Biting off More than I can Chew?

Last September and October I read through my first draft of MURDERING THE DEAD, the ancient Egyptian novel about the murder of King Tut for the first time. I'd written it 18 months earlier and it sat metaphorically twiddling it's thumbs while I revised two of the books that sold to Scholastic, came up with ideas for the third which sold on a synopsis, and also revised a contemporary romance set in Paris which is still waiting for submission.

After the first round of clean-up I sent “Egypt” to two crit friends and one of them gave me a TON of ideas for adding more suspense and action and plot twists and using my secondary characters more deeply. Needless to say I was OVERWHELMED, but I knew the ideas would make a more exciting and dramatic book so I started to work on it again in January thinking I could be finished sometime in February. Yeah, right.

Well - here I am on March 12 - and I barely hit the HALFWAY MARK today! It's going so slowly and I'm rewriting and adding new scenes and cutting so much that I've been lucky to revise 5 pages a day.

Then last week I got my editorial letter for The Healing Spell and I'm leaving on a research trip to Louisiana in two weeks.

I sat down last night and figured out all the projects and travel that are coming up this year and sort of did a general map of my year. YIKES! It's going to be a hum-dinger of a year work-wise.

MARCH - JULY 2009

1. Do the editorial revisions of The Healing Spell

2. Finish the major revision of Murdering the Dead and get final readers for comment/critique

3. Write the first draft of The Traiteur's Daughter - the book sold on synopsis

4. Final polish of The Healing Spell and off to copyeditor

5. Final tweaks/revisions of Murdering the Dead after critique comments and send to agent for review

6. Two-Week Research Trip to Louisiana

7. Summer Family Trip to the Midwest

8. Plan and go on trip to Bulgaria and Italy with son Jared (we've been putting this off for two years and 2010 will be more difficult with two books coming out).

Out of the next 4.5 months I will be gone 6 weeks. Not including the planning/packing and all that extra stuff that goes with traveling. I'm going to revise three different books - and write a new one??? I think I'm officially crazy.

AUGUST - DECEMBER 2009

1. We'll have a new baby in the house along with the almost one-year old currently living here that I babysit several hours a day. :-D

2. First Revisions with my editor for Secret Rites of the Goddess

3. Copy edits of The Healing Spell

4. Copy edits of Secret Rites of the Goddess

5. Proofread galleys of The Healing Spell

6. Revisions of The Traiteur's Daughter with crit group to get it ready to send to agent/editor.

Come December I'm going to have to be put out to pasture.