After, “What are you calling it?” one of the most-asked questions I get about my writing is, “So, have you started anything new since your last book?”

Often the answer shocks a lot of people, because it’s not that I’ve started anything; I’ve finished something, turned it in, and I'm working on something ELSE.

My fifth novel, Spires of Stone, was released September 2007. When I'd get this question around that time, I'd get the reaction, “But didn't your last book just come out?!”

Well, yes. But I didn't finish WRITING it in September. Trust me on this one; I’m not some Super Woman who whips out a book in three months flat (HA!!!! It’s hysterical to even think that, especially when you factor in the research involved in a historical novel.)

So to set the record straight, here’s the scoop on how this publishing time line thing works:

In a nutshell, it takes a whole lot longer to get anything through the pipeline than most people realize. The LDS market is much quicker than the national market, but even here it simply takes time.

Here’s what a typical manuscript goes through for me: First I draft the book. Then I revise it several times, giving it to my critique group and revising again. When I think it’s polished enough, I submit it to my editor. From drafting to submission This process can take a year. A little less, if I'm lucky.

Then it goes out to three different readers who fill out a huge evaluation form with something like a dozen pages or more. This process generally takes two or three months. For a new writer trying to break in, the process can take much longer, since current authors with my publisher get priority in getting their stuff out to the readers.

If the evaluations are favorable and the editor feels the manuscript is strong enough, it’ll be brought to the committee. (If not, it might need some revisions first). Committee is where the final publication decisions are made. Once a book is officially accepted, four months or so may have passed since submission. In my rejection days, instead of four months, it could be nine months or longer before I'd get an answer.

Then comes the fun of edits: a content edit and likely at least two line edits as the manuscript ping pongs between me and my editor. This can last weeks or months. (In the meantime, I'm trying to research and draft the next book.)

After that are the proofs. Again, several of them, some done by me, others by hired proofers. By the time the book is sent to be typeset into the final galleys (so it’s formatted and printed on the page just how it’ll look in the final book), I’m ready to burn the thing. I can practically recite the book in my head, I’m certain that it’s awful, and if I ever read another word of it again, it’ll be too soon.

Generally I'm somewhere around a third of the way done drafting my NEXT book when I enter the proofing stage with the one that's been accepted. Proofing can be a couple of weeks or an entire month or more.

Once the book is finally ready, it’s sent off to the press. Getting the final copies printed and warehoused takes a couple of months, and then shipping them to stores takes more time.

The upshot is that if the entire publishing process takes less than ten months, you’re very lucky. So you submit one book and get to work on the next.

To give you an idea: My fourth book, At the Journey’s End, was submitted December of 2005. The very next month I began working on what would become Spires of Stone. At the Journey's End came out that September (2006), and I submitted Spires of Stone that December. Spires came out the the next fall, 2007.

With book #6, the waiting game will be even longer. The book been accepted (check my gallery for the photo taken of the Manti temple, the setting for the book. The new title is "Tower of Strength."

I began it more than a year ago, submitted it back in December of 2007, and it won't hit shelves until spring 2009.

We'll probably start the editing process in a month or two. So in the meantime, I'm (of course) drafting my next book. (A contemporary novel this time, about five wives whose husbands are deployed. I'm having fun with it.)

The delay feels a little weird at times—here I am promoting and talking about one book that written at least a year ago, when I’ve been living and breathing (and very excited about) a different book that I've been drafting during the same time.

But for readers, of course, it feels immediate. They don’t know when you wrote the thing, submitted it, or, most likely, how long the editorial/publication process took.

But know you do.

And so it goes . . .