When you’re a writer in this world of empowered direct publishing, sometimes “finishing” a work is really just a matter of saying “I’m not rewriting this damn thing any longer”. That’s a power you need to use responsibly, since even amazing first drafts tend to need tweaking and tightening, but the other extreme is no fun either, where you lose all perspective in your futzing around and never put anything out.
It’s hard to guess about one’s self, but I probably err on the side of a quick trigger finger. That doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry to publish, because even publishing direct costs money to do well and I don’t want to rush that. Poverty is probably the most effective editor I have.
That said, I have finally, finally decided I am satisfied with the last story I needed to sign off on in order to publish my collection. So, Stages of Sleep is written, polished, and ready for the editor. I have started the conversation about cover art and am even going to explore whether I can get a friend to write a foreword. Serious business, I know.
I hope I can publish the book by August, although since this is a solo-written project I’ll be covering more of the promotional/publishing tasks myself, and I want to apply a lot of what I’ve learned from the Seeing by Moonlight experience and use the pre-publishing time to get some more reviews lined up. The collection will contain 15 stories, and my guess is the price will again be $3.99, but I may do a little reading into the current state of play just to make sure that’s still a good idea.
You should be hearing a lot about this in the coming months, my friendly Russian Spambot Readers. Stay tuned.