Some lessons learned...
August 11, 2020
In addition to the new look, I've made a few changes to the website that are a little more about substance than style.
- I've removed all references to books that are not in a substantial state of completion.
- I've (mostly) removed pages that duplicated information in a way that required me to update the same information on the site more than once.
- I've deleted a handful of things that I don't think need to be on here anymore. If you really want to grab a copy, the Wayback Machine should have them archived.
- I'm no longer going to give estimates on when books will come out, either in vague or emoji terms. If the date is not on the website, I either do not know when it is coming out, or I do know when it is coming out and I'm formulating a release strategy, which means you will know in a matter of weeks.
I think bullet points 2-4 above are fairly self-explanatory; bullet point #1 may raise this question:
Q. You deleted mentions of a bunch of books on your site. Does this mean you're not writing them?
A. What it means is that having them up there was giving me a lot of anxiety about not having written them, which was interfering with my creative process (and, also, just my life in general.)
A few specifics...
With regard to the Worth saga:
First, I'm actively working on The Devil Comes Courting at this point, and while I don't think it's wise to set a release date, I hope I will be able to do that by the end of September.
For the rest of the series: I locked myself into a structure for the overarching story before I'd even finished the first book, and the deeper I wrote, the more I worried about whether that structure made sense and if I wanted to write it that particularly way.
Announcing everything way in advance makes sense as a marketing point for authors if you write very fast and don't change your mind while you're writing. As a marketing point, it makes even less sense to announce a book and then...actively change your mind and say the book isn't going to happen.
But marketing matters have to take back seat to whether I can write a book or not. When I hit the point where I'm spending months of writing trying to figure out how to cram something into the structure I initially conceived half a decade ago, that's probably a sign that I need to change the structure, and marketing be damned.
In order to finish the Worth saga, I need to give my creativity free rein in structuring the remainder of the books. This means: removing, replacing, and changing book order as necessary.
With regard to the Cyclone series: Keep Me and Show Me are not necessary to the overarching story (which will end with What Lies Between Me and You). Having them on the website makes me feel guilty, which makes the writing go very slowly. If I promised that they were actually going to get written, that would generate similar anxiety.
When I write them, I promise I will tell you.