Susanna here, for my regular third Friday post.
An Infamous Marriageis my third published book, and I’ve been thinking lately about how much my life has and hasn’t changed in the two years and change since The Sergeant’s Lady came out.
On the surface, my world doesn’t look that different. I’m still not at a point where I’d feel safe in quitting my day job, so Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 5:00, I’m focused on the glamorous world of academic research administration.
My coworkers all know I write, though sometimes they seem surprised that I’m still at it. It’s as if they think that after a book or two, I would’ve gotten the writing urge out of my system.
I’m confident in saying that won’t happen. I started writing at age 8–a highly derivative tale of talking horses in a Narnia-like fantasy world–and I look forward to many more years of storytelling.
What has changed is that now I have two careers. I thought I was treating writing as a career before I sold, but it goes to a different level once you add all the business aspects of being an author. Contracts, royalties, tax records, promoting your new release while you work on edits for your next contracted book and simultaneously draft the book after that, etc. I love it, but I’d never claim it’s easy. I sometimes joke that Mr. Fraser and I form a three-career household.
Since I’m still in the middle of my blog tour, commenters on this post can enter my grand prize contest. At the end of the tour, on December 6, I’ll be giving away a $50 gift certificate to their choice of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell’s Books to one commenter on the tour as a whole. You get one entry per blog tour stop you comment upon, so check out my blog for the whole schedule!
Over to you. Let me know what you think of the cover or of romances involving the Battle of Waterloo, or tell me what’s keeping you busy these days. If you wish to be entered in the drawing, include your email address formatted as yourname AT yourhost DOT com.
Hi, Susanna. Can I say I love the cover for An Infamous Marriage?
I’m laughing about those coworkers thinking you would get over the writing thing. Some people don’t understand it’s an obsession. Even though the last part of my mess-in-progress is giving me fits, the idea of quitting is even worse.
I don’t think there’s a cure for this. 🙂
If you started writing at age 8 and are still doing it, it’s just part of you and not something you gave a little try or thought would be fun for a change. Perhaps your co workers don’t know you well enough to see that… It’s a great cover & I absolutely love the color of her dress 🙂
devapajo at gmail dot com
Gorgeous cover and added the book to my wish list. I love stories like this, the convenient marriage and then he comes back… As to your co-workers, they haven’t learned that as soon as you clear out one cast of characters, another takes their place…and sometimes the next shows up early clamoring for attention. 🙂
I haven’t read any books about the battle at Waterloo yet, but I think it would be very interesting to read because I live in Belgium so it would be very close to home for me.
LOVE that cover, Susanna! And I am looking forward to reading An Infamous Marriage as I won a copy when you stopped by History Hoydens! Thank you!
I had to laugh at your coworkers thinking you would be cured as if you had some dread disease. Reminds me of the scene in Becoming Jane.
What is she doing?
Writing.
Can anything be done about it?
I think a lot of non-writers sort of vaguely feel it would be a good idea to write a book someday, but can’t imagining scaling up to think how nice it would be to write 40-50 books someday. 🙂
Stefanie, I’m planning to visit Belgium in 2015 for the 200th anniversary of the battle.
I enjoyed your post and I really admire anyone who can sustain more than one career, especially one as demanding as a writer’s. I think having one job is quite enough, although I have worked two when I was younger, so I know it’s a real challenge. I think the cover of An Infamous Marriage is gorgeous and very eye-catching.
Barbed1951 at aol dot com
What do I think of romances that involve the Battle of Waterloo?
I love them.
I wrote some, too. My Three soldiers series all involved Waterloo. Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress followed the battle very closely and I tried very hard to fit the scenes into the sequence of the real battle. It was great fun to do that.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love the premise of An Infamous Marriage. It is in my TBR queue in the Kindle.