Q3 of 2020 started a week ago, and while it’s hard to believe it’s here, it also feels like this year has been an eternity long. I know I’m not alone when I say this year has been weird. Since it became clear early on that I wasn’t going to get a whole lot done this summer. I’d planned for it, but a lot of my plans got upended, and… yeah. You know the rest.

I managed to stick to my plan for the first half of the year, and that was honestly a big surprise to me, too. I previously wrote about how Q3 would see things slowing down a lot: right now, I’ve got edits for Serpent’s Bane (Snakesblood book 3) underway and will be sending the files for book 4 off before the week is out. Book 3 has a tentative release date of August 29 at this point in time. But before I get the book out there, I have to get final edits done.

How do you plan and set goals when you have such limited time? That’s been the biggest challenge for me. Being used to having a certain number of hours in the day where I can work, and then suddenly having a fraction of that. About a quarter of that. On good days, anyway–on bad days, I might not have much time to work at all.

So how do you get things done?

You let them go.

Counter-intuitive, I know, but my to-do list has continued to shrink in hopes of getting it to fit into my limited work time. It still doesn’t fit, which means more has to be dismissed, but we’ll get it sorted out.

I don’t have as much time as I want, I don’t have as much time as I need, but I still have time to make things happen–the important part is finding which things can be done in what limited time I have. My kanban board has helped with that, as has my planner, because I keep big lists of the things I need to do. Any time I have ten, fifteen minutes to spare, I save myself time by already having a list of small tasks that I can address, and those little tasks will add up to big results eventually.

Have fifteen minutes before everyone else gets up? That could be half a page of editing, or a handful of invoices sent. Five minutes during lunch? That’s enough time to do some needed research or reply to messages.

Through it all, my phone has been my most useful tool (but RIP my battery!) because it lets me multitask, to an extend. Got studying to do? Turn on a Bluetooth speaker and listen to a podcast in the shower. Need to write a book blurb? We can tap that out in the Notes app while pushing a little one on a swing.

Of course, that’s less useful for editing books or filming videos, which is why July is sort of a catch-up/take-a-break month.

I’m still setting goals, but they’re small ones.

Finish editing that book.
Try to balance the checkbook this month instead of vaguely knowing that I’m putting in more than I’m taking out.
Ship all those signed books.
Catch up on work I owe other people.

This unfortunately means my doll projects (and as a result, YouTube videos) are taking a back seat. I’m still filming stuff, but I’m working a bit slower as I knock out some big jobs, and I’ll resume doing videos some time in August.

If school doesn’t go back to normal,  my work schedule won’t, either, and I can’t see that happening. So for August and September, I’ll need a whole new system to deal with things, and I’m open to suggestions for making that happen.

Right now, though… my 15 stolen minutes are up, and there’s laundry that has to be folded.

After a lot of frustration and delays, To Steal the Queen is finished and being polished up by an editor in preparation for its release at the end of the month. If all goes well, the preorder should pop up about a week before the title’s release, still currently tentatively scheduled for June 27.

At the same time, my other editor is hacking away at Snakesblood Saga #3, Serpent’s Bane. I had planned to set the release date for the third SS installment as July 25th, but that would make it my sixth book release in 7 months, and I don’t think I can make that happen. When I made my schedule for the year, I was counting on a certain number of work hours, and 2020 decided pretty early on that wasn’t going to happen! I’ve managed to make it halfway through the year and still hit all my release dates, but for my own wellbeing, I think it’s best to slow things down just a tad.

Right now, I anticipate book 3 being ready for release in August.

What about the rest of the books?

Well, one huge benefit of writing the whole series ahead of time is that all they’re waiting for is editing. If Snakesblood 3 goes out in August, that means you can expect Snakesblood 4 in November, Snakesblood 5 in January or February next year, and Snakesblood 6 about 2 or 3 months after that.

I still hope to finish my Keeper’s Kin series this fall, and still tentatively expect the last book, Her Midnight Hunter, will be out in late October. That book’s half written now, so with TSQ completed, that gives me a couple months to finish it up.

The biggest impact we’ll be seeing is delays in the release of Spectrum Blade, which I was originally supposed to finish writing this fall. But with no idea when our schedule at home will return to normal, it seemed best to push the Spectrum Legacy project back a few months. As a result, we’ll probably be seeing Spectrum Blade some time next summer.

That leaves me with eight releases this year, which is still a lot. I don’t expect people to read through the series quite as fast as I’m releasing it, but with all the uncertainty in the air these days, it seems wisest to get everything out as quickly as possible. It’ll still be there when you’re ready to read. 😉

Who can expect the world to go crazy? I certainly didn’t expect that weeks of my normal writing time would up and evaporate in the blink of an eye. I figured I’d have until mid-May to do the brunt of writing for two of the books I’m putting out–both of them the third and final in a series, and important to me personally to get out into the world.

Everyone’s long exhausted of hearing about illness, so I won’t talk much about that. Instead, this is about something a lot of people say to themselves: I’ll write a book when I have the time.

Let’s be honest. You’re never going to have the time. Time doesn’t magically appear or fall into your lap. You have the same amount as everyone else, and how you choose to spend it is ultimately what decides what you have time for… and what you don’t.

It’s true you won’t have time for everything on your list. There will always be more you need to do. But if you sit back and wait for when things slow down, you’ll be waiting forever, and the things that you really want to do somehow won’t get done.

Again, being honest. More often than not, it’s our passions that end up being put aside. It’s the things that mean the most to us, because we feel selfish for prioritizing them. But if you want to get those things done in your lifetime, that’s what you have to do–prioritize them, put them above all else.

That’s part of why I try to write first thing in the morning. It’s my priority. Something that has to be done, that’s easier to do if I hit it when I’m fresh and energetic, instead of waiting to the end of the day when I’m tired and have been working all day and just want to rest. There will always be enough other work to fill a day, and it’ll never leave room for my writing unless I make it.

That’s easier to do some times, harder in others. When my little one is in school, it’s easy to sit down right after breakfast and hammer out a thousand words. When my little one is home for isolation and my husband is working from home and needs me to keep her entertained and quiet, it doesn’t happen so easily.

As a result, To Steal the Queen isn’t quite where I hoped it would be. Part of this is because–as usual–it’s running a little longer story-wise than I expected it would, and part is because I have less time I can devote to it. There’s time at night, sure, but when I’m worn out, it’s hard to work. I’ve been craving normalcy, because I’d only planned for one week of reduced productivity over the course of spring break.

The good news is in spite of a jam-packed publishing schedule this year, my writing schedule is less demanding than it has been in years past. There are only three new things that have to be written; everything else is editing. So while I’m still working to do the final wrap-up on TSQ, it should be out and crowning the end of the Westkings Heist trilogy at the end of June, as planned.

Of course, Serpent’s Tears, the second Snakesblood book, comes out at the end of May… so I’m back to the grindstone here, wrapping up TSQ so I can slam through edits on ST and still get the book out on time.

Tough goals. Wish me luck. Because let’s be real–nothing’s going to slow down.