A dear friend and reader messaged me over the weekend to ask where Book 4 of the Heroes & Villains series was. And, Dear Reader, I had to honestly tell her I never published Maria’s book.
So let me take you behind the curtain in the Emerald City to get a peek at what’s in an author’s head (and files) when we’re picking our next project, or at least how I go about picking my next project. This is more on the personal side of Monday’s In Publishing, just roll with it…
First, and maybe most important, is deadlines and contracts.
As a published author you are moving on someone else’s schedule. If it’s not a publishing house it’s an agent, freelance editor, cover artists, audio book person, or readers who are all expecting a certain title at a certain time. For editors and artists those deadlines are very often non-negotiable once set.
This is what keeps authors going on the bad days but it is also what can kill a book.
The Heroes & Villains series was, originally, published by Breathless Press, a small press in Canada. I had great editorial support there, an amazing cover artist, and a lot of love from the press. We also had a HUGE problem with piracy. While the ebooks were very popular on pirate sites, the press didn’t make money, and it eventually folded a few months after I released EVEN VILLAINS HAVE INTERNS.
I was writing the fourth book in the series, Maria’s book, when the press folded. And I saw the numbers of pirated titles.
To this date EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE remains my most-pirated book.
It’s hard to want to write a book when I know the series is popular on pirate sites but not selling anywhere else. Under those circumstances the book becomes a passion project, something I invest my time and energy in because I am happy writing the book, not because I’m hoping for anything for my bank account.
This is my job. Would you show up for work if you weren’t getting paid? No, you’d go find another job.
The second major consideration is TIME.
Do I have the time to write this new project and meet my other deadlines?
Some authors manage to do this by only working on one series or book at a time and I applaud them for that, but we all know that’s not me.
As of today I have…
– a full novel + series outlines on my agent’s desk
– a proposal for a second series on my agent’s desk
– a contract for ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A REAPER due in July
– a contract for Fleet #3 due in December
– an almost finished draft of LADY OF THE LAKE for Patreon
– a fantasy novel I started in March to handle my pandemic rage that my agent wants to read in August
When you count all the titles in the pitches and that are planned I have 23 titles between those six universes and 9 of them are under a contract of some kind (and I really want all 23 under contract so, pretty please, let the publishing fairy magically appear with contracts and advances for all my books).
Granted, some of those aren’t expected to hit an editor’s desk for another few years, but they have priority over any books that aren’t contracted and aren’t going to earn me money. My oldest kid graduates from high school next year and I live in a country with *very* expensive colleges. Writing is fun and wonderful and for me to start, but I publish because I need to pay the bills.
This is also the bulk of writing schedule for the next decade or so. I have too much new stuff to go back to books and series that didn’t sell.
The downside of this is that, if my agent shops a book I love and it isn’t picked up, I have to decide whether to make the (unpaid) time to prep it for publication and self-publish that book and the rest of the series knowing that the income for self-published and small press series tend to be lower.
An especially heartbreaking scenario is one of the series my agent has gets picked up and the other doesn’t. Because a series under contract and with an advance is going to have priority every single time. That doesn’t mean the other book has to be burnt and forgotten. It can get picked up at a later date. But I do have to put it down for a bit. Maybe it’ll be a few months. Maybe it’ll be a few years. Maybe it’ll be forever. No one knows!
The third factor for picking my next project is how much I love the story.
Do a daydream about it? Am I excited to see fans cosplaying my characters? Do I stay up late scribbling notes about the story?
This is the thing that really makes or breaks a series. If I love something enough, I’ll make time for it even if I don’t have a contract for it. I’ve written more than one story because it made me happy and I didn’t care what happened to it after publication.
Conversely, I’ve also dropped series because they no longer made me happy.
The Heroes & Villains series kinda falls into that category right now. The fourth book is tied up with a lot of painful memories. I was working on it through postpartum depression, I put it down because of piracy, I almost quit writing when Breathless Press folded. I was applying to grad school when I was offered representation from my first agent, and if it had taken a year to sell THE DAY BEFORE I probably would have gone to grad school, written the Time & Shadows series, and not done anything more than the three books on that contract.
A little sad, but true. Eighty percent of authors who do publish don’t publish a fourth title (or over 500,000 words… Twitter brainstormed the equivalency for people who do shorter fiction). There are a lot of things that happen between getting a book published and getting to Book 4. There’s a lot of ways to fail, and to get overwhelmed, and to fall in love with some other aspect of life so writing doesn’t seem important any more. And those aren’t all the same thing.
You don’t fail if you choose to prioritize something else over writing and publishing. That’s a good and healthy choice that means you’re succeeding at life. Always, ALWAYS, pursue the things that bring you joy.
Failure is wanting to do something but refusing to try because you’re scared of failure. Go ahead and try. If it doesn’t work out the first time it means you learned something and you’ll do better next time. If you decide you don’t want to do the thing, that’s a lesson too. Just try. Trying is enough.
What happens to abandoned manuscripts?
So… sometimes manuscripts get lost. Forgotten. Tucked away because they’re surrounded by rain clouds of doom and don’t feel sparkly and fresh.
That’s okay. Every author has trunk novels. Every author has a book they didn’t finish. Or that they finished and didn’t edit. Or a book they wished they could rewrite because the published version is kinda crying now.
But you can’t go backward.
Forward momentum is the only way to survive in publishing. You have to keep writing. You have to keep working on the next project.
Don’t worry about the trunked novels. Those were learning experiences.
With all that being said, what’s good for authors isn’t always good for readers. Readers miss old projects. Readers miss dropped series (looking at you Dawn Cook!). Readers miss a lot of things and, with that in mind, I’m bringing something new to Patreon: LIANA’S LOST PAGES.
The LOST PAGES will have scraps of older stories. Bits and pieces of things that got abandoned. Sometimes it will be a few chapters, sometimes it will be more. And with each LOST PAGE I’ll try to explain *why* that project, or idea, or opening didn’t work. Why it got cut or trunked and what happens next. It’s already set up so there is a new Lost Page coming out each week for the next 11 weeks. At the end of July everyone will get to vote and decide if we keep doing this, or if we break open one of those trunked novels and read it as a Patreon exclusive.
Are you ready?
Let’s go read some Lost Pages!