I haven’t written a word this week because I’ve been fighting a head cold. And my personal recipe for creating a zombie is to take two cold pills, wait ten minutes and be brain dead for hours.

I thought I’d update you by writing about the writing I have been doing.

I have finished my third novel, Bear in Mind. This book is the first in a mystery series that uses many of the characters from Fun House Chronicles. Two people are plowing through it now (my niece Linda and my old friend Jan who has recently had back surgery – neither of them could readily come up with excuses as to why they don’t have time).

I pitched this series to an agent last July, finished it plus synopses on the next two in the series, and sent the package to her in late October. She candidly admits she won’t get to them until January, but requested an exclusive nonetheless. That is pretty much the state of traditional publishing for us no-names today. Take a year to write one and plot out two more, send them away and wait 3-4 months for your rejection.

So why bother with the traditional route at all? Trust me, I’m not wasting time. One of the things I’ve learned about self-publishing is that the more titles you have available, the more each one sells. I probably made a mistake publishing my first two so far in advance of my third. But the process takes as long as it takes, and I won’t cut corners just to get them online faster.

Nevertheless, I’ve started a series of novellas specifically for Kindle’s Singles. These will be around 25,000 words … that’s about 70 pages. This is a fantasy series starring Spirit Cat – she is the gods’ attempt to understand what the hell went wrong when they created humans.

I hope to have 3-4 ready to go next year, and that will increase awareness of my name on Kindle. Then, assuming Bear in Mind is rejected by traditional publishers, I will put it online by spring. By then, I’m pretty sure I can have Bring to Bear and Bear at Sea ready before the end of the year.

Sounds dangerously close to a business plan, doesn’t it? Now if I could just get myself geared up to twitter and Facebook with any frequency.