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More than one manuscript

Catch You Later, TraitorMandy, from Taos, New Mex­i­co asks,” do you work on more than one book at a time?”

The answer is yes, but in a com­pli­cat­ed fash­ion. At the present moment, I am work­ing on six books. Here is where I am in order of pub­li­ca­tion date:

Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor (March 10, 2015, Algo­nquin) I just reviewed the final com­ments and ques­tions by a very sharp proofreader.

Old Wolf (August 8, 2015, Atheneum/S&S) My work appears to be fin­ished on this novel­la, but I will be review­ing the illus­tra­tions being done by Bri­an Floca.

School of the Dead (fall 2016, Harper­Collins) I am await­ing the first proof read­ing, after which I am sure there will be some work to be done.

Short Sto­ries (2016, Can­dlewick) My edi­tor and I agreed to take out two of the sto­ries orig­i­nal­ly sub­mit­ted, and had me write two more.  Now I am mak­ing revi­sions on all sev­en sto­ries. Need to agree on a title, and the sequence of stories.

A Medieval novel­la (No title. No set date. Atheneum/S&S) I Have only writ­ten about a third of this one and am still doing research.

Unti­tled his­tor­i­cal fic­tion (No date, Algo­nquin) I am still in the research stage for this one.

Notice that each of these books is at a dif­fer­ent place. All have dif­fer­ent dead­lines. It is that, more than any­thing, which makes this kind of work possible.

9 thoughts on “More than one manuscript”

    • It has most­ly to do with pub­li­ca­tion sched­ules, and edi­to­r­i­al sched­ules. (I send a MS in and may not hear back from an edi­tor for a few weeks) I don’t work on all of these on a giv­en day, but with­in a month I will. The last project I men­tioned is in a research stage, so that’s search­ing for info and read­ing. Think how, when you were in school, you took more than one sub­ject. Same.

      Reply
  1. Great to know that you are work­ing on mul­ti­ple projects at one time!
    ques­tion for you: what are your thoughts with respect to NaNoW­riMo where you have to write 50,000 words in a month? Do you think that feel­ing oblig­at­ed to write and to put it up on social media would be a hin­drance or a help?
    I’ve had sto­ries float­ing around in my head and have shared many of them with my sons but have not put them to paper but am not sure if doing it and shar­ing it imme­di­ate­ly on social media would be the way to go. Just curi­ous as to your insights relat­ed to this. Have a hap­py day! 🙂

    Reply
    • For adults I think it’s fine if it moti­vates you to work at a high lev­el of ener­gy. For young peo­ple, I have my doubts. Count­ing words is not writ­ing, as I know it. I’d rather they read 50,000 words a month. Their writ­ing would be better.

      Reply

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