New Plans and Paths

I'm going to update my world-building series next, really!  First, though, I wanted to talk about what's been so eating at my mind and distracting me so very much.

First, my husband and I made the decision to try to move back to Tennessee this summer. I lived there for a good chunk of my life--my family moved to Tennessee when I was eleven, and I didn't move away until three and a half years ago. I've been in Ohio the past few years.  The possibility of moving back has been very exciting and preoccupying.

On top of that, I have one book, Rising (which is my steampunkish fantasy book), that I just finished, and I'm beginning to work on the sequel. I wasn't sure when I was writing it whether I thought it would be a good fit for my publishing company, and this got me doing a lot of thinking about what I wanted for the books, why I write, what my goals are, things like that. Some things that I had thought I might not want and some things I thought I might want have shifted quite a lot.

These two books and what I might want to do with them got me thinking about another book I wrote. This one has an insanely long title: Confessions from the Realm of the Underworld (Also Known as High School).  I wrote it in 2009--it was my first (though not last) foray into a regular story about a modern day family. Usually I'm all about writing fantasy. It also turned out to be one of the easiest books I've ever written in that the characters and story all clicked in my head from the beginning and flowed so easily as I wrote it.

My publisher offered me a contract on this book, and I was going to take it.  And then...in the interim, I got to all of this thinking and praying, looking at the future of my two new books and what I wanted for them, what I wanted overall with my writing, and then looking at Confessions.  I talked to my husband and rambled like crazy as I wavered on the edge of the unknown.  I did research. A lot of research. I weighed pros and cons.

I love my publishing company. My editor has been so patient and fantastic, and my co-author and I still have a contract on the second book in our series, and a contract pending on the third book. I've been thrilled to work with them and believe in their goals, and the wait to get my first book published with them was very worth it.  But I've also decided that there are some things I want to try and some new things I want to explore.

In the end, this weekend I made the decision to self-publish Confessions. This is both terrifying and exciting, because it's a whole new avenue, and I have so much to learn and do this summer.  I haven't set a definitive release date--I want to do some more research and organize a list of what I want to do beforehand--but sometime this year. I'm tentatively leaning toward September, but we'll see if that gives me enough time.

My summer is going to be quite busy with that and with hopefully moving. So that's what's happening with me and why it's been so hard to concentrate on anything else. What's going on with all of you?  Anything new or unexpected happening in your life?