One step closer to Illusion

Last night, I delivered An Illusion of Trust to my betas. Yay! I can definitely say this book is in better shape going to beta than The Brevity of Roses was, so I don’t think I’ll have too much more work ahead of me. While I wait for their feedback, I’ll work on other book-related things.

I guess it’s time to compose my first edition of Linda’s Letter, my newsletter. Maybe I’ll even include the first chapter as a teaser. And I should probably start an ARC sign-up sheet. Of course the cover design is on my mind a lot. I think I’ve found the perfect cover image … at least I hope so. Sending a mondo indecisive person like me to a stock photo site is akin to torture.

The image above is a Wordle created from the 150 most used words in An Illusion of Trust. You can see how important Jalal is to Renee. By default, Wordle doesn’t count common words, so “I” is the word that would appear even larger than Jalal because this novel is written in first person. Tea was a word that showed up in the Wordle for Brevity, which made sense with Jalal as the main character, but in this one it’s the word wine that shows up. And no, Renee’s problem is not that she’s become alcoholic.

Though I have more work to do for this book, I’ve started looking beyond it to the next. I have three possibilities for my next project. Well … four, actually, if I want to take a stab at the short story collection again. I give them each a few minutes thought from time to time, as I wait for one to shout louder than the others.

However, November waits in the wings. No, I’m not going to try to write my next novel in 30 days. We observe NaHoCleMo around here. And believe me, after more than a year of steady work on An Illusion of Trust, I should have no trouble reaching my cleaning goal. More on that later.

Believe it or not, my next post will not be all about me. I’ve been reading a bit and want to talk about some writer friends. So, stay tuned. Have a great weekend.