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Finished work at 2AM went to sleep at 3AM. Alarm sounded at 6AM. Getting up after only three hours of sleep was brutal. What was worse was the fact that the current book I’m writing, Bullet, the June Anita Blake novel, was still not finished. Days and nights of punishing page counts and hours and still the end eludes me. I sit here at nearly 5PM and am still not done. I have a chance to be done tonight before dawn if I can find the stamina to do it, but I honestly don’t know if I have another late night in me. Jonathon, my husband, and Carri, my good friend and assistant, are both staying up with me as they did through the ends of Flirt and Divine Misdemeanors. It’s wonderful that they take turns helping me with technology and hot caffiene, but it means that none of us are getting any sleep. Usually this kind of schedule is a day, two at the most. I’ve been doing 10PM to 2AM as my stop time for work for weeks now. There are a few nights that I didn’t. We had a funeral two weeks ago, and that took some energy out of my muse and me. We we were away for three days to promote Flirt. I enjoyed meeting and greeting everyone at the signing. We loved visiting with Jennie Breeden of “Devil’s Panties” and Happy Goth and their fellas, but it was three days lost when the book was at a white hot heat. I’d finally gotten my feet back under me after the funeral and was running with the book. A day away near the end of a book and the heat cools for me. Three was deadly.

But the deadline loomed and I whipped my muse and me to get back to work, and work we did. We’ve done more pages than I care to keep track of at this point. So here I sit listening to music loud to help keep me awake and aware. I keep rereading the pages and they read well. Over the years I’ve found that my mood, my level of tiredeness, or restedness, has almost nothing to do with how good the pages are. I’ve written great stuff while weeping hysterically at the computer mired in grief and misery. I’ve written sad pages when I was happy in real life. Happy pages are harder to write when I am, personally, unhappy.

I knew I was in the zone for Bullet when Sunday after the gym when Carri and I came outside I was startled to see the snow and have it be cold. It’s summer in the book, and I’ve reached that magic moment when Anita’s world is almost more real than parts of my own. I keep her and her imaginary boyfriends in my head like a song that keeps playing in my head. I know the tune, the words, I know this song. I really like this song. But like it, even love Anita and the gang, I’m tired. I long to be done the way you long for a long lost lover to return from a trip. I need sleep, and time away from the computer. I need to replenish that part of me where the muse lives and my ideas grow. We are all tired my muse, my characters, and me. It’s like a marathon where I see the finish line, and I give it that one last burst of energy giving up all my reserves to make that last push, only to find that the finish line has moved just a little farther away. So that I sit here and I’m afraid to hope that I could actually be done tonight. Afraid to hope, and knowing that I am almost done. Damn it, but I am, but will one more night of punishing work get me to that finish line, or will I see 3AM again and still get up a couple of hours later with the book still stretching before me? Fuck, I hope not.