I have a confession to make: I HATE waiting. Having said that, I would like to think I’ve learned to be patient. I’m not great at it, but I can do it.

It doesn’t make waiting for my work to be published any easier though. I want my contracted book to be done just like I want my self-published ones to be available too. But, I will not rush them and compromise the quality I’m putting out..

As you probably know, I was planning to have my self-published book out in May. A friend of mine did the line edits on it which I just got back. There are lots of them. I could cut corners and put it out anyway, but that would be the wrong thing to do. I respect my friend too much (not to mention and all the hard work he spent doing the edits) to do that.

And, I respect my readers too much to give them anything but my best work.

So, the book will come out in June. Or perhaps in July if everything falls apart (but I’m pretty sure June is the month). Knowing that the final product will be better is some consolation. I just wish the whole process were faster.

GalaxyBillies is another of my projects that I want to see in print. Is the story good right now? Arguably, yes. I have enough positive comments about the podcast that I think it is safe to say that the story is good.

But, the thing is, I want it to be great. I want it to be mentioned in the same breath as books by people like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett or Robert Asprin. Big goal? You bet, but unless I reach for the brass ring, I will never get it.

That means it needs substantial revision. I know what I left out of it that I want to add now. There were certain elements that simply didn’t fit the podcasting medium so I didn’t bother to write them at the time. Now is the time. So, once “The Mystery of Lake Chulala” is available for sale, I will be blowing the dust off GalaxyBillies and making it as great as I possibly can.

I’m going to “Get it Right”.

One thing I want to caution, though, is “getting it right” is not the same as revising forever. When I write a story (and, I suspect, when you write one), I have a goal in mind. I know approximately the story I want to tell, the characters who will appear in it and so on. If the story is close to my vision when I’m done, the revising is minimal. If I miss it by a lot, there is more work to do.

However, if the story is what I want but it isn’t good enough to find a market, I must be prepared to say, enough is enough. I made the mistake of trying to take a story I wrote and massage it to meet a market’s needs. All I ended up doing was wasting time and making the story more convoluted.

I should have said, “It’s as good as it will get, so it’s time to move on.” Perhaps if I had done that I would already have a story in print. Maybe not. But I do know that I would have more stuff written.

“Getting it Right” is not the same as getting it published. It is merely, getting the story into the form you envisioned. Eventually, as you write and improve your skills, it might also mean getting it published. That should be the goal. Continue to write and exercise your creative muscles. That’s what I’m doing.

For now, I’ve got to focus on making my work the best it can be. The rest will follow. I’ve already seen enough success to know that for a fact.

There is a reason I don’t like to talk about what I’m working on that has nothing to do with my muse or losing focus on writing the story. It comes squarely from my career in IT. That is, promoting something that doesn’t exist or isn’t finished.

I have seen more than my fair share of software programs (as an example) that has been loudly and widely touted only to never, ever see it hit the shelves. There have been many reasons for the failures, but, at the end of the day, they were widely anticipated failures that cost the companies in question a great deal of credibility.

So, you can imagine my reluctance to talk about my projects when I don’t have a firm release date in mind. Invariably, something happens that delays the entire thing. In my case, the book was long finished, but the edits have taken more time than I expected.

My original hope was to make the book available in May. That’s a pretty ambiguous goal, right? There are thirty-one days in the month so I have time, don’t I?

Well, in my own mind, that date was meant to be May 20th for various personal reasons. Ambiguous goals rarely work, so I had a solid timeframe in mind. Unfortunately, I am quite confident that the book won’t be available May 20th. Chances are also good that it won’t be quite done by May 31st.

I may be completely wrong in that calculation, but, at this very moment, the line edits are not complete nor is the cover. It needs to be formatted for both paper and eDelivery, both of which take some time. Will it drop in May? Unlikely.

So, at the moment, it feels a lot like vapourware to me and probably some of the people who have been waiting for the story. Let me assure you (and myself to some extent) that it is not. I have put too much work into this story not to see it hit the shelves. The delays are so I can ensure that I’m putting as good a book out as I can. That is it. Full stop.

I’m going to have to spend some time reviewing where I went wrong on this one. I plan to release several more books and I need to be able to commit to timelines if I’m going to do so. Commit to them with the expectation that I will actually be successful. If I don’t, I’m letting myself and my readers down. That is something I do not want to do.

So, for those of you waiting, it is coming. Just not quite yet. I am disappointed in this, but I have no one to blame but myself. Please be patient just a little longer and it will be available.

Honest.