Sometimes it’s just the season. Sometimes the bug just gets you and you can’t stop the flow of words onto the screen. My hands are getting older. I feel it now. And I’ve begun to form bad habits with my fingering of the keyboard. I’m probably down to somewhere around 80-85 words per minute, when I used to be over 105 consistently. That’s okay. I’m older now. But I can’t help wonder how much more I could get done in a day. I had a day of 12,600+ words last Friday. That was significant. Not record-breaking, but worth consideration, to be sure.
And it’s not on the book I told you I finished. Day of the Dogwood is still awaiting my time. I got through about a third of my editor’s paperback and ran across a sentence that spurred a thought. And I couldn’t stop myself. I had to get to work writing the next one. You see, it’s all fitting together so nicely. Things I hadn’t realized about the Dogwood book, or had forgotten entirely, were coming back to mind. And they made sense for this new story I was writing. Like it was destiny. As if I had known this was going to be the reason they happened there was just to be able to bring them back here.
Yeah, it seems like magic.
Even to me.
I have no idea whence these ideas come. Surely from my imagination. But I’m not walking around consciously aware of all these elements. I literally start writing a scene and don’t know what’s going to happen most of the time. The room and the characters tell me everything I need to know. And it works. I haven’t used plotting as a heavy-lifting tool in any of my ten books.
I think this one is going to be special though, because I will introduce two young characters who will grow up to one day take over my universe. If you’ve been with me since the beginning, you’ve walked alongside Callie since she was in her mid-twenties. Now she’s approaching mid-fifty, as if she’s been living right beside us these last thirty years I’ve been writing. And I guess she has.
I introduced you to Shawn in A Flutter in the Window, as I felt it was time to bring in new characters. Someone new to take the reigns of saving the world. I am very fond of her. She’s exactly the personality–fear of death notwithstanding–who will be able to carry the weight of the gargantuan mission just over the horizon. And I can’t hide it forever: she meets Callie in Dogwood. That was an unexpected treasure for me. I always loved both of them so much and would love to see them get to work together. So when Shawn walked into a bar in Miami and met the blonde woman at the hostess stand, I was as surprised writing that as my long-timers will be reading it.
So. Great. You get to put your two favorite protags on the page together. Who cares, Spacey? And I agree. What you want to know, is is there a mission for the two of them together? And the answer is a loud, resounding hell yes. Remember Project Red Bell? Remember what Walter did to the Sigismund Ring at the end of that book? And do you remember the scene where Callie pulls an object from her pocket at the end of the book and says, “Well, I’ll be damned.”? Yes. There’s a mission for them. And it’s strong.
THAT is book ten.
I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say this to give you a little taste, since you’re here. Since you’ve earned it. I owe you something do I not? Well, while I will likely never dabble in mythology (ala Douglas Adams in The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, God rest his soul–and I did love that book in the end) I do respect its place in modern lore. The particular story I’ll point you to is that of Orpheus and Eurydice. A sweet and lovely, but haunting tale. Orpheus went to the underworld to bring Eurydice back to the land of the living.
While this story is finding its way through my hands and onto the keys, I am officially pausing in my edits of Dogwood. I don’t think that will take any longer than a few days once I get back to it. But I can’t deny the creative spark. If I try to push it off, I’ll put it out. And I don’t want to lose it. Not for this story. This is the tenth book. There’s something magical in that alone. It deserves a good chance at coming to life.
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