Today is a special day. October 6th, who knew?, would be the day my author year officially starts again. And by that I mean, today is the day I finally feel like I’m getting back into the swing of author life.
If you read my blog post back in April (the one where I confidently announced that Great Sexpectations would be published on September 10th – hah!) then you’ve probably realised that September 10th came and went and there’s been nothing but silence from me about the book.
So what happened in the last 6 months?
Well, firstly there was work. Not writing work, the kind an author undertakes, but work work, the kind where you’re required to dress up in office-appropriate clothing and go sit at a desk for eight hours every day. Yes, that work. Being a mostly-full-time-author but also part-time employee of my family’s business means that everyone seems to think I sit around at home all day doing nothing. And so, when they’re in a pickle with employees leaving and no new employees to be found (thanks Australian government for such record low unemployment!), Sarah gets called in because she’s clearly got nothing better to do than sit around at home all day doing nothing.
So I had to go back to work. Now, I am fully aware that most people who want to write books have to do so around the outskirts of their day jobs. I applaud the ones who are able to make this happen. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. I can’t seem to sit at a computer all day working, then come home and make myself sit in front of a computer again. There’s the dog that needs walking. There’s the dinner that needs cooking. There’s that gym membership that needs using. There’s that overseas trip that needs planning. There’s the parties I volunteered to organise that need organising. There’s also the fact that I volunteered for the Sydney 2023 Romance Writers of Australia conference and, oh look, I somehow became the conference coordinator and leader of all the volunteers.
The reality is that for the past six months I’ve done almost no writing, a fact that has been the source of a fair amount of panic in my brain for almost that entire time. And so here we are, on October 6th, and Great Sexpectations is in possibly worse shape than it was in back in April when I optimistically set a September 10 release date. I say worse shape, because I’ve just re-read the last draft I wrote and have decided that a LOT of it needs cutting and re-writing. I think this is the book that honestly might give me a proper breakdown.
So Great Sexpectations is not going to be out this year. I’m sorry. But the truth is that I want to deliver a book that is amazing, that not only lives up to but is better than the first two Laura the Explorer Books. I think I’m my own most critical reader, and currently the manuscript has got a lot of problems which require a lot of fixing. A lot of it I’m actually going right back to the drawing board and starting again. So, best case scenario I’ll have it ready for early next year. What I can promise is that when I do decide it’s ready, I’ll be confident that readers will love it.
In other news, in August I attended my very first Romance Writers of Australia conference in Fremantle, and WOW! What an amazing weekend it was. I met so many amazing writers, listened to so many wonderful presentations, and got to pitch my novel Blackmailing Ava Darling, to three different agents and publishers. (They have all requested to read the manuscript, so I’m now playing the waiting game to hear back on that!) One of the big highlights was finally meeting my writing buddy, Bernadette Eden, in person for the very first time! We’ve been online writing friends for a couple of years now, and as soon as we met it felt like we were instant best friends. I love Bernie’s books, and if you haven’t read them yet then I’d highly recommend checking them out here.
Now, for me, it’s back to the writing desk. I have so many projects that I want to be working on, but I’m determined to get Great Sexpectations finished first. I have my own high expectations for this book, and so here I go. Off to write them.