How are you? Hanging in there? Reading and writing and spending time with your friends and families again? Good. That’s good!
You have been so incredibly patient with me every year while I take time off for Lent, and I am most appreciative of this generosity! I am happy to report that my sabbatical has been extraordinary. I closed four doors this past month alone. My 2023 standalone has an official title and is in copyedit now, the 2022 Joss Walker book is finished and is in copyedit now, the proposal for my 2024 book has been accepted, the proposal for the 2023 Joss Walker book has been accepted, and Taylor #9 is inches from completion and heading to beta readers. A Word on Words Season 7 has wrapped (you can see all the shows here) and I’m also plotting a couple of short stories. Once that’s done, I’ll be gearing up to write the 2024 standalone. So yes, I closed four doors, but I opened two more. But that’s how we sharks work, ever forward.
These perfect storms happen a couple of times a year, and now with the pen name, too, the convergence is doubled. But I’ve been practicing letting go of the things that don’t serve my primary goal of writing lots of stories, and it’s worked wonderfully.
The only casualty has been my reading life, though I did devour a galley of Julia Whelan’s latest, THANK YOU FOR LISTENING, which is going to take the fall by storm. It was the perfect combination of story: funny, smart, romantic, poignant, sexy without being smutty… it pulled me out of my slump and threw me right back in, three glorious days of reading later. I can’t wait to hear the audio. You’re going to love it, I promise.
I’ve also been working hard to cut back on my caffeine and working on getting lots of exercise. I’ve been very mindful about how I’m using social media, and right now, things feel really good. I’ve limited my consumption of current events, too, though the happenings across the world are driving all kinds of story ideas. It’s amazing how much mental real estate these sabbaticals create. So much so that I believe I’m going to move ahead with the same deliberate structure to my time on a more permanent basis.