I’m planning on releasing my first book this summer. That’s a big milestone I’ve been building up to for a long time. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve written and discarded on the way to this, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve changed my mind about going through with self-publishing.

But now I am going through with it, and I want to achieve at least a moderate level of success. That means making back the money I’ve put in at first and then earning more farther down the road, once I have more books out.

That brings me to my greatest dilemma. I have a lot going on in my life. I’m going to engineering school, I’m working, I’m trying to get things ready to move, and I’m trying to launch my writing career. On top of all that, I suffer from bipolar disorder and anxiety. There’s only so much stress I can put on myself before it becomes potentially dangerous.

When I look at a lot of self-published authors, I see that they’re putting out three or four books a year (sometimes even more). I’d love to be able to write on that kind of schedule. I’m a very productive writer when I’m actually writing, but I am not able to write every day due to my many other commitments. As such, I think I can put out one book a year, maybe two (but I’m not going to hold myself to that).

I’m trying to keep any kind of time pressure of myself. It will only push me beyond safe levels of stress and likely result in an inferior novel. So I’m going to set my goal at getting one book out a year. Since I have already written the first drafts of all the books in World of Chains, I anticipate the schedule being a bit quicker at first.

It may work out well enough that I can spend more time writing once school is over. I still have 2.5 years to go (including this semester). Of course, that’s assuming I don’t decide to continue my studies in graduate school.

I will try my best to get new material out there quickly because I know I like that kind of productivity as a reader, but I’m not going to promise any set number of books per year apart from the one I think I can do without putting too much pressure on myself. Beyond that, it will depend on how much time I find to write between my other commitments.

That being said, I still anticipate a summer release for Empire of Chains. If all goes well with editing, I hope to have the second book in the series, The Shadowed Land, out sometime around Christmas, but we’ll see how things shape up.

I do want to keep everyone updated on what’s going on with my writing. One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, is great about doing that, and I find his way of approaching his writing career is inspiring to me. Obviously, I’m going a different route with self-publishing, but I still think I can approach my career in roughly the same way.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to get more details soon on the release for Empire of Chains. I won’t really know until I have the cover art finalized, which won’t happen until June at the earliest.