Catch-up and Prayer

Captain's Log, Stardate 03.23.2011

So as you can guess, I’ve been pretty busy. I recently detailed this all for my friend Meredith Efken when she called me the other day, so here it is in all its goriness:

1) I finished a book January 10th, another book (number 15) in the Patchwork Mysteries series by Guideposts. The books are written by several authors and only available to the Guideposts Book Club right now—you can’t buy them in stores—so I haven’t said much about them, but I’ve been having a lot of fun writing them since they’re cozy mysteries, and I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan.

2) On January 11th, I finished the Art Fact Sheet for Stalker in the Shadows, my next Love Inspired Suspense, coming out in spring 2012. I’m excited about it—it’s about Monica, the third Grant sister (you can read about her sisters Naomi and Rachel in Deadly Intent and Formula for Danger).

3) On January 16th, I finished self-edits for my fourth Sushi series book, Weddings and Wasabi, and sent it to my freelance editor, Meredith Efken at the Fiction Fix-It Shop. This is the book that I’ll be self-publishing and releasing in September or October this year.

4) On February 7th, I finished the manuscript for Stalker in the Shadows and mailed it off to New York! I also started work on another story proposal for Love Inspired Suspense.

5) On February 15th, I turned in to my editor revisions on Protection for Hire, my next book with Zondervan which releases in November. I loved this book because it enabled me to channel my Nikita-Alias side in writing the heroine, who is ex-Japanese mafia. She finds Jesus in jail and now is trying to use her skill set to help people rather than breaking kneecaps.

6) I went to Hawaii for my cousin’s wedding, and then to Nebraska to visit Tosca Lee and Meredith Efken, and during that time, the 2011 ACFW Genesis contest ended, and since I’m coordinating that, well, I had to process entries, scramble to get extra judges, and assign judges to all the entries (we had 550 entries!). Tosca’s OCD tendencies rubbed off on me, plus I was envious of her immaculate house, and so I have also been slowly cleaning up my house a little each day. I have a gigantic pile of stuff to give away to Salvation Army and I am just terribly proud of myself.

7) By March 15th, I had to finish revisions on the Patchwork Mysteries manuscript I turned in back in January. And actually, I was a little late because a) I was stupid, and b) a character stumped me, and I had to write 5 new scenes from scratch.

Whew! Are you tired yet? I sure am!

Right now, I’m writing a prologue to Protection for Hire that I hope to get done today or tomorrow, and I also got contracted for a third book for the Patchwork Mysteries series, and the one-sheet outline is due April 1st while the synopsis is due April 11th. I was also contracted to write devotionals for a devotion book by Guideposts, and those are due April 18th.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m whining, because I’m not. I LOVE that I’m busy and on deadlines because otherwise I’d waste time and eat too much. Can you relate? I really don’t work as efficiently as I do when I’m on deadline.

But it does seem sometimes that I’m playing catch up with all my other work—my Story Sensei critique service, my Street Team, my blogging, and let’s not forget knitting! I take a few minutes to knit every day (usually when I’m hanging out with my husband after he comes home from work) but I haven’t touched my spinning wheel in forever and I kind of miss it. Maybe I’ll spin a little tomorrow.

OH and I’m starting a new training program for my marathon running to help me improve my time (because really, running for seven hours straight was kind of painful). I’d like to one day run a marathon in 5 hours. I won’t do it anytime soon, but I can at least aim for 6.5 hours. I’m hoping to be able to run the Disneyworld Marathon in January!

That’s my catch-up for today (actually, reading over it, it kind of looks like throw-up rather than catch-up ...) and I hope you all are doing well!

If you have any prayer requests, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll say a prayer for you! And if you can please pray I make all my deadlines (without dying or at the very least without having a mental breakdown) I’d appreciate it!