Better Than Love is a goddamned book

Friday around 10:30PM, I finished a “truck draft” (if I’d been hit by a truck, they still could have published the book, though it’d have been a bit rough) of Better Than Love, and yesterday at around 9:30 I got done with the book placenta, which is all the not very sexy but very important stuff like making sure I polished all the edges, ran a spell check, etc happened, plus another read through to give everything one more look-see, and then after I fought Scrivener and its insistence on fucking over the chapter headings NO MATTER WHAT I FUCKING DO, I sent that bitch out to the betas. Last few books I haven’t done betas, but this one gets a big fat beta round. Before RT I’ll send it to my agent, and then it will be on to Samhain where it will begin its long journey to your hands, should you chose to purchase it.

All I can say is that I feel like I’ve been through a goddamned war. Twice I tried to put this bitch to bed and failed. This round sure started out well, but I kept worrying it would fall apart, and there was white hot terror behind that, because this time it had to happen. There was of course the great overwrite scare where I nearly lost the fucking flogging scene. Sometimes writing this draft I felt like this was the best goddamn thing I’d ever written in my life. When I wrote the end, I bawled my goddamned head off, partly because of something I wrote, partly because I have no shit been riding this horse since 2010, and I am fucking worn out. Now it’s done, which, thank you Jesus.

Of course, now I”m in EON, End Of Novel syndrome, and this one is bad. I had nightmarish, grisly dreams about trying to save my family from zombie-like aliens, which once they found out I was hiding the dead slimy tentacled corpse of their baby, they were really gonna get pissed. I woke feeling like I’d been on a ten-day bender, and I wasn’t even out of bed before the darkness swamped my head and I began to worry, sure the book sucked, sure nothing worked, that it had all turned sour, and the betas wouldn’t tell me because it would be SO HORRIBLY BAD they’d lie because they couldn’t bear to tell me how awful. (I confessed a shorter version of that in text to Dan while he was at work and he, who is already 15% into it said NO NO NO and proceeded to hand me my ass.) In the end I got out of it by letting a potential WIP talk to me and let my brain stew on new story instead of trying to tear down the old one.

Naturally, the sweet, cute romance I had planned informed me one of the heroes is a sex addict. Apparently my muses are sadists, but I’m a masochist, because after I whined this wasn’t what I wanted, they lifted the veil a little higher, and I said, oh… But we’ll see. Nothing is real until I have 30,000 words, and even then things can still go wrong.

The good news is that I only have two days and then I’m going to be in New York until the 10th. I can’t imagine there’s a better way to spend EON than hanging out with Damon Suede plotting our world domination.

I wanted to let you know, though, that the book really happened, and right now I have a sextet of angels reading and telling me what’s good and what’s not, and basically we’re on the road now, bitches, and thank God.

Here’s some show and tell for fun.

This is the collage I worked from. It was on my desktop the whole time and is still there, making me miss them already whenever I look at it.

This is a screenshot of the music I listened to. There was a lot of music, and a fuckload of JLo. Anna never wants to hear the Love? album again, and frequently said, “What is up with all this Spanish music?”

Finally, if you want an excerpt: I posted this on FB awhile back, and maybe I linked to it here, I can’t remember. But here’s that.

And now I’m going to go watch Doctor Who, fold laundry, pack a suitcase, and in general not write this book anymore. As a parting gift I leave you with a song never referenced in the book, but one that has been in the soundtrack since the very beginning and one which, were this ever a movie, I’d ask them to strongly consider working into a montage sequence somehow. Thanks for riding along with me, for being patient, and for being excited about this story even when sometimes it got the better of me and I wasn’t anymore. Because your letters, support, and love kept me together too.

PSA: Back Up Your Work

Last week I only wrote a little bit, because I was prepping for a big fat sequence I would eventually take all day Friday to write. It was 5800 words. It was one of those gigs where I finished and thought, “This is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever written.” It was a very intense sex scene, but it also contained a full on BDSM scene written from the perspective of a sadist. I was so proud of those 5800 words.

I very nearly lost them all.

I write in Scrivener for Mac, and I have since Jenny Crusie introduced me to it in about 2005 or 2006–I’ve been writing in Scrivener a long, long time. I also use Time Machine and Dropbox, though I’d only set up TM again after a nine month hiatus after I got a new machine because of a need to move things from an old hard drive which hadn’t happened because of sheer laziness. I’d set it up, though, so I thought I was safe.

Until Sunday, I always kept my recent work in Dropbox. It would save to the Dropbox site and to my computer and my laptop, which seemed like a trifecta of backup. Scrivener also won’t let you open a file if you have it open on another machine. I had every contingency covered, it seemed.

Except for one big thing.

Dropbox hangs for a minute before it syncs when I open the laptop, and since I got the new iMac, the laptop has serious trouble hooking up to the network. It takes upwards of five minutes to load, and Dropbox then gets off its game, because normal laptops would be halfway through the internet while mine is still fucking around trying to find the router it’s ten feet away from. So there’s this pregnant moment where, if you open Scrivener (which defaults to opening up your latest work) before Dropbox syncs, it runs the risk of overwriting your current file with an older file.

Friday night, the same day I’d written the work I was so proud of, this is exactly what I did.

The moment it happened, I kind of knew, but I told myself if I had biffed, I had Time Machine. Except when I went to work on Sunday morning, I found that for no discernible reason, it had not backed up since Thursday. Theoretically it’s supposed to do its work every hour, even if I’m working, but it did not at all. I had no backup. None. Whatever this Time Machine issue is, it’s still happening, because it’s still only occasionally backing up with no pattern and frankly, no justice.

What this meant was that I had lost all my work. All 5800 words.

I flailed around trying to make Time Machine show me the twelve hours of backups it should have done on Friday, tried to dig through every recourse in Dropbox. I communed with my computer in every way possible, and then I began to cry. Not right away–my family tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. Not until I called up Damon, who said, “Is everything okay?” and I said, “no” and started to bawl like a baby.

“Honey, I told you to get a better backup system,” he said, because he had, and I said, “I know” and cried harder. Later Dan asked, hurt, why I hadn’t cried to him, and I couldn’t explain at the time, but I think it was because only Suede knew how badly I had sinned. He’d told me his horror story and how he backs up, but I have this paranoia about opening the wrong file or saving over it, and so I kept to my little pattern that had worked for six years, until it didn’t.

