Hey, everybody. It's me again. I am currently listening to a Christmas album by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Why am I listening to Christmas music only a few days before Halloween? Because I'm stuck. The book has come to a dead stop. It's taking me nearly two weeks to figure out why, but even knowing why, doesn't make it any easier, not really. It's like that moment in therepy where you understand the great bad thing and how it effected you, and there is cathartic release, but the damage is still done. Knowing how you got hurt doesn't make it heal. A rather painful scene is ahead of me, and for the really dark moments, or when I'm really stuck, or both, it's Christmas music. My husband is actually making me a disc (or is it an mp3) of selected bits of music from the nearly dozen I bought last night. Some will go for presents, but most will stay with me for those days when nothing else will do. I knew I was in trouble when no Tori Amos music was cutting it. I then fell back to THE MUSIC MAN, the new one with Matthew Broderick, and after nearly a week and a half of just that, I had to throw the towell in, and admit defeat. I feel defeated, that I need to fall back on the holiday music, because when nothing else will cheer me, or help me gather my courage, this music does. But I know I'm in a bad spot, or I wouldn't need it. It's like it's nice to have back-up, but when you're calling in your reserves, you know that your main force has taken a beating.

What is my beating? I can't tell you. The character in question feels that it would be betraying his trust. How's that for issues. My imaginaty friends are in worse need of therepy than I am. Scary, isn't it? Let it suffice to say, that it is emotionally painful, and I was really hoping things would go differently. I like happy endings, honest I do.

Now, if Darla finds the rumor on the internet tomorrow, or later today, that I'm killing off a main character, or something else I did not say here, I'll be pissed. Let me be as clear as I can. No one is dieing. No one is being killed. Stupid maybe, but not killed. But it depresses me when my characters hurt each other, or themselves.

An aquaintance gave me the advice that I shouldn't invest so much of myself in my work. They aren't real people, afterall. It sounds like good advice, but as you've already guessed the person who gave the advice isn't a writer, doesn't read the books, and is very much an aquaintance. I actually thought about taking the advice for a minute or two, but realized that it wasn't very good advice. People ask me why do people feel so strongly about your characters, your world, the answer of course, in part, is because I feel strongly. I didn't really get that, until these last few days where I've moped around damn near depressed for real, because of people who do not exisit. Not really. I can buy them Christmas presents, but there is no way to send them. Sometimes I feel like I should be able to walk into the next room and there they will be, but they won't. These people do not exisit as flesh and blood, but there are different kinds of reality, and there are days when imagination feels very, very real.

I'll go now, because I've got a dozen different kinds of Christmas music to see me through, and I've made peace with what's coming next in the book. I'd save everybody the angst if I could, but apparently, I can't. So I'll go write it, and let my imaginary friends make their choices, and live with them. Here's hoping for better choices futher into the book.

  Hey. Its another blog entry by Jon. I won't bore you with the fact that I'm writingin form my backup computer.... the monster system I got recently began to flake when I was using MSWord. I also won't tell you how the grocer's strike is really impacting my life in a negitive manner. Nope, I'm not going to gripe about anything.

  I'm going to talk about how my writing has been going. I know that this is about Laurelll and her writing, but you can't live in a house with a writer, and not make some attemp to write yourself. And since I originally went to collage to get a Literature degree and to make a living (or at least pay for beer and pizza once a week). I have been trying to write something since junior high and have had some success in compleating a story. I tend to have trouble finishing a given idea, but I have lots of ideas to bounce between.

  I have been working on a contemporary mystery story that has some potiential, and I hope to have some success at compleating the stroy. But I've been working on it for almost two years and have come up with three other ideas since then.

  so I'm going to leave now, and try to work out what to do next in the story, and see where it leads.

Okay, October has been a rough month for me and I am a little behind. So I am asking for everyone's patience. I really will get to it all, I promise. So what have I been doing?

Orders! We have had lots of orders coming in for shirts and stuff. Seems some of you are getting a jump on Christmas and ordering early. Much appreciated!

