An Important Date for You to Remember

Guiz, I finally have it: my tentative date of publication for Jagged Emerald City.

And wow has it been a hard road getting to this point. After I walked through the place my book is set, I came home inspired and ready to publish. I dove back into researching how to make it happen, started putting together a plan, gleefully contacted cover designers…

Then I found out something that resulted in my (ex)partner of 13 years and I separating. Cue everything screeching to a halt.

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll also know we bought a house this year which we were at the tail end of remodeling. So. The second half of September and October were eaten up by making the house as ready as I could, and a heartbreaking move by myself, one I had thought would be a joyful and a new chapter in my relationship. For obvious reasons I didn’t make any progress on publishing. The grief has been… a lot.

All that being said, it’s now December, and I am getting my feet under me to return to this publishing plan with a vengeance. There are two things that have been bringing me a sense of satisfaction and joy, and one of those is writing (thank god).

I’m starting to feel like myself again and am looking forward to getting my book out there more than ever.

How I Chose My Publish Date

This is a funny question. During my research, I found a few people with halfhearted suggestions, like not publishing during the summer when people were more likely to be outside. (Which I chortled at, because when the sun is shining I do not want to be outside.)

The point is, the gist I got was “eh?” about what was The Best Time to Publish.

So I decided to get interesting. I think it’s pretty ingenious actually, never mind the idea struck me and I took all of .5 seconds to debate whether to do it or not. Here’s what my brain threw at me:

The New Moon has a particular significance in my book. Then it hit me: what if I just… decided to publish on the new moon? With a quick google search, I discovered the next new moon dates are December 23rd and January 21st.

December 23rd. Hm. Right before Christmas. That could catch the Christmas rush of people buying books? But this is a debut that nobody knows about, so I shouldn’t rely on that, and people don’t pay attention to things during the holidays.

January 21st would give me time to better prepare, catch people’s attention as we all exit the holiday fugue, and isn’t it just cool my book’s birthday is on the first new moon of the year?!

So there you have it, friends. My totally scientific, fool-proof method of choosing a book publication date.

And if you need a reminder of what I’m talking about, or randomly stumbled onto this page and want to see more about this new-moon-published-book, here’s the logline for JEC, and the link to the full description…

Fairian’s quest for magic drives her into the path of a lonely, mysterious stranger who may have the answers she’s looking for but brings the attention of deadly players in supernatural power politics.

Check out more here.