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I’m almost finished editing STRANGE CANDY. I just need to do the dedication and acknowledgements. I just did that for DANSE MACABRE, so I’m kind of left wondering what to say and how to say it. There are already small introductions to each story, and an intro to the collection itself. What’s left to say? Not sure. Part of it is that it’s the end of the work day and I’m tired. Maybe I’ll leave the dedication and such until tomorrow morning. Probably wiser. But once that part is done then I can ship the manuscript off to New York. I’m even a few days ahead of the deadline. Very cool. I’ve got an e-mail interview to do, then I start editing MISTRAL’S KISS. It sounded nifty to have four books coming out in a single year, but somehow I forgot to figure in that whole editing process. It’s not just writing them, but the rest of it that is making this year an interesting one. I will be spending most of the year with one book or another trading places on my desk. Once I get MISTRAL’S KISS off to my editor in New York, then I can finally settle down to writing on the next Anita book. I will be seeing DANSE MACABRE one more time, or is this the last pass through? I know I’ll be seeing MISTRAL several more times as the editing process goes forward. I’ll be seeing STRANGE CANDY at least once more, if not twice. What have I forgotten? Is that it? I guess so. MICAH is out, published, so the first book of the year is the only done deal. It’s nice that something is done.
Usually books crossing over each other drives me nuts. But, strangely, not this time. I think I’ve finally made peace with the fact that Merry and Anita books collide. The short story collection is a one time deal because I don’t have any more short stories. This is it. I may write a few more in the coming months or years, but it’ll probably take another twenty years before I have enough for my own one person anthology. I’m up in my old office, as opposed to the new office which we haven’t moved into yet. MISTRAL’S KISS is the last book I will finish here in this room. It’s a little sad, but the new office is the office of my dreams. Except for no ocean or lake front view, other than that, it’s darn near perfect. So I’m excited about moving into the space, but a little sad about leaving this one. I’ve already started on the next Anita book, so it was begun here, in this space. But it will be finished in the new office, unless I get some muse-driven explosion of pages. But I doubt seriously I will finish a five hundred plus book in two month’s time. We will either be moving into the new space in late May, or early June, or sometime in July after we get back from tour. Come to think of it, if we don’t move until late July that would be the rest of April, only a week, May, June, and July. Three months might see me to four hundred pages, I’ve got a hundred done, but not with tour in the middle of it. No way. The editing went well today, and I’m feeling unduly optimistic. Tomorrow reality will set in, and I’ll realize that I’m looking at end of August or September, or even October, before the next book will be done. But today the sun is shining, the temperature is perfect, and the mockingbird has been serenading me all afternoon. Jimmy and Phouka my two oldest dogs are settled into their beds, sleeping. Old dogs really know how to sleep. I finally closed the windows, and I’ve got Christmas music on the player. Which either means I’m depressed and don’t know it, or I haven’t picked the next music to write to, and Christmas music is sort of a comforting default.