Writing Update
I'm going to be honest--I'm not a natural blogger. Part of it is that I'm simply not good at short form writing. Anyone who's read my books knows that I tend to err on the side of too many words rather than too few, and my blog is no different. Which means I don't blog that often, because it feels like a writing project in and of itself.
Because of that, I've decided that I'm going to simplify things a bit. I figure if I can keep you guys in the loop with less effort, I'm more likely to post more often.
So I'm thinking regular updates are in order! These will be pretty short and spoiler-free, although I have no doubt that tangents will erupt now and again and wander off into ludicrous places. This probably won't save you from pictures of erasers. I'm still me, after all.
Without further ado, then, here's what I'm working on right now:
Hard Line: Book is scheduled for April 2 (that's the ebook--paperback is later in the month). For Bad Judgment and Loose Cannon, I started doing a release day countdown on Facebook where I revealed a short passage each Saturday. I'm thinking about doing that again, but I'm not sure how effective it will be on FB. They've been fiddling with their algorithms again, so half the time it seems like I'm not reaching that many people if I only put something up there. Maybe I'll do my blog instead of FB? Let me know if you bright ideas, dear reader. :D
Ghost: I'm roughly two-thirds of the way through Ghost's book, which isn't nearly as far as I'd like to be but isn't a problem...yet. One of the struggles of writing romantic suspense is balancing the internal elements of the romance side with the more external elements of the suspense side, and they can pose very different types of difficulties. Pacing is the one I'm concentrating on at the moment, as I'm fumbling my way out of the middle and toward the end. See, with suspense, you want speed. Less time for characters to think and react means more pressure and complication. Pressure and complication means that events start to tunnel as the options get more and more limited. But romance is sort of the opposite. People can fall into lust and infatuation pretty fast, but true love takes time, and that means slowing things down so characters have the chance to develop a bond. And Ghost is someone who needs more time than most to feel comfortable, so the suspense/romance balance has been uniquely tricky with him so far. But I'm enjoying Ghost's chemistry with his partner, and that's making it feel more like an intriguing puzzle than torture. So far, anyway.
Ze Side Project: The name of this will change to be more representative as I have more time to devote to it, because that's when it'll stop being something that gets shoved aside at every inconvenience and starts requiring A Space Of Its Own. Still, I think that'll be a while yet, since Ghost is taking up the vast majority of my energy. But I am making notes for this, and as someone whose production of good pages tends to be based on how much fun I'm having with a project, I have to admit that I'm looking forward to having more freedom to play around with this one. I also realize none of you have any idea what I'm talking about, but such is a life filled with secrets. :D
Newsletter: I'm gonna get one of these out soon. Really. Truly. Maybe. I need to release the cover of Hard Line for those folks who haven't seen it yet. And it'll have the blurb, too, of course. And I like the newsletter to have something special and/or fun that you can't get anywhere else so I'm not just throwing marketing in people's faces and then running away, because that seems rude. I haven't decided yet what that'll be, though. Maybe a nice line of dialogue or something from Tobias's book? What do you think?