#ROW80 Update and Bookish Things

Today the Red launch blog tour continues with an interview by the fabulous Holmes and Bayard, which was possibly the most fun I’ve had in an interview ever.

So I guess it’s time for my mid-week ROW80 update.  The first proper one I’ve done in a while.  My revised goal, if you will remember, is to have a full and functional outline on Devil’s Snare or Kiss My Grits (or both) by the end of Round 3.

Devil’s Snare has been what’s holding my focus lately.  I’ve finally settled on a satisfactory FPP,  PP1, and MP and have a rough outline of the first half of the book.  I’ve gotten Act 1 written out in synopsis form (and hey, writing a synopsis is WAY EASIER before you know all the details!).  I’m still waiting on figuring out PP2, the SPP, and the end.  Hoping to get some valuable brainstorming done with Andrew, Susan, and Lauralynn this weekend.  I’m not used to plot points being this hard won.  Usually stuff is a lot clearer for me.  Of course, usually I’m not having to worry about precedents established in a previous story either.  Really hoping that this isn’t going to become the norm for series writing because it sucks.

In other bookish news, I just finished Michelle Muto’s The Book Of Lost Souls, which was hilarious and a lot of fun.  Long live the Beezlepup!  I’m still sipping my way through Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which is interesting.  Nearly done with Beautiful Creatures in audio (and have Beautiful Darkness all ready to go for my drive).  And I just started J. R. Ward’s latest Fallen Angel’s novel, Envy (and can I just say how happy I am to see that HER publisher is putting out the ebook at the same price as the paperback?  Good for you Signet!).

I’ve been interested in some of the things that Ward has done in her fiction that’s not…shall we say, typical, of the genre.  She started in romance and then, if memory serves, declared she was writing urban fantasy, which caused a kerfluffle in the romance community.  I read both, so that’s mostly no skin off my back.  She still seems to be sticking to most romance conventions with the relationships that she’s writing.  But what interests me is that she frequently uses other POVs in her books beyond those of the hero, heroine, and bad guy.  And not in a head hopping kind of way but more in a limited third, one person in each scene’s driver’s seat.  It’s something I think I’m going to be doing in Devil’s Snare because there simply are some things my primary two characters have no way of knowing that the reader needs to know.

Something else that Ward has done with this particular book (Envy) that I’m really intrigued by is that she’s taken a secondary character from the last BDB novel (Lover Unleashed)–Thomas DelVecchio “Veck”, the guy who replaced Butch as de la Cruz’s partner–and she’s literally picked up with him from a scene that was in Lover Unleashed–and is moving forward using him as the hero of his own story in a totally different series.  Same world, but only sort of kinda connected to the storyline from the other series via a homicide from THAT book.  I’m looking forward to seeing how she deals with this because, even though the Fallen Angels novels seem to take place in exactly the same world as the Black Dagger Brotherhood, so far the two haven’t crossed much.  At least not on the Fallen Angels side–to my memory, the vamps haven’t been mentioned there.  Though I do remember that Iam and Trez were in Covet.  And as for Lassiter in the BDB…who the heck knows where she’s going with that?

It really intrigues me for later series possibilities in my Mirus world that aren’t necessarily a part of the main storyline I’m currently establishing.  I just think it’s really interesting and makes me feel less hemmed in by a lot of genre conventions.