As you might guess, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, I’m a bit behind. I had that horrible cold at the start of May that laid me out flat for a week, and it also ran through every member of my family. Since I work out of my house, a good bit of the responsibility for taking care of sick children falls to me, and that takes a chunk of writing time out of those days. At the end of May, my wife finally caught the virus too, and she wound up in bed for five out of ten days.
The good news is that she’s on the mend now, armed with a fistful of antibiotics, and the rest of us are too, with just a few lingering coughs circling about the place. To complicate matters, school ended this week, and my quadruplets turned 10 years old. (Which took up a bit of time, but woot!)
So, where does that leave us?
I have the first four books of the 12 for ’12 written. Book 1 (Brave New World: Revolution) is not only in my backers’ hands but has also been released to the public. Since it’s the now the start of June, I should have finished a fifth novel by now, but I’m still scrambling to catch up.
My fifth novel of the year is not actually one of the Kickstartered books but instead a tie-in novel based on the Leverage TV show on TNT. My friend John Rogers is one of the creators of the show, and I helped set up the book deal, so when it finally came through earlier this year, I was offered a shot at one of the books. Given that I’d already planned to write a dozen novels this year, I took a big step back to figure out if I could handle this one too, especially given that it’s an 80,000-word book as opposed to the 50,000-word ones I’d planned for the 12 for ’12 challenge.
I decided I just couldn’t pass it up. This is one of the crazy parts of freelancing. You can work on setting up a deal for years, kicking the gears in motion one at a time and hoping the engine will finally fire up and getting rolling on its own power. When it does, you’d better be ready to jump on right then, or it’s going to take off without you.
I often have a half dozen or more such projects in various points of progress. Many of them don’t pan out. That’s the nature of these things, and it’s why you have to poke away at so many of them at a time, working your averages and worrying that all of your big dreams might come true at once. (That’s an excellent problem to have, but it’s still a problem.)
So I took the Leverage book on. I figured I’d buckle down in May and get it done, but that’s, of course, when the plague hit us, and now I’m farther behind then I’d hoped. Still, while the target receded a bit this month, I’m gaining on it again.
At the moment, I’m not sure if I’m going to count the Leverage book as one of the 12 for ’12 books, which is certainly a legitimate way to do it. After all, it’s not just a novel but a much bigger novel than the others. Right?
However, if I can manage to gain some serious ground over the next couple months, I may still try to go for 13 novels this year instead. I don’t have to make that call until we get to the point of launching the fourth Kickstarter, and that won’t happen until the middle of August. By then, I should know for sure.
Meanwhile, I’m heading back to the Leverage novel. Once I’m done with that, I’ll be editing and revising Books 2 and 3 to get them out the door, and then I’m back to writing Book 5, the second in the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy.
On top of all that, of course, we have the current Kickstarter for the Dangerous Games trilogy. That only has 10 days left, so please jump on in and back it before it’s too late. If you can help spread the word, too, I’d truly appreciate it. As I’ve often said throughout this whole project, I can’t do this without you, and that more true than ever.
Thanks for your support!
