Hi Friend,
If my finger-counting is right, December, right before LIARS’ PARADOX released, was the last time I had a chance to update with the real-time goings on in the writerly life, which means it’s been nearly five whole months since the last NEWSIE and, boy, if these months haven’t been filled with some craziness.
At the time of the last update I’d already missed the contracted September deadline for LIARS’ LEGACY, had come up short on meeting the extended December deadline, which meant submitting an unfinished draft and hoping I’d somehow be given more time, and then came release day for LIARS’ PARADOX, and then the year-end holidays, and a January filled with book promotion and events for PARADOX, and just as things began to settle in February I got word on where things stood with the missed deadlines and, considering where things were at with the story, the situation was not pretty.
Thus, I disappeared.
It got kind of gnarly for a while. For the first time since 2015 we had to put the weekly podcast on hiatus and I twice fell about two months behind in answering email (if you’ve written and not heard back, I apologize), and we won’t talk about overdue notices and the late fees for bills that got lost in the mix, and doctor’s appointments that got skipped, and yada-yada as life compressed into 16 + hour days of me trying to turn word vomit and mental mush into something readable.
By orders of magnitude LIARS’ LEGACY is the hardest story I’ve attempted get onto the page. For a few despondent months it really did seem as if it was simply beyond my ability to write. That’s not me being self-deprecating or modest, there are reasons this story in particular was as brutal as it was. [Links to the details on why are down below.] But here we are, six months late on an already generous deadline, and this sucker is finally finished!
I’ve lived with this this book for so long that it’s hard to bend my mind around the fact I've actually reached the end. And there's even more to the mind bending than just having wrapped up the book itself, because see, LEGACY was the last title I had under contract and no longer being under contract means I’m now faced with the decision of what to do next and that, my friend, is a big question.
If you’ve followed this saga over the years then you already know I’ve got two half-written books waiting for me to return, and I’ve been talking about HACK THE CRAFT for nearly forever, and there’s so much else I’ve had to push aside in the quest to get this book finished.
I'm hoping to use the next NEWSIE (which—haha—will most definitely NOT be five months from now) to walk you through the choices I’m facing and the opportunity costs attached to each and what this will mean for you—and for me—in terms of the stories yet to come.
In the meantime, here’s where we’re at with what’s currently in progress:
LIARS’ LEGACY: No book is ever finished-finished until after it releases, which in this case is looking to be the tail end of December. I will still have work to do as it moves through copy edits and other related stages but the hardest part is done and LEGACY has officially entered the production pipeline.
Check out the cover! LEGACY now also has its full color face up online!!
There’s also the flap copy/ back cover summary with a taste of what it's about. If you read the cover copy for PARADOX and then read the book itself, you already know how much of a challenge it can be for a few paragraphs to do proper justice to the story, but at least it’s something to whet the appetite.
I’m so excited and rather in disbelief that this story is actually, really, for reals, going to happen. LIARS’ BLUFF: Having learned from the Munroe stories wherein I wrote the first without thinking there might be a series, I started Jack and Jill with a possible three book story arc in mind. Normally at this stage I’d have already pitched the next installment to my agent and editor and would already be outlining the plot and prepping to write the opening chapters so that we could get it under contract as quickly as possible. That’s how fast the turnaround time needs to be if I hope to keep up the production cycle of one book a year, especially being as late with book two as I am. But, for my own sanity, I need to step off the hamster wheel for a bit. So for now LIARS’ BLUFF is a placeholder: a story I want to write in order to come around full circle, but which I might not start until next year. THE “I CAN’T TALK ABOUT IT YET” PROJECT: There’s also a collaborative work-for-hire project that came at me quite out of the blue and which I signed on for before I realized just how upside down things would become in trying to get LIARS’ LEGACY finished. The project is being done through Serial Box, which is a tech-oriented start-up publisher that approaches book creation closer to the way television shows are done than how it’s traditionally done in print. So here, instead of a solitary writer working on his/her own book for a year or more, the team brings together a showrunner and a group of experienced writers to develop the story collaboratively and once that’s done, the actual writing is parceled out so that instead of one writer doing the entire book, each author takes on a couple “chapters.” I put chapters in quotes because these books are specifically structured for serialization and with the length of the average commute or workout in mind. Weekly episodes are delivered simultaneously in both audio and digital—the formats are completely interchangeable—and run for about 45 minutes give or take, so you’re really looking at about three to four [of my size] chapters worth of material in each installment, each with its own arc that fits within the larger story. It’s a format that provides quality fiction in manageable chunks for those who love novels but just can’t afford to fall down a reading hole that stretches beyond an allotted amounted of time or keeps them awake until four in the morning and anyone who enjoys a well thought out serialized format. I can’t wait to share the details of what this project is and what working on it has been like, but because it’s not my project I’m on a no-talk-about-it lockdown until it’s officially announced. That said, there’ve been hints online and this link probably gives you enough of an idea that you can draw your own conclusions and figure out why I was interested enough to say yes.
