In exactly four weeks, I’m leaving my day job.

Gahhhh, it’s official! Well, blog-official. It’s been work-official for a month and a half because I always give excessive notice, and it’s been life-official for more months than that because I am the queen of agonizing over change. In the end, if you’re lucky enough for life to present you with options, you’ve got to pick something and stick to it. Time to move forward… the samtastic way!

This decision came with a lot more agonizing than usual. I love being an archivist. I love organizing old documents, learning useless local history trivia, and helping researchers find answers. Every day is full of little mysteries! I’ve made people cry with joy! I’ve been spontaneously hugged! (Sidenote: don’t spontaneously hug your archivist.) And I only ever made it into one book acknowledgement page, dangit.

But, barring financial emergency, the archivist career is going on hold for a few years and I’ll be focusing on the home front. The hubby’s been working the night shift for about eighteen months and will now be moving to a day shift, so hey, I might even see him once in a while! And though childcare is far more intensive than my day job ever was, I’m going to eagerly embrace the chunks of free time I do get to focus on the writing career. And, you know, enjoy my babies.

Since I’m a hopeless workaholic, you know I’ve got a battle plan, not least of all the recently mentioned Plan of Agent Attack. (Note to agents: not really an attack.)

To Do List:

• Finalize the Grand Agent Submission Spreadsheet
• Finish polishing Book Submission #1, a.k.a. my western/fantasy mashup full of cowboys and mermaids and a living earth that chucks people loose if it doesn’t like them, generously peppered with observations about cultural identity and commitment.
• Put it on submission!
• While that’s on submission, polish up Book Submission #2, a.k.a. my more conventional fantasy full of winged warriors, a working class rebellion, and the difficult process of overcoming a long-term manipulative relationship.
• If Submission #1 fizzles out, go back to the top of that spreadsheet with Submission #2.
• Start working on the next book!

The next book has been on my backburner for two years. It had a pretty solid outline from the get-go, but it was narrowly edged out by the winged warrior tome last year and now I’m impatient to get back to it. This one is a weird portal fantasy about the forest where lost things go, full of bow women and taxidermy and all the different ways that people process grief. But don’t worry, it still has some laughs!

I’ve got a couple other projects bubbling in the pre-outline stage, i.e. loads of unorganized notes that are rapidly taking on the shape of plot. One is an epic fantasy involving an army of golems versus an army of the dead, and mothers who will do whatever it takes to make sure their kids are the ones who survive. The other one is a Mad Max-ish dystopia taking place on an Earth that’s been partially terraformed by aliens, following an unlikely duo who’ve been cast into the wild and are trying to break into a human colony to obtain desperately needed healthcare. (That second one has suddenly become…too real.)

Even less well-developed, but no less niggling at my brain, is a knight-in-shining armor fantasy based on medieval French romances, which lemme tell you, were full of cross-dressing and social commentary and magicians being dicks, all of which is sadly left out of the average Arthurian screen adaptation.

And that’s not all!!

Gah, why can’t I just abandon sleep entirely and work an additional eight hours per day? I WANT TO WRITE ALL THE THINGS. SPECIFICALLY, ALL THE VARIOUS SORTS OF FANTASY THINGS.

Anyway. That’s what I’m going to be up to for the next few years. What’s on your docket?