The End is Nigh! No Wait, It’s Here!

Hear ye, hear ye!  Yesterday I wrote “The End” on Riven.

It is no mistake that Snoopy is dancing with bunnies because that’s exactly what my brain is doing right now.  During the last several months, I’ve been attacked NUMEROUS times by various and sundry plot bunnies.  Mostly novel projects.  A few short stories.   I had a plan for how things would go next.

1) Send Riven off to CPs for feedback (done).

2) While it was getting critiqued, begin work deepening all the outlines for the various short stories I briefly plotted.  See, we are beginning the hell months at work.  We have SO MUCH GOING ON at primary EDJ with one project, another grant got funded (Yay, we all still have jobs!) and we’ll be hitting the ground running with that in July as soon as present crazy is over, and I’m still finishing up development of my new class to teach for fall for secondary EDJ.  It doesn’t make sense to work on anything long or complicated.  I figured I’d write a few short stories for release and be plotting out my next long project to start come August (which, due to said intensive planning, should go faster and smoother than DOTH did).

Except.

Someone woke me up.  A very loquacious someone who was spilling out details of her story so fast, I couldn’t get to the pen and notebook on my bedside table fast enough to scribble it all down.  I’d forgotten what this was like.  Because the last time someone woke me up, it was Elodie, and I got Red out of the deal.  The easiest book I’ve ever written.  A book that was simply open vein, insert quill, take dictation.   I haven’t had that since Red, probably because of that whole stint I took turning myself into a machine instead of a writer.

I’ll take this as a sign that I’m back on the right path creatively.  Not going to make any assumptions that this book will be as easy as Red.  There’s necessary worldbuilding–lots of it–that needs to be done.  Some historical research.  An alternate history to write.  It’s a lot more up front work than Red was (and, let’s face it, Red was a very simple  and straightforward kind of story, set in our world, where the only huge decisions were what the origin of the curse was).  But I am SO FLIPPING EXCITED about this book.

Sela’s (Sela is the shero) been trailing me around all week, talking non-stop.   I have created a toolkit for the book, a playlist in Spotify, a seekrit Pinterest board for inspiration, have done spreads on my shero and hero, both general personality stuff and character arc. All while trying to tell her, “Girl, I really have to finish this other book first.  If you’ll stop waving that gun at me, really, I can get this out the door and give you my full attention.”  Finally, she did.

So that’s it.  That’s the great derailing of my sensible summer plans.  I won’t be writing short stories (well, I might try to squeeze in one).  I won’t actually even be writing any of the books that I thought I’d be writing next.  I’m wholeheartedly embracing this rabid bunny and making it my own, crazy bulging eyes, pixie stick-ridden nose twitch, and all.  It’s big, full length, and complicated.

And I can’t wait.

As for Riven, as soon as I get that back from CPs, I’ll have a better handle on how long revisions will take.  At present, I have -13 Faith in my ability to judge the quality of my own work, so I truly don’t know whether this will be a simple week’s worth of smoothing and tweaking, or if it will be something longer.  I am trying not to think about what The Pink Hammer or the Green Gobsmacker might do to my book baby.  The Hammer at least looked at it around the midpoint, so I am pretty sure it isn’t anywhere near the mess that DOTH was.  Anyway, once it is back, I shall make revisions and then, THEN, dear, wonderful, patient readers, I shall release it into the world!  That’s right, this is a self publishing project.  It came out a weird length (planned as a long novella, ended up a short novel at 55k), and I wrote it to go with a cover I commissioned more than 2 years ago for a book that ended up NOT fitting the arc I created in the Mirus world (and let me tell you, that’s a challenge–thinking up a NEW story to go with the imagery and title of an already existing cover…).  Anyway, I hope y’all end up loving Ian and Marley as much as I did.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just heard the cocking of a musket behind me.  Sela says break time is over it’s time to get to work.

7 thoughts on “The End is Nigh! No Wait, It’s Here!

  1. I can’t believe how you found such an appropriate video. Snoopy tired, Snoopy seeing bunnies, Snoopy dancing with bunnies. Love it.

    I’m so glad Sela came to visit. That’s really exciting. And I can’t wait to read Riven. Finally, stuff is going ON again! 🙂

  2. Wow, so exciting! I’ glad you feel like your creativity is on-track, and I hope this new project is everything you hope it will be. *joins in Snoopy dance*

    (I know exactly what you mean about getting tapped on the shoulder- it happened to me on Easter weekend, with a character in a genre I said I’d never write. What could I do? I promised her a novella, and that’s it…)

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