A Jack Diamond, Book 2 update
It's been a LONG while since I sent out updates... life has been busy.
But for those of you who are anxiously awaiting the second book, I have news!
I have officially written sixteen of the 30 to 40 some odd chapters that this book will eventually have, making me between 1/3 to 1/2 finished with the first draft!!!
The first eight chapters were a breeze to write. Then I faced a black hole of doom... I didn't like where the book was going. Or rather, I didn't like the way the main character (our one and only victim in this book) was being portrayed. Yes, yes, I know, I know. I am the one who is portraying her. But that doesn't mean that I like it.
So I sat.
And sat and sat and sat and sat and sat.
And MONTHS went by, and the book was just sitting there, percolating and collecting dust and mold in the back of my mind.
And then my daughter, the fabulous and wondermous being that she is, said something to me that made everything just CLICK.
And no, I'm not going to tell you what she said, because it probably wouldn't make sense to you. And its relation to how what she said and how it fixed my problem would probably be quite perplexing to you. But the good news is that she said something that made everything CLICK.
And I thought about a few things, and mulled a few things over, and then I sat down and started writing.
And it's going VERY VERY well.
And very, very fast!!!
So I've found myself in a new conundrum.
When you're writing a new book, in a new series, and no one has met your characters, and no one knows their background, you can make stuff up, and you can flit along your merry way, and it doesn't really matter what happens and when that happens, and the details can be a bit, well, sketchy.
BUT, when you write book TWO of a series, all of a sudden, EVERYTHING matters. How old was this person when that thing happened? When did it happen? How long did it go on for? Where did they meet?
The details are VITAL.
And I've managed to write myself into the equivalent of painting myself into a corner...
I want so very much to go back in time, change the backstory, make things different so that the end result makes one of my favorite recurring characters not look so bad.
However, one can't do that. You can't just rewrite what has been written. You have to stick to the 'truth' of your writing, and follow through. You have to write the history as it has been written. No cheating. No easy way out.
Sigh.
So I'm off to go un-pickle the situation. Write myself out of a corner.
Hopefully tomorrow will produce further good results. Like I said, I am VERY pleased with how things are going.
And just think. Once the first draft is finished, it's just a matter of getting the book into its proper form, printing up edit-able copies, sending them off to the editors, dashing through rewrites, going through the editing process again, finishing the final edits, finishing the final nitpicky details of making the book LOOK pretty, and voila!
And then it's off to publishing, and I head off toward writing books three and four of the Jack Diamond series.
After that, I'm going to switch gears for a little while and write the many romance novels that have been brewing in the back of my mind in the meanwhile. :)
And, as a teaser, let me just say I believe in Easter Eggs -- hiding details (and characters, and events) in my books that will come back later and appear in other books. So keep that in mind! All of my books have Easter Eggs. All of them. And yes, that means Diamonds for Diamond too!!
So that's it for the update of the day (week? month?). Happy reading!!
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I wrote a murder mystery! Here is the link so you can buy it:
You can buy my book in both e-book and paperback on Amazon here:
