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Got eight pages done today. Yea! I’ve finally got my minim page count. I got my butt to the computer by 9:00 A. M. Since I knew I had a business meeting this afternoon, it gave me even more incentive to get up and get moving. Frankly, eight pages has tired me out. I’m hoping after we get through this section, we’ll pick up speed.
Now, I’ll answer another question I got frequently on tour. Why the sex in the books? I think I got tired of killing things. I think I just wanted to do something a little more life affirming than murder. For those of you who would rather see dead and mutilated corpses instead of happy naked people; sorry. Have no fear, there will be more carnage, and more mysteries to solve. But frankly, as a writer I’m more interested in my people’s emotional lives and happiness than in catching the bad guy. In interviewing people, this change of interest is sort of a reflection I’ve found in talking to real policeman. As a rookie, you love putting the bad guy away, you love the chase and catching his ass. But somewhere around ten years in, many of the guys and girls, start to wonder if it’s worth it? I mean, there’s always another crime to solve, always another sick bastard out there. It’s like trying to clean up a nuclear disaster with a mop. You can clean as hard as you’re able, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference, and you’re getting eaten up by things you can’t see or understand. You just get tired of the horrible things people do to each other. Sometimes you get a second breath, a renewed sense of purpose, and you remember why you wanted to be a cop in the first place. But even the guys who get a new enthusiasm agree that coming home to the people you love becomes more important than solving the crime. You do your job, but you also begin to want to come home alive to your family more than you want to catch the bad guy. When you’re young, nothing seems as important as solving the new case, rising up the ladder, getting that one case that will do it for you. A decade in, you don’t get the buzz you once did off the violence and the solving of it. I found myself doing the same thing. The violence just isn’t the rush it used to be. The mystery isn’t the rush it used to be. I’ve always been a more character oriented writer than a plot oriented writer. I’m hoping that DANSE MACABRE cleared the decks in the personal department. So far the new book is more mystery and danger oriented. But for every one of you guys that wanted to know why so much sex in the books, there were a dozen or more, that would ask for more sex. Eventually, we’ll get the arduer under control enough to be able to do a more straight forward mystery plot, and then I’ll have people complaining that there wasn’t enough romance, or sex in that book. Sigh. There is just no way to make everyone happy, in the end you should make yourself happy, or your characters happy, and let it go.