In an effort to save all you fellow newer authors out there from much trial and tribulation, I'm gonna pass along a strong bit of advice here.

See, I thought I had the whole "oh my lord, I just submitted a story to a publisher, now I can't breathe until I hear back from them" issue beat.  Went through that with my first one and followed everyone's advice to immediately start writing another story to take my mind off the subbed story.  And this process worked.

So like a silly, overly confident author, I decided that I could safely sub THREE of my stories all within the space of a single week since I'd finished up their revisions around the same time.

NOT SMART!

Psychologically, this has proven to be a bad, bad idea.  With one story under consideration, I could go on and start writing a new story.  But with one novella and two full length novels (one of which being my longest EVER novel, The Scent of Rain) all being considered at the same time, I'm going nuts!  I'm worse than I was the first time around in the submission process, checking my email every time it dings a notice for a new message, checking it even when it's not. LOL  Nuts?  Oh yes.  Unprofessional lack of control?  Definitely, for which I heartily apologize.  It's not the publisher's fault by any means, either.  It's mine for not spacing out my submissions and waiting for a response on one before subbing another.

Now all you fellow authors out there who are unpubbed or relatively new to being pubbed...HEED THE WARNING FROM MY EXPERIENCE!!!  I have four fully plotted ideas for all manner of stories ranging from the fourth MDG vamp story to a ghost story, a non-series vamp story, and a non-vamp paranormal.  But can I find an ounce of creative motivation in my body to write on any of these stories?  Nope nope nope!

I read an excellent article that made me feel marginally better.  It was about authors needing to embrace the fact that everything is cyclical.  Like nature and its seasons, we authors also go through the fallow winter months in our writing and should use this time to recharge. 

So what, you may ask, am I doing with this unplanned and definitely unasked for "fallow time"? 

Well, my latest project is to combine MDG #1 and #2 into a two part story and giving it a hard and thorough revision for eventual submission to Harlequin's new Nocturne line of category paranormals.  I think it's got a pretty good shot, but I'm working to make it darker, edgier, my heroes more alpha and less beta (though this part doesn't seem to need much, surprisingly, lol), and the plot more action packed if I can manage it.  The word length is already there at just over the max 75K allowed.  Will the editors like it?  LOL Who knows!  But I'm going to revise it to make it the best I can make it, hopefully get a few crits on it, then send it off.

After THAT, I have NO idea what I'll do!  Maybe my muse will come back from her winter vacation in the Bahamas and we can get on with our works of passion.  I'll keep my toes crossed (need my fingers free to type, of course, lol).  Maybe I can bribe her back with copious amounts of chocolate and wine?  heeheehee

More later,

Sav