Summer: A time of deadlines and deadends

The official start to summer has begun. The signs are everywhere, from temperatures over one hundred degrees in the northeast to Hurricane Debby in the gulf of Mexico. The sweltering heat isn't the only thing that makes me sweat during the summer months. The excitement of manuscript deadlines and deadends cause me to perspire faster than ninety degree afternoons coupled with ninety percent humidity.

To be honest, I love deadlines. They force me to amp up my writing and stir my imagination. I just finished the edits and emailed the third book in the Trilogy of The Chosen, "Cursed Days," to my publisher. It will be released in the beginning of September.

My deepest thanks to my editor, Starr Reina, who is also an incredible writer. Look for her new suspense thriller, "One Major Mistake," to be released this summer. I have had the honor of reading it in pre-release and it was so good, I stayed up all night in order to finish it. It is an amazing book.

Where was I? Oh yeah, deadlines. Now that the edits to "Cursed Days" are finished, it is on to the next deadline. I was very excited when my publisher asked me to write a prequel to "Cursed Blessing," the first book of the trilogy. It is to be a novella on how the Phantom Squad was formed and will be released one month before "Cursed Days." It will be available as an e-book and it will be free! Needless to say, I am busy writing in order to have it finished in time for edit and publication. Did I say I loved deadlines?

Now for the deadends. I started a new novel a while back and wrote about half (200 pages) when I realized I was cornered. I had come to a deadend. In order to get to where I wanted the story to go, I needed to backtrack at least one hundred pages and rewrite the plot. Even though this can be a frustrating experience, it is also invigorating. It's like a puzzle. It seems so daunting when you first spill the pieces from the box, but as you begin to put the framework together, you start to visualize where other pieces may go. Before you know it, you can see the finished picture in your head and it spurs you on to the completion of the puzzle. Deadlines lead to new undiscovered roads and to new adventures.

So, as summer commences, so do the deadlines and deadends, but more importantly, the adventures brought on by both begin anew.

One more thing: thank you to everyone who commented on the covers for "Cursed Presence." The new cover, available now is shown below.
Until next week,
J.M.