One Last Ode to “The Time Has Come”

My novel is out in paperback this week.

Sometime in the next three weeks, I will turn in the first draft of my next, currently untitled novel to my editor at Harper Books.

I’m almost there.

This is the second book of a two-book deal with Harper, signed in the wake of How Lucky’s success, that I’m hoping will grow into another two-book deal, and then another one, and another one, hopefully until I or my editor dies. I have come up with a reliable routine for writing these. Every other year, I start a book on Labor Day and finish it by Memorial Day. After I turn it in, I spend the rest of that year editing it, fixing it, packaging it, all the things you have to do to get a book ready for publication, and then it’s ready for release by the following May. Then I spend four months promoting it before starting the next one by that Labor Day. Again: Hopefully this will continue until I shuffle off this mortal coil. It turns out that I enjoy writing these. I think I’m getting better at it too.

You will be hearing a ton about the new book in the coming months, perhaps more than you will even want to, and at some point I may…