Writing the next book
Just do it, and do it, and do it, until the job gets done.
Hi friends,
Farm news
This week we said goodbye to our oldest sheep, Orion, who was almost 14 years old. This was sad, since she was such a wonderful animal, but she had a long, full life on high-quality pasture with her friends and relatives. No health problems ever in her life, until she passed away from old age. Very tough old girl. One of our first two sheep.
Orion was smart and observant, with a relaxed but self-confident personality, always taking her place at the food, never complaining or lagging behind the flock (unlike her more passive, slightly dopey sister Artemis who passed away from old age this fall). Solid. Reliable. Friendly without being super-interested in humans. Liked being petted and getting scratches behind the ears but didn’t hang out at the gate waiting for humans like a bottle-fed sheep might.
Orion was a herd queen, the leader of the flock, but she wasn’t aggressive or bossy at all, like some herd queens. She was what we call a great sheep, and she will be missed.
Writing news
February is solidly the middle of novel writing time here.
If you have written a book, you will have to write the next book, and so on and so forth. People in indie publishing sometimes say that the best marketing strategy is to write the next book. This is a bit silly and I don’t know if it is true or not. There is clearly value in volume, though, and many successful authors have a book (or two or three) out every year.
A series is sometimes called a product funnel, because it encourages readers who enjoyed book one to read/buy the next book.
I write quickly, but not because it is a marketing strategy. Writing novels has always been something I do for fun, long before publishing was on my radar. I would be writing these books for myself anyway, just to find out what happens to the characters I love, and indie publishing is going to be a sandbox to play in.
I’m currently fifteen days into writing a chapter a day of the new book, which will eventually become book three in the Queenslander series that takes place on a sheep farm in Australia.
I outlined the plot and subplots on colored index cards, then typed that into a word document, (26,000 word outline), then condensed that into two pages of one-sentence chapter summaries. From the longer outline I’m handwriting the rough draft in a large notebook.
I’m loving the Leuchtturm1917 because it is the largest notebook I have found, and has pages larger than printer paper, but it will take at least two of these giant notebooks to fit all 90K words across 45 chapters.
I’ve never handwritten a first draft before, and I’m not convinced that it is efficient, but I will report back on that later.
The downside to handwriting the first draft is that when I finish it I will have to type the entire thing into a word document, which will be tedious. But that process will result in a second draft, so maybe it will be worth it.
We will see!
I think I do a lot of sentence-level editing as I go when I write a rough draft in a word document and I don’t do that when I handwrite.
Book one is coming out in April (April 21st), book two later in 2026, and book three hopefully sometime in 2027 if all goes well.
This Thursday I’m going to order the first physical proof copy of the paperback of Queenslander, which will take some time to arrive. I can’t wait to see how it looks and hold it in my hands! Book baby becoming a tangible reality soon.
So far I’m happy with Vellum, the software (for macs) that formats a word doc into an ebook or the internal file for a printed book. It seems to be working well.
The hardcover might have a slightly different cover, just because the dimensions of the image have to be bigger on a dust jacket because it has more of a margin that gets cut off at the printer.
I’m excited to read Greta & Valdin (2021), a queer family drama novel from New Zealand by a young Maori author, Rebecca K. Reilly. A friend in one of my writing groups recommended it as being similar to Queenslander and a potential comp title.
Democracy news
It is difficult to concentrate on generating art when the US is a political dumpster fire with techno-fascists trying to loot and pillage all the money they can steal in their illegal grift while the republicans in congress protect pedophiles, rapists, murderers and billionaires.
But if fascists are getting out of bed in the winter and making things, we also need to get out of bed and make things.
The horrors persist, but so do we.
The Epstein files matter.
Baby steps. Keep moving in the correct direction and calling your representatives and supporting social justice work, protesting ice, and together millions of Americans doing small things will make fascism economically nonviable. When fascism becomes economically nonviable, corporations will flee from it, and the tide will turn against it.
The tide is already turning against it. Americans are outraged by the senseless murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ice thugs. Fascism isn’t popular. The orange narcissist and ice aren’t popular. The vast majority of Americans hate having their rights stripped away and their public money looted by pedophile billionaires in bed with Russia.
February is Black History Month. What are you doing to celebrate Black History Month this year?
Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her daily newsletter,
“On February 1, 2026, as the fiftieth observance of Black History Month begins, government officials under the administration of Donald J. Trump have just removed an exhibit on enslavement from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The exhibit acknowledged nine people enslaved at the President’s House Site when President George Washington lived there. Curators intended the exhibit to examine “the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation,” but it conflicted with Trump’s March 2025 order that national historic sites should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.” In his order, Trump called out Independence National Historical Park for promoting “corrosive ideology,” teaching visitors that “America is purportedly racist.”
The administration is openly working to replace American multiculturalism with white nationalism, launching raids by federal agents to terrorize Brown and Black Americans as well as white Americans who reject MAGA ideology.”
We must work together to defend our Constitution and free and fair elections.