Happy holidays!  Hope you’re enjoying the season and getting to spend time with your favorite people.  Also, a quick reminder for anyone who reads the Rider’s books through Kindle Unlimited that they’ll be rolling out of KU at the end of the month, so borrow them now or wait another six months or so before they do another spin through KU.  (And if you don’t like that, tell Amazon to not make authors be exclusive to Amazon just to list their books in KU.)

On Twitter today I saw someone giving Patrick Rothfuss (a great author, you should read his books), a hard time because his third book isn’t out yet.  Granted, the last one came out in 2013, so I get it as a reader, you want to read that next book.

(Poor George RR Martin gets a lot of that, too, and he’s written about how that kind of pressure can just shut him down in his writing process which just makes it worse.)

What I’ve come to realize as an author that I never understood as a reader is that sometimes it’s not that easy to just write the next book.

I usually alternate between pen names so after I finished the last Rider’s book in July I turned to a romance I needed to finish.  It was a second-in-series book about a woman who lost her husband and is now finding love again.  I thought it would be easy to knock out and I’d have it published by September at the latest.  I knew the character, I knew the world, I even knew the story and who she falls in love with.

But…

Writers, or at least the type of writer I am, plumb our own emotional experiences to fuel the emotions of our characters.  So, I, for example, draw upon the death of my father to fuel the scenes I write about losing someone you love.  And sometimes going to that same emotional place too many times in a row is just too hard to do.  Most people experience a loss like that and then find a way to shove it aside so they can keep living.  They don’t keep going back there and revisiting those feelings over and over again.

So after writing about grief in Rider’s Rescue, it turns out I wasn’t able to write about it again in this romance novel.  Which means I stalled out with my fiction writing and ended up writing a cookbook instead.  (Seriously.)

I’m now setting aside that romance that just doesn’t want to be written right now and turning to RR#3.  There’s some heavy lifting to do there, too, but not of the same kind.  Book 3 will have conflict but it’s about resolution and triumph this time around, so yay.

But given my process we’re probably looking at June for release of that one.  (I know, sorry.  But it’ll be worth it, I promise.  Or at least I hope.  A little early to promise anything, although I’ve been thinking about book 3 since I finalized edits on book 2 and from what I know of it, I think it’ll be enjoyable if you liked books 1 and 2.)

I’m sorry it isn’t going to be out sooner but at the same time that should still be less than a year after book 2 came out, which is better than Rothfuss, right?  Right.

And I know you’ll still have plenty to read in the meantime, because there are so many other great books out there.  (You should see my kitchen table right now.  I keep buying them even though I don’t have time to read them!  If my next story is about cloning, you’ll know why.)  For example, I recently enjoyed Thunderlord by Deborah J. Ross.

And if you are still at a loss for things to read (how is that possible, please let me know), you might want to check out this list here.  Through the end of the month it includes links to SFF books from authors who donated to help out their follow authors this holiday season so you can find a great author to read and help out someone you know helped out others.  Sort of a win-win-win.  Right?  Right.

Now.  Back to RR#3.  Because if I don’t write it, no one else will.

Alright!  Later than I wanted it to be, but had some cover designer woes and the book is currently being reviewed by others to make sure that it isn’t the pure dreck I always think a novel is right before it releases.

The sequel to Riders Revenge will be out on…drumroll…July 12th.  It’ll probably go up for pre-order on a few of the sites before that day, although not Amazon.  (They make you lock down the book ten days before release and I don’t want to do that.  Otherwise it would’ve gone up today.)

Should be available on all the major sites (Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, B&N, Google, etc.), but it won’t be available through KU, at least not initially.  (Sorry any KU readers, but the readers on the other sites have been waiting longer so they get first dibs and the only way a book can be in KU is if it isn’t available anywhere else.  At least, if you aren’t J.K. Rowling.  Sucks that Amazon does that, but they do.)

Also, as a thank-you to those of you who tried out an unknown writer when you bought Rider’s Revenge and are still willing to hang in there to read book 2, the sequel will be $2.99 through the end of July and then go up to a regular price of $4.99.

I will post here when it’s out, just letting everyone know where things stand at the moment.