A Time For Everything

Book six is (mostly)(probably) done and off to my lovely proofreader.

About three months late. Since I'm planning to indie publish, the fact that it's late doesn't have a whole lot of consequences, it just means that my whole publishing schedule was postponed. Potential money earning postponed too. That's the worst consequence.

My plan had been to have book six done and in the proofer's hands in June and that I would start publishing the previous books in the series around that time.

But I wanted book six done before I started down the publishing road.

Unfortunately, I struggled and struggled with that story for some reason--I still don't really know why. Writing it was still mostly a chore when I finally just put my nose to the grindstone and made it happen. I have no idea if it's as good as the others or if it makes sense or if there's some major plot hole that's so large I just can't see it. My proofreader will definitely let me know.

BUT

It's finally done and out of my hair for the time being. Now I can turn my attention to...you guessed it...book seven.

Hope you're having a great week. Mine is looking up. :0)

WOO HOO! The last I has been dotted and the final T has been crossed in book four (formerly three). That's not to say there might not be editorial-related changes later, after the editor has a look at it, but I'm finally pleased with the story I wanted to tell.



I was tempted to not finish my last read-through, but I'm so glad I did. I fleshed a few things out and fixed some things at the end I hadn't realized weren't up to snuff. At the end of the day, I also added about 800 words. It's my longest book to date and I'm not even sure how that happened.

Now it's "resting." I'm taking a break from it for two weeks to get some distance and then I'll do another read-through before scheduling a date with my content/copy editor.

In the meantime, book five is now on my plate. It's written, but needs revisions. Maybe not as many as I thought, based on what I read yesterday. We'll see how it goes. I do have two other projects, one (very) short story and book six to write.

In my quest to start up this little publishing company of mine, a new but oh-so-important aspect of being a business owner has come up in my reading/research--bookkeeping. Yep. This endeavor isn't going to have to cover set costs yet (office space, electricity, Internet, etc.), but I do want it to eventually pay for the book covers and editing, as well as the things I stipulated in my business plan.

Anyway, I researched bookkeeping for small business and found some easy-to-fill out Excel spreadsheet templates. Income and outgo are going to be minimal for a while, income=owner investment, outgo=book cover and editing expenses, and they won't happen on a predictable schedule either, so I think even a plain old ledger would serve me fine. But I found a spreadsheet template with a whole bunch of formulas already built in. All I have to do is key amounts into the appropriate cells and the spreadsheet will do all the hard work. YAY!

A dear friend reminded me that sometimes we need a break from all the noise in our head. Something not writing- and not business-related. We need to feed our souls as well as our muses. So I celebrated finishing the book on Saturday with a lot of hockey watching and some cross stitching. And it was lovely. Almost done with my sampler and the Dallas Stars won--YAY. The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Columbus Blue Jackets lost--HUH?? (None of these teams played each other.)

Hope you had as lovely a weekend as I did. :0)