The Inside Scoop #3

I wanted to let you know what’s going on with my nearly completed WIP Nom de Plume—An Extraordinary Life (NDP).

My hope was that I’d have it finished and published by late 2019. That didn’t happen. Why? This novel needed lots of additional think time. More so than my previous books. When the title includes “extraordinary life” you’d best deliver. Despite having more time on my hands at the end of 2019, the story was still percolating, and I was fine with that. After the new year, I’d go full steam ahead and have it done and published by February.

Enter 2020.

I literally ended 2019 with what I like to call “The Plague,” and entered 2020 sick as a dog. Likely THE virus. I struggled for the next three and a half weeks, writing when I could focus, which was almost never. It wasn’t easy. A few days after finally feeling human again, ready to take on what I believed would be the best year of my life, beginning with finishing NDP, I slipped on my porch stairs, and… broke my back in three places.

After a stint in the hospital, the next six weeks I was stuck at home and lost in an opioid haze necessary to tamp down the blinding pain. Pain the likes of which I’ve never experienced.

Hard to write.

Finally back to work teaching, and writing by mid-March, and then…? Enter the pandemic. The shutdown. Stay home. The world is ending. You may go broke and become destitute… and then you and everyone else will die. Prepare for the next Great Depression, zombies, or alien invasion.

Lots and lots of time on my hands, but my brain and creativity were like the wrong sides of two magnets.

Hard to write.

No, I’m not making excuses. It is what it is.

I work on the book every day, but now I’m at the deep editing stage which is so terribly tedious. Painstaking. Worth it, of course, because the book is improving quite a lot, but it’s a time-consuming and slow painful drag. I’m three-quarters of the way, but as I’ve been editing, it’s become painfully clear this small book (compared to my others) needs at least another chapter and more information in some other chapters.

One thing I’ve learned having written novels is you do not want to be impatient. Do not rush. It’s not worth it. Let the book take whatever time it needs to reveal itself—its best self. I strive to write great stories. Not saying I’m successful, but that’s the goal. This book is crying out for more time, and more information because it wants to be great.

That said, I love NDP. It’s different from what I usually write. It’s not part of The Em Suite Series, but it is about the author of the series. The nom de plume author, I should say. Yes, I’m the author, but I write under the nom de plume of Djuna Shellam, and I gave her her own backstory which, suffice to say, is not mine. I’ve had a lot of fun and shed an ocean of tears writing this story. It’s also been a difficult book to write because of the subject matter requiring loads of research. I’m so anxious to get it out there because I feel confident my readers will enjoy it, but I do not want to risk publishing a lesser book just because of my impatience.

So there you have it. Right now, I’m hoping I’ll have NDP published in Kindle format by August 2020 at the latest, in paperback by September. I’m champing at the bit to get started on A Woman Like Eve—The Em Suite—Book Five, so there’s strong motivation to keep moving forward.

DS