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At last! Today it’s 73, which is warmer than it’s been in the last six months. When I got home from school, I got the patio organized and cleaned, brought the cushions down from the attic, unwrapped the bushes from their burlap winter coats, cut the soap out of the shrubs (which I put there in the fall to keep the deer from eating them) cleaned out my bluebird nesting boxes (I can hope I get chosen by a pair this year) and settled down in the fresh air to write. All I can hear is the brook roaring, some redwing blackbirds down by the beaver pond, and a few chickadees who aren’t too happy with me because I brought my feeders in this weekend (the bears are awake now, and as much as I love the birds, I fear the bears more).

Depth of Return is hovering around 42,000 words. I say hovering because I cut a couple thousand yesterday. My plot kind of ran away on me, or rather, I was trying to force it in a direction I thought it ought to go. But my MC gave me a very stern talking to yesterday morning while I was lying in bed not wanting to get up, and so I dutifully obeyed. Now things are going the way he wants. Well, not exactly, since he’s in worse trouble now than what I’d written him into, but if he wants to suffer, that’s his problem. At least I’ve got some scenes clear in front of me now.

I’m on school vacation all next week, so I have this image of myself finishing the book. But I’ve got some family stuff to do and the weather is whispering to me about getting my bike out, and damn, there are a lot of limbs down on the lawn under the trees…

But getting out from under the weight of all that snow is wonderful. I hope everyone is enjoying spring as much as I finally am!

I just hit the halfway word count! I’m aiming for 60,000 words, and I passed 30,000 last weekend. It was going well at first, then I got hung up on some plot stuff. Last week I had dinner with my editor friend, and we talked through the second half of the book at a quiet Chinese restaurant. Now things are working again.

And what’s cool is that I didn’t realize how amazing that dinner was until I was thinking about it today. I mean, that’s the kind of thing “real” writers do. Have dinner with editors in quiet Chinese restaurants and hash out plots.

Up until five years ago, I was still printing the first three chapters of a novel and driving it to the post office and mailing it out with a self addressed, stamped envelope and hoping desperately for six to eight months that this would be my lucky break. Then the SASE would appear in my mailbox with a rejection slip in it. Back to the post office again. This had been the story of my life for years and years. And years. I’d had a few “yeses” from small magazines, but nothing seemed to help get those novels published.

Then I looked at online publishing, and I fell head over heels into the m/m fiction world, and things have been looking up (very much up!) ever since. I’ve gone from not having anyone know I exist to corresponding with readers from all over the world who enjoy what I write. And, ah, getting money, too.

And having dinner with a professional editor discussing the plot of a book that’s only half written.

Would I have been sitting there without putting in the years of SASEs? Absolutely not. That’s how I learned to write. But it’s awfully nice not to have to go to the post office with a brown envelope every eight months.

Okay, back to writing…

Some nice reviews for Natural Instincts are starting to come in. HERE is one from Prism Book Alliance that I found very touching. There is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing someone “gets” what you were trying to do.

The reviewer commented on how my point of view character is mute, which is unusual and sets up a real challenge for dialogue in the book. I had attempted doing it a long time ago in a story that is buried in some filing cabinet now, and I’d always wanted to try it again. When Natural Instincts started taking shape in my head, I decided that this was the story in which to attempt it.

In a way, Natural Instincts is a rewrite of that long ago story — it was about two guys going camping together in Canada and falling in love with each other on the trip. (I also had one of them lose a filling in his tooth and have to hunt up a dentist while on vacation. I have to say that my romance plotting has improved a bit since then. A lost filling? Really? Yuck!) But one of the guys loved to lie on a picnic table at night and gaze up at the stars.There was no loon in the story, but there was a pretty lighthouse. Anyway, that’s how my mind hangs on to things and rewrites them years later with elements that probably only I would recognize. (And I just remembered — the main character’s name was Kyle! How weird is that! I swear, I only thought hard about that story just now, but clearly it was always there in my unconscious. Proof that writers are the most bizarre creatures in the universe, right?)

I recorded this under my bird feeders this afternoon. While most New England is getting walloped by a blizzard, we’ve only gotten half an inch. And I can’t say I mind a bit. Some benefits to living very far north.

Want to go flying with Ambient?
Check out Flying, today on the DSP blog!

HERE

Enjoy.

Well, our trip to Boston was sort of a disaster. The weather forecast was looking dire, so my husband and I headed straight home after dropping off our daughter, only to hit freezing rain in Concord, NH. It took us two and half hours to go two miles up a three lane interstate in a traffic jam, and the rain fell harder and harder. Cars off everywhere, police and ambulances everywhere, the southbound lane completely closed — we hit the first exit we came to and checked into a hotel for the night. The roads were so scary that we didn’t even dare go to store for toothbrushes.

Then we got sick. Both us us — fever, coughing, aches, chills, nausea… just what you don’t want to have happen stranded in an ice storm. We limped home the next day on roads that were better but not great, and I have been in bed drinking tea ever since, trying to relax. I don’t do icy roads well.

But the family is all safe, and that is what is important.

Jai is in the hands of my editor. What should I write next? (When I’m not in danger of throwing up on the keyboard.)

The sun rose this morning perfectly centered over the top of Mt. Mansfield. I took this from my bedroom window and I was in such a hurry to get the shot that I didn’t bother to take the screen out first, which explains the reflections and things. But it’s still kind of a cool photo.

Working on Jai this afternoon, doing a final read through to fix major errors before it goes to my personal and wonderful editor, who will tell me, I’m sure, that it has a million problems. I’m very anxious to get Jai finished because the seedling for my next project is taking root in my head already, which is a very nice feeling.

My second free story, Flying, will be coming out on the DSP blog soon — I heard from the lucky winner that the advance, personal copy had been sent a few days ago.

Heading down to the Boston area tomorrow to deliver our daughter back to college. Weather permitting, we will swing by the ocean on the way home. It will make a very long day with school on Monday, but I NEED to find me a little of that wonderful sea smell. Even in January. And I wouldn’t say no to spotting a loon or two in their winter habitat in the surf.