Everyone was so sweet, so good. I found out how many friends I didn’t know I had–my daughter sent me sad little chats (I love you, Mom. I’m so sorry you lost your story.) Dan kept rubbing my shoulder and helped me dig through Dropbox how-tos. Marie sent supportive chats. The whole of the internet social media sent commiserations and offered tips as to maybe find a secret stash. Damon said all the right things about how I’d written it once, it was in me, it couldn’t die, how I’d write it again and it’d be better–different, but even better. I really did think it was gone, because it felt gone, like it had gone to the gods. I even remember feeling a weird (and inappropriate) peace as I’d realized what might have happened on Friday night.

I began to rebuild. I reorganized all my files and pulled everything out of Dropbox that mattered. If I had to leave it in, I made it a duplicate of a copy on my hard drive. I forced Time Machine to backup. I emailed copies to Damon, to myself, to the iCloud. I put a backup in Dropbox. Then I went to Scrivener to stop that auto-open, and to set up the backups again, because apparently they’d turned off, since I didn’t see them in my Dropbox anymore.

That was when the magic happened. That was when I found out how wonderful Scrivener is, how they have saved my ass, and when I decided I was giving a huge on-my-knees thanks to them in the acknowledgments. Because when I went to the backup settings, I found out they’d been backing up for me after all–and they’d moved them to a secret file in my Library.

Breathless, afraid to hope, I went to the Library. I saw, as the last file about to go away, a Friday afternoon copy of BTL. I opened it—and saw my missing 5800 words.

I shouted. I cried again, and with shaking hands I saved it in six different places. I emailed it to myself. I called Damon back, and he said before anything else, “EMAIL IT TO ME RIGHT NOW,” and I did. Because why not have seven backup copies.

It took me until last night to be able to write in the file again, in fact, to write at all. I had a huge headache all day Sunday, and even though I had the file back, I felt wrecked. I still twitch when I open the file. I’m having to walk through work like I’m going through a pile of corpses, even though everything’s fine. I still fear I’ll overwrite something by accident, but I “save as” at the end of every writing session and give it a new name, so now I’ll have literally sixty copies of the file before I finish. And two hundred if you count the backups. Because I turned on the feature to save all Scriv backups in that library, I save to Dropbox, I email it into various boxes, and I’m looking into more reliable online backup with tech support (still haven’t received any feedback from Dropbox). I’m remembering now why I was so reluctant to “save as” with a new version: for a period of time around 2010, Scrivener took away that button, and you had to duplicate and rename the file. I always feared I’d fuck it up, so I moved to the Dropbox method. The downside is I’m going to have to be more deliberate about moving and fetching my files between my iMac and laptop, which is a huge pain, but I’d rather not be able to work sometime because I forgot to transfer an update than to lose my work entirely.

So, this Mercury Retrograde, go back up your stuff. Get a system if you don’t have one, and if you have one, double check it. Let me be your horrible warning so that you never, ever have to feel what I felt on Sunday morning. Back up your work. Back it up, back it up, back it up.

(I’ve listened to too much JLo, and it’s killing me to not add, “like a Tonka truck” after “back it up.” See below to understand why.)

The Definition of Success

Yesterday on my Twitter stream, someone posted what appeared to be an auto-reported update from an app describing how many follows and unfollows that account had received in the last twenty-four hours. The poster was a book blogger, one who takes her charge very seriously, and I’m certain she’ll find the app a useful tool for measuring the success of her venture, or that if she doesn’t she’ll discard it as a nice idea that didn’t pan out. She’s a smart, savvy cookie, that blogger, and I’m sure she didn’t lose a minute of sleep last night over finding out a few people who had been following her no longer do.

Having said that, I feel fairly confident in saying that most authors who tried to use that app would find it to be a gateway to the deepest circle of hell.

I’ve been an active part of professional author communities since 1999, and in those fourteen years I’ve only deepened my conviction that by and large authors are the most beautiful hot mess of ego and self-consciousness that has ever walked the planet. As a friend of mine once pointed out—we slave (alone) for months and years over a work, crafting and honing and sweating and weeping, and then we not only share it with the entire human race but ask to be paid for it. There’s no escaping the ego, no matter how humble we are. Yet at the same time, to be able to successfully access the stories of the human condition, we must be humble, we must put ourselves aside and reach into truths where ego must be stripped away.

Maybe it’s a bias, but from where I sit writing romance is even more of a schizophrenic split. It is and likely always will be the best-selling sub-genre of fiction, the Big Kahuna of publishing, and yet it isn’t just the story of the human condition but a chronicling of humans at their most vulnerable: falling in love. Even if we try to shut out the world, we know our potential audience is huge, and as we strip ourselves away to write emotionally vulnerable stories, we find ourselves that story’s biggest champion, wanting it to become the biggest story ever, not for our ego but for its own sake. To give it that boost we often must gird ourselves and send the introverted writer out into the void, to be the shill and the advocate and the ringmaster for our book’s success.

Nothing, nothing feels more horrible than rising out of that selfless pit of story, putting on ego we didn’t want—and finding the story not only missing the goal posts but sometimes failing to even get out of the sidelines. Did we do something wrong? Did we not promote enough? Too much? Did we burp in public at a conference and that killed the book forever? Did we make a stupid comment on a blog post or social media and now our stories must suffer for our foolishness? Did we not give it a strong enough editorial pass? Did we edit too much and stripped away the soul? Why, how, did this work we slaved over become passed over? How did we see such a beautiful gem and fail it so completely?

Put a few books under an author’s belt, and this kind of nail-biting ego soup/self-consciousness spirals to wild and crazy heights of hysteria, and usually it isn’t allowed to bleed out until something random makes us spill our carefully guarded jar of crazy. It might be a review. It might be a reader’s random comment on Twitter. It might be the failure of a book to hit a bestseller list. It might be a disappointing paycheck. It might be a failure to be mentioned in a magazine citing several of our genre peers—but not us.

It might be hearing that a conference will extend pre-invitations to a small number of high-profile, reader-requested and bestselling authors—and we must now get a bigger crock for our crazy juice, because now someone will make a judgement, a call, our peers will make a call, and we if we don’t make that list, it will cut us, it will send us so deep into that hysteria that we may not write again, because we’ve been wondering this whole time if maybe we really suck, if those lower sales numbers and meh reviews are tea leaves, if this is the final Tarot card that says, “Jesus, you fool, give it up already and go back to the accounting job.”

Don’t. Don’t you ever, ever let anyone, anything, any list or invitation or blog or review site or magazine article define you that way. Don’t let any outside force, anything of any kind tell you who you are, what your stories mean, what potential your career has. Don’t, not even for a minute let anyone but you define what success means for your career.

