December is always a crazy month for me. I never seem to expect the busy-ness that the holidays bring around. I’m ahead of the game this year, thanks to Cyber Monday, but the next few weeks will be hectic regardless. I usually shut down the blog in December, but this year I have a mid-December release, so it wouldn’t make sense to take a blogiday. If you’ve been reading my posts at all lately, you’ll know that WHERE SHE BELONGS, my 2007 Golden Heart finalist manuscript for Long Contemporary, is releasing December 16th from Five Star/Cengage.
Okay, December 16th isn’t really the release date, in that the book won’t be in libraries and stores ON December 16th. That’s actually the shipping date, when pre-orders from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Canadian Amazon will likely go out, and when my publisher will mail my RITA copies. The RITA contest deadline has been moved up to December 30th, because January 1st falls on a weekend. So cross your fingers that my copies arrive in time! My publisher is working with me to get them out of the warehouse STAT on December 16th. It’ll be nail-biting time around here after Christmas, until I know the copies have been received at the RWA offices.
So, my “shipping date” is what I’m celebrating as my “release date.” And I have laser eye surgery scheduled for that date. Yes, I am finally getting my eyes lasered! I go in for my consultation tomorrow, and during the consult I’ll find out which surgery my eyes qualify for, PRK, which my son had last year and has a 4-7 day downtime. or SBK, a fancier version of LASIK which uses a laser to create the flap instead of a cut, and which has a downtime of 24-48 hours. It’s more expensive, but that downtime is super appealing.
When I booked the surgery, it had completely escaped my mind that December 16th is my book’s release date. So I won’t be able to promote my book ON the release date, but what can you do? I’ve decided the best way around this is to pre-schedule posts to appear on my blog (and therefore on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and my Amazon Author page) on December 16th and thereafter. The plan is to post scene snippets on the blog, you know, to entice folks to buy my book!
That’s the plan. We’ll see how the execution goes. Because I’ve been super busy helping to execute two other major life events that have sucked away all my writing time, and I must wrap them up before the surgery, plus get out my Christmas cards, etc (I skipped last year, so I really want to do this year).
And then there’s the shopping! I still have a lot to do.
How’s your December shaping up?