Author: Jonathon

This is the last trip I will make for Aunt Bev. I knew Uncle Jessie was ill, so we were able to go see him when he was still able to visit for a few hours. It was a good visit. For my aunt the first that most of us knew she was ill was that she was in the hospital getting, last I was told, a quadruple bypass. She never recovered from it. So the last thing I can do for her, is go today, with my family, and pay our respects. It’s a three and a half hour drive one way, but that’s close enough. We’ll drive down, do the viewing, and drive back. Truthfully, the trip, like the funeral, is for the ones she left behind. My Uncle Toots had been married to her for nearly fifty years; forty-eight or forty-nine. Another uncle and aunt were unable to agree on which, and since that was before I was born, I couldn’t break the tie. I was not going to call up Uncle Toots and say, which year were you married? Not a question for now. But whichever year it was, that is a long time to be married. I can’t really imagine one of them without the other. I’m sure my bewilderment is nothing compared to my uncle’s, or their two children, and their grandchildren. I know what it’s like to loose a mother, I’ve done it twice, so I understand some of the grief, but not all. Grief is too personal, too intimate a pain.
Aunt Bev was one of the few other people in my blood family that read. She didn’t read the same kind of books I did, but she read. The summer that I stayed at their house, she took me to the library a lot. She, like all of my family, never argued with my choices in books. No matter how odd. She was kind, and she was smart, and I didn’t really know her. She was Aunt Bev, and I spent more time with her when I was a child than I did as an adult. You grow up, you get a life of your own. Aunt Bev and Uncle Toots lived in a different state from the rest of the family, so when we visited Granny, they weren’t Johnny on the spot. So there are other relatives that I saw more often. But Uncle Toots and Aunt Bev took me on their family vacation one year. Their kids, Denise and Bret, were a year and two years older than me, respectively. So my aunt and uncle went on a car vacation to the east coast with three teenagers in the car. This was in the days before portable video players, or iPods. Bret did have a tape player with something either headphones or an ear piece. I read. But, at some point they started threatening to throw my book out the window. I’m sure I did more accidental irritating things to them. Three teenagers in a car without any portable electronic amusements; not a peaceful way to travel. We had a good time, all in all, but I’m sure we drove my aunt and uncle a little crazy. We went to one of the Carolinas, I honestly can’t remember which one. I saw the sea for the first time. It was leaden and gray, and cold. I remember being disappointed. But I appreciated the trip, because it was the only trip I ever went on that wasn’t to see relatives. It was the only trip I was ever on, until college, that was just to see somewhere new. They had neighbors that had moved there, and they were visiting them, but it was a vacation, not a pilgrimage on the altar of family obligation. It was new places, and new sights, and things we’d never done before.
Now, one last trip to see Aunt Bev, though, of course, we aren’t seeing her. She’s not there anymore. I told Jon that I’d like to visit some people before they go in a box. I think I’ll make that part of the new year’s resolutions. But this one, I’m hoping to keep.

