I gave the beta readers a month and they all responded early.

I expected the final re-write to take forever but I think it took me one weekend. I spent a little more time trying to fix a few spots I thought were still weak and then off to the editor.

Since then it’s been a lot of learning process for getting it published. I’m glad I’m finally getting close.

When I started this whole thing I had grand ideas for several different series and free novellas. I knew I couldn’t do four books a year, but maybe three.

Now I’m thinking one every nine months would be pretty good.

I can see where I could write more efficiently. But it also puts a lot of stress on my home life when I get wrapped up in a writing project for an extended period of time. Plus I like to do other things like hang out with my husband and putter in the yard. I exercise. I prefer to eat food I make myself.

I still haven’t decided whether to write additional stories connected to this one.

I am considering doing a series of Urban Indian romance because near as I can tell, there are none and I have tons of ideas. But this is going to take some preparation so no projected release date yet.

Plus, I’m going back to the Project of Forever 2 to see if I can finalize that.

Dahlia from my garden.

What I didn’t mention in my previous post was how much I loved working on this project.

I go through cycles of insomnia and normally when I wake up in the middle of the night, I stare at the ceiling unhappily. During the project I would happily get up and start working. I was constantly coming up with ideas I wanted to work into the story.

At the end of May I finished a draft on The Project of Forever 2 and as a reward I decided to finish Season of Us. And to incentivize myself, I hired an editor and got myself on the calendar. Then I recruited my beta readers and gave them a hard date when I would give them a draft.

The 44K draft was a bit of a mess. For example, I knew Shelly was involved in some sort of business but I wasn’t sure what. And I knew she would have a sidekick but changed my mind between friend, sister, sister-in-law and mother-in-law. I took a long weekend to map it all out and make an outline so I knew what I needed to fill in. It took me two months to get it figured out and expand the manuscript to 75K.

This is amazing speed for me. I’m not a fast writer plus I have a fairly demanding day job. I’m also the person most responsible for keeping my household from falling apart. Three cheers for the outline.

Then it was ready for the beta readers.

Southern Oregon

I wrote Season of Us at the challenge of a friend.

I had been (and still am) working on something I refer to as: The Project of Forever. I also had a separate shorter piece I was working on that became the Project of Forever #2. I was banging my head against the wall with both projects.

So when the challenge came, I was ready to try something new. I’ve always wanted to write contemporary romance. The first novel I ever attempted was romance. Actually, that’s not completely true. I tried to write a book when I was a kid. It was about a girl with horses. (Of course.)

November was coming. I had a vague idea. I knew Zach would be a professional soccer player and Shelly would be someone older and a little more stable. I had a couple of ideas for scenes and I mapped out a couple of key moments.

When November 1st came, I went for it.

The goal for NaNoWriMo is 50K words. My goal was 40K because I decided, “I’m not crazy.” I managed to do 44K and had a beginning, middle and end.

I considered this a success.

Then I put it away and went back to flogging on The Project of Forever.