Goofing Off in Paradise

What a summer! Generally played hooky for three months, fiddling with the jungles surrounding my house some might call my perennial gardens and played enough golf to keep me going for months. The weather was too gorgeous to sit in front of a computer screen all day.

And now, with the first snow forecast to fall tonight, I return to writing the next great American novel as I face down the grim reality of encroaching winter. It's not that I mind winter per se, it's just that I find six months of gloom and cold and gray a bit over the top.

I'm really pumped about the novel I'm working on now. With working title, Mudder, it'll be a fun read when I finish. Unlike my first two novels, this one is going to be light on research, especially compared to Pestilence which forced me to relearn genetics and biochemistry and to spend countless hours grinding through research papers and books on the subject of prion diseases. The research for Mudder will be limited mostly to researching family annihilators as the book opens with the protagonist discovering her beloved brother swinging from the chandelier after, apparently, killing his wife and two young children. Of course the protagonist doesn't believe her brother is capable of such a dastardly deed, but hey, all the evidence points at his being the bad guy. But enough for now: I don't want to spoil the ending.

I'll probably have to sleep with the lights on and all the closet doors in my bedroom firmly closed once I get into the really scary chapters in Mudder. I just finished writing the sixth chapter and hope to finish the first draft by late winter. Then the real work begins as I sort out the plot, timelines and fix what will be dreadful writing since I just spew the idea out without worrying too much about the end result. Kinda like I do when I first sightread a new piece of music: no matter how bad it is, I try to keep going until I reach the end.

Writing, I find, is kind of a 24/7 proposition - you're always thinking of character arcs or dialogue or plot twists. Some of the greatest ideas -- read as in twisted and evil -- pop into my head on my daily walk with my dog. Hope me and the puppy can continue slogging through the snow to keep that steady stream of ideas coming. I'll let you know.

Enough with the snowdog picture. How depressing is that?

Hopefully, within a few weeks (See? I'm an optimist.), my gardens will look more like this - that's barring drought, more hard freezes (guaranteed) and insects and marauding deer.

I've been crazy busy practicing. My brother and I and two of my percussionist sons are playing Symphonic Dances from West Side Story next week. I've never played jazz before so this has been quite the challenge starting with my believing that transcribing it from a score written for two pianos to a score for four hands one piano would be a piece of cake. Well, zillions of hours and eight rolls of scotch tape later, I realized that I had taken on a lot more than I had planned for.

And then the rehearsals commenced: pretty close to the most frustrating experience I've had since deciding that writing novels would be easy. But the good news? We have our final rehearsals starting Monday, play on Thursday and I'm very confident it's going to go well. (That's me talking myself into not running away to hide.)

My second novel, "Plagues: The Sequel" has been out for the last couple of weeks with my beloved beta readers. I've received very positive feedback with some great, doable, constructive criticism. One reader felt I had to tone down the sex - Where's the fun in that? It was fun writing it (I giggled a lot to myself) and I think it's a hoot reading it, but I understand where they're coming from and I'm definitely going to make Deirdre behave herself when the action really gets going. Sometimes her shenanigans get in the way of the story flow and she just has to understand that she has to behave, at least occasionally. Naughty girl!

I hope to make revisions the week after my concert and then it's out into the cold, cruel world of submitting. Been through this before, so I do at least know the ropes. Interestingly, I'm really not that keen on submitting to agents, at least in the early rounds, who don't accept email. It seems so archaic. But wait until I get a few rejections. Then I'll change my haughty, little tune.

Here's hoping.

LIKE GIANT DOLLOPS OF WHIPPED CREAM

It being almost St. Patrick's Day, I was patting myself on the back about the relative lack of snowfall this year -- normally we get well over one-hundred inches and we'd only had about fifty. As usual, I opened my mouth too soon. Between Friday night and this morning, we had twenty-eight inches of whipped cream applied to every outside surface. The snow was so deep, my poor dog, a rollicking, 90-pound lab, couldn't figure out how to get through it. I had to tramp out a path for him. Even then, he wasn't sure going outside was a good idea. Thankfully, I convinced him otherwise.

Ah spring! I can't wait.

Contests - We love Contests!

Hey fiction writers. If you haven't already done so, check out the BookEnds Literary Agency's blog - www.bookendslitagency.blogspot.com -- They're running a contest, divided by fiction categories, to evaluate the first one-hundred words of your manuscript. The MS doesn't have to be finished and the winner of each category will have their query letter and synopsis evaluated by the agents privately. The first 100 words, however, have to be posted in the comments section for the whole world to see.

But isn't that the point anyway?

Good Luck!

It's not gonna happen: Me blogging on a regular basis

So much for writing new posts. It's just not going to happen, not as long as days are restricted to a lousy twenty-four hours.

Oh well: I probably would have sucked as a blogger.

But good news is that I'm almost ready to send my second novel, now (and likely temporarily) titled: Plagues: the Sequel, out to my beloved and beleaguered beta readers. Then, after receiving a major beat-down from them, I'll rewrite and edit again. After that, I'll start submitting to agents as I begin the process of writing a brand new novel (Mudder) while watching my perennials poke from the ground as they return from their long winter's nap.

I'm really excited about Mudder. I have some research yet to do, including learning more about family annihilators and the underground railroad. But I'm giving away the plot by telling you that. So I'd better stop right there and get back to work.