Charities. We have donated lots lately. Here's hoping they bring in lots of bucks for those groups. But that also means my figuring out what we will auction or send to a specific group. Including the USS Enterprise. To all the men and women on the ship, oops almost said boat. We sent you a box with lots of goodies. We know you cannot be with your family during the holidays. But we hope the contents will make it a little easier and the long hours a little more bearable until your tour ends. Thank you Michele F. for asking us to help with that.

Charms! I have designs done and to the production company for every book title in the Anita series. Hope to have them all by the end of November. Still trying to find a good bracelet to hang them all on. But we will offer them as individuals for necklaces.

Also coffee cups. I have a design for Bloody Bones finally I think Laurell will like. So look for that soonest. Also one for Danse Macabe.

Morphing coffee cups. The kind that are black until you fill em with hot liquid and then a design shows up. Working on stuff that will be cool on there.

Micah Shirt. That has gone to the production company also. Black shirt with green leopard eyes and the phrase: "Whatever you need...."

Christmas cards. Okay, if you been out to Cafeshops.com/lkhprem, especially in the Petite Morte section, well we have some wacky or strange ideas for Christmas cards and those designs are up or going up soonest. (For once! A job where my stranger sense of humor and twisted personality is an asset!). So to a former boss, I should say bosses as we went through three in less than six months, who missed the mushroom reference on the outside of my cubicle and didn't get why all the mushrooms were named after my fellow employees. Thppppttt!

I do not take responsibility for all the designs for Christmas. Laurell is responsible for some of the concepts. You should see the ones we discarded as too strange for even us. But we also have three others in the works.

The fan club Christmas card. Something special this year and I hope you will all enjoy it. But getting my model to where I could get her to sit still long enough for me to photo her has been hard. I agreed that if she would pose for it, I wouldn't share her name. I hope she doesn't scream when she sees what I did to it. Maybe I will just mail her one and not take it over personally like I planned. Then again, she knows where I live.

Interviews. We have had a lot of requests for interviews as of late. Especially from the foriegn publishers. We have found the method that works best is for me to ask Laurell the questions, tape the answers and then type it all up. Else Laurell will spend days going over the answers trying to get them perfect so this is the speediest method. Unfortunately I do not type as fast as Laurell talks, so it has meant rewinding a lot.

The upcoming release of Seduced By Moonlight has eaten up time. Trying to arrange two venues, one in St. Louis and the other will be....drum roll....Huntington Beach California. Sorry New York, again we were told New Yorkers do not come out for events. We are going to try and arrange something later in the year in New York if possible. But we did magnets that will be given out and door prizes at least in St. Louis. Since Laurell is not touring this time, we have been trying to come up with promotional ideas. So far they have been shot down as too expensive or impractical. Suggestions are welcome!

Center for the Book November 15th. I have arranged to have it filmed. Hoping we can put it on CD and more folks will get to see and hear Laurell. She is really a great speaker in person. We call it The Traveling Laurell Show. She is funny, witty and will be reading from the next Anita book as well as signing and doing a Q&A.

Marcon in Ohio in May. Laurell will be GOHing.

Juggling around and trying to fit in more of the con and personal appearance requests Laurell recieves for next year and 2005. We wish she could do them all but that is not practical. So we are trying to choose those where she hasn't been and places she would like to visit.

Research. Looking up dead words. Words that are no longer in use but may still be used by the fey. Worse, is so many words have changed meaning over the years. So while it had one meaning originally, it now has a completely different one so choices have to be made carefully.

Ireland. Yes, I have been researching ancient Ireland. Mostly for where Damien was probably last human. I have probably just about ran through an entire cartridge on the printer printing pages about Ireland for Laurell to peruse. And then going back for more indepth view and history on some areas. And may I just say, Ireland is really cool!

Circus of the Damned will be out in hardback. They didn't say when, but copyedits needed to be made. Not that I do more than go through and mark the spots that Laurell needs to fix or change. But we hope it gets rid of the YAABI's.
The disappearing car will be resolved!