Well, it’s official 2006, thank God, thank Goddess, pick an appellation for Diety. My own family has now lost three people this past year. My grandmother, who raised me, I know that I’ve mentioned here. I believe I also mentioned my uncle who died of cancer very suddenly this spring. Now, at the end of the year we lost my Aunt Bev. Very sudden. We’ll be headed out of town for it tomorrow. I was talking to my Uncle Monk, and it was he that pointed out what a rough year it has been for the family. It has.
2005 was a funny year for us, and for the country, I guess. What went well, went very well. What went badly, went badly. Some of it not as bad as it could have gone, God knows, but bad enough. We had some close friends that survived some rather harrowing medical problems. We had emergencies that didn’t go as badly as they could have; no one died. So all in all, not a bad year.
It was an amazingly good year for business for us. Both Anita and Merry continue to sell beyond any dream I once I had. Doing this well, I am now setting my sights higher, because that’s what you do in a career. You do as well as you can then try to figure out a way to do better. We signed a deal with Hollywood, at last. Jon and I are doing the script. A new adventure opens up. The fourth Merry Gentry book came out; A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. I wrote two books this year; MICAH and DANSE MACABRE. The first was the very first novellite. Too long to be a novella, but not long enough to be one of my novels. DANSE MACABRE is the thirteenth Anita Blake novel. Amazing that I’m that far in any series. All the Merry books and all the Anita books since we went into hardback have hit the New York Times list. Like I said, business is good.
Jon, Trinity, and I, are doing well, personally. We are healthy, happy, and every year Trin gets more interesting and more of the person she will be. I could talk about the family deaths, and how that effects me, us, but I won’t. It is enough that we are well, and I’ll leave it at that. Now, I’m going to find all the new calendars and put them up in their various spots. The Airedale terrier calendar goes on my office door to remind me to be courageous, to never give up, to have fun, and that I am safe. The Cobblestone Way calendar goes in my office. It’s the one I use to keep track of page count. I’ve used this calendar for years, it just pleases me. The pug calendar goes in the kitchen as the family calendar. Trin has a calendar in her bathroom that she uses to keep track of things, but I’m not sure she picked one yet. And the last calendar goes in the master bath; a songbird calendar. It comes with a CD of the bird songs for each month’s bird. Don’t ask me why I put a calendar in the bathroom, I’m not sure. But I know that the birds remind me to keep it light, and that there is beauty and song, and joy, even when things aren’t going so well. Different birds can remind you of different lessons; it can be surprisingly helpful each month’s new little bird. Anyway, that’s the calendar rundown. I actually bought a few more, every since that one awful year when no calendar in my office made me happy with the book I was doing. Heck, I think that was the year, or year and a half that I wrote A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT and INCUBUS DREAMS. I must have gone through nearly a dozen calendars on my wall, and door, and nothing made me happy for more than a few days. I even tried a Penguin calendar. It may work for Anita, but it didn’t work for me. I do buy it every year for her, like a gift I’ll never be able to give her. Funny, I guess.

