Having reached this significant milestone with Anna Scavolini 5 (title TBC… though I do have a potential one in mind that I’ll share with you just as soon as I’m more certain about it), I wanted to take stock and give some thought to my publishing schedule going forward.
Since 2018, when my first novel, In the Silence, was released, I’ve published a book a year. At the back of my mind for at least the last couple of years has been a desire to speed up that schedule – to move, if possible, to releasing TWO books a year. But doubling your output is always a tall order and one that I’ve grown convinced, short of a radical reduction in my hours for the Day Job, is unsurmountable.
Recently, though, I had a bit of an epiphany. I realised I was thinking about it all wrong. Instead of viewing my schedule in terms of year-long blocks, I should instead be thinking in terms of MONTHS. And I thought: why not target a release schedule of a book every nine months?
That would mean cutting the average incubation period of each title by three months, but a 50% increase in my output seems a whole lot more attainable than a 100% one, and the fact that work on Anna Scavolini 5, using this quasi-experimental writing technique, went so smoothly has given me enough confidence to at least give it a shot.
Which means, roughly, Anna 5 being released by around May/June 2024, followed by the next book in February/March of 2025, then the next in November/December 2025, and so on.
I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen – who knows? The next book could turn out to be an absolute developmental nightmare – but I’m determined to at least try, and I doubt anyone reading this is going to turn round and say, “No, we DON’T want more books from you!”
So here’s the deal – I’ll give it my best shot, and if it doesn’t work out, you can always say, “I told you so.” If, on the other hand, it DOES work out, you can say, “Never doubted ya for a second – honest!”
Either way, time to get cracking…
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