Book update and sequel progress

Greetings, crickets! I finished the book last month – the one that was initially a novella and the sequel novel. I sent it to a beta reader in August of last year and then spent four months hashing through to make it better than it was before.

It’s still not perfect, but it is head and shoulders above anything else I’ve ever written. Which means there’s still room for improvement…

I have five more illustrations to complete and then I can upload the epub file to Smashwords and be done with it. Which means I’m probably going to drag my feet…

And the sequel to this monster book? It was actually nice to take a break away from it for a few months so I can see it with fresh eyes. I’m not rehashing what I’ve written yet, because I believe that edit should come after I finish up the missing scenes, but I am making notes on what to look for. I learned a lot from the beta, and found she made eerily similar notes to what I’ve written on the works I read for friends. Maybe I’m a beta reader at heart, but I still can’t seem to notice everything in my work that I should – probably because it’s just too close to me to see it objectively. Which means, I will still need a beta for the sequel and should start saving some money for that…

Here’s hoping I can send the sequel off later this year and take a break.

Or maybe I can write the short fics needed to round out the next anthology. Or maybe dust off the fantasy book and finally finish the rewrite. Or maybe…I’m just hopeless. Thanks for listening.