Update

My novella Hawks & Rams will be available starting the 31st from Dreamspinner Press (their page • Amazon) and I will be having a posting party at their blog on January 1st. Once I wake up from the New Year's Eve celebrations, of course. I will also be chatting on their FB page on the 4th.

I will be posting the map and character index for H&R over at my book blog.

If you're on my mailing list, look for an announcement about Disciple, Part VI's release date. :)

I've been keeping my head down and writing all month. After what a bad year for writing it has been, it seemed risky to divide my focus... though if you've been following my daily word count at Twitter or watching my sidebar here at the blog you can see the progress starting to pile up. I hit 35k on my WIP the other day and it felt good.

Keep writing, friends. Slow and steady can win the race.

Becoming a crossover author

Back in May, my novella Hawks & Rams was accepted for publication at Dreamspinner Press. Up to now, I've been a self-publisher so naturally I wondered how different the process would be with a publisher.

My novella is coming out December 31st (check it out!)... And here's the story so far:

Editing

The process was strikingly similar to going through multiple rounds of beta feedback. To be honest, I was expecting more conversation and some sort of comment on the changes I made, the new bits that I wrote. In general I agree with "no news is good news" but the process did leave me a bit uncertain about the final story. 

Blurb

I had to explain my story to the blurb department and they wrote based on that. Guess I should have known they weren't going to actually read it? Either way, they sent it to me for feedback and it was pretty good.

Cover

I had to explain my story to the cover artist. This, I can understand more why they might not read the book. I gave a couple rounds of feedback and I'm happy with the result. 

Strangest thing

I realized this a couple weeks ago and double-checked my correspondence with Dreamspinner... Aside from some generic compliments they gave me, I have no idea why they wanted to publish Hawks & Rams. I assume somebody enjoyed the story, liked the characters, found the sex steamy or something, but I have no direct evidence of that. 

I suppose I could ask, of course, but that seems odd as well. 

So overall, working with a small press publisher been similar to self publishing but I haven't had to pay anybody. There's the release and promotions yet to come, though. Stay tuned!