Delaying my release date. Again.
As most of you know, I intended to publish A Dark Sky Opens in 2020. Then, COVID-19 struck without notice, destroying my plans for an actual release party. I decided to delay the release once again. Because, why not? There isn't an author on the planet who won't benefit from an extra few months of editing and revision, right?
Well, I certainly wasn't an exception. Those additional months of revision lead to a complete overhaul of the manuscript. And in November 2020, my editor highlighted a few new areas in need of improvement—right before the chaos of the holidays, moving out of Flagstaff and to Sedona, and then moving *again* into a brand new RV.
Let's just say my life hasn't been necessarily conducive to writing for the last several months, and while that's changed significantly (now that the chaos of moving, particularly, has finally been squared away), I'm massively behind on revisions.
As of now, I'm about 100 pages into a 500-page manuscript (that is bound to get longer after rewriting the ending). Instead of taking on four manuscripts a month as an editor, I've kept it at two (or three, if they're short). With this in mind, I hope to have these revisions ready to be released to my CPs by May of this year—hopefully before my birthday.
The new tentative release date for A Dark Sky Opens, assuming my CPs don't discover some fatal flaw to the manuscript that neither myself nor my editor found, is August. I would really love to release it on Eos's birthday, August 1st, but we'll see! :)
Honestly, it sucks to continue postponing the release date on this book—and it's moments like these that make me truly question whether or not I'm capable of ever publishing a book traditionally, that's on an unwavering deadline. My priority is to always tell the story the right way, to the best of my ability, and I absolutely refuse to waste anyone's money on something that I've carelessly churned out into the world, so I stand by my choices. But damn, it's going to be wonderful when I officially start gaining traction.
I can feel it already happening, honestly, now that we're all moved. I can feel the thrill of that upward swing in momentum. The goal is always to publish well and to publish quickly, so I've outgrown the temptation of pie-in-the-sky goal-making—but honestly, if things stay the way they have been, I don't think it's impossible for me to release book three within the next year and a half, which is psychotically exciting.
Speaking of Book Three: Stay tuned for more soon! Once I've got A Dark Sky Opens in the hands of my critique partners, I'll be officially announcing the title of Book Three as well as its back-cover blurb. I may also have another book-related announcement coming your way as well, so again: stay tuned! :)
