What's up, Tam?

I thought I'd step away from the 30 Days goofiness to post an update of sorts about my writing.

2011 was an extremely stressful year for me, with quite a lot of life upheaval, especially concerning Bill's job. He's a postal worker - specifically, he repairs the machines that sort the mail - and as most anyone who follows the news knows, things have not been going well with the posty office.

Anyway, we've endured a lot this year and my writing has definitely suffered. I've squeezed our about 20,000 words on Stain - much, much less than I intended - but have not managed to make progress on anything else since I sent M to my agent in March. M has not yet sold - it's still being shopped around - and, in an effort to focus my writing in a more productive direction, I discussed this past year, and the one we're just beginning, with my agent.

He's amazing and wonderful, and has pointed me into what we both hope will be a more productive and profitable future. I can't really talk publicly about what that is just yet, but Stain is once again on hold as I spend this month on research. 

There's a lot of research. I have a huge stack of books in my kitchen, and my brain aches from all the reading I've been doing, but there's a lot more yet to come. I've promised to get back to him in about a month with some ideas how to make this all work for me and my books, and I'm genuinely excited and optimistic about the future of my writing.

It's been a long, long time since I was happy and excited about writing. It feels really good to be sliding into the groove again. We're taking my work into a whole different direction, and I think it's going to be fantastic!

As for Stain, I'll get back to it in February (actually, I should be able to sneak some time into it next week, but don't tell ;) ), and after talking with my agent about the future of the Dubric series, I can just about guarantee that it will be self published. Threads and Valley simply have not sold enough to keep the series viable for traditional publication. After considering those facts - they're pretty obvious - I've also decided to make Stain a bit longer than I'd intended, and include more closure of story lines that were originally going to get tied off a book or two further down the line. There are some things that will be left hanging, lots of things, actually, but I plan on ending the book in such a way that if it were truly the end of the series, no one would feel cheated, or that there's too much left to go.

It's going to be a rather long book, I'm afraid, but that's just fine with me. Sammie has already volunteered to edit it and I know several of my pre-readers would be happy to jump into the madness as well. All of this has me super-encouraged, too. So look forward to a lot of updates as the various projects progress. Again, Stain will be self published, likely through Smashwords and Amazon, and I'm writing it for the fans, all you wonderful folks who've stuck with me through all the upheavals. I love you all more than you know, but, dammit, I am so relieved to be working again.

It's nice to be back.