Well, it has actually happened--my second book, Starting the Colt, is out! It even arrived earlier than expected from the printer. Now it's time to take off my writer's hat and put on my marketer's hat--not my favorite hat. I'd much rather be spending more time with my cowboy hat, but that's not going to happen for awhile, what with winter cold and snow. So it's a good time of year to be selling books in my spare time.

I am an introvert--I don't enjoy publicity or the process of publicizing my books, but I am trying to balance the side of me that would prefer to remain invisible. Every time I take a load of books to the post office, the rewards of marketing outweigh the challenges. Starting the Colt is now at the library and available in over half a dozen stores across northern Nevada. I just barely got it in at the Western Folklife Center in Elko before the week of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

My hard-working publisher, Janet Muirhead Hill, at Raven Publishing, has Starting the Colt up on Amazon.com, both as a paperback and as a Kindle book. She has been so great to work with--promptly answering my many questions, always making good suggestions and guiding our projects in the right direction.

As I have been subbing, I have shared with students the progress of my book in its journey toward publication and had a few opportunities to give mini-author talks or short readings. I love talking to students about reading and writing.

Other projects include tweaking my website (www.janyoungauthor.com) and placing the curriculum unit that I wrote last summer on TeachersPayTeachers.com. I have spent the past month and a half familiarizing myself with TpT--the products, the descriptions, and the process of formatting and uploading a digital product. Here, teachers can easily access the CU for an affordable price, and even download a free introductory mini-unit. Visit my TpT store to find "STARTING THE COLT Curriculum Unit Common Core Aligned" and "STARTING THE COLT Mini-Curriculum Unit Common Core Aligned."

The good news: I finished the curriculum unit for Starting the Colt! A combination of hard work and fun, it could also be a slave driver, taking over my summer and pushing aside other things I wanted to do. But I had set a goal of finishing by the start of school, when I begin work of another sort, and there is satisfaction in reaching my goal. I also feel a burden has been lifted from my shoulders, freeing up my time for other things, or even, nothing! I try to keep projects from becoming my master, stealing my ability to relax and do what I want.

The bad news: Starting the Colt won't be out in paperback until early 2014. We tried to make 2013 work, but life just wouldn't cooperate. There was a chance it could happen late in the year, but I learned from my first book, The Orange Slipknot, that a late-in-the-year release has marketing disadvantages. Many lists, awards, reviewers, etc. will only accept books published in the current year, so a late release makes it difficult to take advantage of many of those possibilities. With subbing and teaching piano, I only have so much spare time to spend marketing, and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. I believe it will pay off in the long run to be patient and make a wise marketing decision. If you just can't wait that long, the ebook is available on Smashwords and Kindle!