Author Time Warp

by Sara Rosett

The doorbell rang last week and I found a cardboard box delivered courtesy of UPS on my porch.

I frowned. I wasn’t expecting any packages.

 I dragged it inside and saw the label from Kensington books, my publishing house. It wasn’t that time, was it? I trotted off to check my calendar and found that it was, indeed, that time. The paperback version of Mimosas, Mischief, and Murder had released that week.

How had a missed this important event? I’d been caught in the author time warp.

For the last few weeks, I’d been deep in the final draft of my current work-in- progress, the eighth Ellie book, which is set on the Florida Gulf Coast and involves a missing person, celebrities, the paparazzi, and a murder that is mistaken for suicide. My head was full of majestic oaks dripping with Spanish moss, Southern plantations, and emerald beaches. I tend to have tunnel vision as I near the end of the first draft of a book and I hadn’t even thought about Mimosas since I finished the page proofs for the paperback ages ago.

I wrote Mimosas in 2009. The hardcopy version was published last April. It takes place in Alabama and involves a Southern book festival, missing funeral caskets, lost letters from a reclusive author, and a tight-knit Southern family. It was a fun book to write, but when I opened the box and looked at the cover, all I could think was that it felt like I’d written it about five years ago.

Time moves at a glacial pace in publishing. It takes about a year for me to write a book and about a year for it to move through the publishing process. Then, throw in the year between the hardcover and the paperback and add the fog of finishing a first draft, and it’s no wonder that poor Mimosas slipped my mind. Things are changing in publishing. Ebooks have sped things up considerably, but there is still a delay between when I finish the book and when it will be out.

I don’t know if I’ll ever adjust to the crazy world of writing where the book I’m immersed in won’t be read for years and the book that is “out” seems like a distant memory.

Today, though, I’m basking in the “completed first draft” glow (of #*8—no title yet) and can focus much better on Mimosas (#6). I’ll be giving away several copies today. Comment to be entered in the drawing.

~Sara

P.S. Only four months until Mistletoe, Merriment, and Murder (#7) is released Oct 1. Putting it on my calendar now. 

In Red. 

With little stars around it… 

Sara Rosett is the author of the Ellie Avery mystery series, an adult “who done it" mystery series in the tradition of Agatha Christie. Publishers Weekly has called Sara’s books, “satisfying,” “well-executed,” and “sparkling.”

Visit http://www.SaraRosett.com for more information or connect with Sara on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Goodreads.