The short answer to that question is ‘because I have a ton of stuff I could publish.’
The longer and much-more-revealing answer is ‘because like a lot of people right now I am thinking I could die a lot sooner than statistics would lead one to expect and therefore why wait to release these things.’
That sounds really overly-dramatic. I am generally very healthy, subject only to periodic allergy attacks and the occasional cold (and, of course, hot flashes). I have the incredible luxury of being able to work from home while commuting is contraindicated. I have a very small zone of contact. The only human being I’ve been in the same room with since mid-March is my husband. But we are in the midst of an historic public-health emergency, and shit happens.
That’s really why. Even if no-one in the world ever buys any of my books, getting them out there feels like doing something. It feels like an accomplishment. There is not a lot I will be leaving the world otherwise. We don’t have kids, and the work we do for a living isn’t the kind that gets recognized.
The writing itself has always been for my own satisfaction. I don’t need to sell books to pay the bills (which is a good thing) and I don’t expect to ever make a profit (though I will be speechlessly delighted if, at some point, I do). But I am - obviously - not the person who will write a book and then stash it in a drawer (or a folder on my computer) and contentedly call it Done.
And thus, there is a very high probability that there will be another blitz in the near future. There’s simply no reason not to, as far as I can tell. As I write this post, at the end of July 2020, I have three completed novellas sitting in the queue with three completed novels. All I’m waiting for is cover art. There’s another novella and five more novels at various stages of composition. I’ve actually been pushing myself to do novel-length work because 30 already-published novellas is A LOT and since the flow of inspiration shows no sign of abating I might as well apply it to longer work.
The novellas are so much fun. They are fast to write, which means I get that dopamine happy-chem reward from finishing at regular intervals. (Call it a bookgasm.) And there are a lot of romance stories that don’t require a full-length-novel treatment. I don’t want to be forcing an extra 30,000 words of Dealing With Conflict (or whatever) simply to call something a novel. I want the love story.
The two novellas that I’ve expanded to novel length (EXPOSURE and BEAT) featured main characters who had genuine relationship-balking issues. At novella length, the resolutions were rushed, and a lot of character explication got left out. It is not beyond the realm of conjecture that I will go through the backlist again and mine those 30 novellas for another expansion. However, at this moment, with all that work-in-progress, it seems unlikely.
Prepare yourselves: I expect to publish four more novels this year. Let’s hope we’re all around to see it happen.