News

Okay, the title of this post says it all. This was our day yesterday. First, the hot tub broke. The workmen are here fixing it now. Second, the door knob fell off my door. I tightened the little screws, but couldn’t actually figure out how to get the pieces back together tight enough to hold. Jon has now fixed the door knob. Third, the water filter on the kitchen faucet broke too. In the middle of filling the kettle for Tea. Fourth, a file that I had Jon rename went missing. Logically, it had to be there on the computer, somewhere, but I could not find it. We had the copy Jon had made, so we duplicated that, and I have two identical files with different names which is what I wanted.
One file will be the next Anita book. The other file will be notes and plot outline, mostly a list of incidents that I know need to be in the book. Yes, it’s that time again. Time to write, at least part, of the first chapter of the next book. Anita’s voice is so loud at the end of months working with her, that I always do the beginning of the next book, so that months down the road I will have a start, and not have to face the blank screen. Eek. I do the same thing for Merry, most of the time. I always regret it when I skip this step, because it makes my job harder. Writing a entire book is hard enough, I don’t need to complicate it.
Yes, yes, you do need to know what book is next is going to be about. With Merry, it’s easy, because it’s all one really big plot. Anita is harder, because there are more choices, but the end of one book usually still leads me to the next, sort of inevitably.
Though, I was surprised by the book that stepped up. I was all set to do Book A, when Book B tapped me on the shoulder. I thought, well, I haven’t really started I’ll try Book B for a few pages. I was having trouble getting Book A’s first chapter anyway. Well, a couple of hours later I had ten pages of Book B. When I sat down last night for a just a few notes, I ended up with seven more pages. This book is ready to go, chomping at the bit, actually. Good, except for that whole need to write Merry next. SWALLOWING DARKNESS is also chomping at the bit, or was before I had to leave it to finish up BLOOD NOIR. I’m not sure my muse and I much care which series we work on, as long as we get to do some first draft, and don’t have to get trapped in edits.