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Hey, everybody. I’ve been off the Christmas music for nearly five days now. I didn’t write about it, because I’ve spent a day here and there, and had to go back to the Christmas music because I wasn’t getting anything written. But day five and I’m doing good. Though for some reason Tori Amos is not the music for this book. I’m actually listening to Fiona Apple’s first album, Tidal. Two days of that and I started alternating with Poe’s first album, Hello. If you haven’t picked it up, it’s great. Some very cool songs on it. ‘Hello’ is good, but my favorites are ‘Trigger Happy Jack’, ‘Angry Johnny’, ‘Dolphin’, ‘Junkie’, and ‘Fly Away’. I’ll buy an occasionally album for one or two songs, but most of the time I gotta really like an album. Especially to write to it. The Fiona Apple album doesn’t have a single song that I don’t like. some better than others, but nothing leaves me cold.
So I’m back to writing to non-Christmas music now that it’s less than three weeks away. Ironic, isn’t it?
I can now stop referring to the book as the new Anita book, and give it a title. Incubus Dreams. I’ve had that title on a sticky note in my office for over a year before I ever sat down to write this book. When I wrote those two words I didn’t even know it was a title. I thought it might have been a short story, but the longer I walked past it, the more I thought no, title, and book, and finally, this book. (I put my sticky notes on walls and cabinets, places I can see them. I find just seeing them daily helps me not forget them, and helps stimulate the imgaination.)
I’ll tell you how well the book is going. I came up straight from breakfast and getting the kiddo on the bus. I walked right up to my office and just sat down to write. I know exactly what I’m writing today, as I’ve known for the last few days, and that seems to be the trick on this book. I need to know what the days work is going to be, no vaugeries, but very specific stuff. Today I get to fill in a blank in the newest chapter and we get to see Jean-Claude on stage at Guilty Pleasures for the first time. Yes, you read right. Now, he doesn’t strip, far too declasse for him, but he finds his own way to entertain the crowd. Oh, yeah.
I know that the next chapter is either Anita raising the dead, or the next murder scence. It depends on when in her night Zerbrowski calls. Before or after the zombie raising. But see, I know my whole day. I was so excited to get to it that I forgot that today is Tuesday and we have allergy shots. I get three every time I walk in the door. Fun, fun, fun. And that is said with as much sarcasm as I can put into it. But the shots are helping, and in five years we can stop. Yeah, you heard me, five years. Jon and I have had to make a longer term commitment to our allergy treatment than most people make to their marriages.
But my point is that I’ve got to runaway and get ready to do allergy shots. I just forgot. The book is cooking and it tends to swallow the world, in a good way. My favorite part of writing is when the book gets to this white hot intensity. When you wake up first thing thinking about it, go to bed at night with it, and walk around during the day with it bumping inside your head, tickling across your skin. Jon and Darla are used to me staring off into space in the middle of a conversation, or suddenly vanishing from a room to make a note. They’re happy to see it. One, it means the book is really going well, and two, I’m grumpy when the book is going slowly. I try not to be, but I am. But right now, gotta go get shots. Bye for now.