And as always there is the mail. I am answering everyone as fast as I can. And the occassional response from Laurell herself requires I type the letter and get it out.

And I forgot to record the changes to the first chapter of Seduced in my rush to get it in the mail. So I gotta get that back to post on the website.

So you can see, I have busy. And I really will get to those pics the Marines (thanks Brynda!) in Egypt sent me of Sigmund there and all the other assorted stuff that is slowly engulfing my desk in a pile of papers. Almost like a slow flow of lava. Lets all hope it doesn't roll off the edge and bury a dog. Laurell would never forgive me. Though they do bear half the responsibility for ruining my CD Rom drive. I bought another but haven't had the chance to install it.

Hope everyone has a scary Halloween, or not as suits you.

Darla

The copy edits for SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT, the third Merry Gentry book, have eaten most of the last two weeks. I've never been fond of copy edits, because they always come when the book is over for me. When I write 'the end' at the end of a book, I want to walk out of the house into a book store and see it on the shelves. It doesn't work that way, not even close, but that's what I want. I want the book to be DONE. But it isn't. There are copy edits, and page proofs, and I will be throughally sick of a book before it stops haunting my doorstep. So I always found copy edits a bother, because I was done with the book. But a new demension of bother has surfaced in the last few years. I am writing two series, long books, so that more and more the two series are crossing.
Example, I was almost two hundred pages into the twelth Anita Blake book, then the copy edits for SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT comes along. I tried to divide my day. Part of the day on Merry and the edits, and the other part of the day on Anita and the first draft, but finally I had to stop, because I much prefer first draft to meticulious editing. Editing is one thing, deciding what stays and what goes. Does this conversation belong here or in another book? Things like that. But copy edits are small changes, a word, a sentence, occassionally a paragraph. Small stuff, bugs me. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. So trying to divide the day between something I don't enjoy and something I do enjoy, meant that the thing I enjoy eats up most of the day. There comes a point where I simply have to concentrate on the copy edits and get them out of the house. It doesn't matter what book it is, or what character it is, I would rather do first draft. I also find that I end up reading the book instead of editing. I start by trying to decide how I feel about this reworded sentence and end up pages later reading until the scene stops. I guess it's a good sign that I can still get caught up in my own book, but it's one of the reasons that copy edits are hard. I get distracted. I have fallen in love with Frost's dark moods; Doyle's steady heat; Galen's smile; Rhys's growing power; Nicca's new found extras; Sage's surprises; Barinthus rediscovering himself; and the new characters. Adair who hit the page running and won our sympathay. Mistral, who isn't even one of Merry's men, but still came to life for me. He, more than most of the new characters metamorphized from note to page, into a very different person. Even Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, showed new depths, and surprises this book. See, I sit down to write about something else, but the world is there at my finger tips, ready to go. I could sit down today and begin book four. It's soup, ready to be a meal, but today I will be writing Anita.
Of course, I do get to put Richard back into the thick of the triumverate today. Have you ever wondered why one of the first things that Jean-Claude did once he became Master of the City was to negotiate for Damian to come to St. Louis? I'll finally get to put that reason on paper today. We get to try to explain to Richard's new girlfriend that no we're not having sex, we've had a metaphyiscal emergency. The fact that some of us are naked is just bad timing, honest. Think she'll believe that? Me either.
I was ready to write Anita #12 long before SEDUCED was finished. Like I said, the books are crossing more and more, like trying to dream two different dreams at the same time. Now I have the odd sensation of having two books ready in my head at the same time. I guess, I'm really not ready to sit down to Merry # 4, not really. I'd make notes, and outline for a few weeks, and I'm already outlining for Anita # 13, yes, you read right. I already have the plot ready to go for the next anita book, once I finsih this one. And there's this new idea that's been niggling at me. Something totally different. I've been making notes, character studies, and trying to fight off yet another book series idea, but soon it will be soup, too. I can't possibly do three series at once, so you'll have to wait awhile to find out what the new idea is. So many wonderful books to write, and not enough hours in the day. An embarrassment of riches.

