And here we are entering October already. We have officially passed from pre-Halloweening to full-on Halloweening.

October is usually my absolute favorite time of the year when the rest of the world (or at least the country) joins me in celebrating all things spooky, scary, and weird. We make our annual pilgrimage to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios for our yearly dose of fog, neon, and chainsaws.

October also brings our annual Halloween party (this year’s theme is Loki, just in time for season 2), and my wedding anniversary. Lots of things to celebrate and enjoy.

And yet, I enter this month a little heavy-hearted. I spent September with my head down and my hands glued to the keyboard in a near-panic to make as much progress as possible on Bloody Revenge II: Even Bloodier Boogaloo because I knew I was going to have a lot going on in October that would distract from working on the book.

I had a business trip the last week of September, for example, and while I always like to think I can smash out a few words after I’m done in the office for the day, I’ve come to learn that with things like team dinners or just outright exhaustion from a long day of peopling, I’m not likely to be very productive. There’s also the aforementioned HHN trip, finishing out my costume build, and other festivities to think about.

I really tried, then, to throw as much focused time as possible at the book. I took a few days of vacation in September so I could have long weekends to slog through as much work as possible. Unfortunately, by the time Sunday would roll around, I’d be mentally shot. Words would barely make sense anymore. I couldn’t connect or engage with my characters or plot. In fact, even looking at my laptop screen made my eyes hurt.

Slowly, I’ve started reckoning with the realization that throwing more time at it isn’t going to work. Creativity is a fickle beast. While it can survive hostile environments, it thrives in balance. Ideas manifest in moments of quiet boredom or mental meandering. Inspiration doesn’t strike when you’re hunting it in desperation, but springs at you while you’re focusing elsewhere.

I haven’t given myself a lot of quiet moments lately. I haven’t given myself much opportunity to look away. For much of the year, my daily life has broken down into thirds: work-work, book-work, and working out. I don’t end up with much time for anything else, so, pretty predictably, I’ve found myself on the precipice of burn-out.

I’m usually happiest when I’m chasing a goal, and I’m a firm believer that good results take hard work and long-term pay-off requires short-term sacrifice. I fully expect that, no matter how much I love writing, parts of the authoring experience are just going to suck sometimes, and I have to push through. But that having been said, I’ve also found that there’s a fine line between focused pursuit of your passion and dogged obsession with success, and on the other side of that line, your passion sucks the joy out of the rest of your life until you learn to hate the thing that you previously loved.

I don’t want that to happen, of course, so I really needed to stop, be realistic with myself, and reflect on what I DO want.

• I want Nightlands to be as good and well-polished as it reasonably can be in the hands of a fallible human writer
• I want to have time to celebrate and enjoy hitting milestones in the writing, revision, and publishing process
• I want to be strategic and intentional in launching this book so that it can be enjoyed by an even broader audience

Even if I did throw every available second of time and every shred of remaining sanity at squeezing this book out by the end of the year, I wouldn’t accomplish any of those things. I’d have to shortcut some of the revising, editing, and formatting that should go into the book and it wouldn’t be as good as it could’ve been with a little more time and patience. I wouldn’t have time to celebrate and feel good about the work that I’ve done, and as you can see, I’d have even less time to share progress as well. I definitely wouldn’t have time to plan fun launch activities and build hype around the release.

In other words, no one really benefits from this. I put “late 2023” before the Nightlands excerpt in the new printed edition of Bloodlands in a rush of optimism, and then wanted so badly not to make a liar of myself. At this point, though, I really think that’s the better option.

I’m still going to treat getting this book done like my top priority and will focus on it accordingly. But I’m also going to enjoy my favorite holiday and the cooler weather, read some good books, spend time with the people who are important to me, and maybe play some Mortal Kombat 1.

I’m also going to revive my social media strategy, because I’ve neglected it for longer than is reasonable. I’ve had a TikTok for months and still haven’t really figured out what to do with it other than ignoring the 20 notifications I receive from it each day.

You’re probably wondering when you can expect to finally get this word-brick into your hands.

Early, to me, means sometime in the first quarter, if that helps.

I do still have progress to show for the month of September!

Chapters revised for the month of September:

• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14

Both Chapters 15 & 16 were started in September, but 15 is difficult for a number of reasons. I knew when I completed the rough draft of it that it would need an intensive overhaul. Now current-Sarah is having to deal with past-Sarah’s “good enough,” and with travel and burn-out piled on top of it, the going has been a little slow! I’m unraveling the kinks a little at a time, though.

So that’s that. Still moving forward, still making progress, but also trying to cut myself a little slack before I drive myself mad.

I hope you all enjoy your October, and also that you’re giving yourself a little grace where needed too.