Good News, Bad News

The bad news is simple and straight forward: I had hoped to release Sol's story, A Dark & Stormy Knight, in December. That's not going to happen. 


The why is the good news. Or at least, it leads to the good news. 

Instead of releasing a new book, I'm planning to put my house on the market in December. Yeah, it seems like an odd time of year for that to me too, but the Seattle Times says there are more buyers here than houses on the market. The local realtor I spoke to swears it's true. In fact, he says if we price it right, I should have multiple offers inside of a week.

This is good news since I'm constitutionally incapable of keeping a house in show condition for an extended period of time. (An affliction many writers suffer.)

I've also been in this house for 20 years, and in keeping with my pack rat genes, a three bedroom house with a garage has offered me the opportunity to keep far too much stuff, so I've been going through everything, deciding what to get rid of and what to keep, and packing the keepers (20+ boxes of books now sit in the garage), listing a few things on Craig's List (like my 20' ladder because I will never again own a two-story house), donating what I can, and tossing the rest.

Argh.

This is such a big job.

The living room is a disaster as we speak.Mostly because everything passes through it either on the way to the garage our out the door. At the moment, it's dominated by empty boxes. I actually think I have more of those than I need. Sort of an embarrassment of riches. In a strange way.

Decisions weigh me down. When to schedule the handy man? And the window washers (courtesy of Living Social)? Will the house show better if I vacate?  In spite of what the realtor says, I suspect so, since a single chair in the living room doesn't exactly scream "homey." If I do vacate, where would I stay? And it's winter. My move will take me over two mountain passes. Very possibly two snowy mountain passes. Should I pay a moving company or just rent a large U-haul? If it were summer, I'd do the latter, but driving a big truck on slick, snowy roads? Yeah, not my idea of a good time. When I finally get to Boise, where will I stay while I find my own place? And that's just a sampling of the decisions that need to be made.

Sometimes all these decisions bear down on me, and I feel like it's all too much to coordinate. 

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Once it's all done and I'm ensconced in Boise, if things work out as I'm hoping they will, I'll be writing nearly full-time. Which is wonderful for my productivity. Knowing from experience as I do that, if I can eat, sleep, breath in my story world without the distractions of a 40-hour a week job, I write better stories and I write them faster. And I have so many stories to tell.

So if my McKnight fans can be patient now, it will pay off later.

And if anyone has any tips or thoughts about making a move like this, I'd be delighted to hear them.