Heartbeat: July 2022

Welcome to the fifth heartbeat of 2022. As promised, every six weeks I update you on my progress. This one is a few days later as I lost track of my schedule.

My goal is to finish the first four books of the Postal Marines series by November 2022. Why then? Because the annual 20 Books to 50K Vegas Conference is then. At the end of the last conference, I committed to publishing these four books before the start of the next conference. That gives me until 14 November.

Distractions. At the end of the last heartbeat, I committed to finishing Imbroglio, the last work necessary to finish the quartet. With much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I failed to deliver on that promise. Instead, I spent most of the past six weeks yak-shaving on this website. The heatmap below shows my GitHub contributions. They were sporadic until June when I pivoted to developing this website. As you can see, I committed code 49 days out of the 63 between June and today; or 80% of the days. I coded in those missing 14 days. I just did not commit. The website is mostly there, but perhaps in as a heavy alpha or light beta.

Writing Imbroglio. So, what about Imbroglio? Since my last heartbeat, I added a whopping 2,645 words in three days. (See heatmap below.) One of those was right before my 20th wedding anniversary. I went back through the prior chapters to do some line editing, which lowered my overall wordcount.

With 1 August starting, I committed to writing every day until I finish, and to ensure I finish before 31 August. I need September to do the full edit. I’m in the last two chapters, which are sparsely plotted. But, I’ve put my back against the wall with the due date. Procrastination, be my guide.

Other Work. Beyond the website and not writing a novel, I’m now working with my excellent cover artist to complete the fourth cover. He started on it last week, so I should be cover-complete by our next heartbeat.

Plans to next Heartbeat? Should we meet again, I shall finish Imbroglio, the novel that started this entire series 16 years ago. I will have two more covers complete. I should progress through the final integration review. My original goal to release by September is still on track. My stretch goal of releasing in August slipped.

Anyway, thank you for accompanying me this far through the process. I hope you find your way over to my new site and sign up. If not, I wish you all the best.