So, as you may have noticed, this summer wasn’t the most productive time for me when it came to actually … you know.. producing words— that thing we writers are kind of expected to do…:)

Granted, I do have valid reasons re health and the summer weather. And, even when I wasn’t actually making words I was still plugging away with the “back end” kind of things. I overhauled the website. It looks really stunning. I have put a lot of attention and energy into building ads. They look great. Success of that is still pending:)

Oh- and I did write a short story, Yara’s story– that got out of hand and is now waiting on the jury to deliberate on its future. I also wrote a holiday short story. Err… novella… errr… who are we kidding- this thing is now 54k full-fledged novel.

Midwinter Mage was a very unexpected surprise. It was the middle of summer and the last thing I was thinking about was— you guessed it… Holidays!

But the marketing group I was temporarily in (I left it with some modicum of disappointment and disillusionment- but that’s a story that shouldn’t be public).. they were all raving and prepping and talking about getting ready for the holidays. TF is wrong with these people. It’s 98 degrees out with 105 percent humidity!

Anyway- I got caught up in the  “challenge” — dammit! I couldn’t resist a “challenge.”  As  you may know, I usually try to write a holiday-themed story for my readers. If you aren’t in the readers’ group, though, you may not know that:)

Anyway- the gauntlet had been thrown down. And Midwinter Mage was born.

I went into a writing frenzy- which may be the optimal way in which I produce books… the jury is still out on that one, also (I have a lot of juries:)… and the short story had stretched into 24k words?… yikes! At that point I was well past the cute short story phase and options. Solution? Double down, of course!

Anyway- I had the story up to 40kish words. It was drafted. Rough. Drafty AF. But it had a clear premise, a beginning, middle and end. My job is done– right?

HA!
Well, back in July, they were all talking about strategies etc. Mostly they were discussing reader magnets and first-in-series.

Neither of which Midwinter Mage– is.
I tried asking several times– so… this doesn’t match the blueprints you’re laying out. What should i do with it? How should I handle it?

Crickets!

Fucking crickets.

I asked a second time.

I responded in a post that was on-topic, tagging the person hosting the course (this is paid, mind you, not free)

No response.

Well that sucked Ass!

So, I trotted over to GPT and did some brainstorming.

Just release it as a companion story, that can stand alone and launch it just before the holidays.

wow- Was that so hard???? OI!

Anyway- I set a 10 Nov launch date and put it up on pre-order.

And then mentally just put that baby aside– because 98 degrees and miserable.

Well– guess what happened next?

It became October– dammit!

I realized– wow- I only have three weeks before this HAS to be done.

Now, this has been on the monthly to-do list (along with finishing bk9 and doing revisions on the Wayward Mage Special Edition)…
Funny- those don’t actually have deadlines.

so- guess what made it to the top of the panic-list?

You guessed right:)

So- I spent the last 3-5 days going over the manuscript from chapter one all the way through to the end– at 54k words!

So- somewhere along the way, it became a full grown-up novel… they grow so fast… and before you know it they’ll be heading out the door…

But– it’s done. It still needs beta-reading… and I am praying there aren’t any egregious issues in it:)