Why am I so happy right now? Well, friends, I am not much of a sun worshiper. Sure, I love sunny days as much as the next person, but I really hate the heat and humidity of summer in Michigan. This summer was particularly horrible, and I feel like I spent the vast majority of it holed up in the house with the air conditioning cranked. Now that it's September, the weather has taken a turn for the decidedly fall-like, and I couldn't be happier. Bring on the 60 degree days! I've been able to actually open the windows and go outside to get yard work done! What's more, I can wear hoodies and jeans again. I'm sorry to rain on the parades of those who love summer, but I am all about this weather right now!
A big woo hoo for my new computer screen! I wasn't very happy about my old monitor dying, and it pretty much goes without saying that I couldn't function without one. I'd been wanting a bigger one for a while, so the good thing to come out of the hardware failure was finally getting a much larger screen. It's amazing how much more I can see when I'm working in full-screen mode on Scrivener.
Woo hoo number three is writing related! After some deliberation, I decided to put Infiltrator on hiatus for now and work on my contemporary women's fiction novel, Phoning It In, instead. As much as I love the Contributor series, it's nice to have a break and to work on something that has a completely different flavor. I've been extremely productive the last couple of days, cranking out more than 3,000 words a day, so I'm hoping to finish the manuscript by the end of this month and get some editing in before NaNoWriMo starts. My goal is to publish Phoning by the end of the year, which will bring me to a total of four books across three genres. I'm excited to see what the market is like for contemporary women's fiction, but don't worry--I'm not forgetting my other manuscripts. For NaNoWriMo, I'll be writing the next entry in the Fairytale Collection series, and then it'll be on to Infiltrator, book two in the Contributor trilogy.
Most exciting of all, though, is how well sales of The Eye have been going this month and last. I'm on the verge of a major milestone, and it looks like I'll hit it by the end of the month. It's so exciting to see something that I hoped against hope would sell 100 copies in a year do so much better than I'd ever dreamed! I'd like to get my other books off the ground as well, but right now I'm extremely pumped because, thanks to sales of The Eye, it looks like we'll be able to make a trip to Europe next year. This is huge because my husband is from Belgium and all his family lives there, so a 2013 trip would be the first time he's seen his parents, brother, and nephews in three years. I'm very close with my family and can't imagine having to go that long between visits, so it means a lot to me that my income is contributing toward making a trip home possible for him.
What's got you pumped this week, my wonderful readers?
Oh, and just because you're awesome and my last run went so well, I'm doing another free run of Creators today, September 19th, so get yourself a copy from Amazon! I'm really looking forward to seeing what readers think of both it and Contributor. Happy Wednesday!
(Psst! On Friday I'll give everyone a sneak peek of Phoning It In.)
