One Year Later... Wow.

A year ago today, I was dancing across my kitchen tile and screaming in excitement. Exactly three hundred and sixty-five days ago from today, I had finished writing my first novel.

Where do I stand now? Huh. About that...

I'm 87 pages into book 3 [The Heiress] and I'm 82 pages into a completely separate novel [still untitled... I'm waiting to see how the events unfold. Don't want to name it prematurely]. Book 1 is a frightening total of SIX PAGES long, even though I've outlined the plot to bits. It's really hard to write a series backward, because I already know how this book will end. I can't do half as much improvising as I did with book 2, or I'll end up leading to a conclusion that doesn't match my plans. Not that that's an entirely terrible ordeal, but considering that a large chuck of The Hidden touches on the events that should unfold in The Emperor, I'd like my stories to be the same.

It's also very difficult to write two books at once, let alone three. In both The Heiress and my "other book" I have a character named Aidan, except in Heiress it's "Aidin" and in the other it's "Aidan." When it's approaching one in the morning and I'm trying to get the ideas out of my busy head, I have a hard time differentiating between the two Aidans and often I combine the stories.

And then when I reread those portions the next night, I find myself baffled as to how modern technology and terminology wound up in Heiress, considering that it's supposed to take place "long ago." When the hero of Heiress starts talking about the Internet, that's when I start deleting.

So no, there's no new book this year. And I severely doubt that I will meet the goals I set for 2008. Finish a book by the end of summer? HA! That's a funny joke. Haha.

Argh. I'm going to go take my aggression out on my laptop. I only wrote for a half-hour yesterday [hardly enough time] and it seems as though I miss my characters already.

Take care, and if you live in southeastern Michigan, don't go anywhere. Seriously, it's a blizzard. Don't drive. :]

Abbs is out [like a campfire in this weather].