Hey, everybody. I finished the read through of INCUBUS DREAMS on Saturday morning. We went to the ballet the night before. Trinity was entranced, but it was a three hour show that began at eight, so she was sacked by the time we got home. That boneless, child sleep, where you can put them in their jammies, tuck them in, and they don't even move. It had been a long time since I'd seen her that hard asleep. Ballet West's THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, beautiful costumes, and that impressive physicality that I always come away with from almost any dance company. The show was at the Fox theatre one of my favorite venues ever. Trinity's main complaint was that it differed from the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. Jonathon's mom, Mary, went with us, as did our friend Andrew. We got in late, and slept in the next morning, as much as the dogs would tolerate, but I finished the read through the next day.

I know the book works, because I kept having to make myself stop reading and remember to edit. When a book is this fresh in my head, and I'm still caught up in it, I've done something right. The book manuscript, pages stacked is almost six inches tall. It is the longest book I've ever written. It came in just shy of 1000 pages, but I'll be adding two small chapters and a few pages here and there, so we might get closer to that 1000 mark. I'm not trying for it, just aware of it.

I have lots of sticky notes on lots of pages, but most of them are small stuff; typos, spelling, some grammar. A lot of the more serious sticky notes are during the police scenes, because I took Anita outside her area of expertise, or mine. I'll be trying to set up an interview with someone who can answer my questions. Appoitment will have to wait for next week, because tomorrow Jonathon and I are off to a business conference. Since it's not open to the public, it seems cruel to tell you where we'll be, because you won't be able to get in. The professional guests are only allowed one guest a piece. But we'll be gone until the end of the week.

So going back through the sticky notes and talking to the experts will have to wait a few days. Which is sort of frustrating. It means instead of getting the rewrite done at the beginning of May, it will be more like the middle of May. Okay, it's like one week later, but the thing is, I am taking two weeks off. I really am. Which means that once I put INCUBUS DREAMS to bed, then I take the break, and only then do I start on the fourth Merry book. Right now the titlte is, A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. It may, or may not, be the final title.

I need the break between books. I need to relearn how to relax, or at least do other things. But I'm impatient, as always. I want this book done, really done, so I can take my break with a clear conscience. I want the break, and I want to know when I'll be going back to work so I can start working on the schedule. I always feel better when I have a schedule to work from. There are other side projects that I'm wanting to start on, and I need to figure out how to work them in. Anyway, got to go. Talk to you guys in a few days.

Done. I was half-tempted to just type the word done. It feels like anyone reading this blog would know what I meant. The book, INCUBUS DREAMS, is done. Yea! I've got a week, or so, of clean-up and final research questions. As always I find that I need at least one complete draft before I know exactly what questions I need to ask my experts. Though you do have to have enough earlier research to write that draft or two, before hand. Always a fine balance, research.

I did a marathon session on Friday night that finished around 10:30 at night. Thirty-one pages at a shot. Good pages. I was pumped when I went to bed. Phyiscally tired, but pumped. At four A. M. I woke and realized that the thirty-one pages was crap. To try and make my plot work out as planned I had made the villian be stupid and Anita be less then her usual competent kick-ass self. One of Hamilton's rules of writing is, "Though shalt not make your hero stupid to further your plot. Rewrite the plot not the character." Another rule is, "Your villian has to be more than just mean, sadistic and stupid. He's got to have his own motives that make sense to him." So that glorious rush of pages had to be thrown out, completely. No saves.

But getting all those pages out of the way, unstuck something. As if that false trail were some kind of boulder stuck in the way of the water of creativity, or whatever less poetic phrase you like. I got up bright and earlier next morning, since I'd been awake since four A. M. though I didn't get out of bed 'til about six or seven. But by the time I got out of bed, I'd made my notes, and thought it through. By around noon on Saturday I was done. Done, gloriously done. We celebrated by going out to lunch and contacting our friend, Richard. (He had earlier called and requested that if we had time this weekend to call him.) And no, this Richard has nothing to do with the Richard in the books. I did not even meet our friend Richard until years after the character exisited. Sorry to all those who wish to make more coallaries between the books and my life than actually exisit. And sorry for all those who wish the men in the books were real, I sort of understand that part. Anyway, we did dinner and a movie. We saw LadyKillers with Tom Hanks. It is the first movie I've seen in a year or so, that was totally guilt free. I was done. I earned that movie.

The movie was wonderful. Funny, dark humor, wonderful acting all the way around, great cimetography, costumes, and a sure hand at the directing, that left nothing to chance, and yet, was only heavy handed when it was funny and worked for the film. The writing was brilliant, and I'd love to know how much of the dialogue was ad-lib, and how much was scripted. The three of us had nothing but praise for the film. The three is my husband, Jonathon, Richard, and myself. We wanted to see the movie before we took Trinity to it. I'm not sure the kiddo would enjoy it. I'm not sure she's old enough to get the jokes. The violence is mostly benign and hilariously. I haven't seen this many people die, and laughed this hard in years. Maybe ever.

