The horrors persist…

…but so do I.

And my bougie, if unprofitable, books.

Anyway, this month has been a nightmare, of course–roof is okay right now but two weeks ago I guess some snow piled up and I was up until 6am dumping buckets of water every forty minutes or so. The audiobook rights sale in 2024 bumped my gross income over a particular threshold and now I have to collect/remit tax (that that threshold hasn’t changed in thirty years is a real failure, I spent weeks doing extra work and have to refile my taxes on top of doing 2025’s all for the govt to give me back a couple hundred dollars since nearly all my income zero-rated).

But last night I finished the zero draft of the eighth Waverly Jones novel.

I knew how it ended–I’ve known pretty much how all of them do, because I see the overall arc in my head and I know where the character lands book to book. But I did not expect I’d just be sitting there weeping over the last scene. The character goes through so much change, so much loss–every book she’s a slightly different Waverly than where she started from, but by the eighth it’s clear what tremendous growth she’s been through. I ache for her and I’m also proud of her.

A background of misty evergreen treetops and the book cover for Waverly Jones book 8 called These Haunted Woods, with a young woman with long dark hair hugging herself with her head bowed and a snowy forest in the background. Text says "Finally done" and then "which means it's roughly drafted with four-hundred fix this bracket notes and is a giant mess that makes sense to no one but me."

And I’m proud of me. So far I’ve written over a million words on Waverly Jones, including the finished books (not the cut out parts of drafts), the shorts for Patreon and the hardcovers, side novelettes/novellas, and the drafts of 6-8 that aren’t publication ready yet.

That’s a lot of words.

I know how the ninth ends but not precisely where it opens–it’s got two mystery plotlines and then a background one–so I’m going to let that roll around my brain over the next few months until it sorts itself out, with the hope I can start it (and get most of it done) in the fall.

I am increasingly grateful to myself that I’ve kept up with my goal to write ahead.

The fifth is on the verge of release–a couple of friends have read it early and eARCs go out tomorrow to the Patreon Book Club tier and last year’s contest winners. So we’re nearly at the midway point in the series. I’ve long set various events into motion, which is why it’s so damaging when I start second-guessing myself–I literally can’t stop the train now! But thank god this time I’ve written ahead so I’m less likely to get paralyzed. It’s written, I’ve committed to the story I want to tell whether people will like it or not. I’m hoping, by the time people are reading the one I’ve just finished, that I’ll already have the twelfth done.

As a series goes on, especially with the wait between books, it’s normal to develop our own expectations (I’ve long thought one of the reason revivals/sequels that come after a decade or two don’t always work for me is because I as the audience and the creator have diverged in how we saw the stories play out, and reconciling that as the audience can be jarring). Our own headcanon. Our own wants and hopes for the characters. Because stories are living things, characters continue in our heads even when the last page is turned.

But after what I went through with a vocal subset of the Livi Talbot readership, I’ve been feeling a lot of dread where I should be feeling excitement. There will be developments that make some people happy and some people disappointed but in both cases it’s because they’re only getting a slice of the story–the full picture isn’t in place until the twelfth book (and…I guess no one will be happy? I don’t know, I hope someone will be besides me).

Waverly Jones Mysteries graphic with all twelve book covers, each showing the same unsmiling young white woman with long dark hair across various backdrops, usually forests. There is an arrow at the fifth book, A Dark and Distant Home, with the words "You are here." At the ninth, Last Known Victim, are the words "I am here." And at the final book, the twelfth, Crossroads, is another arrow and "we are going here".

I have the full picture, and I know what I’m doing, but I started to spin out the past few weeks–the series is deeply unprofitable and has such a tiny readership, I dread them losing interest over the years and especially braced for being yelled at (or disappointing those whose opinions I value).* So I think part of what hit me emotionally reaching the end of the eighth book was how much it drove home that I have made the right choices.

Come what may, the story I want to tell is coming together. And even if the only people still reading at the end is me, my editor, and my proofreader, it will be what I wanted it to be, saying the things I want to say. It will be painful and hopeful, bittersweet and cathartic. It will hurt because it was always meant to.

But the dog lives, so there’s that.

I mailed out some Patreon swag envelopes today and waiting at the post office for me, like a “congrats, you’re done!”, was a couple of test copies from BookVault UK, including the jacketed hardcover edition of The Silent Places** but also the first volume boxset of Waverly Jones Mysteries.

The former will go up soon; the latter, I have to tweak some things and put in a question about something they fubared. But overall, really beautiful products that will cost a small fortune so no one will buy them because everyone is broke, but this is the series of my heart and my soul and I want to celebrate that.

Three book covers lined up, each have a white woman with long dark hair and a forest running vertically. They're very moody. — Alternate covers that keep the “Waverly” from the OG paperbacks and title colours, spot UV gloss over the shadows and forest and title.

Boxset for Waverly Jones mysteries vol 1 with a dark haired woman hugging herself with her head bowed. — Boxset front

Side and back cover for the boxset. Young woman with long hair looking out at water on a dock and the book titles. — Boxset front

It did feel like appropriate timing, rewarding me not just for finishing the eighth book but for sticking to the story I want to tell.

I had planned to just rest today, March was exhausting and I did a lot of freelance work and just wrote 50K, plus the tax stuff, plus finishing touches on A Dark and Distant Home.*** But now I’m poking at revising files for upload, because I can’t remain idle, and Livi’s about to take over my brain for April.

But I got my fancy bougie books, and I have a deep sense of accomplishment and trust in the story after finishing the eighth, and that’s pretty great.

* Before you chirp in with the cliche of “You have to write for yourself!”–yes, that’s what I do. I’m forty-three years old. I’ve been doing this seriously for twenty-five years. If I wasn’t writing for myself, I would’ve already quit (remember, I did write erotic romance under a few pen names in various subgenres for several years, for the money–I’m not cut out to write for other people).

But I have to make money at writing in order to have more time to write. So while I do not write anything for anyone other than me, I try very hard to signal–through genre categories, jacket copy, and the text itself–to the right readers for the work, rather than the ones who abandon it the moment I kill a main character (or scream at me when they finally figure out I don’t like HEAs).