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We’re home, home to stay for awhile. It’s not that meeting everybody out in Arizona wasn’t lovely, but it’s good to be home, and know that we don’t have another plane to catch the next day. If I could just get over my dislike of air travel, it would all go so much smoother. Oh, well.
We are saying the last good-byes to INCUBUS DREAMS. The manuscript is off again to New York. We’ll see it one more time after this, but for all intents and purposes it’s over on my end. Jonathon still gets to do the proofs in detail, and I get to make a quick look at them, but that’s it. Now is the time to take down the last few sticky notes that still cling to the wall above my computer. Some of them will go to the Anita wall, and wait for another book. Some of them didn’t get used this book, and won’t ever get used, so into the trash for them. I get to erase my big white board, which was a Godsend during the rewrite. A few notes will be transferred to permanent sticky notes and put on the Anita wall, but most will simply be erased. Most have been used in the book at last, and can be gone.
I have already begun the first chapter of the next Anita book. Lucky thirteen. One of the last things I do at the end of every book is to write the beginning of the next one in the series. I do that for both Anita and Merry. The voice and world are never stronger, clearer, than right now, at the end of it all. So I open up a new file and begin again. Sometimes just notes, or plot outline, but most of the time a few pages, a true beginning. I always have an easier time later down the road when I’ve actual begun. Notes just aren’t the same thing for me.
I will do one more reorganization of my notes and stuff of the first chapter of Anita 13. I think I figured it out on the plane, what I want in that first chapter. No, I can’t give you a hint, because it would give things away that happen in INCUBUS DREAMS. The first chapter of book thirteen gives things away, too many things. So no hinting, except to say that it will certainly be a different beginning for an Anita book.
Sorry for the tease, but much else and I’ll give away too much.
July 1st is the day I’ve put down to start the next Merry book. A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. My goal for the blog is to literally write a short note every day, or every other day, and talk about the actual process from day one. We’ll see. I fear me that there will be days where all I’ll want to say in the blog is more pages, or not enough pages, or oh, God, not another sex scene. But maybe not, maybe I’ll be able to explain what I’m doing better than it actually seems to explain in my own head sometimes. We’ll see.
Right now, the dogs are scattered around my office. Sheryl Crow is singing on the CD player, and tomorrow I will take down the remnants of INCUBUS DREAMS, make my last run at the first chapter of the next Anita book, at least until months down the road. The day after that, I’ll probably take some time off. Time to play with my kid, and visit with our friend, Greg, that’s coming up from Texas. Then probably on July 1st, I’ll actually pick some of the sticky notes off the Merry wall and put them over the computer. I may make some notes, but I think it will be a prep day. Who knows the muse may strike, but I think a few more days of bubbling in the back of my head will help the beginning. This is one of those books that I made only notes and outlines for it, not actual pages, and I’m regretting it. I’m regretting that I didn’t write actual pages when I finished SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT. Lesson learned, not just notes, every again, but only actual pages. I was just so behind on deadlines, that I rushed. But you can either take your time at the beginning or end of a project, but the time has to be paid one way or the other.
Probably the actual writing-writing will begin on July 5th, a Monday. I usually prefer to start a new book on a Monday. The beginning of the week, fresh, new. I’ll see you there, at the beginning. Interestingly enough because I didn’t write pages, but only made notes about this Merry beginning, it means the blog will actually start with the real writing. You will be there from the moment I choose the first sentence, to the moment I write the end. (No, this does mean that I will be writing the book online so you can read it as I go. It means exactly what it says, I’ll talk about the process.) Tori Amos is singing on the CD player now, and since, if I have a musical muse, it’s her, I’ll sign off. Bye for now.