I’m going to have to dust off the cobwebs of this blog. I know I’ve made a couple of posts, but it feels like it’s been forever since I really did anything over here.

The long and winded version of how I dragged my way through the past year

I’m finding that my burnout is going away. I guess there are some situations where you just have to take a complete break from writing. The process took a long time. I was burned out for probably two years before I finally gave myself permission to quit. I think God sent me the dry eye thing to force my hand on the issue. All of last year, I pretty much didn’t write anything. I might have gotten 20,000 words in so I could finish up The Earl’s Jilted Bride and Worth the Risk. I even added a couple of thousand words to two new books. Overall, that was essentially writing nothing because the year spans 365 days, and I was used to writing at least 20,000 words a month up to that point.

I think when an author starts to come back from burnout, it’s slow. I would get a spark here and there, but it wasn’t anything that led me to the computer. I decided to let these moments flicker then fizzle out. The more time went on, the more sparks would come, and without realizing it, they stopped going out so fast. I dictated a couple of chapters in Tagalong Bride and one chapter in Anyone But You during these moments.

Necessity is a good kick in the pants that brings me back to seriously writing

I’d love to say that money doesn’t influence a writer’s motivation. It’s more romantic to think of authors writing books solely for pleasure. But I guess we live in the real world, and in the real world, money matters. I am fortunate enough that my writing brings in enough to take care of the house and car repairs. And I have had to take car of two cars last month. This month, I discovered stains on my bedroom ceiling that made me call a roofing company. I don’t know if there’s something serious going on or not yet, but my dwindling savings account alerted me to the fact that I need to work. In this economy, my husband income just isn’t viable. So I decided to stop feeling sorry for my dry eye situation and the fact that I was in burnout for a long time. It’s time to get to work. And if I need to work and if I can do work I love, then I might as well get back to the computer. Perhaps the repairs are God’s way of telling me it’s not time to retire the writing gig. I do believe God uses circumstances to give us a message.

But I need to be smart about this because I don’t want to aggravate my eyes. They are doing great. I have barely had any issues with them. I occasionally will have the “sand in the eye” sensation or a day where it waters up more than usual, but considering where I started, this is a huge improvement. I haven’t needed eye drops in about a month. I’d like to keep that up. The son who is in college is using my laptop that has the microphone feature on the keyboard. So I have decided to try my hand at typing with my eyes closed. I am typing most of this post that way. Once in a while, I open them to make sure I’m not messing things up, and the strategy seems to be working pretty well.

I still need the help of the people who have graciously offered to help me. I can’t do the edits like I used to, and I’m afraid if I were to try to do them, it would set my eyes back to where they were last year when I had to quit. It’s possible to listen to books as a way of editing, but you find a lot more when you can read the content. Listening doesn’t find punctuation issues, improper spacing, or homonyms.

Anyway, to sum an exhaustive tale, I am getting back into a writing routine. Here is my plan moving forward:

The Earl’s Jilted Bride (Marriage by Obligation Series: Book 3) still comes out on the 15th.

I have most of the stuff done to get it ready for its release day.

I need to get Worth the Risk (Marriage by Obligation Series: Book 4) ready for the editor.

I will have to ask my editing team what their timelines are like to determine when I will put this up on pre-order.

I have gotten to Chapter 3 in Anyone But You (Marriage by Obligation Series: Book 5)

And I discovered that the heroine of this book isn’t as nice as I originally thought she’d be. I was surprised, but I think it will make for a much better story because I will have to work with redeeming her and Felix at the same time. I am still working on how much he damaged her reputation. I haven’t decided how far to go in how much she’s been tarnished. I have to balance the two out so that they’re on equal “footing” with what needs redeeming.

While writing in it, I also discovered two (possibly three) gentlemen I want to write about in a future series. Their stories just popped in my head while I was writing. I was originally tempted to let Horatio (the brother of the heroine in Secret Admirer) remain single forever, but, deep down, I feel like he needs a story, too. I thought it’d be fun to do a series where characters are using a lab to find a “love potion”. Yeah, it’s farfetched and make corny, but it’s something that piques my interest, so I’m going to run with it. I’m hoping I can put a lot of humor in this series.

I am in Chapter 5 (almost at Chapter 6) in Tagalong Bride (Love Under Desert Skies: Book 1)

I believe this is going to be a funny book. The hero is nice to our heroine, but he only married her for her family’s fortune. They are now in Arizona to find his sister. (They had to leave right after their wedding because the sister was kidnapped by bandits.) I’m at the point where they are an the inn where he is having to confront the official wedding night. He really doesn’t want to do it. And because it’s fun to build up the sexual tension, he won’t have to because a brawl is gong to erupt downstairs where men will start shooting. However…(and this is where my sense of humor kicks in)…there will be a time later in this book where the hero will want to consummate the marriage but won’t be able to because of all of the circumstances that will pop up. I’m looking forward to watching him squirm. But it’s what he gets for being so reluctant to do things to begin with.

I am not going to have the sister fall in love with one of the bandits. I haven’t decided who she should end up with yet. It’s either the clumsy but lovable deputy who only has his job because he’s related to the sheriff OR the man she was supposed to marry (because she is a mail-order bride). There’s a possibility that I can work with another character I introduced, but I have to see how things go between her and the deputy before I settle on that decision. I would like to make this series three books.

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I am going to start posting on the monthly blog that I haven’t touched in much too long again. I’ll start on that when The Earl’s Jilted Bride comes out.