Yes, the blog has been quiet lately. It goes through these lulls when I get busy. I did read a book last week, but it’s a book that I am reviewing as part of my writer’s group, and it’s by an author you might have heard about. It’s good. Hopefully we’ll see it in print in the near future, and then you’ll hear a lot more about it here.

Other than that, I’ve been heads-down editing since the middle of September, first on my book Labeled, and then on my book, Nowhere Wild. Both edits are now complete. The first 25 pages of Labeled is in front of my writer’s group and I plan on submitting that for the PNWA Literary Contest next year. Entries are due by 2/17/2012. I’ll spend a bit of time over the next couple of weeks cleaning up the synopsis. and getting everything ready to send out.

Nowhere Wild is also in the hands of my writing group. I’m a little nervous about getting feedback this time because my writing group is pretty spectacular when it comes to writing credits. Plus, I’m getting close to the end of my rope on just how many full edits I can do on a single book. I know I can do ‘as many as it takes’, but I’m really hoping I can get to the point of “It’s pretty damn good. But you have an extra comma on page 236”.

With both of those stories wrapped up, I’m taking a short break over the holidays to do some reading… and some blogging. I’ve got 3 other books that could use a good edit, but my brain is telling me to take a short hiatus. Only one of those three is stand-alone (Army of the Risen) . One is a book that will probably never see the light of day (To Cage the Eagle), but that doesn’t mean my OCD won’t let me try to make it better, and the other is the sequel to Nowhere Wild (Nowhere Home). I’ve learned my lesson about working on the sequel before the first book is finalized. It’s going to need to be completely re-planned and rewritten since the plot of the Nowhere Wild changed so much, and I don’t want to do that more than once.

It may sound like I’m down on writing right now. I’m really not. I want to do more of it. I’d love to be able to turn out books like Zane Grey or Stephen King. But I don’t have that kind of time in my life right now, and I need to pace myself. My goal is to become a better writer so I don’t have to do so freaking-many editing passes through each book before it is ready to send off to my agent. So I guess I am just down on editing, not writing. I wish the two weren’t so… connected.

I can’t wait to start on a new story, and I’ve been resisting looking at my “What if” file to see which idea seems to have the best legs. But I want to make sure at least one of these stories I’ve already got done is “out the door” so I can dedicate a long stretch of time to a single work without worrying one of the old ones is waiting for another turn with the red marker.

So that’s the plan for the next two or three weeks. If I can just keep that “What if” file closed, everything will be just… oooh… wait… What if there was this guy, see…