrome” a while back.  (I can’t find your blog post now, McKenzie, so please forgive me if I’m not getting this 100% accurate.) It’s this situation where you’re so overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted that the tiniest detail, such as having to answer an email, retweet something, or toss out the trash someone left on the counter, can put you over the edge. I’ve been operating close to that level since last January. Thirteen months now. The 100+ emails I get every day (sometimes as many as 200) are just one of the many things that have put me over the edge.

I try to stay on top of these emails, deleting the ones I don’t need and sorting others into folders, but I have a huge backlog that grows every day. It exhausts me to even look at them, so I practice denial. I’ve had to do that for a lot of things. There simply isn’t enough time for all the promotions I should be doing. I’d love to be socializing on Facebook and Twitter, doing a couple blog posts a week, and taking advantage of other marketing opportunities, but I simply can’t. It’s a daily slap in the face for a perfectionist because I’m lucky if I can do a half-assed job, let alone the impeccable one I feel I should be capable of.

So what’s kept me so busy lately, other than email, the launch of Getting Sideways, and my revisions to Driven (book 3 in the series)? Well, for one thing I’ve been teaching indie publishing classes. My first official continuing education class was January 19th. I also spent several days creating proposals for the Willamette Writers Conference (something that’s a bear to get a gig at if you aren’t well-known) sorting out what I’m going to speak about at the SCBWI Summer Picnic, and preparing a self-pub class for the SCBWI Spring Conference. That last one’s going to be a challenge. I only have an hour to cover what I can barely squeak into a 2 1/2 hour community college class. Anybody got a crowbar?

All this has delayed the release of the print version of Getting Sideways, something I feel bad about when so many people were expecting it in mid-January. One of the hold ups was that I needed to do my revisions to chapter 1 of Driven so I could include it in the back of the book. I didn’t get my notes from the editor until early January, and then the onslaught of preparation for classes began. Once I finally got started revising Driven, I kept going back to make small changes to the opening chapters, so I was a little anxious about calling it good too soon. I finally got it worked out, though, and finished up the paperback formatting. As soon as I get the complete cover design from Robin Ludwig, and Bob goes through the manuscript one last time to check for kerning issues (thank you Bob!) I’ll be ready to upload it. For those of you who have been waiting for the paperback, you can probably expect it around the end of February or beginning of March.

I’d like to apologize to all of you whose blogs I normally comment on, and to my friends on Facebook whom I’ve been neglecting. My lack of participation is not ’cause I’ve forgotten about you. I’m just buried.

I have a few other projects I’m working on, which I’ll announce in the future, and some more great books to introduce you to, including an anthology of love stories by the Indelibles, which will launch February 14th.

For your viewing amusement, I’ll leave you with a picture of a boneless cat attempting to help me with my writing. Keelan occasionally blogs, and he has his own Twitter account, though I suspect he only wanted it so he could stalk their mascot. You can follow him here: @Wee_Cat.