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!