HAPPY NEW YEAR!
by Kait Carson
What! Happy New Year? How is that possible? It’s only June. We’re not even close to the New Year. That may be so, but I’m more than ready to ring in the new and ring out the old. 2018 has been the year of the dark star.
I’ve referred to it as the testing year. For the most part, nothing too terrible has happened. At least not until recently. So, without further ado, welcome to 2018 part deux.
There used to be a tradition in Buenos Aires, Argentina that on New Year’s Eve administrative office workers threw all of the prior year’s papers out the window. The New Year began with a clean start, a new slate. Okay, I confess I learned about that tradition from a 1960’s coffee commercial, so I don’t know if it’s true, it makes a nice story. And for 2018 part deux, I’m following it.
You may remember how excited I was to be writing Sanctuary City. It was to be the third installment of the Catherine Swope series. A ripped-from-the-headlines thriller. I have the outline, and about a third of the first draft complete. Each morning when I sat at my desk writing, became harder, and harder, and harder. It seemed odd because I knew where the story was going, knew my villain, even had a rough draft of the final cataclysmic scene. Why then did it seem that every time my fingers hit the keyboard, I had to shove aside the image of a man in a skeletoncostume on Key West’s famous Duval Street with a knife protruding from his chest?
Who was that guy? Getting rid of him was like playing mental whack-a-mole. Without warning, my imagination was filled with a group of twentysomething characters and they were all talking at once. Believe me, I tried to put the brakes on the situation. I haven’t been twentysomething for oh…. a lot of years. We won’t discuss how many. These kids come with a vocabulary that’s Greek to me. I have a lot to learn. They’re also a headstrong and prolific lot. They’ve already gotten themselves involved with three other murders.
I know when I’m beaten. Like the Argentines in that old commercial, I cast out Sanctuary City, and am now hard at work on Fantasy Fest Fatality which takes place during that amazing Halloween revel in the Keys known as Fantasy Fest. The second in the series will be a winter book set on New Year’s Eve, working title Corpse in a Conch Shell, the third set in April with a working title of Crawl Duval and Die, and the fourth will be set in July, featuring a death during Hemingway Days, no working title yet.
If the writing gods are favorable, and my muse smiles on me, I plan to have three of these books out in twelve months. Cross your fingers for me!
Readers and writers, are you ready for 2018?
go for it! And good luck with the twenty-something vocabulary and social media usage.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Margaret!
ReplyDeleteKait, like Margaret says, go for it. I'm looking forward to reading whatever you write.
ReplyDeleteAs for me yesterday I opened up the fourteen first chapters of the tenth book I started at the end of February and quit in March to read and get an idea of where I'm going with this book since for some reason I quit writing in March. Too many other things going on, I guess. Anyway, I know I have those who are looking forward to reading my next book so I need to get back to writing at least one chapter a day after I write the bios for the six possible suspects who could have been the murderer. Then I'll be able to pick one as the murderer. I also realize there are edits I need to make on those fourteen chapters, too, although not many, thank goodness.
I'm just about done with everything I know anything about in my current project so what happens next will be an education.
ReplyDeleteSometimes you just have to admit that what you plan to write, and what your characters insist you write, can be entirely different things.
ReplyDeleteThat's an ambitious schedule, but I bet you can handle it.
I'd like to give a special shout-out to Grace for posting my blog for me this morning while she was traveling in PA. Thank you, Grace!
ReplyDeleteHi Gloria, Sometimes you need a break and the book benefits from sitting back and letting the story flow around you. Six possibles! What a great way to select the killer. No wonder I have such trouble figuring out who your killers are in advance of your endings! Each of your possibles always have such perfect motives and opportunities that I waffle back and forth among them until the final clue is discovered.
ReplyDeleteI started DAYLILIES FOR EMILY'S GARDEN last night - I couldn't put it down and read over half before I finally realized I was dozing more than reading and turned off the light. What a wonderful book.
The perfect way to describe the fun part of being an author, Warren! Enjoy the ride.
ReplyDeleteSo true, Kathleen! They can be difficult little tykes at times. I wouldn't mind it so much if they would gloat less.
ReplyDeleteIt may sound ambitious, but it's really like taking dictation. The oddest thing.
Thank you, Kait. I'm glad you like my second book. Right now I'm trying not only to figure out who the murderer is, which I won't do until I write a bio for each of them, but which of my characters that return throughout most of my books will be brought back in this one. I almost always throw in Belle Polsky, who with her husband runs Belle's Diner which is where a lot of people go to eat including some of the policemen. She's a nosy person full of gossip. I've already brought in Martha, the police chief's mother, but I haven't brought in Bruce Twohill yet who is a continuing character after book two.
ReplyDeleteI also find once I start writing my characters take over their own conversations much of the time.
Oh, I'm glad to know Bruce comes back! You had me at your younger Paul Newman description. I'm eager to learn more about him.
ReplyDeleteYes, characters do drive the plot. I learned so much from Linda Rodriguez's excellent book PLOTTING THE CHARACTER DRIVING NOVEL and I refer to it at the start of every new book.
I am such a slow worker; reading about prolific writers makes me feel like a slug. It’s not your fault, of course, the mind angst belongs to me. No one told me to make the comparison. (Well, at least no one since I became an adult.)
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question about the second half of the year, I plan to publish Seamus McCree #6, False Bottom, and start working on a new series.
And I’m looking into selling prints of some of my photographs – we’ll see if anyone loves them enough to want to have them for their own.
I can relate, Jim. I am usually slow as well. This time (or so far) it seems out of my hands! I am looking forward to FALSE BOTTOM.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with selling the prints. You certainly are a talented photographer, you should easily find takers.