We took the entire rest of the weekend off, and it was wonderful. I was pumped. That euphoric rush that always follows the end of a book. It lasts for around two to three days, then comes the two to three days of moping. Moping around the house like a lost soul, because I've spent months and months knowing exactly what I had to do every day, and now suddenly, it's gone, over, finished. There's always a certain amount of unsettledness to the completian of a big project for me.

Added to my usual mood swings after a book, there is the fact that it's not really finished. I have to print it off and reread it. God, I do not want to do that, but I've already found a few things that were in my head but never made it to paper, in just a quick run through on the computer. Most writers miss more things if they write too fast, I miss stuff if I write too slow. I think this book took longer than any other Anita book ever. Well, it is the longest one I've ever written that's part of it, but also, well, enough of that. I'll give stuff away if I don't shut up. Let's just say that the next book will be the test to see if certain themes slow me down every time or if this was just something about this book. But as always when I'm slow at a book, I don't seem to hold it all in my head as completely, so I have to reread just to be certain what choices I made outside of the main mystery plot, and main character action. It's always the small stuff that will come back and bite you on the ass. Throw away lines are notorious for catching you out in a series of books. You make one line somewhere in some book, no note about it to yourself, because it's just a throw away line, not important. Then three or four books later you've forgotten you wrote that one line, and you write an entire book that contradicts it. I haven't done that yet, but I know some fine writers that have. But I'm a fan of their work, so I've reread the book with the line, so I knew that they'd forgotten it when the other book came out. Writers don't reread their own stuff, mainly because once it leaves the house for that final, final time, you're so sick of it that you never want to see it again. You try rereading your own words over and over, while you and about a half dozen other people edit them. The best test for me whether a book works is do I get so caught up in my own writing that I forget that I'm supposed to be editing. If I do, then I know that I've done good.

Well, got to go. I've got to sort through my sticky notes. The ones I've used get thrown away. The ones, a growing mass, for future books get moved to a wall space that is not above my computer. I've got so many future Anita sticky notes that I'm going to have to rearrange my office walls, so that Anita has a bigger permenet chunk of wall away from the computer like Merry does. I am running out of walls, which is one of the reasons that we're building on new offices. Though don't get me started on that. I think I'll move the sticky notes that don't have to do with either current series out into the hall just before the door of my office, and put Anita where those were. Merry has the biggest wall in the back, because I knew from the first book what the last book would be about. Though, no I do not know who will be her king or how she will get to that final climax. No pun intended.

I am going to finish putting INCUBUS DREAMS to bed, then I'm taking some time off. A couple of weeks. With my schedule I've finished one book and started the next one within a day or two. I need a break, and everyone is okay with me getting one. Cool.

I need a few days to sit around and do nothing for a change. Not spend the week frantcially doing errands, and catching up on stuff, but actually taking some time off. I think I've forgotten how to do that. I need to relearn. Recreation means to re-create yourself. We all need time for that.

On one of the days I was most frantic and most convinced this book would never die, two little birds came to the tree outside my window. Warblers. For all you birders out there you'll understand that I grabbed my binoculars and my bird books and tried to look at the warblers while I was talking on the telephone to New York. I am a cautious birder, so I would not say what birds they were though, I'd narrowed down both to two or three possibilities. Warblers are tiny, smaller than most sparrows, and fast. They seem to always be moving, especially if you want them to hold still. Many of them are also very nearly identical to eachother.

I had never seen warblers in my trees before. I had forgotten how excited I used to get with the spring migration. It's been years since I went birding. The allergy shots are helping. I might acutally be able to go out in the woods without being sick for hours afterwards.

Walking Pippin, our big puppy, I saw one of the little birds again, and this time it held still. A Bell's Viero, not exactly a warbler at all. And the other little bird came back to my tree and let me have another chance at him. A yellow-rumped warbler. They are both new birds to me, never seen them before.

I took their coming as a sign, that I need to remember how to enjoy myself. I need to rediscover the things that helped me re-create myself, outside of books and writing. I think so many of us get so caught up in our work, and just surviving from one family activity to another that we forget ourselves. Forget who we are as individuals, because the real world swallows us up. I finished the book weeks ahead of where I'd pessimisticly aimed. I finished in time to take a pair of binoculars, some books, a back pack, and go out and see the spring mirgration before it all goes away for another year. I think it's a message that I need to look up more, out more, and remember that life is not narrow, but very wide.

