by Writing and release schedule update:
Back in May of 2021, I told you that I would have a dark academia novella called Blood Over Bright Haven coming out in late 2021 or early 2022. When I made that post, Bright Haven was a draft of 40,000 words and I was planning to publish it with only a quick edit. Well, in subsequent drafts, the story swelled to 100,000 words (no longer novella-length by any means) and grew into something that is going to need a more comprehensive professional edit. Consequently, I’ve pushed the release of this now-novel into 2023.
You can now pre-order Blood Over Bright Haven here. The tentative release date of June 1st, 2023 is subject to change in the rare event that I get ahead of schedule.
If you’re interested in receiving a review copy of Bright Haven, you can email me at ml@mlwangbooks.com and I’ll add you to my list of folks to be notified when ARCs are available.
For those who were wondering, I do remember the post where I said that I wanted to publish something new before the end of 2022. That actually brings me to my next bit of news…
New Mystery Project!
As Bright Haven outgrew its bounds, I didn’t want to sacrifice my goal of publishing a new book in 2022. To that end, I’ve drafted a trilogy of short (and actually to stay that way!) YA fantasy books. Because these books are aimed at a very different audience from my current readership, I’m going to publish the first one under a new pen name, which I will later make known to my usual readers. The complete first book will be available to read on some platform—if not on Amazon, then on a serialized fiction platform like Wattpad—in the coming months, and I’ll be letting you know where to find it via my usual channels before the end of 2022 : )
If you’re into girly younger-skewing YA and you’d be interested in an ARC of this mystery project, you can email me (still at ml@mlwangbooks.com) and I’ll get you on my notification list for that.
If you’re not interested in YA and July of ‘23 seems like a long time to wait for Bright Haven, I’m still publishing monthly chapters of my slow-burn military fantasy, Gunpowder Magnolia, to my newsletter and Patreon (fourteen chapters available as of this posting). I also have a short story called “Death in the Uncanny Valley” in The Alchemy of Sorrow, which is currently available for pre-order here.
Time to get personal
To leave off, I want to apologize for going so long without publishing anything. I’m starting to realize that, for all my improvements to my productivity, the fact that I get words on the page every day, and my consistent love of the writing process, I have a mental block around actually finishing a project. That is: not just getting through the last chapter (I can do that) but calling a project “finished” and sending it off. Part of this comes from a happy place, the joy of tinkering; I like working on a story far better than I like being done with it, so I resist that second part.
The other more subconscious barrier is probably anxiety. Here, when drafting this post, I made the mistake of trying to psychoanalyze my own hang-ups surrounding publishing, and man, does that get incomprehensible and navel-gazey real quick! So, suffice to say that having people read my books triggers my anxiety like nothing else—the more eyeballs the worse the symptoms. It’s silly, considering that reader eyeballs are what makes my writing career viable in the first place, but that’s how my dumb brain works.
One thing that soothes my nerves is working on more than one (or two, or three) projects at once. It disperses the stakes and makes me feel less like the thing I’m working on at this moment could make or break my career. The plus side of this coping mechanism is obvious: I now have a lot more books in progress across a lot more sub-genres, increasing the likelihood that something you, dear reader, will personally enjoy is around the corner. The downside is also obvious: it’s harder to finish one project when you’re working on five.
I’ll continue to look for a happy middle-ground between creative satisfaction and quick output. In the meantime, as always, I appreciate you all bearing with me!
You continue to pique the interests of your fans as we capture new readers for you. I’m already looking forward to reading this book.