Having a Plan B

I had planned to put up my Christmas decorations today, but it was 83 degrees yesterday, and today is looking to be about the same, and I'm just not in the mood, in spite of watching my first bad Christmas TV movie of the year last night. I may do the pre-Christmas house cleaning, and then maybe I'll take a stab at decorating on Friday. I'm kind of in a work mood today.

I had a meeting with my agent on Saturday (over margaritas on an outdoor balcony, which is a great way to discuss business), and now I have my plan for the next few months. While I do prefer to just hand a book over to a publisher, as long as the publishers are being weird, it's nice to have a Plan B option. Once upon a time, it was a waste of time to write a sequel for a book that hadn't sold yet. Now, though, not selling (particularly when the rejections are all along the lines of "I love this book, but I don't know how we'd publish it) isn't the end of the line. When the rejections aren't about the book but are about their perceptions of the market, and when what I hear from actual readers is that there is a market for this book, then if they don't want it, I can still get it out there, and in that case, I may as well start on the sequel. If the first one sells, then I'll have a sequel ready. If it doesn't, then I'll have the series ready to e-publish.

This month, I'll be revising a book we discussed (and I think I solved the big problem while I was driving home), but it's not a huge rush because there's no need to get it back to my agent before the holidays. Then I'll do final tweaks on Book 7 after my agent looks at it. And then I'll get to write book two in my planned fantasy steampunk trilogy.

There are some other things possibly in the works involving the Enchanted, Inc. series, including getting book 7 out in the US, working on digital English-language releases of the first four books outside North America, and maybe even an audiobook, but those are mostly still in discussing stages.

But while I'm not feeling very Christmassy this week, I think I'll buckle down and work, and then when the spirit strikes me, I can relax and enjoy myself.