Big news about the Special Delivery series: Old Blue is taking a drive

If you go to Amazon, B&N, and the usuals right now and try to buy Special Delivery, you’ll only have the option of picking up a handful of paperbacks, and before long those will be gone too. The book is, as of today, out of print.

PLEASE REMAIN CALM.

Special Delivery and Double Blind are on the move–today the contracts are in the works between my agent and Samhain, and that’s where the series is going. This includes, as some of you have been hoping, book three, Better Than Love. There might yet be more, but for right now, let’s take it one book at a time.

To be clear, though, there WILL be a third book, and it is for real coming, and its production is 100% my top priority right now. I’ll be delivering it to my editor by June, straight-up.

Let me anticipate some of your questions.

When will the books be re-released at Samhain?

I forget which months exactly, but basically this time next year. As I understand it, the releases will be 1-2-3 in a row, one month apart for each.

Why is it going to take so long?

Because I really, really care about these books, and I want to do it right. This production schedule will help Samhain give the books wider exposure, do solid, solid editing, get new covers, the whole works. Also, to clear three months of release, we had to look a bit ahead.

OMG DOES THIS MEAN YOU’RE CHANGING MY FAVORITE BOOK EVER???!!!!!

NO. Absolutely NO. The edits, I swear on Sam Keller’s cute peach-shaped butt, will not eat your favorite scenes or even one-liners. I’ve already cleaned up a lot of “and thens” and some stupid spacings and other things that always get left over. Sasha will push me to clean up any other bits and pieces, and we’ll clean up things that you’ll never realize were change and yet will make the whole thing smoother and sharper. If you notice what we did, we didn’t do our jobs. I promise, we will be good at our jobs. This goes for Double Blind too.

What about the audio book? Is it going to go?

Yeah, sorry. My agent is looking into that, but for now, yes, it’s not hanging around.

Why are you moving your books?

That was probably your first question, but it has the longest answer, so I put it later in the queue.

The why is very complicated, but the short answer is because it’s the right thing to do. There is no dramatic behind-the-scenes story here–moving the series is what was best for it, and this was a decision reached after discussing things with my agent, Dreamspinner, and Samhain.

Editors, publishing houses, agents–these are all relationships, and as in all relationships, it’s important that everyone is happy and feels good. Everyone needs to want the same thing and share the same vision. It’s not okay for one party to need something different and have to not get it because another party can’t give it, and when that happens, it’s time to go. It says nothing about any of the individual parties’ worth, and polite, professional partings are a sign of strong individuals who are good at their jobs. Consider this one of those moments.

So you really are going to write Better Than Love now? You’ve been saying that for three years, you know.

Yeah, I know. Thankfully, George R. R. Martin has set the bar really high for how long you can let a series go. Though while we’re on the subject of long breaks…

One of the biggest reasons there hasn’t been a book–in addition to needing to be at the right place–is that I have had a bit of a hellish three years. Health, professional stuff, personal stuff–it’s been a ride. I have, actually, worked on this story the whole time, sometimes actively, sometimes just in the back of my head. Being in the right place, having a solid plan, and having cleared my desk for the project is going to help a lot.

The thing to remember is that Special Delivery, Double Blind, and Better Than Love are what I call “big books.” Big in that they’re not just lengthy but full of meat. I do, truly, work like the devil to make them sing, and I am, frankly, relentless in my standards for them. Special Delivery took over two years to write, and I have probably about 200k (not exaggerating) of dead manuscript beneath what you currently read. Double Blind is a bit of a fluke–It took 25 days to write and has the least editing ever in any book I’ve ever done, but I wrote it under extraordinary circumstances and spent three months prepping the research. I also wrote it in the dark. When that book got birthed, none of you knew who I was. That you do now? That you’re watching? Yes, it changes everything, and it makes it very hard at times. It makes it slower, because I have to keep shutting off my head.

The current reality of publishing, especially in indie, is that we must produce with incredible speed, speeds that ten years ago would be considered inhuman. In 2004 I went to a national writing conference where authors (NYT bestsellers) were angry that their publishers were beginning to require a book a year from them. Please enjoy that fact a moment when you consider how many books in m/m most authors crank out right now. I produce on average three a year, and I’m one of the slower producers. I’m not when you consider that a “short” book for me is usually 60k. Not only is a 100k book (my preferred length) longer, it’s more difficult. It’s not simply more words. It’s more complex plot, more to hold in one’s head, more pacing to make sure doesn’t flag. I do not make more money for that length, either. In fact, were I to crank out 20-40k on a regular basis, I’d make a lot more money.

At moments this reality–too fast a production, too unstable a landscape–has been very hard for me to come to terms with. I suffer too from too many ideas and too many fingers in too many sub-genres, and while I’ve corrected that a bit, it came at a financial and branding cost. When you add how visible and connected authors have to be to fans to stay relevant–social media, conferences, etc–I sometimes wonder how I have managed to do this at all. I think, weirdly enough, my unstable health has helped, because it becomes a sort of laser focus, making me constantly assess.

But yes, there will be Better Than Love by spring next year. It will be as big, if not bigger, than SD & DB. It will be worthy of your fandom and pleasure. It will be worth the money you’ll pay for it and the reviews you’ll leave on social media sites. I will give it, and you, the gift of my full authorial attention.

This is how, honestly, I’d prefer to proceed from here on out. I’m open to some fun small projects, but my meat, my core, is this sort of thing. I honestly enjoy taking a big, crazy idea and taming it. I love taking subjects we shouldn’t write about (trucker fantasies, casino heists) and making them beautiful. I love inserting painstakingly detailed research and real things into works so that they feel so real they take your breath away. I love hiding little plot devices and structure you won’t notice, ever, but will make works stronger and smarter and better. I love crafting art out of same-sex romance, better yet when I can put a bit of dirty sex in it to boot. I love taking what is a rather extensive and expensive education on writing and story and how to do this job and writing not a staid piece of LITERATURE but a raunchy, riotous ride.

That, however, takes time. And energy, and focus. It’s why I moved the books, so I have the best opportunity to reach for those things. It’s why I have an agent to sell my books and advise me where to go. It’s why I have started saying a lot more NO to everything that is not writing and supporting the writing. Because the writing is what I want to do, always, forever. Without it, the rest of life is so tasteless I cannot bear it.

So this is the big Thursday news. Books are moving, new book is coming. Heidi is getting her game on, and we’re ready to go.

There actually is other news, which sort of steps on what was a nice closer there, but whatever.