I edited the first chapter of Anita 14 this morning, but when I tried to do the outline a funny thing happened. I now have chapter two done, and notes on chapter three. I am not intending to write this book right now. I can’t. Merry 5 is next in the deadline schedule. But damn, I have nearly forty pages of Anita 14. Apparently the book is ready to be written. I guess I should have expected it. For one thing I’ve finally had enough of a break from work that the writing is pushing at me again. Pushing at me not with deadlines, but with the pressure, or need to write, to create.
But also, the plot of this book was the Edward part of DANSE MACABRE. I had to take the part that brought Edward to town out when I realized just how much other plot was already there. DANSE MACABRE was over a thousand pages long, can you imagine if I had tried to keep in the plot that needed Edward to come back Anita up? The book would have been impossibly large. But just as it’s left me with more type-written notes than I’ve ever had before I started writing a book, it also means I know what happens for most of the book. There’s no sitting at the computer and wondering what happens next, or how to work in that clue, I know already. I think that is one reason that I now have two chapters written, and that they’re both almost twenty pages a piece. It’s cool that it’s writing so fast, but it’s not next. Interesting problem.
I’m hoping that part of the renewed urge to write will transfer to other projects. I am hoping, very much, that when I sit down to start Merry 5 next week that the pressure of creative juices will be there for that book, too. It would be nice. But my fear is that just like with DANSE MACABRE that this Anita book is ready to write, ready to go, and that I will somehow damage my creative flow by jumping to a different project when I’m doing almost twenty pages a day. One of the many issues with doing two series for me. Merry was supposed to help me rest from Anita, so that I could come to both series fresh. But in some ways writing is writing and work is work. Even I cannot truly rest from one series by writing another. I needed to rest that part of me that gets ideas, and needs to put them on paper. No matter how much I enjoy a book, it is not the same thing as taking a break. You’d think it wouldn’t take me a trip to Italy to figure that out, but it did. They say travel broadens the mind, but for me, it just let me see my life and work from a new angle. I’ve come back refreshed and renewed, but still puzzled on how to juggle two series without damaging the flow of either book. It is a puzzlement.
Tomorrow morning I’ll give it another try to do the outline, but I’m betting I’ll come away with chapter three. Hard to complain about that, but I’ve got to start on Merry. Strangely, I’m excited about starting the next Merry book, too. Though, because I’ve only done four books in her world, the characters are not as real to me, the voices not as strong, so the press of them is not so loud in my head. Somewhere around book eight, BLUE MOON, is when Anita and the gang got very loud and clear in my head. It will be interesting to see if the same is true of Merry and her crew.
In fact, I’ve had two ideas for other series that have nothing to do with Anita or Merry’s world, and oddly enough, they, too, have been clearer in my head. Characters, world building, images, scenes, plot points, swimming through my head. Though, I did try and sit down and write some detailed stuff on one of the ideas and it was hard. New world, new characters, always a little difficult at first. Anita and I are like a well-oiled machine; we know how to work together. The two new worlds will be years away. One isn’t ready to write, and the other there isn’t time to write it, now. Two series is more than enough. And yes, I haven’t forgotten that my first book, NIGHTSEER, was supposed to be the first of four books. Sometimes I think I will go back to it after Merry is done, in about a decade. Other times I’m not sure I can go back and finish the story. Just is there are some books that appeal to you as a child, or teenager, but when you come back to them as an adult they do not fill your heart the same way, I fear that books that you write yourself may be the same. That perhaps the time to write my first series has come and gone. I don’t know, all I know is that it does not speak to me. The characters do not knock on the door of my subconscious. They did once, and no one cared. The direct sequel was rejected, and NIGHTSEER, itself, did not sell well enough initially. My success with Anita and now Merry has kept NIGHTSEER in print. In fact, the people that rejected the sequel came back and sort of hinted, or maybe asked, I can’t remember anymore, if I could finish the series. But it was years later after the Anita books had really taken off. By that time I was committed to Merry and Anita, and there wasn’t time or energy.
I’m going to go try and organize some notes, either Merry or Anita. I do not edit on screen. I still edit and organize on paper. The screen is not real to me, paper is real. Early experiences with computers taught me that on the screen can go away and be beyond retrieval, but printed paper I can carry with me, and I know where it is. Jon has finally convinced me that the memory sticks, or whatever they’re called, are secure, and will hold lots. But it’s only been in the last few months that I trusted to it. Once a technophobe . . . but, hey, I’m working on it, okay.

I finished the first chapter of the next Anita book. Once I’ve edited it, and finished a rough outline of some of the major points then I can ship it off to New York, put a copy in my file system, and the decks will be cleared for me to concentrate on Merry 5. The chapter will be there waiting for me months from now when I get finished with Merry. I’m off to bed now.

