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Okay so remember how just yesterday I was telling you I couldn’t wait to show you the cover for Love at Roades End? It’s like the cover art gods were listening, because not a few hours later, it arrived in my inbox!  It’s beautiful, and I love it.  And the very amazing, incredibly talented, wholly wonderful LC Chase was the one who made it!  Yay!

I thought I knew what I wanted on the cover of this adorable short story which just makes my heart happy.  And LC tried to give it to me.  But she also gave me this cover, the one I chose, and when I saw it, I just couldn’t stop looking at it.  Its all about the feeling, and this cover?  It gets it right.

The story isn’t out until February but in the meantime, feast your eyes on this!

And the blurb, to whet your appetite!

Sean Newvine is looking forward to his weekend at Roades End Inn so he can review his stay for inclusion on his travel website.  What he never expects is for the owner, Hunter Roades, to capture his attention from the very start.

The only problem is Hunter thinks Sean’s been sent by his brother on a blind date so that Hunter doesn’t have to spend Valentine’s Day alone.  Once the awkward misunderstanding is resolved, Sean is charmed by Hunter’s formality and hospitality.  And when they have a chance to talk, sparks really fly.

A passion-filled night has them both wanting more, but Hunter pulls away knowing Sean doesn’t live in town and the distance might be more than they can overcome. Sean and Hunter must figure out if they can make it work for longer than one night, of if their chance at love will end at Roades End Inn before it can begin.  

Okay, so you may have noticed I’ve been MIA for a couple of weeks.  Truth is, life just happened.  Like every other person on the planet, I need to deal with life as it comes.  And the fact is, the things that have been going on in mine, in particular the day job, have sapped me emotionally.  That coupled with no desire to write (I think, from a wee bit of burn out), and I went quiet.  I didn’t have anything to say, so I didn’t say anything.  I focused on some other areas in my life, have been knitting like crazy…and watching movies and reading books.  Doing all the things that I push aside when I’m in full-on author mode.  So it’s been good, and I’ve been happy.  Quiet, but happy. (at least when I’m not at the day job, that is)

And I haven’t even been worried that there has been no story in my head.  Which is a new and novel experience for me.  Not only not having something going on in my head, but not being worried about it.  I worry about everything, it’s who I am, and so to be all “I don’t care” about not having a story playing in my brain was kind of nice.  I joked and teased that I was giving up writing for good, so I didn’t have that pressure in my life, but we all knew that I wasn’t serious…even when I claimed to be.  A writer’s got to write, and I am that.

But over the last couple of days, things have shifted in my head.  Slowly and surely, a new character has emerged.  He’s beautiful and a bit broken.  He’s got a big heart and some scars.  And he wants to find his forever man.  Just this morning, I may have gotten a glimpse of who that man is.

I’m not rushing into anything.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take the rest of the year off, and I still might do that.  But knowing me, as the story coalesces, I might start putting things on the page.

I think the interruption may be coming to an end.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on edits for Love at Roades End, which comes out in February (and I CAN NOT wait to show you the cover on that!) and will soon start edits on Something Like Peace. So there’s still stuff in the pipeline, and things to look forward to.  I’ll share more details as they become available, so watch this space for news!  And!  Flash fics will start again this week, and go about continuing on as they have been.  I’m slowly getting back in the saddle..and remembering how comfortable it is for me to be there.

I don’t have anything to talk about because I haven’t been writing.  Haven’t been because I have zero desire to.  Usually the characters yammer away at me, constantly poke at me, demand I write.  That is not happening right now.  Not with the story I’ve barely begun or with anyone new trying to push their way in.

It’s a little unsettling.  A little weird.  It’s certainly not normal for my brain (not that anything about my brain can be considered normal).  What’s weirder still is that I feel okay with it.  It’s not upsetting me to any great degree.  Normally I’d be all bent out of shape and whinging on because nothing I was trying to write was working.  But yeah.  that’s not the case here.

I’ve said I was giving up the writing.  I’ve pretended I was serious about it.  Those who know me best don’t believe a word of it.  They are right, of course.  And I could rationalize about six different reason as to why the writing isn’t happening right now.  Three of them are even legitimate.