• Let It Snow, the first book in what will be the Minnesota Snow (I think that’s what I called it) Christmas series, will be available this year in November from Samhain. I think the 26th. My plan is one of those every year.
  
• Hero is also out of print. I’m looking at probably self-pubbing it this summer just so it’s available, but more on that later.
• Love Lessons, a new adult, almost-sweet romance is in the hands of my agent. She has Plans. I will let you know about them when they are firm.
• Tucker Springs is on my radar, but right now I so very have to finish BTL and it’s the only thing I’m allowing myself to process. Though I’ll confess, I have a few characters talking to me from that town.
• Damon Suede and I have many crazy cowriting schemes together, but first he has to finish his book, and I have to get ankle-deep in BTL before any of that gets serious.

I think that’s about all I have for news. So there you go. Ask whatever other questions you have, and I’ll do my best to answer them. Just don’t expect much detail on BTL yet, because the story is hot and doesn’t want attention. I can’t even tell Damon or Saritza about it right now, it’s in that kind of state. I’ll just say there are some high awesomes, and I’m excited. As for a Randy POV? Maybe. Only if it works and adds to the story, but so far, he seems to be determined to make himself essential.

Can’t say that surprises me at all.

What I Learned as a Writer in 2012

As my family and my daughter’s friend watched the ball drop in the other room, cheering as 2012 ended and 2013 began, I sat in the easy chair in the living room, devouring my third book of the day and thinking, “Thank God. Thank God, thank God, thank God.”

There’s nothing notable about 2012 to make it more onerous, not in a signpost way, but even so I feel like I’m crawling out of it with my legs bloodied and my soul shaken. Some of that is the usual end of the year, post-holiday jesusfuckingchrsist!!! usual, but something about this year was very carnivorous, something shadowy and dark and belonging on a Doctor Who episode. Leave me here without a sonic screwdriver and no Matt Smith and it was never going to be very good. I know a lot of writer friends who felt this way too: same nameless weariness, same sense of scrabbling and desperation and nothing to pin it on.

Well, now it’s a new year. The world didn’t end, the planets have shifted out of some pretty fucking crappy alignments, and even if they move into shittier ones or new doomsdays pop up, I’m ready. I survived 2012. I can do anything.

This is some of what I learned in the past 12 months about how to be a better writer.

• Mental and physical health are equally vital and are completely, utterly intertwined. Trying to write while either is diminished is a death sentence. 

I’ve always been one to try and push through, making my body do what I needed it to do, but not only would it not do this in 2012 but my failure to take care of the physical and mental aspects of my being affected my writing in just about every way it could. From failing to eat properly (though I didn’t know about the damn allergies until part-way through and I still swear I’m flushing some of those) to not exercising to not getting the right sleep to simply not taking breaks and resting–well, let’s just say I’m going to make it a priority to eat, drink, and sleep properly from now on, and when I can’t, I’ll build in time to recover.

• It’s entirely possible to travel for work to much. From financial strain to physical and mental strain, too much travel is hell. Sadly I appear to be poised to do it again this year, though I still don’t quite get how that happened. I’m a little annoyed, because what I really want to do is take a trip with my family where there is no work at all, where I don’t even check any email. Maybe next year.
• Sometimes books take a long time. Sometimes they don’t. Whether they do or not is a reflection both of the book itself and the writer’s frame of mind while writing, but trying to suss out the varied degrees and control them is a short chute to madness. That’s all there really is to say about that, but I’ll keep sitting with that one this year, and many years to come, because it’s a hard one to be Zen with.
• Conflict.  This year I learned that conflict really is vital to a story, like, really fucking important, and that it’s really fucking hard to get right. Another long-term sit-with concept I won’t be putting down anytime soon.
• I must write with joy or the book will suck.  Even if the book is darker or full of angry backstory, even if–especially if–it’s a story born out of my own rage and sorrow, it must be planted in joy and fed with more of it or it’s going to go tits up in a hurry.
• I have to shut my goddamn email off and let it pile up often or I won’t get anything done. There are days all I do is answer email and online sites and messages and forum questions, and none of that pays me a dime in royalties.
• No is a beautiful, powerful word, and I need to use it. Especially when I think, “Oh, that’s just a little thing, I won’t matter,” because I know damn well ten thousand little things that won’t matter become a huge thing that eats up my time.
• I need to journal regularly to myself, to my characters, and to my muses. That’s a recent one, and it’s sanity-saving. I’m not sure how much of it is real magic and how much of it is psychology, and I really don’t care so long as I keep getting results.
• When mixing business and friendship, I need to be very very careful. Holy crap, is this true. It’s so hard because especially in LGBT romance we tend to be so connected, but that closeness I’ve learned means we need to take great care of how we deal with each other. It’s impossible not to muddy the waters, and muddying the waters leads to cloudiness and hurt feelings.
• I need to keep my agent appraised of what I’m doing and actually listen to her because she is right every goddamned time. All my angst this year has come in cases where I went against Saritza’s advice. I won’t regret any of it because it’s served to teach me, and my vow this year is that I rely on our partnership and trust her to do the job I pay her to do. We’ve already had this conversation privately, but I want to state it publicly because I really believe in this one and want to make myself accountable to it.
• I need to take breaks and make time for my family and myself. I was so bad at that this year. But I ended this year feeling frazzled and empty in so many ways, and I keep looking at my daughter and thinking she’s growing so fast and soon she won’t be here, she’ll be off living her own life. My husband’s work is crazy too, and it’s easy to get in habits of being distant. None of this serves me and it doesn’t serve my writing either.
• I need to remember this is my job, but it’s also my joy. When I’m rested and healthy and using my support system appropriately, being an author is a job I love, struggles and all. The joy doesn’t come from success or from “doing it right” (Jesus that one’s a bitch) but from being part of the dance. I do love pushing myself and reaching for impossible things, but if I get too fixated on the pushing part and not the enjoying the pushing part, I’m going to get in trouble.

I probably learned more than this, but these twelve points sum up the big ones. 2012 is done. 2013 is here, and as Papi likes to say, “All new mistakes.”

Bring it on.

PSA to Authors: Why Writing Is Hard

In the past week the book I’ve been wrestling with like Jacob and his angel has decided to gel, organize, and come out of the chute so fast and clean it’s all I can do to keep up. It’s a wave and I intend to ride it to the end, which hopefully is middle of next week at the latest. It’s what I’ve been doing and why there have been no blog posts, limited social media, and limited everything.

