Over time, followers of this blog have learned a lot—and probably more than they want to—about the publishing process. In other words, when all you really want to know is what time it is, I keep right on telling you how the clock is made. This is one of those times, and here we go again.

After I submit a manuscript, I sit on my hands and wait for the first step in the editing process—the editorial letter. After my editor reads the manuscript, she (with two exceptions over the years, all my editors have been female) sends it back to me with corrections inserted (for my approval or disapproval) along with suggestions about changes in the story itself. Once I make said changes and return the manuscript to New York, guess what? I get a paycheck.

Literary advances are broken into several pieces. Payments arrive on signing the contract, on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript (the D&A payment), on hardback publication, on paperback publication, and a final payment six months after the paperback pub.

I could probably go back in the blogs and find the exact date when I was told that the pub date for Smoke and Mirrors, was being pushed back until March of 2027. That meant the editorial process along with my payday were also being deferred. That’s when I buckled down and wrote The Taken Ones, the next Beau book, in one hell of a hurry in order to make sure that, for the first time in 40 years I wouldn’t have a new book coming out. The manuscript for The Taken Ones went to New York on January 29.

Even as I sent it, I had an idea that the long-delayed editorial letter for Smoke and Mirrors would suddenly show up at approximately the same time as the one for The Taken Ones. Sure enough, the Smoke and Mirrors letter arrived in my mailbox at 10:10 am on February 6. I started work on it that very afternoon.

That involves going through the entire manuscript, word for word, and making all the necessary changes, including not only the ones the editor has suggested but the additional ones I find on my own as I go along—the places where I repeat words within the space of a few lines; the times when my syntax turns into a garbled mess. That takes total concentration, and I worked at it hour after hour all weekend long—starting early and going to bed late. With the exception of the Super Bowl, (Go Hawks!) I ignored whatever was on TV.

Doing the editorial work after such a long pause was interesting. The story was so compelling that I found myself doing exactly what readers do—telling myself, I’ll do just one more chapter and then I’ll go to bed. Yesterday morning, however, at 7:52 and with eighty pages to go in Smoke and Mirrors, the editorial letter for The Take Ones arrived. Not wanting to derail my concentration on one book, I kept right one working.

In Evie Busk’s household everybody had to clean their plates before leaving the table, and so, leaving that latest email sitting there as new, I finished those last eighty pages. At 12:02 am this morning, Smoke and Mirrors went back to my editor in New York. Writing this blog is my literary version of taking a deep breath. Right now it’s time to make breakfast. After that I’ll finish getting today’s steps—43,888,949 so far. Then, after a 2 pm appointment, it’ll be time to be off to the races with The Taken Ones.

You can file this one under “No Rest for the Wicked,” I suppose, but the good news is, I’ll have two incoming paychecks instead of just one.