It’s time for another progress report. 🙂
Yesterday I published Injustice Is Served. My original goal was too see it out the door this past Wednesday. A few items happened to prevent that. 1) I got lazy and found myself one day behind schedule. Then I was too lazy to catch up. haha. Then Wednesday my laptop power supply died. <sigh> I didn’t gain access to my work again until Friday.
I tell you what, that put a fire under me. I did two days of work and managed to put Injustice Is Served on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. They finally finished processing this morning. I swear today has felt like 2 days, cause it seems like the short story collection has been live for at least 48 hours. 🙂
Well that’s out of the way. It’s time for something new.
Originally, I’d plan to get A Tiger Leaves His Stripes onto the shelves by January 7, 2012. I have to tell you, I’ve been stressing over doing the edits in 2-3 weeks. It’s not that it needs editing so much (it was really supposed to be an sex-free version of Shadow Cat). I was more worried about cutting it enough and keeping the flow, not creating plot holes.
I cut the first three chapters, which I’ve known needed to go since before I published Shadow Cat. I just had a hard time chopping up my baby. Well, that attitude burned me a bit, because the readers pointed out the slow start. : ) Then I got to chapter four, when Eric and Berani meet and LOVED the sexual tension. OMG, I DO NOT want to cut out the sexual tension. It’s such an intricate part of the story. And this isn’t holding onto my precious like the first four chapters. Cutting out the sexual tension would changing the entire dynamics of the story. Shadow Cat will never be a sweet romance.
What I’m thinking instead is after I get the other two Striped Ones books out, I might revisit A Tiger Leaves His Stripes and publish it as a special version — “This is the way Shadow Cat should have been written if I had an agent/editor to tell me.”
For now, I’m moving on to Chasing Shadows. I know I keep coming back to this work then moving on, but I’m really feeling the pressure here. I look at other authors and wonder why they’re doing so well, and I’m only doing so-so. I have enough works out, and the reviews are decent. The biggest difference I can see is others who are doing well tend to stick with one genre. I can see evidence of this in my Control Freak series.
The sales for the Control Freak series are okay, nothing to brag home about, but decent enough I don’t get depressed about low sales. I imagine readers will take a greater interest in Control Freak once I release the next short story. I need to do for the Striped Ones series what I’m doing for the Control Freak series — publish more in the line.
So my goal for Chasing Shadows is to get it out by March 2012.
I’m pretty happy with the cover art but am thinking about giving the guy a bit more hair. I’m thinking he’ll look better if I don’t fade his head out at all… same with the girl. Just let the edge of the cover determine where they start and stop.