The Chapter From HELL

Welcome to Texas, the home of whiplash weather. I'm used to rapid changes, but this week was ridiculous. I went from one night needing the ceiling fan to sleep comfortably to needing the electric blanket the next night. Monday was short-sleeve weather, and last night I had to wear my heavy winter coat to go out (I might have needed it Tuesday night, but I didn't go out then). I can handle a gentle summer, autumn, winter transition, but going straight from summer to winter can be hard to adjust to. What's funny is I spent yesterday shivering, bundled up and drinking hot tea while writing about a cold winter day in New York, then was chatting with my publicist at Ballantine, and she said it was 70 degrees in New York. Yep, the Texas weather provided me more of the proper atmosphere for writing winter in New York than the real New York weather would have.

Speaking of writing that winter in New York stuff ... I've realized that this chapter six is just going to have to go down in history as the chapter from hell. First there was all that location stuff I won't be able to write until after my trip next month. Then I realized once I started looking at it in order to write my "location stuff goes here" note that I'd forgotten a fairly important scene at the beginning of the chapter that had nothing to do with the location. I got that written, put in my placeholder note, then wrote the end of that chapter and the beginning of the next chapter and felt like I was moving on. But then last night just as I was falling asleep I realized that even the stuff I'd written for that chapter needed to be completely changed because I wanted to take a totally different approach to the way things were going with the characters. I don't want to go and rewrite what I have written, since I already know I'm going to have to completely rewrite it soon anyway. Instead, I'm just going to write a long note to myself about how I want things to go when I know enough about what events I want to have happen in this section. Mom, are you still sure you want to read this draft? It's going to be really, really drafty (as in with holes in it that the wind blows through). I also came up with a fun little comic riff that can go in the rewritten scene, but then had a moment of panic when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't remember it. Fortunately, it came back to me when I woke up this morning.

Now I have to go to the dentist (fun), but first, we've got another Out of the Blogosphere entry, "White Heat," by Leigh Wyndfield, in the Secrets, Volume 12 anthology. Raine has spent the last few years avenging her murdered team, but the cost has been high. She’s hiding in an icehouse in the middle of nowhere from one of the scariest men in the universe. Walker escapes from a burning prison, staggering to safety. Imagine their surprise when they find out they have the same man to blame for their miseries. For more info, visit Leigh's web site.

Oh, and I got the Dutch copies of my book yesterday. Very cool. Unfortunately, the UPS guy showed up when I was in the middle of a thought, and I couldn't retrieve it once I finished admiring the books. Ah, the woes of the creative life.