Hey everbody, its me. I'm all most afraid to say it, but I think, finally, I'm truly almost done with Incubus Dreams. Almost done means that I'm hoping to be done by the end of this month. I'm not going to get sucked into a big blog entry. I am going to work now. Talk to you guys later. Bye.

Hi all!

Just a note to let you know that I've added some pictures to the galleries. Please note that I've given the dogs their own gallery. Their volume of pictures has grown to fill more than a screen on my monitor.

Look for additions to the LKH Misc. gallery in the next few days. I'll be adding shots from the St. Louis Botanical Gardens' Annual Orchid Show.

That's all for now.

Hey, guys. We got some e-mails from people who thought my last blog entry was a little depressed. I didn't think so, but hey, reading back over it, it does seem a little down. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to tell me to buck up. I finally realized that I'm trying to treat the books the same way I treated them when six hundred pages was a really, really long book. Now most books average around seven hundred plus pages. INCUBUS DREAMS is going to be over a thousand pages. I'd make it shorter if I could, but the book has to be as long as you need to finish the themes, plot, whatever of the book. But back in the day when books were four hundred pages, five at the outside was when I finalized how I write. My schedule, my habits, etc . . .

I'd been wondering why the last few books I couldn't find one single album to get me through the entire book. The answer is simple. I like to listen to the same music over and over, so that when I hear that album it puts me in the mood to write that book. There are still some songs that evoke certain books or characters for me. I can't listen to the music without thinking of the writing. I can listen to the same album for five hundred pages, then somewhere between five and six hundred, I get tired of the album. I just simply want different music. When I next sit down to write a book, I will know that if the book is going to be six hundred pages or more, that I simply need to plan for two different albums. Either switch them back and forth early on, or be prepared with a back-up album when I get to the last third of the book. See, perfectly logically, once you think about it.

I also used to immerse myself into my books. I would write and write, and barely eat, or sleep. I threw myself into my make-believe-universe like jumping off a cliff, trusting my words to catch me. That works great when it's a four hundred page book. It's even doable at five, but you get much over that and you just can't disappear from the rest of your life for so long. Especially with children, and a spouse, and dogs, and friends, and hell, just everyday life. Your life doesn't run itself. So this total immersion technique that worked great for the first four books or, so. (There was some problems with it when my daughter was born and I went back to work when she was three months old. Babies take up an amazing about of time and energy.) But I stubbornly tried to keep writing as if I was still childless. I gave that up. Impossible. Babies change everything about your life. You're still you, but your time is not really your own. Not for a very long time.

But when I do write, when the kiddo is in school, or my lovely husband is doing child duty, I still try for the immersion technique. But now the books are seven hundred pages, eight hundred pages, nine, a thousand. I simply can't immerse myself into a book for that long, and neglect everything else. It just isn't doable. Even I don't write that fast. But because I was still opearting as if the books were half this long, I was mentally beating myself up. Thoughts like, I used to be able to work like this. What's wrong with me? Why can't I do this the way I've always done it? The answer, is so obvious, but only if you notice it.

I've in effect been trying to do the equivelent of three to four of my old books in a year's time. No wonder I can't do it. Who could? As the books have doubled, or more, in length, I've cut myself no slack in my schedule. I've treated the idea that I want to write two books a year, as gospel. When I set this goal the books were around four hundred pages, close to five, a piece. Eight hundred pages a year is doable for me. Even a thousand pages is doable with effort. But what I've been trying to ask of myself is between sixteen hundred and two thousand pages a year. That is not doable. That is like insane.

It also explains why I get tired of a book before a book is finished. I always am tired by the time I finish, no matter what book it is. I always like getting to the end. But the last several books I've gotten tired sooner. I've had this niggling feeling that the book should be done, and it's not. It's like only three quarters done, but my body, my mind, my habits, tell me we should be done. Because I developed all these habits, trained myself to write a book about half to three-quarters the length of what I'm writing now.

I'd been thinking I was doing something wrong, but it's simply that I hadn't made room in my schedule for the growth. It would be like trying to treat your child like they're still in elementery school when they're about to graduate high school. All the strategies that worked when they were little, just don't work now that they're eighteen.

I've been putting off vacations; trips to the zoo; you name it, it's all on hold. Because I have to finish to the book first. No, I've decided, no I don't. I will continue to work on a regular schedule, and I still turn out more pages per day than most writers do. I am blessed in that way. But I have to find a way to write that reflects the length and complexity of the books now. I have to figure out what of my engrained work habits I can change, and what I can't. Extra music, and probably go back to a page count that is smaller than my usually, so I pace myself better. I keep hitting days of twenty page plus, and that would be great if the book was actually that close to the end, but it isn't. I have almost two hundred pages still to go. I broke it down yesterday to a chapter by chapter outline, and that's about where we're at. Now would be the time to go into the tweny page a day run, but I did it too early. Like running a marathon and doing the last kick too far away from the finish line. You make it across, but you make it across slower.