Today, however, as I prepped the next sequence and realized I was ghosting a scene I’d cut, I peeked into the “old stuff” folder to see if I could use the first version or if I should rewrite it. I ended up deciding the latter, though I pasted in the opening for a prompt. While I was there, I looked at the pile of cut material and thought, “I wonder how much I’ve cut from this novel?”

Answer: 35,000 words.

I knew it was a lot, but holy shit, that’s a lot of words. That’s a fucking novella. This too is only the stuff I kept when I cut it. Usually if it’s a whole scene, I drag it to an “old stuff” folder in case I need to use or reference it later, but I axe plenty in media res, and that just goes in the bin. This section was so big because I’d cut 16k in one go, because I knew I’d gone down the wrong road. (It turns out it wasn’t, actually, just that I tried to write the third act opening at the midpoint. I’ll have to rewrite it, but it’s odd how similar they’re going to be.) I had no notion, though, that I’d cut that much again in bite-sized chunks.

Why am I posting this? Well, one, because holy shit, that’s a fucking lot of words, and I’m kind of stunned. Mostly, though, I’m posting this because I can feel that this one has the big sparkle, and someday some of you reading this are going to read this book and think, I love this book! Some of you doing that are authors too, or want to be. Some of you will find this after a bad, bad writing day and be ready to hang up. Some of you might have a pile of novels under your belt like me and maybe you won’t even read this book because you don’t have that kind of time, and right now your writing has you feeling like raw exposed neck tendons and you don’t know how you’re going to live through your next contract.

To all this, I submit the 35k of cut words, and I do it right now like a bet I’m laying down that someday Love Lessons will do very well and be loved, and we can all remember this St. Crispin’s Day moment when it wasn’t done and it had tried to kill me and that I’d had to cut a novella out of it to make it work. And I bet I cut more before I’m done. If you’re a reader, you can relax and think, “golly, glad I don’t write.” If you’re a writer, take up your banner and get back in your trench, because if I can cut that much and more and emerge with a book, then by god, you can do it too.

I’m not kidding, either. Walter and Kelly. You’re going to love them. I’ll go back now and finish so you can share the joy by the end of summer or so.

As a Writer: Pretending No one is Looking

Once upon a time I blogged in Livejournal, and on a good day thirty people saw what I said. Most days I would put up a post and know my husband and a few close friends would see what I wrote. Even when I first got published, my readership was largely my LJ community, and there are days I miss that. I started blogging to get myself used to the idea of being exposed–definitely I’m one of those authors who wants to tell stories and make a living at it, but the whole social navigation thing, even when I’m good at it, wears me out. I found however that one of my favorite things about blogging and writing was talking through the process out loud, but unlike emailing a bf or talking to Dan, people either responded or didn’t in a way that was totally okay. Usually my favorite parts were when nobody said a word or the usual two people said, “You go get ‘em!” I know I could go reboot the LJ or make a private new one, but it feels wrong, like I’d be deciding who got to see behind the curtain and who didn’t, plus there’d be pressure on how to filter…no. It’s all or nothing now.

Today, though, I’m going to pretend none of you are here. What I want to do is talk through my latest WIP, which I was all set to finish until it snagged this week, and when I pressed on it a little it opened like a lotus.

 

Probably you should ignore that “Hope University” novel, because I don’t think this is going to be a series like I ultimately thought. When I started it was supposed to be fun and short and light, a little something to keep me busy before GRL and give Saritza something to sell. Now it has morphed into something between Special Delivery and Dance With Me. Definitely it’s a longer novel, at least 80k is what I’m thinking. It would be fun for it to be over 100, but that kind of makes me tired. This is the problem with doing this to make money: there’s almost no incentive beyond “writing the best book that can be” in making the book longer. In fact, everything is geared to keep novels at 65k or less.

I could see this book, though, making me go long. The irony is it’s not a pushy book. It’s very soft, like the aforementioned lotus. It would totally let me shove it out at 60k, which was my original goal, and most of you would still enjoy it. I think it would feel slightly flat, like I rushed. But it would let me close off the doors, if I wanted. It would sell well enough, and it’d clear my plate to write something else which could behave much the same. Or I could knuckle down and do this thing up with bows and ribbons and really, really make it hum.

That’s the funny part. I’m not used to being given a choice. Usually there’s a hard furrow to find and follow, and if I get out of line the book shuts down. Usually it’s either big or it isn’t. I will never, ever forget trying to find the line in Special Delivery. Every time someone says it’s their favorite book I want to say, “Good, because it tried to kill me.” This book is a lot like SD in that it started as something simple but revealed itself to be something bigger. I wanted to write a cute little number about kids in college, and that’s still there, but this is definitely what I think of as a “big book.” It’s like the difference between Second Hand and Family Man, the books I co-wrote with Marie. We love both books, but SH was light and fun and not complicated, whereas FM has veins that run deep. I thought Love Lessons was going to be more like SH, but it’s not. What it might be most like is Dance With Me, not an erotically focused novel, but probably even though I think the sex scenes will be sweet, nobody else well.

Still can’t get over this idea that I could chose to make it simple, and let me tell you, the urge is there, and it’s very tempting. I could knock this off and have it out and in the circuit before I left for Albuquerque. I could maybe come home to a contract. I could have another book in the editing hopper. Or I could let the writing days come to a full stop and change the Scrivener due-date to “November 1″ and that word count from 65k to 100.

I think the only reason it’s letting me think I have a choice is it knows there’s no way I would choose anything but to do it up right. I say this because when it built the story soundtrack (that’s always like reading a tarot deck for me) it pulled all manner of stuff from Special Delivery‘s soundtrack, so when I hear those songs I think of how it felt writing that story–not obsessing over it, just writing, the bits that were good and strong and hummed. So every time I think about trying to cut a corner, one of those songs come up, and I sigh and get ready to adjust the word count. To put a nail in my coffin I just added the majority of the soundtrack to Partition, which that combined with the instrumental tracks of Imogen Heap’s Ellipse send me straight into the cab of Mitch’s truck and Sam’s head. This story isn’t even close to that one in structure, but it’s definitely coming-of-age in the same way that one was, about boys finding themselves. It’s just that this time they’re both coming-of-age. And if I’m honing these two out of stock, Walter is Randy, not Mitch. Except really Walter is Walter, and Kelly is Kelly, not Sam.

Just now I went over to the document and changed the settings: officially 100k, officially November 1. Which will undoubtedly get pushed further back, unless I can somehow write the back half of a novel while also going to a big fat con I’m helping organize. Fine. I just bumped it to November 15.

