Funny how life moves at an undulating pace; slow and lazy like a calm river one minute, fast and life-endangering as rapids the next. I exist right now in a lull between two of those fast-moving periods. I wouldn’t say life is slow and lazy at the moment, by any means, but we’ve just passed a treacherous stretch of rapids. The next phase looms before me like a tidal wave gathering its strength. Maybe that’s a little dramatic. Certainly it makes things sound a lot more negative than they’ve been. But I like the nautical tone; it’s relevant. I’ll elucidate.
For the past several months, my sole focus has been to ensure my novel is published by the date I’d set out for myself (early October). This was a reasonable deadline and gave me time to get the cover designed, book edited, proofs approved, and have the novel published. I should have known something was coming…things were too calm.
Sometimes positive change requires upheaval. We have a ton of positive change headed our way, which means plenty of upheaval in our life right now. The big pieces of news are that Annie is pregnant again and we will be moving to the east coast at the end of September!
The move in itself is a huge change for us. Relocating across the country with a 1.5-year-old, a baby on the way, three dogs, and a cat will be a challenge. We’re moving out there to go into business with my parents, running an RV resort. So not only are we re-locating; we’re transitioning to a whole new way of life. A better one, we hope. We’ll be living on the resort, which is located on a beautiful river connected to the Atlantic, about a mile away. There will be lots more news to come about the new place in the days/weeks/months to come.
What this means right now is that all of our focus is going into preparing for the move, laying the foundations for the business, and sifting out whatever time we can to spend time with and say our farewells to the family and friends we’ll be leaving behind. It’s a bittersweet occasion to be sure.
Add into all of that chaos the fact that Ontario has been re-opening and we’re finally allowed to live some semblance of what was once our normal life again. This means I’m back to work, which I’m ecstatic about, but which also detracts from time that could be spent on preparing for our move or, even better, on creative endeavours.
All of this means I have very little time to put into my forthcoming novel. As such, I’ve decided to push the publication date out to January 2022. I’m not happy to do it but I want to release the best possible work to the world and, as things are, it’s impossible to do that on an October deadline.
The question now is, of course, how will I find time to write at all if I’m busy running a maritime RV resort? Fortunately, this whole plan has a built in accommodation for my writing. The park will be open from late-spring until early-fall, meaning I have nearly seven full months to dedicate almost exclusively to writing. I do still plan to write during the summer months, there will just be far less time to do so. Having more than half a year when we’ll more than likely be snowbound anyway will give me more freedom to complete large projects and pump out more novels, which is the dream.
Once our house sells (hopefully in the next week or so), I’ll have more time to bring news and updates about the book. I’m looking forward to sharing more about my debut novel with you!
In the meantime, be sure to sign up to my mailing list to receive exclusive news, information, and offers!
Thanks for reading!