Haywood Micaye: The Second Edition

Hello, all! 

Yes, I’m being serious. Haywood Micaye is getting a makeover, and I’m going to talk about that and more in this month’s blog post. I’m also going to tell you how you can get a copy of the new release for free if you bought the first edition already!

So without further ado… Let’s talk.

January was an exciting month. I finished the first draft of my second novel, a project I attempted completing off and on all summer before really committing to it for NaNoWriMo and working on it from there. At 112,372 words and 299 pages, it is by far the longest piece I have written to date and I am still ridiculously proud of myself for completing it.

I’m taking some time to distance myself from the project so I can jump into editing with fresh eyes, so these last few weeks have been taking care of some life things I have been putting off (hello, housewide deep clean!), along with taking a bit of time to really reflect on my career as a writer.

I have been watching a lot of videos by an author named Alexa Donne, who maintains a YouTube channel and is also a big name behind Author Mentor Match, a program that pairs aspiring authors with established ones to guide them in the right direction (my aspiring friends: if you have a book-length manuscript you want to get published, I urge you to look into this!). Alexa is a candid and fairly transparent author, and her videos discuss the realities of the writing business in a way that I don’t see a lot of other people discussing it. That, paired with some of the posts I read on a pretty prolific author group on Facebook have made me step back and really reflect on where I want my career to go.

When I look that my work as a whole, from my Budding Bards pieces to Haywood, there are things I would have loved to do differently. But, ultimately, I don’t have any regrets about the way things have gone or the opportunities that have opened up for me because of the choices I have made. That being said, I have come to the realization that if I really want to achieve the goals I have set out for myself with my writing, then I have to be more serious about it now than I was before. And so I’m using Haywood Micaye as the first step in doing that.

Looking at the book now, a little more than a year after I published it, I don’t regret doing things the way that I did with it. However, I know that if I want to get more serious with my work, there are things with Haywood that I should have been doing ages ago that have probably hindered my ability to move forward.

So, that brings us to the second edition.

I’m doing a complete rebranding of the book, for lack of a better term. So, we’re doing some tweaks to the outside cover and some big changes to the story inside. The second edition of Haywood Micaye will be much of the same story as the first but expanded and with some new details that went unmentioned in the first edition. I’m working closely with a copy editor and my cover designer to make sure we’re delivering you a great new product, and I’m very happy with the results of our work.

The second edition is going to be released on April 3rd, 2020. Preorders for the ebook edition will go live in March. I honestly haven’t set a date yet, but keep an eye out around the start of March for more information. Like the original launch, print books will be able to be purchased from launch day onward.

 For those who purchased the first edition, I am willing to send you a free copy of the second edition in whatever version you purchased it in initially as a kind of “thank you” for your support. All I ask is that you send an email to haywoodmicayefree@gmail.com telling me which version you purchased along with a photo of your order receipt and I’ll send you the information you’ll need to redeem your free copy. 

 You are under no obligation to do this if you want to just buy a copy of the second edition outright, but I knew that if I was going to do a second edition that I wanted there to be an option to show my gratitude to the folks who have taken care of me by buying the book.

And speaking of gratitude, I want to thank you all for the millionth time for supporting me in my creative endeavors and recognizing that though it’s taking some time for me to grow, I am learning and getting better every day.

I will be the first to admit that I am probably doing a lot of work that won’t have much of a payoff until a later time, but it makes me feel good, and I guess at the end of the day if I am the only one who is satisfied with the end product, that is enough for me.

Looking forward to April and beyond with you all.

-Ashlynne