I hate limbo.

Not the stupid, drunken dance where you see how low you can go. Publishing limbo. Waiting for submissions and trying to find some strength within myself to keep pushing forward with my work on books I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sell.

For me, motivation is tough concept to understand. When I teach the chapter on motivation and emotion in psychology, I have to dig down deep to offer good examples and explanations because I don’t always understand. It’s not that I don’t “get” motivation; it’s that I don’t “get” lack of it. How can I explain a Type B personality, someone who takes the easiest approach to a problem and never feels stress? The concept is as foreign to me as speaking Mandarin Chinese.

I wake up every morning with an ache in the pit of my stomach because I know I won’t be able to get everything done I want to do that day. I want to dazzle my students with brilliant lectures that contain the perfect analogies. Yet I also want to have the time to sit down and get whatever story is swirling in my head down on paper. Even worse, I want to pull up all my other books and give them one last polish. Unfortunately, Mother Earth only gives me twenty-four hours to accomplish all this. I suppose I could always give up sleep. No wonder Type A personalities have short life spans. We don’t burn the candle on both ends. We pitch the entire thing in the fire.

I’m in limbo on the books I’ve sold. I turned Murphy’s Law edits around in five days. Now I wait. I wait to see if the editor is pleased with my efforts. I wait for the release date to be set. I wait to see if it will sell.

I’m also in limbo for the books I’m tyring to sell. I wait to see if Maureen can do her magic with my stories. God love her, she believes in me, and I’m humbled by that.

I need to refer back to the mantra I decided to cling to in 2009 — Publishing is a marathon not a sprint.

But I still hate limbo.

An editor reduced me to tears yesterday.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Editors are supposed to be cruel and demanding. I didn’t cry because of some criticism of my story. Just the opposite.

Murphy’s Law did a nice stint on the contest circuit. Most of the time, it hit the finals or was at least damned close. I always take judges’ comments into account to look for ways to improve my story or my writing skills. But one thing that was said by a few judges I disagreed with. Totally.

Seth, my hero, is in need of redemption. The series is called “Damaged Heroes” after all. Even though I start the book out with a Tennessee Williams quote about redemption, some judges gave me low scores because they didn’t like Seth. Duh. He’s an ass in the beginning of the story. Hence the redemption. I was worried, however, editors might feel the same way. Then I decided that I loved this book, and I wasn’t going to soften Seth up in the beginning just to please a few people. His ultimate salvation would lose its impact. So Seth stayed an ass, and I sold the story anyway.

I received my edits for Murphy’s Law yesterday. Please allow me to share the editor’s comments:

Editor’s Notes:
1. This was a delightful book. I loved the humor and the characters, including the secondary characters. All are richly developed. The transformation of the hero was a work of art.
2. I know nothing of horse-racing but the author did an excellent job of explaining it within the confines of the story without “teaching” us about horse racing.

Now do you know why I cried?

What goes up…

BookStrand has two official “best sellers” lists. One is the top hundred ebooks for the last thirty days, and the other is the top hundred ebooks for the last six months. Since its release, Turning Thirty-Twelve has been on both lists. It peaked at number thirty-five on the thirty day list and climbed up to sixty on the six months list. Watching it rise was hypnotic. If BookStrand checks their website visitors by IP addresses, they will think I am stalking them.

Friday, I hit thirty days since the ebook release of Turning Thirty-Twelve. Now, as each day passes, I get to see my book drop in the standings. It just seems so… sad. But before I feel too sorry for myself, I need to tell you the good news. My publisher is bumping up the print date to February. Soon, I will be able to hold a book with my name as the author in my own hands.

I really want to thank all of you who bought my ebook. While my sales haven’t reached the levels of erotica, I’m pleased to know so many people wanted to read my story. I’m also absolutely thrilled with my reader ratings. Not too many people go back and rate the ebooks they purchase, but I’ve had several make the extra effort. I’m thrilled to say that my overall rating is 4.9 out of 5. Not the perfect I demand of myself, but pretty damned close.

Onward and upward. I’m looking forward to the releases of my Damaged Heroes series. Starting in March and spreading through the spring and summer, I’ll have four new books coming out.

What more could an author ask?

For the first time since I started writing, I’m taking a pass on the RWA national conference.