So, anyway, right now the writing isn’t happening, and I’m not going to beat myself up about it, or push at it, for at least another couple of weeks.  I’m sure by then I’ll start panicking if I haven’t been inspired. But right now?  I’m okay letting it sit.

I learned a couple of years ago that I could, in deference of everything else but work, write 50k words in ten days. That was exciting. I also learned that I absolutely cannot work that way and if the finished project needs a complete rewrite, then for me, there’s no point it writing it the first time. 

It works for others but not for me. 

I need to edit and tweak as I go. I need to fix things and delete entire paragraphs/scenes/chapters. I can’t just write and keep going no matter what because I write myself into corners I can’t get out of. So it’s not an approach that I like, and it causes me anxiety when I think about it. 

I’m not doing NaNo this year. But I see a lot of people who are. Rock on, authors. May the muse be with you. I’ll be writing with you. Just not the same way. 

Funny thing is, I can get really weird about starting a new story.

First thing that happens is I’m not ready to let my old characters go, and I’m a little bit in mourning so I need to have time to work through that before I move on.  Now, this was lessened a bit while working on the series because I knew these guys already, at least to an extent and I knew the characters that I had just left were at least going to make an appearance so I wasn’t leaving them completely.  But the reverse is true.  Having left the series (for the moment, it’s not done!) the mourning is doubly hard.  Because with the exception of one week where I detoured to write a short story, these guys have been living in my head for a good six or seven months and that’s all I’ve been focused on.  So there’s that going on.

Then there’s also this stage I go through while plotting where I’m convinced it’s a bad story and I shouldn’t write it.  (This also happens at some point while writing the story, usually the 3/4 mark but not always, so it’s something that just happens).  I’m certain no one is going to want to read it, or that if people do read it that they will hate it.  Because it’s a bad plot or I can’t do it justice or any of that other 100 thousand thoughts that slam through my head.  Eventually I get passed all those worries and fears, and write the story.  Because, let’s face, I’m not going to please everybody no matter what I do, so there’s always going to be people that dislike the story.

So after I go through those two stages, I have one more where I’m trying to figure out if these are the guys who want their story told next, and if I can really delve in, get inside their heads, and tell it.  This is usually the shortest stage, and I figure out yes or no really quickly.  If it’s yes, obviously I write the story.  And if it’s no, then I go back to plotting and have a repeat of stage 2.

This whole process can take a couple of days, or a couple of weeks.  Usually not months, but sometimes yes.  This time around, there’s was a little burn out to accompany everything, plus the day job sucking a lot of my energies, so yeah, it’s a mess.

But I’ve finally gotten through stage 3, I have the plot and the boys and I’ve barely broken ground on the new story by I have, in fact, begun.

So that just goes to show the weirdness works for me.

Okay, so.  Sometimes you have to take a day off from work for no other reason than you’re on the verge of going stark raving mad, literally right on the precipice, and if you don’t take that day, then you’ll end up being forcefully shoved off the cliff and go tumbling down into the dark, twisting madness.

Which actually sounds just a little bit appealing to me right now, but I took the day off anyway.

I’m going to use it for a lounging and edits.  And coffee.  And comfy pants.

And maybe, because I’ve finally come to a decision and I’ve got a clean slate (chalkboard!) I just might get to work on a new story.

Because sometimes part of what’s threatening to throw you off the edge is all the writing things that need doing and you not being able to just sit down and do them.

So I’m going to go ahead and accomplish all the things I can before I have to, once again, get back to the grind of the day job.  And grind it truly is. I wish I could explain to you the hellacious experience that work is at that moment.  But there are no words.  And remember, words are kinda my thing.

At any rate, it’s going to be a laid back easy day.  And I’m going to get things with the words accomplished.  And the time will positively fly, and before I know it, it’ll be over.  But I’m not going to focus on that.

Because sometimes you just gotta take each moment as it is, and not look to the future by even a minute.

Sometimes I do my best thinking in the shower, which only sucks because I can’t write it down.  This past weekend, I had one of those showers and got one of those ideas.  It’s yet another incarnation of an idea that’s been in my brain, and maybe this time, it’ll work.