Today Trinity is at a friend’s house for a play date. So today is the first day back to work for Jon and myself. And for the rest of the staff, too. Jon is back to work on the first draft of the script. We’re actually reversing the process that I do on the books. I do a draft, or several, of a book before anyone else looks at it. Of course, all I’m wanting is someone to tell me if it makes sense, or if my dyslexia has kicked in I’ve used the totally wrong word in a sentence. (Spell checkers won’t catch it, if the word is a real word.) For Jon and I, it will be a true collaboration on the script. Jon seems to have no trouble taking the already written book of GUILTY PLEASURES and turning into a script. I have terrible trouble seeing it as anything but a book. First draft of a script, which we experimented with for an afternoon, that, I’m faster on. I love creating something out of thin air. Jon seems much better at taking what is already in existence and turning it into a script. I’ll look at it once he’s got a draft, because all I can see is the book. I find that when Jon has it in script form, it looks like a script to me, but I could not have put it in that form. Funny that.
What am I doing today while Jon works on the script? I’m still clearing the decks for the next book. I went through a lot of the papers, old versions of scenes from DANSE MACABRE that will never be used in any book. Scenes that just didn’t fly. They have been shredded, or will be soon. The time intensive paperwork is the scenes that didn’t work for this book, but may work for the next one. Characters too, that will work better later. Those I’m saving, and I’m trying to find a way to file them that is actually useful. The story idea files work. When I don’t know exactly what to do next I use to go through the story idea file, full of bits of paper, sticky notes, and pages from old writer’s notebooks. When I was shopping for what to do next this system worked well. I tried to expand this system to Merry idea file, and an Anita idea file. It seemed like it should work, but it isn’t. At first, I thought it was because it was too disorganized, so I divided the Anita files into narrower and narrower topics, giving them each their own folder. It didn’t work, because writing a book is not that easily delineated. The scene with Meng Die overlapped with some of the Requiem scenes. The information we learn about some of the new vamps from London overlapped with a lot of scenes. I write entirely too organically to divide everything so cleanly. I also found the outline format they teach in most classes to be almost useless for me. Some writers swear by them, I’m more likely to swear at them. The character interaction is too complex to be divided up into neat bites.
I actually have purchased large, hard-sided, three ring binders. I hate three ring binders, never liked them at all, but due to the fact that the last Anita book was divided in it’s plot. The mystery that was supposed to be in DANSE MACABRE will actually be the entire plot for Anita book 14, untitled as of yet. So a lot of the notes are very pertinent. I can’t file them, because filing makes no sense to me as a way to construct a book. I can’t put dozens of type written pages up on the wall. It’s too bulky, and sticky notes are one thing, entire chapters another. So in a bid to find a method to help me organize that works for me, and how I write, I have the binders. I’m going to try and separate the notes in sections for different characters, or scenes, or maybe just first third, middle, last third, climax. Maybe that would work better than organizing by character or scene? Maybe? Maybe. Why am I changing how I work after nearly twenty years? Because I have never had a book plot that I knew so much about ahead of time. I have never had so many pages, and notes that are actually part of a book, and the next book at that. Well, the next Anita book. I will actually be doing the next Merry book next-next.
Because of the amount of paper, I actually kept redoing scenes that I already had written out, because I didn’t remember writing them. I would write a scene and find it in the files in a slightly different version, but not much different. The last Merry book took longer than I’d hoped, and Anita was chomping at the bit to be written, so I made notes. That took some of the pressure off and allowed me to concentrate on Merry. I find that when I have that pressure of another work in my head, that I need to take an afternoon and just write out the notes, or the chapter, because it frees me up to go back to the current book. The novellite MICAH was like that. The story interrupted DANSE MACABRE early in the process. I wrote it in like two weeks, two glorious weeks where the muse was driving me hard. I’ve never had anything that long come out so quickly. Of course, usually two hundred pages is like the bare beginnings of a book for me, so maybe I’ve had some two hundred chunks write this fast before, but because the book wasn’t done, I didn’t notice it.
So, I am drowning in notes, characters, and I have to organize it so I can clear the desk off and start on Merry number 5, untitled as of yet. So I’m giving myself the rest of this week to organize the notes; at the end of this week what isn’t organized goes in t he Anita drawer. I’ll sort it out later, because my deadline for Merry 5 is not getting further away. I also will finish the first chapter for the next Anita book, so that months from now I won’t sit down to a blank screen. I actually have entire chapters written in the next Merry book; scenes that just didn’t have time for in SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT. But what I thought was the beginning scene is actually been pushed back a little, just from rereading the first few chapters of MOONLIGHT. Merry being a continuing story arc, much more than Anita, has had some of the same organizational problems for me as DANSE MACABRE and the untitled next Anita. So I’ll be trying the binder system with Merry, as well. We’ll see. I’m hoping the binder will allow me to go through and glance at my notes in a more user friendly way. Whatever the file system has failed me, so as my worlds and characters get more complex, I need a more flexible and visual system. The sticky notes work because I can look up and see them. How to do that with dozens of pages of typed notes? We’ll try the binders.

Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa. Sorry we missed the start of Hanukkah by a day. But everyone enjoy their holidays. I so don’t get this whole being insulted because people say happy holidays and not Merry Christmas. Contrary to what some people may think you can’t actually tell by looking at a person what faith they follow. I have a lot of friends that are Christian, and none of them are insulted by being bid happy holidays. It seemed like a nice compromise so that you wouldn’t be in the embarrassing moment of wishing Merry Christmas to someone who was Jewish, or Happy Hanukkah to someone who was Christian. There are lots of religions out there to get confused with this time of year. Some years Ramadan also falls around this same week, and then you’re really struggling on what to wish anyone. But don’t we all agree that Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and Christmas, are all holidays? Can’t we at least agree on that much? Besides, if you were hitting it correct for our faith it would be Happy Yule, or Happy Solstice. Plus there are all sorts of civil holidays that happen around this time of year. Boxing day in the U. K. It’s a U. S. public holiday. It was the Emperor’s Birthday in Japan on the 23rd. New Year’s is just around the corner. I’m sure there are holidays in other parts of the world that I’m missing. So Happy Holidays everyone, and remember that most of these holidays have one common theme; we’re supposed to love one another, or at least tolerate each other. Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards everyone.

Its now officially Christmas.
Happy Holidays from All of Us at LKH Central.

Two additions to the unmerry Christmas list of movies: “The Blue Carbuncle” a Sherlock Holmes Christmas mystery, and The Vicar of Dibley’s “The Christmas Lunch Incident.” The Vicar of Dibley is a very funny series. The Christmas episode is the one that we saw first and made us order the rest of the series. Sadly, I’ve only been able to find it on VHS, not DVD. Sigh. The vicar special is actually one where no one dies, and it’s heart warming, very funny, and very feel good. But somehow, strangely, it’s still not on the traditional list of holiday specials. It just feels subversive, somehow.
The turkey is in the oven, the cook book is open to the sweet potato recipe, raisins and dried cranberries are soaking in boiling water for the stuffing, and while we wait for the turkey to cook Trinity and I are baking cookies. ‘Tis the season. Happy holidays.

‘Twas the night before, the night before, Christmas. All through the house many creatures were stirring most of them furry and canine. Oh, hell, I call this parody for lack of patience. Jon and I have been sick for two out of the last three days, and I have to say that probably exercising in the middle of it was not my brightest move, but I’d do it again, I think. We usually feel better when we exercise. If any of you are feeling as Grinchy as I am this year, I have some alternate Christmas theamed shows for you to put into your DVD player. Things that will help you embrace your mood and still be festive, sort of.
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas with David Suchet. “The Christmas Party”, another murder for the holidays, this time with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. If you do not know who I am referring to, then get a Rex Stout book, quickly, and cure your ignorance. It’s one of our favorite mystery series. There are other not so merry holiday movies, but I’ll leave you with this one; Bell, Book, and Candle. It’s not about murder, but it is about the supernatural, and love, and not love, and cats, and it has Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in it. It begins at this festive time of year. A romantic and scary Christmas, just up my alley. I’ll recommend one short story, and one book, to complete the unmerry list. “The Festival” by H. P. Lovecraft, and THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper. The Lovecraft story has long been a favorite of mine, and Cooper was out long before J. K. Rowling ever dreamt of Harry Potter. THE DARK IS RISING is actually supposed to be the second book in the series, but the first two books can be easily read out of order, and this is the book that sold me on the series. It is magical and heartwarming and scary and awe inspiring. It is one of the few books that I will reread periodically, just for the pleasure of the words and the story. Some books you like to take off the book shelf and wrap around yourself like a favorite blanket. Something to comfort you when your spirits are low. THE DARK IS RISING is such a book.
Enjoy my unmerry Christmas list; I do.