🚀The Dark Age: The doldrums!

Good morning, friends!

I find myself in an uneasy state. When I sit down at my writing desk, I am projectless, oddly adrift. It isn't, of course, that I have no projects; instead, it's that all of my projects are in a state of waiting.

• The Dark Age is with my agent, who is reading the latest draft. Aside from a brief missive—"I started reading, btw, and am really digging it"—I couldn't tell you what he thinks of it. I anticipate some good notes, and at least one more revision before we consider doing something with the book. So: I'm waiting.
• The novel I ghostwrote earlier this year is in that uncomfortable limbo between done and published. It's on the schedule: Late June, 2023. Sometime soon, I think, the book will officially be announced, its cover shared, preorders opened. Happily, it seems my name will be on this book after all, which means I'll be able to share it with you once it's made public. For now, I wait.
• A pitch for a new young adult novel is with my editors at Roaring Brook. The last YA book I delivered to them didn't click; they passed, and I took some time to work on The Dark Age. Now, with Dark in a place of waiting, I've written up a new idea I'm excited about. Now I wait to hear if the editors are as interested in this idea as I am.
• The YA book that my editors passed on is still in development, however. It's currently with a freelance editor I've hired; she's reading the book currently and I anticipate some nice, juicy feedback that will help me whittle the book into shape. But for now: I'm waiting.

I never know what to do with the waiting. There are no concrete dates on the calendar, no sense of when the waiting will end. Could I manage a short story before one of those above projects wakes up again? A novella? Heck, a whole book? But what if I begin, and just as I settle into the pleasing rhythms of working on something new, one or more of those projects swings back around, demanding attention?