Shadow Demons Update: Unexpected Delays

I have some sad news to announce today. While I completely intended to release Book 4: Shadow Demons in May, the book simply isn’t ready. After a very stressful weekend of worrying about it, I finally made the decision to hold off and publish the book in June. Overall, the delay is only going to be about 2 weeks. Right now, I’m officially pushing back the release until June 10th.

I am so sorry to push it back! I get messages every single day from people asking when the book is coming out, so I know some of you are anxiously waiting for it. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all the excitement and encouragement. That’s why I hate to publish the book late. I don’t want to disappoint the people who support me and support the Peachville High Demons series. At the same time, I don’t want to rush the book and publish something that is less than what I feel is my best.

So where am I in the writing / editing stages? I finished the original rough draft in April and started revisions and rewrites at the end of April. I expected to have the book uploaded to my critique group by the 12th, but the beginning of the book just doesn’t seem right. Something about it isn’t coming together. With writing, it sometimes feels like a magical process. Like the story already exists somewhere and all I have to do is find it. Usually with a story, when I do find the right words, this feeling comes over me. A feeling of rightness like everything just falls into place. So far, I haven’t gotten that feeling, and I know that I can’t publish this book until I get that feeling. Does that make any sense?

My revamped plan is to now upload the book to my critique group on the 26th of May. Then, I need to give them a week or so to read the book and comment on it. On June 6th, we’re planning to get together and talk through what works and what doesn’t work. For the next few days after that, I’ll work like a mad woman to finalize all the changes and put the finishing touches on the manuscript before I hand it over to my husband for formatting. Looking at the calendar, I’m pretty sure that would put me ready to publish around June 10th, give or take a few days for the various sites to upload the book.

The exciting news is that I have been working with a new cover artist to design completely new covers for all of Peachville High series! I should have those covers to reveal within the next week or so, and I’m so excited about how they look.

Thanks for being patient with me. Being an Indie author isn’t easy, and neither is writing and publishing a book every two-three months. This time, since the series is getting toward the end and the relationships are deepening, it’s been even more difficult to follow such a strict time line. The good news is that this book will probably be a little bit longer and hopefully even better than the last three.