It hasn’t been that long since my last post, but I promised updates as I had them. The Price of Survival has gone through it’s final proofread and is now in the final stages before it goes live. I don’t have a definitive date of release yet, but it definitely looks like an April release is strong, and possibly still that early April release.
It’s always hard at this stage of the game to both wait and push forward. Writing, for me, is something I do for the most part on my own. Sharing it with anyone after it’s roughly finished is both nerve-racking and a delight, and then the editing process once the story reaching that point brings out a whole new level of stress. Even that though fades, and then it’s almost a relief to work with my editor to polish whatever I’m working on until it’s far better than it was when I started. I’m going to go slightly off topic for a bit, so bear with me.
Confession time: Grammar is not my strong suit. Spelling is definitely not my strong suit. I’m dyslexic, highly dyslexic actually, and while it’s never hindered my reading skills — much to the frustration of my teachers and the person who tested me — it has thrown me a few curves. Enough of them that if anyone had told me I’d decide to write my own novels, I’d likely have laughed in their face. And then apologized.
My dyslexic tendencies, as I’ll call them, normally rear their head in spelling, speech, and numbers. In order to correctly spell a word, I cannot sound them out, I have to memorize the spelling of each word. To say that is a special frustration is an understatement, but it has made me a better speller overall, and I consider the struggle therefore almost worth it. I am, in case your wondering, one of those terrible spellers who stumps spellcheck constantly. I’m sure most people had at least had one or two instances where your friendly spell checker suggests a few or several words for a typo or a word you didn’t know, and perhaps even some of you have had those slightly humbling moments where you type out a word — knowing full well it’s wrong and seeking help — and the spell checker of your choice comes back utterly baffled and blank with this “…erm what on earth were you trying for, ’cause I got nothing” sign and you sigh and try again? Yep, that’s pretty much my relationship with spell checkers unless it’s a word I mostly know, and just played the good old game of swap-the-letters-’cause-you’re-dyslexic. Which, I do, a lot as well.
Fun fact: two dyslexic people working together can work out. One of them will read data (say numbers or letters) backward and their partner will automatically reverse the data to its proper position without meaning to. It’s awkward, but it works.
So, now you know why my blogs may not be the gold star of writings. I do try, and I continue to improve, but my brain also has this awesome self-sabotage button, and it shows up to have fun when I least expect it.
But, to get back on topic. The Price of Survival is very close to being ready, and I am nervous, but hopefully, you will enjoy it. Book three, in case anyone is curious, does exist as well. It has not, however, started the editing process, and I recently decided it needs a new name. Naming characters and places in this series have been a cakewalk but naming the actual books themselves has been sheer torture. I’ll continue to post updates as I know them, but at this point it still looks like the second or third week of April will be the release date.
Meagan Hurst 