Now that I've had my revalation about why things aren't working as smoothly with the writing as they once did, I can fix it. I can try to rework how I work, but until I realized the false logic, or maybe outdated logic, I was working on, I didn't know what was wrong. It's an old saying, but a true one; don't work harder, work smarter. Which is what I will be trying to do from now on. Bye for now.

Its mid morning here and I haven't really written anything of note in the blog for a while, so I thought I'd write something.

As Darla said yesterday, SbM is #11 on the NY Times list, and that is soo cool. I can't really articulate how cool, as I'm still in shock that it is back on the list.

I've been taking some time of late to re-acquaint myself with one of my most favorite hobbies. Miniature Gaming.

I love to put together and paint miniatures. It brings me a bit of peace in my hectic schedule and everyone here thinks I do a wonderful job of it. Maybe I'll put up a picture or two of my stuff and let you decide. But don't tell me, I like to keep my illusions intact. :-)

For the sixth week, Seduced By Moonlight is on the NY Time Bestseller List! #11!
Happy dances abound!

It's me. Sat up late and finished a scene that I'd had to leave blank. A scene that I had not the heart or patience for weeks ago. I just typed, scene here, and moved the fuck on. Last night I had to finally finish it. It was a great scene. Fun, exciting, sexy, but it was still hard, because anything with Richard and Anita, and Jean-Claude is hard. It's their dynamics, I guess. I was pumped after the scene, and if it could have been the end of the book, I'd be exstacitic this morning, but it's not. Last night I chose music for the scene. TYPE O NEGATIVE "Black Number 1". on continuous play. If you're familiar with the song then it gives you some idea of the scene.

This morning I've skipped back to where I left the rest of the book, over two hundred pages ahead. I'm at page 920, and not done. I was in such a good mood last night. The scene really worked. This morning I woke in a deep blue funk, so tired, emotionally drained. For me it's been being sick with one of those icky viruses for two weeks. Only kicked it's ass yesterday. For Anita, we're finally seeing her pay the price on stage for no longer believing that vampires are monsters. If vampires are people, living beings, then what does it do to you as a person to be killing them on a regular basis? She's murdering people. Yeah, they started it. They killed other people, but sometimes they aren't fighting back. Sometimes, the bad guys beg for their lives, and she still has to pull the trigger. It's been ugly. So through very different avenues Anita and I come to this place in the book, both emotional drained, so tired. Maybe I'm like one of those method actors, and I adopt some of what my character is doing, or expereincing, because my courage has faltered several times this book. I know what's coming and I don't want to put Anita through it. I don't want to see it, or do it, and I don't see a way to avoid it. We're back to having Olaf and Edward on stage, however briefly. We'll need the back-up and that says more than anything else what kind of end we have for this book.

How much violence can you see before you break? I'm beginning to daydream about a cozy mystery world where no one dies violently, and it's always tea time. Anita needs a real vacation, and so do I. But I think that she, like me, is incapable of having an innocent vacation. I can't go anywhere without getting a new book idea for her, and it would be her luck that she'd be out jogging, or something and find a body. I can hear her now in my head, yelling, "What is this karma? I'm on fucking vacation." She'd be so wicked pissed to have a crime dumped on her lap if she actually left town and tried to do something normal. You know, go to the seashore, look for shells, jog along the shore. Sounds good, doesn't it, but even if I went, I would be gazing off to sea thinking of monsters.

I've got an interview question waiting it's turn in the cue of interviews. The question is why violence? Why write about such violent themes? Why write about scary stuff? The answer, simply, is that I can't help myself. It's how I think. Give me an idyllic scene with daffodils and bunnies, and there'd be a severed hand in among the flowers. Or maybe, better yet, a partially decomposing hand, that one of the dogs dug up. Naw, we've seen too many dogs digging up stuff in mysteries. It happens in real life, but fiction should try to be fresh, if you can do it. One of the hardest things about writing a series if your detective is a civillian is finding exscuses for bodies to keep turning up. It's so much easier with a main character that gets to be a professional cop or detective. One of the reasons that Anita is a professional, rather than a civvie, is that I read mystery series, and decided I'd rather have a reason for my main person to keep being called into crime scenes.

Strangely, I'm feeling better. Yeah, I'm tired. Yes, the book is the longest yet, and that's playing hell with my deadlines, but what I wrote is true. I write what I think about, what ocurrs to me, and that is some pretty dark shit. I'll leave you here. Keep the light on, watch your back, and remember that noise . . . It's nothing.