I PAUSE FOR BREATH: Now that LIARS’ LEGACY has been submitted, I’ve finally, for the first time in a year-and-a-half, had a chance to stop and just do nothing. I mean, I’m not actually good at doing nothing, so for me nothing means a chance to do laundry and file paperwork and vacuum floors and get the oil changed in the car and begin digging through mountains of stuff I’ve ignored for way too long. But to be able to do that without feeling the time cost of every minute away from the daily double digit hours I've been spending at the computer feels absolutely surreal—like a mind vacation—and that’s what I’ve been up to for the past week.
I could absolutely use a few more weeks--months--of doing that same kind of nothing but there’s some material on the can’t-talk-about-it project that will be due from me soon, so tomorrow I return to writing. Which is probably for the best because the longer I stay away from it, the harder it is to start again.
But I’m hoping—fingers crossed—that it’ll now be a slower and less-stressful pace that’ll allow me time to break off and work on a few of the HACK THE CRAFT podcasts we’ve got lined up, and after that, well, depending on where things are at with copy edits on LEGACY I might actually be able to choose what I want to work on and I’m still trying to wrap my head around actually being able to do that. MORE DETAILS AVAILABLE: If you’re interested in a deeper look at why LEGACY in particular was so difficult to write, as well as some other personal and behind-the-scenes things that have been going on during these crazy months, I did manage to get a few posts up on Patreon and you can find those specific details at these links: A Contender for what was Nearly My Most Humiliating MomentAn Invitation and Other TidbitsStill Alive. Still Here. And Other Stuff.Holy Crap, LIARS' LEGACY is FinishedGOODIES: It’s been so long since our last Goodie Giveaway that this month I'm putting twelve books in the giveaway pile. If you’d like to be entered to win, simply respond to this email with the subject “GOODIE GIVEAWAY” [If your email program likes to be difficult and won’t let you change the subject, just put GOODIE GIVEAWAY in the reply and I will make sure it gets to the right place.] The 7th, 16th, 24th, 31st, 38th, 46th, 50th, 56th, 62nd, 73rd, 84th, and 90th readers to respond will be prize winners this month. I read every single email that comes in but due to the volume, I’m ONLY able to respond to the 7th, 16th, 24th, 31st, 38th, 46th, 50th, 56th, 62nd, 73rd, 84th, and 90th respondents. If you email and don’t hear back, it’s not because I’m ignoring you, it’s because due to time and volume, I just can’t. [Standard buzzkill disclaimer for all giveaways and offers of free books: Void where prohibited or restricted by law. Limited to U.S. addresses. I am not responsible for lost or misrouted emails, interrupted or unavailable network or server connections, other computer or technical failures, or post office mishandling.] And that closes out our first and long overdue NEWSIE for 2019. I promise it won’t be another five months before I’m back with more. :) --Taylor PS: A FAVOR PLEASE? If you’ve read and enjoyed LIARS’ PARADOX but haven’t had a chance to post an online review, is there any way I could convince you to put a few words up wherever it was you bought your copy?
If you borrowed your copy—or, the horror, stole it—or feel up to posting more than once, the places where reviews tend to matter most are: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Book Bub, and Goodreads.
It doesn’t have to be long or eloquent. Even a few lines saying how or why you enjoyed it would make a world of difference in keeping interest alive for LIARS’ LEGACY, which will make an enormous difference for whatever book comes after that.
These days, with the bulk of all books being purchased online, the only way most readers are able to discover what’s available is if either a) the publisher pays one of these sites to promote the book and get it in front of readers [but everyone else is doing that too, so in many cases it still gets drowned in the noise] or b) the algorithm gods decide the book is worthy of being recommended to other readers who’ve read and enjoyed similar work. In the case of the latter, reviews are one of the biggest factors going into the calculations, but with PARADOX having launched right before Christmas when everyone was so busy it just didn’t get the same amount of online interaction that previous books have gotten and it’s kind of disappeared.
I could really use your help with this and appreciate it more than you can imagine.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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