My birthday gift to myself was to complete the first round of revisions and edits (yesterday), which leaves me time to work out the book blurb this morning. Since today's my last rest day for the summer, I'm going to take it easy and allow myself to be as lazy and unproductive as I can be (though reading isn't unproductive at all, is it?).
I need to put some space between the recent revisions and the next round of edits, and it's going to be hard as hell to do with me being at home. The temptation is real, yo. Anyway, here's the book blurb:
In the fairy tale-like and colorful town of Glossop lies a small graveyard guarded by an ancient yew. Residents have long resigned themselves to its existence, with the poorer ones forced to trek through its dreary space just to get to work each day.
For little Rowan Linville, the mysterious graveyard is both a necessary ordeal for his parents and a strange place where something in the shadows whispers after him. Something that might also be behind a number of personal items Rowan’s lost in his occasional walks through the graveyard in his mother’s company. As he grows older, those whispers follow him, and boys his age intent upon courting him suddenly fall victim to all kinds of misfortunes. Illness, broken bones, sprained limbs, and odd accidents plague hopeful suitors until Rowan is saddled with the reputation of a cursed youth.
Hope stirs at the arrival of the Akker family and their younger son, the dashing Tennyson, who is immediately drawn to Rowan. A couple of chance glimpses of the lonely boy stir Tennyson’s artistic muse and lay the foundation for a future courtship that seems to come straight out of a Shakespearean comedy—and tragedy, for that matter.
That is because the entity that has attached itself to Rowan is not at all pleased with this new suitor, and it will do anything to keep him away. Unfortunately for the ghost of an embittered man, it appears it has met its match in a determined and ridiculously smitten Tennyson.
I think this is close to the final version of the blurb, but don't hold me to it. I always tweak the blurb as I continue to work on edits, and this one's no exception. At any rate, I'll be sharing the final version (if any) in a future post.
By the way, I have an update on my upcoming publishing calendar. Recently, I said I'm thinking about spacing out the release dates some more since keeping to a four-month schedule is starting to wear me down especially with my day job holding steady with its volume of work. I gotta take care of myself some more, and that involves easing up on the gas pedal where my writing's concerned.
I'll be going back to my six-month calendar, which will be a May / November timeline. Pretty easy to remember for all, and it was the schedule I followed in the past when I was still writing full-length novels. I mean, in some places my long novellas actually count as short novels, but I'm still adhering to the label of long novellas. My chosen word count is perfect, anyway, and I love working with it.
Tangent aside, that's my plan, which means that the following will be out next year: Doppelgänger and The Shadow Groom. And in 2027, we'll have Camera Obscura and A House of Profane Gods. I'll likely finish these books well ahead of schedule, but I'll plow through the edits and revisions as I usually do and list each book accordingly. Whether or not the final listing happens a month or two months or even three months before the actual release date is neither here nor there. If my speed puts me way ahead of the game, I'm not going to change the dates.
What I'll expect to do in that case is to work on the next book even if its release date ends up a year out. All that extra time will be spent planning upcoming books, anyway, so there's no lost time at all. Plus self-care. Can't forget about that.
My Book News Page has been updated with the new calendar.
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