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I’m listening to Nine Inch Nails, the song “Sunspots”. I love the line, “We’ll make love in the fire and spread all the ashes around,” don’t know why, but it seems to say something to me about love and lust.
I’ve thought of a lot of things to blog about tonight. That we just finished watching the Disney movie, ENCHANTED, and it was great. All three of us highly recommend it.
But what I meant to blog about earlier in the day was that I’ve started the next Anita book. Yes, BLOOD NOIR, is the next Anita book and it’s safely in New York getting ready to go through the final part of the process so you can all have the book the last week of May.
I’m over half way done on the Merry book, SWALLOWING DARKNESS. That’s nice, over half way done. I’ve found my stride, at last. The scene I did today was fun and frightening, beautiful and horrific. It was a Merry moment. I can’t tell you much about it without giving away some very major plot points. I’m in the end game on the book, so I can’t share. Sorry. I just wanted to reassure everyone that though I’m blogging about Anita, Merry is well in hand.
I’ve been giving myself permission, if I finish the deadline pages early enough, to write on anything I want later in the day. What’s been wanting to be written is Anita. I’ve never actually written two different books in two different series at the same time before. I’ve written one, and edited the other, but I’ve never attempted this much first draft of two books simultaneously. I wasn’t sure it would work, but since the next Anita book is due at the end of November, it’s not like the work will go to waste.
I loved the first two chapters of the Anita book yet to be titled, but then I bogged down. I just couldn’t seem to bridge the next scene. I put it away for a few days and just concentrated on Merry. Then an idea came to me, or rather a way to get Edward on stage earlier, at least by phone. So, chapter three was Edward on the telephone, and it worked. Now Anita is on the ground hunting vampires out of state and Edward is there. Olaf is on stage, and I’ve even brought back a character oft requested that was also in OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY, yep, Bernardo. It’s like old home week.
I almost didn’t do this book next since we spend most of BLOOD NOIR out of town with just Jason. I didn’t want to do two books in a row where we’re out of St. Louis with less than the full cast. But this was the book that needed to be next. I’ll go days and not work on it, because some days it takes all day to do Merry, but more and more often I seem to be able to work on both. The voices are strong, not crossing, and the supporting cast is unique to each book. Knock on wood, so far, so good.
I actually work at one desk in the morning on Merry, then change to another desk and the second computer in the afternoon for Anita. I’d been doing different music, too, but today I didn’t. Today, I had my musical score from the main play list all day. I’ve only found that I can’t write Anita to Sarah McLachlan, and I can’t write Merry to Audioslave. Other than that, it was cool.