I thought about this long and hard. I enjoyed the conferences in both Dallas and San Francisco, but I asked myself what I really “got” out of both those trips. When I weighed it against the escalating fee for the conference itself and the price of the hotel, meals, etc., I decided against it this year.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the conference is a waste — not by a long shot! I made some great connections, learned a little about the business, and spent time with friends. But both times, I was not only physically exhausted but mentally spent. The conference is always at the end of the summer, which means I’m gearing up for school to start again. The summer is supposed to be when I get healthy. I try not to let my lupus run my life, but after both conventions, I needed some major rest and didn’t have time to get it before I was facing those three scary words — back to school.

I have to admit to still feeling a little angry over the Rita and Golden Heart problems. I don’t think that is why I decided against going, but it did factor into my decision. I am in hope that this will all be solved by the next round of RWA contests, but… As it is, I’m in no-woman’s-land with RWA. I’m pubbed where Golden Heart is concerned. I’m unpubbed where Rita is concerned. Still a bit bitter over that fact.

So what I will do instead is travel to the Big Apple. My sister and I have always wanted to take a trip together, and New York is our choice. I’ll get to meet my fantastic agent and her wonderful assistant face-to-face. My sis and I are going to take in a Broadway show. And we get to simply enjoy a vacation.

It sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

People ask me some really funny questions about writing books.

I love answering anything anyone asks about what it’s like to be an author. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I find questions fascinating, answering them even more so. But of all the people who have posed questions, the one person I never expected to do so was Jeff.

He was looking over my shoulder the other day when I was obsessively staring at my author’s page on the BookStrand website. He must have been reading the blurb for Turning Thirty-Twelve, because he asked, “Where in the heck did you get the name Jackie Delgado?”

Now, I could have given him an answer that would make sense. You know — “I know someone with that name” or “I saw it on a movie.” I was just so stunned he’d asked about my writing that I answered honestly. “That’s what Jackie told me her name was.”

Jeff blinked a couple of times, so I assumed he was trying to decide if I was having some kind of schizophrenic break with reality. He finally shook his head and said, “Writers are weird.”

I don’t name my characters; they name themselves. And heaven forbid I try to force another name on any of them. They rebel in the form of writer’s block. Once they introduce themselves, then my job is to search out their characters from their likes and dislikes to their annoying little habits. In my demented author brain, each one is a real person and would take offense to me writing the story in a way that isn’t true to who he or she is.

I find the same sort of phenomenon when I take the wrong turn at a literary fork in the road. The first two hundred pages of The Brazen Amazon tumbled out of me so fast, I had no choice but to put a laptop in front of me to catch the words. Then… nothing else came. I don’t have writer’s block often, but when I do catch it, I get a severe case. I ran right into a proverbial brick wall with Gina’s book. Because I had just come off of NaNoWriMo in November, I figured it was a small case of burn out and decided to relax and read more than write in December. At least that was the case until I tried to write. Nothing was there.

I sat down last week and tried to backtrack to where I lost Gina’s story. Bingo. I found a critical scene where I had gone left when right was the correct path. Once I trashed that scene, I found the story again. Gina and Zach embraced me like long lost friends, and now we’re happily walking down the plot path together.

Aren’t writers the strangest creatures?

Oh, Lord. It’s time for New Year’s resolutions again.

You know what? I might be a bit loud, somehwat pushy, and more than a little bit crazy, but one thing I am not is cliche. No resolutions for me. Instead, let me reflect on what I learned in 2008.

1. Publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. Jeff is supposed to tell me this every single day. I can’t be constantly worrying about where I am on BookStrand’s bestselling lists. My books will be on their website for a long, long time. The first week is important, but that’s all it is. One week among many.

2. I’m blessed to have so many people who support me. I really leaned on a lot of you in 2008, and I’m very grateful you were there. There’s not a day I fire up the laptop when I don’t have an email from someone who cares about me. My facebook wall has as much graffiti as any building surface in Brooklyn. My agent and her assistant are constantly looking out for my best interests. My BookStrand “family” has embraced me. And a few of you actually bought my book.

3. Erotica does better in ebook than does mainstream romance. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise. I think erotica made ebooks the strong phenomenon they are. I’m just hoping that a few of the many erotica readers who are so loyal to Siren/BookStrand will allow themselves to take a look at some super romances. Like mine.

4. I still have so very much to learn — not only about the business of publishing but about writing. I am so grateful to my BookStrand editor for the hard work she put in on Turning Thirty-Twelve. She pointed out things that I’d missed, things that made the story stronger.

I wish all of you a wonderful and prosperous 2009. May all your dreams come true.