Coming soon...but not THAT soon.

So you may have noticed that the book I last blogged about was touted as "the first in a trilogy." As my mother-in-law said, that's a lot of work, doing three books instead of just one! It was, and it has consumed a great deal of my life over the last decade. See that picture over there? That's how my books begin their life, as word documents that may never, ever see the light of day. The fact that this one has clip art on the alleged front matter you see there means either that I needed some inspiration or I was trying to hide from the revision process. Or both.

I have a wonderful friend that is serving as my reader and editor. He is not the first to read the manuscripts and give me feedback - the first reader was mostly looking for plot holes big enough to fit a dragon through and story arcs that dived off cliffs, never to be resolved. I'm so grateful to him for his work, too - when you have spent this long looking at a bunch of words on the screen and you know what plugs the holes and ferries the plot back skyward it is often hard to see those issues.

I have an unfortunate tendency to think that everyone knows what is in my brain and therefore does not need to slog through what I think is boring exposition. Not so, advised my second reader/editor. It was his suggestion that some readers like to make organic discoveries about the story universe as they go along that led me to take out a large and unwieldy chunk of Wanderer and rehome it in the novel it was meant to be in all along - Prequel To Be Named Later. These are things that I simply cannot see in my own work, and makes me understand why normal authors that do this for a living have things like agents and editors to help them along.

Second editor (that sounds a bit like second breakfast, doesn't it?) also helped me with the cover design. This led to major revelation number two: I can let go of control of the Novel Process without letting go of the novel. I don't need to go full Elsa on it. I need to admit to what I cannot do, and gratefully accept help from those that can do. When I do, I get stunning book covers like the one on Wanderer, and hopefully on the rest of the Orana books.  The swooshy looking thing up there will be replaced by something much better.

So Tempest is away with Second Editor, and once that process is done I will do the revisions needed and hopefully get this beast into the hands of my readers by the first of the year. Impatient Nancy says THAT IS THREE WHOLE MONTHS FROM NOW AND FOUR WHOLE MONTHS AFTER WANDERER WHAT GIVES MAN? But rational me knows that while I say first of the year it will most likely be February if not later. And that's okay. Mostly. Excuse me while I put Impatient Nancy back in her box.

If you haven't checked out Wanderer and you have a Nook or a Kindle, give it a go and then let me know here or on Facebook what you think. If you have checked it out, see the previous request for feedback. It is a scary thing to send a piece of work out into the wide world and to have no idea how things are going...if it is drinking or doing drugs, or needs bus fare, or has a mountain of laundry. So while you are discovering Gin and Sath, I'm going to go ring my mother.