OK, perhaps not. Not me, anyway. It was my editor. Well, not by a dragon. But certainly buried under a backlog of edits. You recall I mentioned the release date for Stalking the Demon wouldn’t change barring a disaster on the scale of being eaten by a dragon. Well, two rounds of edits have been completed by my first editor but the third round (the first of two by my second editor) won’t even start until 16 September. I customarily do three rounds of edits, with a fourth copyedit and then a proofread. Based on my editor’s timeline, I have glumly concluded it would be unwise to try and release the book before 31 October.
So with a heavy heart I must move the release date. :-(
For those who have signed up for the free eARC, this will also change the date the advance reader copies are available. If you haven’t signed up yet and would like a copy of the book before it hits the shelves, follow the link below to sign-up.
I must accept the blame for this debacle. I was on maternity leave when I wrote and released Confronting the Demon, and while I was working part-time from home and looking after a newborn, it’s not quite the same situation I find myself in now, and it was difficult to judge how long everything would take. In addition, I completely screwed up the first three drafts – I say that, but of course each draft was successively better than the last, it’s just that I started in a pretty rotten place that created more work for me.
To put this in context, this is what I have on my plate day to day:
- I work full-time as a lawyer in financial services law;
- My commute is a 3 hour round trip;
- I have two children under 5;
- I am married;
- I am, of course, writing Stalking the Demon;
- I do 2000 exercises daily to repair my abdominal separation;
- I have a (hopefully temporary) eye condition which means I can’t currently wear my contact lenses – to attempt to fix that I must apply eye drops 4 times daily, as well as apply hot compresses and perform eyelid massage;
- I attempt to make it to the gym 3 times weekly as I try to shed the last of my pregnancy weight;
- I run our household.
On top of that mind-boggling list, the additional issues I am struggling with right now include:
- Deciding if our 4 year old should go to school next year;
- I am about to become a partner at the law practice, which has associated stresses with it such as arranging finance, managing additional budgetary and taxation issues, seeking accounting advice, plus all the additional concerns of a business owner such as managing business finance and cash flow;
- I have been completely redoing my website, which is almost finished, but the Blogger to Wordpress transition is still in front of me; and
- I recently had minor heart surgery and I’m still kind of in the grey area where it looks like my condition is probably cured but I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fact my heart hasn’t gone into tachycardia given all the above stress probably means I am cured, but still it weighs on my mind.
I’m so stressed and distracted that when booking Comic-Con tickets for next Sunday, I booked them instead for Saturday. I never make such mistakes.
So all I can say is that after this year’s experience, I have learned, and I promise to do better for the next release.
If you’re as disappointed by this delay as I am, please please please do sign up to receive your free advance copy – that way you’ll get it as soon as it’s available, instead of waiting for the official release date.Fill in the form below (or follow this link if the form plays up).
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