It feels good. It feels like going back to August 2009 when Hero hadn’t yet sold and Special Delivery was still beating the shit out of me. Because back then I would never, ever have let myself cheat. I would never have taken a short run to completion. Back then I still believed only the best would do. So this is me pretending this is Livejournal and nobody cares, that this is still a book nobody’s seen or cared about. I have to do my best because if I don’t, the book might never see the light of day. I have to work like hell because that’s what writing is, and 100k is the length of books. 60k is a novella to me again. This is going to be a big book, and so I’ll take my time and do it right.

Feels pretty damn good, to be honest. Thanks, book, for letting me get here on my own. I think this says a lot about your character.

Writers: Story is a Ride

I mentioned a few posts back I’d been stuck on a story. In fact, I’ve been stuck on stories all year. Marie and I joke because she says I “saved” her by coming in midway through Second Hand and helping her finish; I tell her she saved me, because I got to follow the lines someone else had put in place instead of tearing myself apart following my own into the wall. What really got me was when I finished one–finished–and knew it wasn’t right. Usually by the last third the thing comes into place. This one? Well the last third wasn’t so bad, but it just never gelled. And it seemed to happen to everything I touched.

When this happens, it starts to make you feel crazy, and the great enemy of an author sets in: doubt. You begin to think you can’t write anymore, that everything up until now has been a fluke, and if you let yourself go into Deep Doubt, you go back and look at all the success you’ve had and start thinking it wasn’t really good either, that everyone lied to you. You can end up fetal in a corner if you’re not careful, once you start down this road.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading a lot of other people’s stories. I’ve been beta-ing and reading contest entries, pubbed and unpubbed. I’ve beat my head against one of the stories I ran aground on earlier this year. In short, I’ve looked at a lot of stories in the last few weeks, and one thing over and over again keeps jumping out at me.

Story goes off the rails when it forgets to be a ride, a journey a reader would want to embark on.

It became clearest when I looked at other peoples’ work, but I could see it in my own too. As a reader, when I pick up a book, I want to figure out right away what ride I’m riding. I figured out what kind it was by the cover and the blurb–though be careful those don’t advertise a roller coaster when it’s a ferris wheel–but once I get to page one on my kindle, I want to ride.

A reader wants to know what’s going on, and it had better be good. Why this is such a tough concept for writers to grasp, I don’t know, but I fall for it too. Here’s a hard truth: as soon as I start reading, I want to know what’s going on in the story, what central question I’m following the answer to, and I want it very very fast. In unpubbed, self-pubbed, and very, very small press entries I’ve read, over and over again the author didn’t give me a question. They flailed. The masterbated over prose or concepts. What do I do as a reader in these books? If I’m reading for pleasure, I stop. If I’m reading for a contest or a beta? I start skimming. I read faster and faster and faster until I find the central question.

You would be amazed how many times in my contest entry reading and beta reading I never found it.

The problem of course is that every author thought they had one. “It’s the story of George the panda as he wades through bamboo.” Except that’s not a central question. That’s a setting. “It’s the story of George the panda, wading through bamboo looking for the holy grail” is a little closer. Even that, though, isn’t quite right. Why? It’s the other thing authors always forget, and it’s so elementary it’s embarrassing that we do, but we always, always do.

A reader wants a story to have conflict. George the panda can’t just wade through bamboo to look for the grail. Someone has to get in his way. Or something does. “George the panda is wading through bamboo, looking for the holy grail, but the grail is invisible, and George is allergic to bamboo.” Well, in my example the book will last until George dies of starvation, but you get the idea. What a reader wants more than anything is to see that the protagonist in the story has to do something IMPOSSIBLE, and when we write romance especially, we know it’s going to work out, so the more impossible the better.

When authors get lost in the weeds is when we get caught up in concept. “It’s about the struggle of human existence.” “It’s about how hard it is to live in a small town.” “It’s about how limiting a bamboo-only diet is.” Great. Theme, concept–wonderful stuff.

What. Is. The. Story. That’s the only damn thing that matters.

I don’t know a single author who isn’t a reader too, and every one of us when we get stuck should back up and ask what we’d want as a reader. Not in the story that has us stuck, because we’d be hugging those weeds so fast it’d be pathetic, but in general. What ride do we like best? What is it we’re looking for when we read? Then we need to go back to the elementary school principles of protagonist and antagonist and conflict. Then we have to go to our story, fuck the theme, and say, “Is it a ride?” Usually if you’re in the weeds, the answer is no.

Sometimes in works that have gone aground, my own and others, I can see the justification on the page. We get this idea in our head of what we want the book to be, and when it won’t go there we construct words around the idea as if trapping it or shouting at it will make things happen. I went through a phase about seven years ago where I would write and write and write, thinking eventually I’d find my way through, and more often than not I simply ended up at two hundred thousand words. That’s two goddamned novels, folks. Two long novels. The way ebooks go these days? That’s four. Worse, I usually felt like I was at the midpoint when I finally gave up.

My personal issue is that I can’t nail my story down too hard without wrecking it. The only two I’ve written that just came out and worked full-stop were Nowhere Ranch and Double Blind. Well, and Dirty Laundry, but you haven’t read that yet. Everything else I’ve written, if you read it and liked it? I bled. I wandered off into the wilderness and then into the mountains and the valleys until finally I figured out where the story spine was. I try to make spines, to give out plans, but it doesn’t always work. They always shift on me, and I swear a lot of it is my own fault. If I’m not discovering as I write, I get bored. D0uble Blind worked in one go because it had so many ways it could fail that I think the terror alone kept me on edge. Plus I was so busy double checking the poker hands I couldn’t get bored. Nowhere Ranch worked because it was first person, which I hate, and I can’t usually write, so I kept fearing it all sucked ass and what would I do then? Dirty Laundry was tied down by the Tucker Springs series, its original short story setup, and the whole we’re-at-a-new-publisher-is-this-okay thing. It was also the first thing I’d written alone since Cowboy Eagle turned itself inside out, and I thought, holy shit, what if I’m really done? What if I can’t write anymore? Terror. It’s a powerful motivator.

I’m working on a story now, and I’m at the midpoint, and it’s a good, strong story. It’s almost sweet for me–they haven’t even kissed yet. I had to get something done, because there is a damn horse to pay for now, and so I said to myself, “What is it I really want to write?” All year it’s been stuff I “should” do, stuff that I needed to finish, stuff people had been asking for. Actually it’s been that since a year ago right now, full stop. I don’t recommend writing things you have to write. Nothing quite kills the muse as that, I think.

