I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been known for my patience. When I was a kid, knowing my birthday was just around the corner, I would keep an eye on my parents, looking for clues about my birthday present. If I was lucky, I would hear them actually discussing the gift I was going to get. And if I didn’t figure out what they were getting me, I would sometimes learn the gift’s hiding place. (Not that I would ever sneak into the living room, grab a chair and check out the top shelf of the hall closet in the middle of the night or anything.) Christmas was the same way. Waiting was hard. I wanted my goodies and I wanted them now.
I haven’t gotten any better at waiting as an adult, either. And unfortunately, the publishing business is all about waiting. Take the release of Awake at Dawn, book 2 of my Shadow Falls series. It’s scheduled to release on October 11th but that seems like way too long for me. The only thing that makes the wait bearable is having the Countdown Clock on my website’s main page. Whenever I’m wondering how many more days, weeks or months till the book’s release, I can swing by and find out. Then I just sit there in a hypnotic trance and watch it count down. Actually what I’m doing is trying to move it faster with my brain. (Hey…I’m that desperate. And I’ve heard about people who can bend spoons, so why can’t I make time go faster?) This is generally when my husband will come into my office and ask, “What are you doing?”
I always tell him the same answer, “Working.” (No way am I going to tell him I’m trying to make time go faster. He already assumes I’m crazy when I start talking about Kylie, Derek, and Lucas as if they are real people.)
And seriously I am working, I think those hypnotic trances are crucial to jumpstarting the brain. I also know waiting is part of this job. Because I seem to do a lot of waiting as a writer. Waiting for a story/plot to jell. Waiting for my editors to read a story/plot that finally jelled. Waiting to get a contract on that jelled plot/story. Waiting to see the cover, waiting to get the ARCs, waiting for the book to come out. It’s all about the waiting and as I mentioned, I totally suck at waiting.
Anyway, other than going and staring at my countdown clock, I’ve found a couple of other coping techniques for my waiting.
I try to forget about it. (This only works for short intervals like maybe a couple of hours. And it helps if I have good chocolate to eat during that time.)
I try to lose myself in my next book. (This technique works pretty good, until I hit on the least little hiccup and then my mind goes right back to thinking about October 11th and how it feels as if it will never, ever come.)
I fantasize about the release. I imagine that I walk into a bookstore and I see the bookseller putting my book on the shelf. And there is a line all the way around the bookstore of people who have to have their copy. LOL. Hey, it’s a fantasy. I might as well make it good!)
Now, several people have emailed and begged for insights to what’s going to happen in Awake at Dawn because they are as bad at waiting as I am. Well, I can’t tell you a whole lot, but here are a few teasers.
• Miranda gets kissed twice in the book. And only one of them is by Perry.
• Della gets accused of doing something really bad, and the scary part is that she doesn’t know if she’s guilty or not.
• Miranda has a spell go way wrong and this time, she can’t fix it.
• Kylie gets another letter from Lucas.
• Derek asks Kylie to go out with him.
• Fredericka and Kylie have a little issue. And let’s just say that Fredericka ends up being a real stinker!
So, what about you? Are you a patient person? Or are you as impatient as I am? And if you are, what tricks do you have for coping when you want an event to hurry up and just get here?
C.C.