Hello everyone!
I realize I'm rarely on the blog anymore, but life has been chaotic over the last year, hasn't it? If you're reading this, I hope you're doing well, staying safe, and are healthy. My husband and I are hanging in there and we both received the vaccine earlier this month. He's been working through the pandemic and I've been working at home with our eBay business and my personal assistant business.
Over the last two years, I began working on a plan for what I would like to do with regards to publishing as Jessica L. Tate. Since my writing tends to be more for my pen name rather than this name, I haven't had much time to actually work on this plan. However, I would like to start taking small steps so that I can publish something new under this name.
Some small things include the following:
- Updating all my current covers
- Updating the formatting on all three published works
- Revising If Only We (there are some errors that have been discovered since publication)
You're currently able to view the new covers on retailers (for my fiction books), but I haven't fully updated the covers on Goodreads or on this blog. The formatting shouldn't take too long since I learned how to do it last year. But the revising of If Only We might take a little bit. I have to double/triple/quadruple check this one because the errors are regarding the timeline and I'd hate to cause any confusion to readers. And while fixing those timeline errors, I'll be going through and doing some light edits with grammar, etc. The main story won't be changing, but there's a decent amount that needs to be updated.
When it comes to future releases, that's another thing entirely. I wrote a novella thinking it would be published as Lilly, but the steamy scenes felt forced and didn't suit the story. Instead, I'll be doing a little bit of an overhaul of the story so that I can publish it as Jessica L. Tate (since my Jessica stories are no steam/no swears). This novella was created to be part of a series, so I still have to outline and write the rest of the series. My plan as of right now is to rewrite/revise the first book, write the rest of the series, and then publish them in 2022. Of course, this isn't carved in stone just yet. I am still writing books as Lilly, so I have to plan accordingly for the books I'd like to publish under that name, too.
Another thing is I would like to publish more poetry. Sadly, my laptop (which contains all of my poetry) is on the fritz and I'm unable to access those poems. I do have most of those poems available in notebooks that I wrote them in upon completion. It's basically a matter of either getting the laptop working again or typing all the poems up again. Since that's all up in the air, I have no definitive plans for the poetry just yet.
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What it all boils down to is that once I take care of the small things, I will know more about the bigger things. My goal is to have the covers updated everywhere by the end of May, formatting on Not Until Tonight updated by summer, design a new cover for Now You Can See by the fall, and have If Only We revised and upload the new version by the time we reach its anniversary (October 27th). I would do all of the above sooner, but I also have to work on getting taxes together, finish writing my current Lilly book, and update formatting on my Lilly books, too. There are so many things to do and so little time!
Anyway, I'm going to work hard on getting everything accomplished as quickly as I possibly can. I would love to share new stories and poems with you and I can't wait until next year when I can give you something new!
