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194 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes, 30 seconds.

As I type this, that’s how much time I have until Don’t Touch comes out. That’s a little more than six months, but it feels like September 2, 2014, is looming over me like one of those precarious Midwestern ice caves they keep showing on the news.

In the past few weeks, I’ve asked for blurbs, sent in my first pass pages changes, built a website, organized a cover reveal, and held a giveaway. I also received a big ol’ box of ARCs that I’m not sure what to do with . . .

.Image.

I think mailing’s involved.

Over the next months, I need to figure that out, order SWAG, submit to festivals, plan launch parties in two states, plan a blog tour, schedule signings, make a trailer? I need to decide how much I can afford to travel and where and in what order makes the most sense.

These are author problems–i.e. not bad problems to have. I’m not complaining. And there’s a little-expressed business side of me–let’s call her my inner author–who enjoys all this stuff.

But the writer in me is getting grouchy. The writer in me wants to tackle the author and shut her in a dark room free of distractions till she passes out from lack of Twitter.

This morning, I spent about two hours reading over my notes for my many-times-abandoned novel-in-waiting. It’s languished for months at a time while I’ve revised Don’t Touch, and more recently, while I’ve worked on completely non-writing-related tasks of authordom. I want to work on it, but I want to do it my way. I want to do it first thing in the morning, when I don’t have the weight of a zillion other responsibilities hanging over me. And I’m not going to get that luxury.

So I’d better just write. And remind the author in me that without the writer, she’s just building a gorgeous ice cave in the hot, hot sun.