So there’s a little more than a year to go to the February 2010 release of the first Assassin book (the wait is killing me too!). A lot of people wonder why it takes soooo loooong for books to be published, so I thought I’d share a rough timeline of the major events that have happened since I first got the idea for the book until you guys can go to the store and buy it next year. Here goes:

Sometime around 2003 and 2004 (I think): I have an idea to write an epic fantasy novel about an assassin. I start writing said book, realize it’s crap, and start again. I start two or three more drafts, none of which are very good. Eventually, I put the idea aside to work on other stuff.

October 2007: I’ve finished everything I need to do on Hot Mama (the second Bigtime book) and have a break in my writing schedule. I’m itching to write a new series, and I remember that half-finished, craptastic, epic assassin fantasy I started. I decide to change it to a modern-day setting and make it an urban fantasy. I send that proposal and several others to my agent. She thinks the Assassin proposal is the best and suggests that I focus on that one (which is good because that’s the one I really wanted to write).

December 2007: I finish the first Assassin book and send it to my agent to read.

December-April 2008: The agent reads Assassin and suggests some revisions, which I do. We go back and forth a couple of times with suggestions/revisions/etc. Other people also read the book and offer feedback.

May 2008: The agent sends Assassin to an editor. I try to work on other things while I wait for news (waiting is definitely the hardest part of this whole process for me).

June 2008: The editor gets back to my agent and says that she loves the first half of Assassin, but thinks that the back half needs to be totally scrapped, which is a major, major revision. The editor calls me, and we talk about the book and the series. Her suggestions are spot-on and help me look at the book/series in a whole new way. Basically, I throw away the last 50,000 words of the book and take the story in a completely different direction.

This is really the major turning point of this whole process. Without this conversation, I doubt the book would have turned out as well as it did. But more important than that, the editor’s suggestions made me focus on what I do well and made writing fun again. Her ideas made the book into a fun, sexy, action-adventure Jennifer Estep book, instead of me trying to write a more angsty-type of book (which I don’t do very well).

Mid-July 2008: I finish the revisions. My agent reads and loves the revisions and sends the book back to the editor. I start writing the second Assassin book to keep myself from obsessing (too much).

August-September 2008: The editor who suggested the revisions loves the new take on the book and makes an offer for three books. My agent also gets another offer on the Assassin series. At this point, there are lots of e-mails and phone calls going back and forth between me and my agent, and my agent and the interested editors discussing the various deal points, etc.

September 2008: We go with the first editor who suggested the revisions.

November 2008: My editor tells me that there will be three Assassin books out in 2010 — February, June, and October. Which I think is pretty cool since the first book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Coming up in 2009: I’ll get cover art at some point, do a final round of revisions, do copy edits, and read through the page proofs for Assassin. In late December/early January, some reviews will start coming in. And then in February 2010 — about seven years after I first had the idea — you guys can actually read the book.

So that’s a brief recap of the history of the Assassin series. So yeah, it’s a long wait, but I really think it will be worth it. I guess we’ll find out this time next year! 😎