What I wanted to write at this moment was something cute and fun and sweet. The stories I loved every time in my judging and betaing, even when they were hot messes, were the young adults. God, they just made me snuggly and happy. I wanted to write snuggly and happy and fun. Fun, goddamn it. Except I really, really can’t write YA for a lot of reasons I’m not getting into, but I thought, well, there’s college. And it was this huge light bulb, because it was perfect. It made me feel good just thinking about it.

So right now I have 33k on a light contemporary set in a fictional college, and it’s so much fun I forget to eat so I can keep writing. Why else is it working? I made myself write the synopsis first, not so much for the plot but for the conflict. Because in everything I fucked up this year, my issue was always that the damn boys fell in love too fast and had nothing in their way. Every time writing has gone right there was a huge thing in their way they had to get over before everything was HEA. So I set up the characters in total opposition: one wanted a boyfriend, one swore he’d never have one. Then I put them in the same room.

Now as I’m at the midpoint, I can see why this one worked was that I let in character, because the above isn’t enough. Walter has deep, confused reasons he doesn’t want a boyfriend. Kelly has kind of silly reasons that he does. Those are some nice arc potentials. (Walter needs to face his confused reasons, Kelly needs to figure out why he thinks he wants a connection.) The book writes itself in part because they each have so much to do inside.

But what is the key to making this book work? The ride. I’m making myself a slave to the ride this time: yes, it’s lovely that Walter could stand there and brood for fifty pages, but that’s not a ride. He has to brood while moving, and things have to keep happening to him, and he has to react. The reader isn’t tracking Walter’s subconscious. They’re tracking what he does in real time. When he goes out without Kelly, does he hook up, or is he unable to and therefore frustrated? I’ve also been militant about maintaining a spine: for the first act of the book, Walter is obsessed with getting an apartment off campus, and Kelly is trying to fit in to his first year in college while coming out. At act change they have new things they’re chasing: they’re both starting to fall for each other, and they both feel they shouldn’t. The reader, obviously, knows they should be together, so this is one of those delicious things where you KNOW they’re going to get together, and you can see what they need to do, but you just keep following that angst and hesitation, willing them to be brave enough to show what they have in their heart. I never leave the reader without a question they’re trying to answer, something that isn’t settled that they need to see resolved, and when it is, I make sure a new problem has come up for them to track. I let them see, too, the way the characters should be taking, so they feel not just safe but empowered. They know who to root for, and they do.

Ride. Maybe not everybody wants that ride, but I do, and I know romance readers enough to know a lot of them will like that ride too. I’m having a really good time twisting the boys around knowing I’ve hit a moment a reader will settle deeper into the covers for. I love knowing the pacing is so solid you could bounce a quarter off it because I never, ever let myself stop time and lecture. Could this book still fall apart? Yes. Can I talk myself into something going well only to have it fuck up later? Yes. Might this be a ride only I want to ride, despite all my plans? Yes. But there’s no point in dwelling on that because of the final key to a good story ride.

A reader wants an author to be confident, and often if the author has no business being so, the sheer presence of confidence will usually fill in whatever gaps are there. My old choir director used to tell us if you’re going to make a mistake, make it big and bold, so much so the audience assumes it belongs. It is so fucking true for writing I can’t even tell you. My weakness: I’m over the top. Yeah. I know. I love a big schmaltzy ending. I love sweeping, sappy, aching romances. I also love putting in weird realism, especially in sex scenes. That’s what I’m going to do, so I do it boldly. When I screw up, it’s usually because I was letting my apprehension show. You love head hopping? It’s your favorite thing, even though you know it’s bad? Well, own that fucker. You love gay for you? Great. Do it bigger and bolder than anyone else and make it yours. You want to write a cliche that’s so done to death people groan? Do it, and do it so hard their teeth ache.

Readers are fickle. Readers are overstimulated by life. Readers, at least this reader, don’t want to do any work. They just want a fucking story. They want to know that when they read about George the panda and his quest for the invisible grail it’s going to make them feel good. They want to plug in and forget the soup on the stove. They want to not think about how the rent is due and they have no money. They want to not think about how hard work was today or is going to be tomorrow. In romance especially? All they want is to see two people hook up, people who shouldn’t be together but are together anyway.

Readers want a ride. Romance readers want a ride that gives them hope. Erotic romance readers want a ride that gives them hope and makes them feel tingly in their underpants on occasion.

Ride, authors. Write a ride. Figure out what yours is, and then pimp the ever-living shit out of it.

BTL Diaries: Sometimes You Gotta Walk Away

Note: You may have noticed the header and theme of this blog is different. I’m playing with a new logo. This is the prooving ground. Let me know what you think.

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Since last we spoke, I’ve worked on Better Than Love for one whole day. I tried for a second, then a third, and on the fourth day my muses stood up as angry mountains of angry and said WE ARE NOT DOING THIS.

I didn’t blog it for a lot of reasons, the chief being that was an awfully personal moment and very frustrating. It’s been a hard year for projects (for everyone I know) to start with, but then there was the whole gamble of blogging progress, plus the fact that I’ve been trying to write this sucker since 2010. I’ve done the walk away before, so I wasn’t buying the whole “oh, maybe not right now” thing. I sat long and hard, then said, well, if it doesn’t start working in a few more days, I’ll shelve it indefinitely, maybe permanently.

The muses stood up in their mountain-ness and said, “You’ll do that right fucking now.”

So I did. It made me sad, because I love Chenco, but the truth is, sometimes there are the stories we only tell ourselves. Sometimes the time is never right or the window is small and you’re busy brushing your teeth or something when it happens. All I knew is that every time I tried to work on BTL my brain dredged up A Model Man which has been stuck on Stuckety Fucking Stuck since April or worse, and that in fact is what I’ve been working on lately. So far so good, but I’m still fussing in the pre-stuck part, so we’ll see. That sucker feels like Special Delivery and the way it fucked me around for two years.

I’ve also been doing Other Things. I’ve had many many days that are just emails and promo posts and shuttling things for RRW and other biz stuffs, travel for something I’m not sure I’m supposed to announce yet, but I will when I get full permission. I’ve also been walking a friend through the valley of hell of a book, something I know well and hate, and it feels good to help. It’s also still early in the school year for Anna, plus I’m never out of things to learn about Heidi’s New Cooking Adventures. I even had a birthday party for myself, which was fun and rather me, even if they did keep dragging me out of the kitchen to be social. I think people thought it was odd that on my birthday I wanted to spend three days cooking tamales for my close friends and family. I did, though. That’s kind of how I roll.

