Taking the plunge (and other exciting news!)

First things first!

I finished the redraft of The Darkest Gate, which means it is getting VERY close to hopping over to your Kindle. :) Editing does take a few weeks, so "very close" isn't like "next weekend" very close, but more like "early next month" very close.

The process from here gets a little hairy: I need high-level feedback from my first editor, a couple minor revisions (usually like adding or deleting a couple scenes), which shouldn't be too serious since this was only a redraft in the first place. Then comes the sandblast edit. That's where I retype the whoooole book from scratch and read it out loud to make sure I don't have any awkward sentences left. It doesn't take as long as you would think. I type REALLY fast.

The book is pretty good to go at that point, but there are artifacts leftover from sandblast edits. Lots of dropped punctuation, double words (my fingers get away from me sometimes), and mistypes. That's where my team of proofreaders come in. They need a week or so to beat the book into the shape before I format it.

THEN the book will be ready for your Kindle! So in the next month-ish. I don't want to start blasting a date all over the place until I see what my high-level editor thinks needs to be fixed, but I will definitely say that it's going to be out in the first half of May, if not sooner. I should have plenty of time to work on it in April, so I don't anticipate it taking too long. I'll be hacking away at it whenever I can tear the pages from the grubby hands of my beloved Helpful Toddler.

That brings me to my second thing... the scary thing.

You probably remember when I was asking for advice as to whether I should make writing my full-time job or not. I got so much wonderful advice on that post. I'm touched to see how many people genuinely care about my situation. I'm so lucky to have gotten to know all these remarkable people.

But daydreams of quitting have suddenly turned into an urgent "oh God I have to get out of this job ASAP" situation. The main reason being that my husband's job is a lot more demanding than we could have expected. We basically had to choose between spending $1000/month on childcare or having me work from home and watch the baby, which is what I wanted to do anyway, soooo...

I'm taking the plunge!

April 13th is my last day at my Real Job, after which I am a full-time, honest-to-goodness stay-at-home writer. I actually get a little teary typing that. It's everything I've always wanted. If I could travel back in time and tell my twelve year old self that I was going to get to write full time in twelve more years, I never would have believed you. But here we are. And it's pretty... wow.

This wouldn't be possible if I didn't have so much love and support from friends, readers, and bloggers. March was a record sales month for me (I made almost twice as much as I did in a month at my Real Job!), and if things keep heading in this direction, then hopefully I can keep Living the Dream for a few years. :)

Thank you all for everything. I'm going to do my darndest to keep publishing awesome books. In fact, I have three more novels slated for this year, AFTER The Darkest Gate (seriously!), and I might squeak in some other stuff too. So I'm definitely taking advantage of my newfound free time. Here's what the rest of 2012 will look like:

• May: The Darkest Gate
• Probably somewhere in between: A SUPER SECRET PROJECT
• August: Gray Moon Rising
• October: Anthology with my publishing company
• November: Damnation Marked

Woo. Scary and exciting. But definitely worth it.

I hope you are all having an AMAZING spring.