After completing manuscript ten, I decided to pump the brakes on writing for a while. It is very much like a therapy for me, but while I stack up the pages, I have a queue of books waiting to be released into the wild. Between the Literary Agent submission trenches and moving house, I’m very much in a no-man's-land regarding creativity. I don’t have the output, and keep adding ideas and prose to a document for upcoming stories, but that’s as much as I’ll do.
For now, I’m working on the marketing side for Missing Girls and Lost Boys. I’m working with an artist to design a front cover, and although I’m aiming for traditional publishing, the design process is cathartic as I give my book a face. It looks like an actual book, and not the home-printed, French-link stitched creations I’ve made at home. As well as this, I’ve been diving into the wonderful world of Booktok. I’ve done marketing for fifteen years, and I do not like the Social Media side of it all. Understanding the algorithms and tactics is like learning a language, and even then, luck is very much a key component of being seen. But Booktok has such a strong sense of community. I initially went into it, believing I was going to push, push, push my book. But I’m just enjoying being a book lover among the community, meeting new people, and having a laugh in the comments with avid readers and writers.
So the sabbatical continues, but there are other things for a writer to do.
