Working Notes – February 28 – Another Leap Frog

A few weeks ago I was bellyaching about how I had produced books so fast that I had missed out on updating you on two books, between working note installments.  Poor me, life is a bitch, huh?

Guess what?  Done it again.  Well, sort of.  🙂

Last working notes, I got to roll in ecstasy because I was smack in the middle of writing Byzantine Heartbreak — which was proving to be a lot longer than I had planned.

Well, I finished that, in a marathon of writing over the long weekend last weekend, which for me was a four-day weekend because of an earned day-off from the day job.  Plus, Mark was away on a wrestling road trip for three of those days, so for three days I did nothing but write.  And sleep a little.  And stop to eat when I thought of it.

Not only did I get the 400-hundred pager finished (first draft), but I also finished two other books.

Yup.

Oh, I didn’t write them from scratch!  I’m not that prolific, although I wish I were!

Here’s the details:

Delly’s Last Night

Was Thief In the Night.  I got rights back for this late last year, and one of the things that several reviewers and readers had mentioned from the original edition was that the book was simply too short.  There had been wistful regrets that the history between Delly and Neil wasn’t shown.  So over the weekend I re-wrote what was a short story, including the backstory of Delly and Neil’s original romance in Golden during the Olympic trials, and modernized the story, tweaked the language, etc.

The story is still novella length, so it can only be released electronically.  I can’t stretch it enough to justify a print edition just on its own, but I have plans for an anthology of all my own stories later in the year within which it will be included.  But now, with the re-write, Delly’s Last Night is now thirty-three percent longer than it was originally.

The story is ready to go.  I’m just waiting for a sales cheque, royalty cheque or bonus money to land so I can pay Dar Albert to build one of her beautiful covers to go with it — that’s all that is stopping me from releasing the story right now.  I’m looking forward to this story actually having a decent cover at last, too.

An Inconvenient Lover

This book was Eyes of a Stranger, and it was the first book I published.  I spent part of my weekend revising, tweaking and updating the story and prepping it for release, as Eyes was removed from circulation last year, also.  An Inconvenient Lover will also be released as my own Author’s Edition, and one of the nice things about this edition is that finally, this story will reach paperback.  It only took thirteen years.

Like Delly’s Last Night, this book is also ready to be released.  I’m just waiting for the money to pay Dar to do the cover — and I can’t wait to see what she does with this cover, either.

Blood Stone

I didn’t start Blood Stone on the weekend, but this is the next book on my list of things to do.  I actually started the book last year, and now I have to pick up the traces and get the buggy moving again.  Given how popular Blood Knot is —  glowing reviews and two Book-of-the-Year nominations — I actually moved Blood Stone up on the list.  I was going to write the third in the Beloved Bloody Time series first.  But I’ll do that one after I’ve finished Blood Stone, instead.

So Blood Stone is the book I’m currently in the midst of writing — except I’m not actually at the point of writing it yet.  I’m still revising my plot and character notes and rebuilding parts of the plot to tighten it and make it squeal, which in some of the best fun you can actually have when writing fiction.  It involves anticipating the effect you’ll have on the reader’s emotional pulse…and their actual pulse.  Your pulse.  If I do it right I can orchestrate an opera of emotions inside your heart and brain and body as you read the book…and maybe reduce you to tears, laughter and sighs.  All while sitting (possibly) on the other side of the globe, and months away in time.

It’s the closest thing to magic in the real world.

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