See, I’ve discarded this idea a couple of times now over the last couple of months.  I have various reasons for ignoring this story, for not wanting to write it, for just shuffling it off onto the shelf and giving it a pass.  All of them are valid.  But the thing is, it just won’t leave me alone and I keep coming back to it even when I’ve decided to give it up.

With all the reasons not to write it, I really feel like I should just let it go and move on to the next thing.  I’ve checked off a bunch on the writing list so far, and I’m looking forward to a couple of the upcoming projects that I have on my agenda.  This wasn’t actually on the original list (another reason to let it go) and I want to write the things that are pretty badly.

But it just keeps riding me, sneaking in when I’m not expecting it, and I keep giving it brain time.  So I’m at that indecisive stage where I just need to either dive in and write it, or really shelve it.  I want to write it and I don’t at the same time.  Until I can really figure out it, things are on hold, because if I’m going to write it, it needs to be next.  And everything else will have to shuffle down one spot.

I need to make a decision about what story I want to tell next and I need to do it soon.

About a year ago, I sat down to write Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love. Even just that short time ago, I was a complete and total pantser.  I had a vague idea in my head, the injury and Ben flying across the country, and I just started writing it willy nilly and hoping it all came out in the end.  Fortunately it did, I finished by the deadline and was able to submit it and it was accepted.

But what a difference a year makes.

Now I’m a combination writer, have been all year long, and it’s made such a huge difference for me.  If it was a year ago, I would have started writing this new story, gotten a good four or five thousand words in, and had to scrap it because it just didn’t work.  Now though, even though I have begun plotting, I could see that it wasn’t going to work. It nice stuff, good stuff even, but the structure is not going to work, and it would turn into something….not good.  So!  Now I know I’m not going to do it that way, and I’ve tucked those notes out of the way, and made a few keyword entries on the chalkboard to work them in if I can.  Right now, they’re backstory, which is not a bad thing at all, so these scenes may never see the light of day.  That’s okay too.

At least I know my characters.

At any rate, it’s back to the starting over point.  My boys are vivid and real, and together we’ll sort out their story as it’s meant to be told. Eventually.  And at least I know what doesn’t work.  That’s how I’ll find what does.

When it comes to my stories, I like to jot stuff down and have it where I can see it.  I’ve thought about writing on the wall in the writing nook before, but I knew it probably wasn’t the best of ideas.  And then, like one of those lightning strikes, I thought about chalkboard paint, and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.  So I picked a swatch of wall in the writing nook.

And I blocked out what I wanted to chalkboard.

And I painted it.  And waited.  And painted again.  And waited. And then one more coat, and I had a chalkboard spot.

And then I put up a border around it (which I’m not quite sold on, but kind of like, so I haven’t decided yet if it will stay or go) and started a bit of plotting.

With some pumpkins because it’s fall.

So that’s my brilliant idea.  I’ve got this spot right here next to me where I can write stuff out, and where I can see everything all laid out without flipping back and forth to a document.  It will have the salient details, and I’m thinking it will be a big help when I start the next story.

And hell, it’s there even if I just want to doodle. 😀

Some exciting things on the horizon!

I’ve contracted a short story with Dreamspinner Press, a lovely little Valentine’s Day story, and so that’ll be out in February.  I basically adore the crap out of it, and it’s a quick, cute read, so in a few months, I hope you’ll check out Love at Roades End.

But that’s still months and months away.  Pretty soon I’ll be starting edits on that, and in the meantime, I’ll be tweaking and working on Something Like Peace to get that ready for submission.  I hope to send it in within a couple of weeks.  And with all that going on, it’s a little easier to breathe about taking a break.

Because I’m starting to get itchy.  My brain is working overtime, trying to figure out what we’re going to write next, and is spending a great deal of time working on plots.  I’m starting to feel the need to get back at it, but I know I need more of a break before I delve into another story.  So I’m focusing on fixing the ones I currently have in the queue, and soon, when I’m ready, I’ll start something new. And that’s always an exciting thing, and something I look forward to very much.

Incidentally, I’ve come up with a brilliant idea to assist in the plotting and writing, and if it actually works like it should, I’ll share pictures.  But that won’t be till next week. (And if it’s an epic fail, I’ll relate the story here too)