Spoiled & Sick

Well, I called in sick to work. I probably shouldn't have, but I felt like absolute trash. I have no idea what is is - some kind of stomach bug mixed with the common cold? I know I'm stuffy and I have cold sweats and my guts were twisted in knots earlier. I feel a bit better now, thanks to herbal tea and lots of sleep, but I'm not totally better. I have to go to work tomorrow no matter what, so I hope I'm better by then because if not, I'll be working another eight hour shift sick as a dog. . .

In other news to be mad about, I got spoiled for Jessica Jones. As in three deaths that I didn't know about and the overall ending of the season spoiled. Gah.

I really love it, so I'll keep watching, but I'm angry it happened. I've been avoiding the tumblr tag since I heard the news of the show to avoid any spoilers, 'cause the show sounded so interesting, only to get spoiled now. Not fun.

But what is fun is 8tracks. Which I'm obsessed with. Right now I'm listening to a random paranormal romance playlist, but I've been listening to it while drafting/editing SOSAS too, and I've found so many good mixes for fantasy writing it blows my mind.

Because I have been writing - even though it doesn't seem like it. Souls of Salt & Seawater should still be out Dec 15th (originally planned for Dec 5th, but life happened, so it's gonna be ten days later. And as far as ADSD goes, I'm still drafting, and having fun with it, exploring Lilac's present reality a year after the dark times where I left her at the end of How I Broke Us. I think I might want to have the sequel to Shadows (tentatively titled Whispers) drafted before I publish the first book, just so the wait on the sequel is shorter on your guys. I would rather have a bunch of stuff finished instead of making you guys wait the entire development stage of a project, you know?

And I don't know if I like talking about stuff before it's done, anyway. I think after SOSAS, ADSD, and Shadows are all done and out, I won't be talking about projects until they're ready to be released, because it leaves less room for waiting and disappointment when things like release dates change.

I don't know. I'm still trying to figure this all out: how long I want to take the indie route before trying traditional, how I want to market myself, which books I want to write, essentially, what do I want my artistic career to look like? It's important to me to put out a professional product.

A lot of self-pubbed books have a bunch of editing mistakes and bad covers and end up reading like a stream of consciousness. When I put out the Lilac short stories I made plenty of mistakes - hell, just the other day my mom pointed out an error in her ebook of Welcome to Midnight that I'd missed in copy edits (to be fair, I wrote that book in 2 and a half days as a surprise project) and now have to go back and give another read-through. I'm not better than all other indie authors, by far. But I do want to put out the best product I can. As cocky as it sounds, I know I'm a good writer. It's one of the few things I'm confident about - and I put out Welcome to Midnight to give readers a glimpse at the darker, more serious side of my work. It's not all going to be sunshine and rainbows and pop culture, even though it might be some of that, sometimes.

So I'm eager to put stuff out and show you guys what I can do. But I'm also aware of my limitations and flaws, and I want to be careful. I'm a fast writer, but it's not fast writing that's the problem - it's fast editing. I've rushed the final part of the process in the past, and it was a mistake. I want to take my time and do right by these projects, so I hope it's worth the wait for you guys, and I'm sorry if I feel like a ghost sometimes.

At least I'm a ghost that's nice to look at. Well, not today - today I have bed hair and black bags under my eyes. Whatever. I'm still the prettiest damn ghost you know.