News

It was a rabbit hole. So I threw out a days work(albeit a small amount) and started the scene over. Works better and it doesn’t derail the main point of the scene. I find it very difficult to blog during the process of a book without giving too much away, or being accused of teasing with hints. I’m not teasing, I’m simply working under the burden of keeping surprises secret. I’d love to be able to talk plainly about the book and plot, but people just can’t keep a secret, or worse yet, begin to pick the book apart on the internet before I’ve even finished the bloody thing. I actually received cover copy for DANSE MACABRE already. I hate getting cover copy before I’m finished with a book. Years ago I got the cover flat, a flat cover, for the one Star Trek Next Gen book I did. I had not even gotten half way through the book. I was ahead of schedule, but they worked even faster. I remember holding that cover flat and thinking wow, the artist really did use what I suggested. In fact, if I’d known he’d give me everything I asked for in the picture I’d have asked for more. This was like my second or third book, but I already knew that no one listens to writers about covers. I have more clout now, but for years and years, like most writers, I was at the mercy of others. But I held that cover flat, and measured the spine of it with my fingers, because I knew that my book, still not finished, had to fit within that spine room. By doing the cover first, they had dictated the size of the book. It costs money to redo covers, and I was a very new writer, filling in for another writer that had missed a deadline. They would not redo a cover run for me, just because I got long worded. I held that pretty cover flat in my hands and thought well, it’ll be this long and no longer. I had some unbelievably short period of time to finish the book, like I said, I took the opportunity to fill in for another writer who’d dropped the ball. I couldn’t afford to let the spine size weird me out, but I never quite forgot that the book had to fit within that space. It left me with a permanent dislike of getting pieces of the book, like cover copy, before the book is finished. Once upon a time I was ahead of schedule, but that was long ago when the books didn’t come so damn close to a thousand pages. My goal next book is to try and figure out how to make the books shorter. I’m not Dickens, I don’t get paid by the word. Most best selling writers average around four hundred pages per manuscript. Mine are double that, and with two series going at once, well, you do the math.
I hear that Grisham takes six months off between books, must be nice.
(Truthfully, I’d go mad if I didn’t work for six months, but a month off would be nice.)