Anyway, all this happened, and the whole time BTL sat shelved. As in, I had no intention of picking it up, possibly ever. I was ready to apologize to fans, to encourage them to go write fan fiction or use the Sam/Mitch/Randy/Ethan die-casts to write their own stories, even just in their own heads. It was all set that the SD series would simply be finished.

I forgot about Chenco, though, and how badly he wanted to be story.

In the end I think it was a good technique, because instead of me killing myself trying to make the muses function, Chenco is doing the heavy lifting, sorting out the things that keep snarling (“Hey, maybe I’m not Mitch’s brother, just some guy he adopts like a brother!”), keeping things interesting and tantalizing. The muses are not buying it, but they’re watching out of the corner of their eyes. I think if I keep saying, “We’re not doing this” and let Chenco dance, it might all work out.

I’m aware that I get a lot of readers, both of my books and my blog, who write, and what I’m saying next is to you. Sometimes you have to walk away. Sometimes the characters don’t stand back up and dance for your muses. Sometimes you work a long time on story and it’s nothing more than a hard, frustrating lesson. Sometimes you write story and it never sees the light of day, by your hand or by the publishing gods. I’m here to tell you, that’s a good thing, and you should never feel ashamed for putting something down. Oh, fans, yes, they’ll be disappointed. But you know what would disappoint them more? You never writing again, or writing but being always bitter and angry and frustrated and letting it show.

There’s no way to measure how many authors I’ve talked out of trees this year. I think all the transits of the stars and what not have made things hard, and the social pulse on the ground isn’t helping either. The zeitgeist isn’t friendly just now, nor is it accessible, not like it used to be. It’s been a hard year to make up story for a living for whatever reason, at least for a lot of people I know, and I’m one of them. This happens. This happens a lot. Sometimes it’s the way the wind blows, sometimes it’s personal, sometimes it’s inexplicable, but it happens.

I could slam through BTL and pump out something. I could override my muses and make the story work whether it or I want to work or not. It would suck, by the way, and at best it would be like a bad date, something that was maybe fun if you didn’t think too hard but mostly left you back home on your doorstep feeling empty and confused. And upset, because I’d have taken your money for that date, and you’d remember that. Story isn’t something you push, not when it’s saying slow down. If you’re a slow writer? Then you’re a slow writer. If your muses like to meander? Then that’s what they’re going to do, and yelling at them, I promise you, won’t help. Neither will making them go when they don’t want to.

Creating story is such a fragile, miraculous effort, and we need to acknowledge that. We spin whole worlds out of gossamer threads, worlds great and strong enough for millions to walk through and feel they are at home. Unlike the movies and TV, we do this all by ourselves–polish and such comes from editing, yes, but the bricklaying, or rather that thread-spinning that becomes bricks and trees and earth and city sidewalks and shopping malls and everywhere our characters go–that’s all us. We’re the directors and actors and writers and by and large the producers too. We do most of the editing. We add special effects. We create the worlds as lonely gods, and yeah. It’s hard.

So I’m not writing BTL right now, but I’m no longer saying absolutely I’m never picking it up. I’m back to, when people ask when SD3 will be out, saying, “Not sure, still working.” I’m back to knowing fans are disappointed, wanting their next foray into a friendly world. But I”m making other worlds, ones my muses are ready to do, and I’m sticking to the truths I know, that if I write a book when it’s not ready, it’s going to be bad. Yes, other people can write sequels faster. Yes, other people don’t have as hard a time. That’s okay. Other people aren’t me, and I’m not them, and allergies and extra pounds and all, I like–no, love–who I am.

As for Better Than Love? Randy is a betting man, and he hasn’t laid anything down yet, but he’s got his eye on Chenco, and he keeps smiling and touching his lip thoughtfully. I have a feeling before long he’ll be in there helping Chenco woo the muses. So no promises, but–well, you know how Randy gets. I doubt you’ll wait forever.

BTL Diaries, Day Two: Konichiwa Bitches, or, Upgrade At Your Peril

This morning my baby sister texted me from her computer, courtesy of her recent upgrade to Mountain Lion on her Mac. I mentioned it was cool, and liked the idea, and the next thing I know, I had a gift certificate in my email saying, “Now you can go get it too!”

I’ve updated a lot of OS in my day, and every. single. time they are a huge pain in my ass and end up with me in the Apple Store. But nobody’d ever bought me an OS before, and it was awfully cool, and so I did it.

It IS cool, and Hillari is awesome for setting me up, and once I get all the bugs out, I’ll be fine. But let me just say, upgrading the day before I have to spend the day shuttling Anna to my mother’s and get ready to get on a plane Friday? DUMB, Heidi. DUMB.

Not much writing today because of this, both the upgrade and trying to get ready to go to Hotlanta. Made Dan a huge kale salad and things he could heat up while I was gone. Rode bikes with Anna, watched  TV with the family. Spent several hours with Apple Care arguing with them that it wasn’t my phone, it was my operating system and getting hung up on every other second. But I did write a little bit.

I figured out the first sequence, and once again, it’s a Heidi book because they have sex within the first sequence. Apparently that is the only way I roll unless I’m writing with Marie. I”m still in the Chenco section, but I’m almost through, and then I get to introduce the rest of the boys, which is of course a re-introduction, and, yay.

And that was when it occurred to me that I have to start this fucking story THREE TIMES.

I don’t know why I forgot this, because I had to do it in the other versions too, but it still shocked and depressed me when I realized it. What I mean by that, in case you’re frowning at the screen, is because I have three distinct arcs and three distinct POVs, I have to start the story three times. Each time I introduce a new character/arc, it’s like I have a blank document all over again, except for this little thread that leads to the other POVs–and those threads aren’t connected, that’s where I have to go. The first opening is easiest, because it’s what everything attaches to. The next two will be harder because they must link up to Chenco’s plot.

I’ve made it extra fun for myself because Chenco is in McAllen, Sam and Mitch are in Iowa, and Randy and Ethan are in Vegas. Nobody’s stories are linked yet, except we assume Iowa and Vegas occasionally get together for a hot orgy weekend and maybe a tamale festival. Neither Vegas nor Iowa even knows McAllen has a plot point. In other words, this is work. It’s like, really really work.

But I’m already loving it. I love Chenco. I had him pegged a little wrong, because I was thinking he was ghetto fabulous, but he’s not. He’s been talking, and he’s…I don’t know what he is, but he’s not ghetto. Fabulous, though, absolutely. I can’t wait to get the boys all together. I’m hoping I can make some headway on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, one song from the soundtrack is constantly stuck in my head, probably because it’s so Chenco it hurts. Enjoy.