Guest Post: Time Between Books by E.J. Copperman

It has been quite awhile since Mr. E. J. Copperman was last here, but please welcome him back to the blog today. He has been very busy the last couple of years. We may share the worry gene, but he has been far more productive.

 

Time Between Books by E.J. Copperman

I’m waiting at the station

I can choose my destination

I’m a free soul

I’ve got no chains

But it’s a long time between trains

--Susan Werner, “Time Between Trains”

The only thing that’s worse than writing is not writing.

There was a time, not many years ago, when I was writing four mystery series at the same time. People would marvel at that and ask how I could possibly keep it up, but I honestly enjoyed it because it kept my mind occupied and if I ran into a wall on one book I almost certainly had another to think about and clear my brain.

Because the publishing business is, you know, a business, I now have one series. Witness to the Persecution is the third in the Jersey Girl Mystery series from Severn Books, and if it’s not in your bookstore or your library now it will be shortly. The fourth in the series is in the editing process as we speak, and after that… we’ll see.

Now in the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone – absolutely everyone – has experienced some sort of disruption in their life. Some are tragic and impossible to shake off. Others, the lucky ones like me, have had some degree of inconvenience and not a tremendous amount more.

But what I have found in this insane time is that I need to be writing.

When the pandemic sent everyone home to lock the door and not come out, I occupied my mind by writing – count ‘em – five novels. Not all at once. I filled my agent’s inbox with two possible series “pilots,” two standalones (unusual for me) and one that could go either way. Don’t be rushing to a bookseller in pursuit of those; they have not be purchased by publishers. Yet.

Oh yeah, and a middle grade novel too.

After a while adding more inventory to the pile just seemed excessive. I didn’t have any can’t-miss ideas that I couldn’t wait to sink my synapses into, and there was the matter of the aforementioned Jersey Girl Legal Book #4, which I made sure to get to the editor a mere two months early because what else did I have to do?

I might not be the greatest writer in the world, but I’m fast.

After that last one was sent in, and with no contract in place (again, yet) for a Book #5, I had nothing to write. And my family knows that when that’s the case, you tiptoe around me. I don’t get mean but I’m anxious and testy. I don’t like being around me when I’m not writing so you can imagine what it’s like for other people.

Time between books isn’t great for me. I worry about politics, about aging (something I’ve been doing at an alarming rate), about family members and about the baseball season. Don’t get me started. I’m a first-class worrier. And when there’s no story to occupy me my mind will, as Paul McCartney once put it, “go wandering.” It doesn’t often go to nice places. My life is actually pretty good, all things considered, but go tell that to my mind.

As of this writing I can’t update that situation, but I have every confidence in my agent and he has plenty of books to peddle, so I think something will happen soon. And I’m not quite as desperate to get something going as I was in the darkest days (like a month ago).

I have this new idea, see, and it’s not ready to write yet but I’m working on it. 

E. J. Copperman ©2022 

E.J. Copperman is the author of the Jersey Girl Legal Mystery series, with the latest book WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION arriving any minute (officially April 5 but who really knows). The books follow Sandy Moss from her “safe” job as an assistant county prosecutor in New Jersey to Los Angeles, where she thinks she’s going to be working on less stressful things like divorces. But somehow she keeps having to defend accused murderers in court… www.ejcopperman.com