Release Day for Born Wolf has now come and gone, and I wish I could say it was as exciting as the Release Day for Black Wolf. Unfortunately, while the release itself went great, I was SICK! I barely made it out of bed at all on Friday. I was up and about for around two hours before I returned to the sanctuary of my pajamas and bedsheets!

The rest of my weekend was more of the same, straight through yesterday. In fact, the first time I even checked to see that people were buying and reading the book was this morning! Thankfully, though, according to the KDP dashboard: people are buying and reading Born Wolf.

Which is pretty damn exciting, considering a year ago, I hadn’t even published my first novel, let alone my second!

And people came back. For MORE!

I truly cannot believe it. I mean, it’s wonderful, and I’ll totally take it. But it’s absolutely crazy for me to consider that people are really out there, reading my books!

All in all, my second book launch went about as smoothly as I could have hoped, considering I wasn’t around much to attend to it.

Book Two is now solidly in the bag.

Which means, of course, I’m on to the next big thing: Book Three.

I had a goal of taking two weeks off from writing when we returned from our recent vacation. I wanted to focus on the release (this didn’t quite work out since I got sick about two days after our return).

Now, in the second week–which I should still be taking off, per my goal-I’ve found myself half a notebook in on outlining for Book Three. Oops.

Blame it on a sinfully relaxing vacation followed by almost a week spent sick in bed, but I couldn’t contain my creative energy or the compulsion to get back to work any longer.

Of course, as usual, it’s not actually going to be called “Book Three” (subscribers to my mailing list will learn the title and see the cover first, you know!).

I’ve been dreaming up scenes for Book Three since the middle of 2016, and the little notebook where I’ve kept my collection of scrawl-covered sticky notes, index cards, and other scraps of paper (or actual trash that should have been thrown away, but got scribbled on instead) was bursting at the seams and ready to be properly unleashed!

I’m excited, as always, to take on a new couple’s story. The books are becoming a bit more harrowing to write, emotionally-speaking. There are some big real world issues I want to address moving forward, and this book will offer the first solid glimpse into some of that. Learning to let the emotions surrounding those issues move freely onto the page and into the world is something I’m looking forward to, but I’m also anxious about it.

I think it’s natural as the series matures–and I, as an author and a human, mature–to let the plot grow up and be a little more serious. Don’t worry. It’s still me writing, and I’m still writing a narrator who can be goofy at times. But the things I’ve seen playing out as the story continues to move along are a little darker. It’s a long series–darker is a part of that.

So, since I’m already working on Book Three (and I’ve admitted it now, instead of trying to pretend I’m totally still taking time off…) how about a new goal?

50,000 words by the end of June.

That’s going to be quite a stretch, considering I wasn’t planning on finishing my outlining for another couple of weeks. We also have some busy weekends ahead. But I think I can do it–or I can at least come close. I’ll be looking at a pace of just over 2,000 words per day, once I get the outlining completed. That’s still a very comfortable daily range for me.

I want to continue to streamline my process as much as I can. The rest of the story (and, thereby, the rest of the books) become clearer with each step I take. The more I know, the more quickly the story comes to life when I sit down to write. I’m lucky to be able to devote the amount of time to writing that I’m currently able to, so I want to use that time to my absolute advantage!

So, here we are. Two books down, and a whole lot more to go.

I freaking LOVE it!