I am circling just under 180 pages on the new Anita book. I always start out a book with great energy and excitement, but somewhere after the first chapter I hit what most writers hit, which is the 'where do I go from here' part. I have my outline, but my outline is fluid. I have more a list of events that need to happen in a certain sequence. I have several lists this book of things that must happen in Anita's personal life (and no I don't just mean sex). For instance I knew Anita and Ronnie were going to have a heart to heart talk about their respective love lives, and their faltering friendshipt. I knew that that needed to be early in the book before the mystery got too deep. If you're going to do personal stuff it needs to be before the bodies get too numerous. Or at least that's the theory.
I read over my husband's entry for the blog today, and realized that I had my own epiphany. I've been writing Anita books as if the books have not changed from GUILTY PLEASURES to CERULEAN SINS. I keep trying to do convoluted msyteries where everything feeds back into each other, and that was great when the books were mostly mysteries with very little romance or vampire politics, or lycanthropy politics, or the dozen different things that have happened as the books have progressed and the world has grown in depth, and become more and more real, more solid. By trying to do the mystery as tricksie as always, I feel like I've not been able to do the mystery justice. I mean, the main villian in NARCISSUS IN CHAINS was way cool, and he got very little on stage time. I'd planned for much more and there wasn't time, nor did Anita cooperate. She was too tough for the villian's henchmen, and didn't captures as planned. I learned that I needed tougher villians, and she was just way more dangerous than I'd realized. Which was very cool, but it meant that I threw out the last third of that booK, and almost start over for the climax, as far as planning.
I finally realized as I looked at the mystery slotted for Anita Book 12, that there was too much mystery. That this mystery plot was enough for two normal books, even if they'd been straight mystery without any of the other elements. Which meant I'd end up not getting my villians on stage enough, and feeling like I'd created this nifty idea that people barely got to see. So I have scaled back. One good solid mystery plot is better than two not so solid mystery plots. Besides the second mystery idea will probably be in Anita book 14. Notice how I've skipped book 13, almost as if I already know what the plot is for that one. Hmm.
But those who have heard me speak across the country, and read bits in the newsletter, do not fear. Edward is still coming to St. Louis this book, and Olaf is, too. Richard has gotten on stage in a major way, and I realized that since I'm not in love with Richard the way Anita still is in part, I'm just angry with him. I'm like someone's best friend who gets to hear all the awful things the boyfriend does, and then the girlfriend goes back with the boyfriend, and the best friend is left hating him, and not being able to say it out loud. No, this does not mean they're back together. This only means that Anita is having to deal with her feelings about Richard, and he, with his feelings for her. But Anita has the promise of maybe sex, and I'm the best friend who isn't going to get sex, and will probably be who she gripes to when everything goes south again. I finally realized that Anita has been hurt enough, and I just don't want to see it anymore. I want her to be happy, and I'm not sure Richard is capable of making that happen. But that's their business not mine, and so I'm trying to stay out of it. But it does make him harder to write on paper, because I'm angery with him for hurting Anita. Once I realized that I was able to get out of my own way and just let the scene unfold. But damn, the fact that I almost need therapy to deal with my fictional character's love life is very close to frightening. I had a vaction this year, honest.

Hey, its thursday, and no its still not Laurell.

I'm just going to post a short note and then leave to get my new computer.

I've just had a revelation recently. I'm not a hardware geek, I can build my own computer, but it is buggy, and not too stable. So after monkeying around inside my computer for three years, I'm giving up and having one professionally assembled.

I'm not ashamed, that I can't build my own machine, I'm just glad that I am able to accept the fact that I'm not the best at everything.

My point, if I ever had one, was that there are a lot of people out there doing things that they are not good at, only because they think they should be. Not everyone is equaly talented in a given area. I'm not so good at Hardware, but I am gifted at help desk.

In closing, I'm going to go and pick up my new computer, and stop bothering everyone.