I‘ve been at this indie writing thing like a ‘roided up pit bull since about Fall 2016, and that’s not much of a hyperbole. To put it into perspective, I was only about two or three chapters into Sapphire’s Flight at the time, and I only had Jaeth’s Eye published.
Since then, I’ve gone on to finish and publish not just Sapphire’s Flight, but three other books: The Wolf of Oren-yaro, The Ikessar Falcon, and Blackwood Marauders. I am now working on The Xiaran Mongrel, which is currently in the 2nd draft stage (and so technically complete as well, just needs work). These are all very substantial novels. The smallest is Blackwood Marauders at 110k words. The Wolf of Oren-yaro is 120k. The Ikessar Falcon, Sapphire’s Flight, and The Xiaran Mongrel are all over 180k words, with the last two closer to 190k/200k respectively.
A lot of work, in two years. I’ve learned a lot about book marketing, and I’ve made a lot of friends (and some very good ones), and it’s generally been a positive, if exhausting experience.
Looking at my schedule now, I’m hopelessly behind my extremely optimistic outlook for the upcoming year. I spent 3 months on the 1st draft of The Xiaran Mongrel (working around the clock, while preparing Blackwood Marauders and The Ikessar Falcon for release) and have now spent 2 months on this edit, which is currently at 65%. I’m expecting to take another month on this for this pass alone, and will need about another month or two for the third (and hopefully final developmental/structural editing pass), and THEN the line editing, before beta-reading time. As an aside, I also generally do a few more editing passes after I get comments back from beta-readers.
I think I can still make the April 2019 release date for The Xiaran Mongrel. I am still hoping to get the first draft of Blackwood Marauders Book 2 completed by the end of this year, because I really want to write that story and I really miss those characters, and people seem to like them, too; the release for that may be delayed until June of that year. Though you never know; if the writing gods smile on me and throw me a bone, I may get it out faster.
Anyway, with this kind of hellish schedule on my plate, I had to turn to my husband and admit I can’t do this alone anymore. He’s been helping out with the ARCs for The Ikessar Falcon, but I’ve spoken to him about handling all review requests, as well as learning a bit about book marketing so he also can fit that in when he has the time. Which is a lot to ask. He’s working on our industrial maintenance business on the side, too, which means he’s out of the house doing service calls fairly often, or cold-calling potential clients otherwise. I feel awful about it, but I’m also writing/editing nearly 10-16 hours each day now, on top of homeschooling our children and taking care of necessary chores (hint: laundry is not a necessity if you still have clothes to wear).
And I’m not willing to compromise–I only look like I write fast because I spend a lot of hours on it each day. While books are a matter of taste, I try to get the quality as high as I possibly can, given the limitations of my situation. Word-of-mouth is still my strongest advertising, so I’m not going to skip an editing round or release a polished first draft for the sake of making this easier on myself. It sucks, but we’ve done the best we can, and we know we’re here because of the choices we’ve made–choices we would make again if we ever got a do-over. Living the life you want is not easy, and sometimes it’s a hell of a lot of hard work, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
