I will not be doing my monthly post on everything I’m working on next month. Instead, I will just make the announcement when The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride is available. That way, I won’t clutter up people’s inboxes. 🙂

I will have The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride out in September.

I am looking at September 17, but I probably won’t announce it until a day or two later when I have had time to get all the links together. This time around, I’m not going to put it on pre-order. I’ll just release it. I want to see how things go. Then I’ll decide if I want to keep doing it this way or if I want to do more pre-orders in the future. To be honest, I don’t see the benefit of a pre-order. Maybe if I did them far out, I would have some benefit, but since I have trouble knowing when I can release a new book, I’m not keen on setting up dates far out in advance.

I am close to 30,000 words in Masquerade Bride

I am hoping this is the halfway point. The last couple of books have been longer than I anticipated and because of that, I haven’t been able to get as many books out a year as I’d like. At this rate, this book won’t be out until 2026. I had hoped to get four books out this year, but The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride only put me at three.

I don’t get a lot of people telling me they are anticipating my next book, but there are a couple who have expressed an interest in more books. It’s frustrating to work at a slower pace than what I used to manage. I used to manage six books a year (sometimes even eight) without missing a beat. I wish I could write faster. Since I can’t, I am trying not to let the books run on for too long, but I also realize I need to fully flesh out the story so I don’t rush things, either. It’s not an easy balancing act.

I am keeping all of this story in the heroine’s point of view. I typically don’t do that, but for this setup, it’s required I do it this way. I might include the hero’s point of view at the very end. To be honest, I didn’t know exactly WHO the hero would be until about 20,000 words into the story, but I’m sure everyone will feel that the hero was obvious. It might be obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. When I began the book, I figured it could go in any direction. 🙂

I’m 30,000 words into this one but have stalled out

I will probably end up putting this on hold. I am happy with the progress up to this point, but I’ve hit a snag where I am not sure how to connect the beginning to the midway point. I need to transition from the hero and heroine to being “awkward and developing a friendship” to becoming romantically attached to each other. This book has a three-prong setup. One is awkward to friendship. Then I bounce to love, but that love needs to be unconditional. So the third part is where the love becomes unconditional. We’ll get there. It’s just a matter of doing it the right way.

I’ll be starting up Oscar’s book soon

This book will follow The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride. I don’t have a cover or a title yet, I was going to originally call this “The Virgin Widow”, but that no longer fits since the heroine’s first marriage will be annulled. So I need another title. I’m bouncing ideas around.

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That’s about it to report for this month. My next post will come out around September 18 after I get all my links together. Hope everyone has a great August!