Update!
So lately it’s been a lot of waiting. If you thought that the query stage was a trial of patience, brace yourself. Publishing is all about waiting. Waiting for an editorial letter, waiting for a marketing plan, waiting for a cover, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Right now, I’m in the waiting for a cover phase and it’s a fantastic mix of excitement and anticipation and genuine impatience. A cover is something that everyone from the editor to the sales department weighs in on, and they take into account all sorts of practical variables that I would never think of, plus still find a way for it to be true to the book. And I am super duper lucky that I’ve been invited to chime in with any thoughts or ideas I may have–not many authors can say that! So, with so much expert input, these things can take time.
But, while I know all this with my brain, I am still impatient. Waiting is hard.
I’m keeping myself busy, though. Book Two is well underway–probably only 10,000 or 20,000 words away from being a real first draft that I can then rip apart and stitch back together (like Frankenstein’s monster.) I won’t lie, Book Two is been a PITA, and this is only the drafting part–the easy part. God help me when it comes to revision time.