I’m out of hibernation mode and back among the living. (Although I’m not hanging out with Wil Wheaton like Some People.)

Mowed the lawn, on my third load of laundry, still need to clean up the kitchen and make myself a tuna sammich so I don’t pass out. (I didn’t eat until 7 pm yesterday because I was in the throes of Book Finishing. This is untenable, because if I don’t eat two meals a day + snack my body starts to hoard calories and then my pants don’t fit.) This day is chock-a-block with glamo(u)r. I may even scrub the bathroom floor.

I thought of an opening for “Ashes to Ashes”, something drawn from one of my own personal “worst nightmare” scenarios. It’s not quite as scary as “Something behind me in the mirror” or “SPIDERS!” but it’s right up there. Imagine you can see things no one else can see, you’re strapped to a table, and one of them is standing over you and there’s not a damn thing you can do. Yeah, that’s where we find Ashley, our sorta heroine. And then we find out she’s institutionalized, but not crazy, and then something probably blows up because it’s a story by me, after all. It’s also my first try at third person close present POV (enough modifiers?) so it may all end up junked on my hard drive. We’ll see.

And if I get all of this RL stuff I’ve been neglecting polished off today, tomorrow I can go see Speed Racer. Or Iron Man again. Or both. I’m my own boss, dangit.

ETA: I bought these as a reward for book-finishing. Just wanted to share the shiny.

This was my 7th novel.  I think it was better than my 6th and definitely a better baseline than my first.  This was the fourth book I’ve written in the Hexiverse, and the world got to grow by leaps and bounds, with several new characters who will have long-term story arcs.  Because of that, I’m wondering if it’s a little crammed.  I wondered if I tried to do too much, throw too much Cool Shit up on the wall and neglect the baseline story and the development of the leading characters.

I guess we’ll know in a week, because now I let the manuscript sit and get some distance on it, and think about what I need to fix.  I really do think my biggest change is going to be to A) explain the world, because I always under-explain things and there are a lot of changes to the canon of Nocturne City in Book 4, and B) de-cram the narrative.  I need to stretch several set pieces out and give them their own shape and act structure so they tie together into a steadily rising action that leads to the payoff with no feeling of disconnect.  My inner screenwriter is rearing her head–I still tend to see my books, even though they’re books and not scripts, as living, three-dimensional organisms, with their own internal logic, pulse and bones.  I’d describe how a plot and a character arc looks in my head but then all of you reading this really would think I’d gone around the airy-fairy bend.  I will say that I tend to see the entire story as rolling film, with color, sound and camera angles.  When things get blurry or start to jump around, I know it’s a spot I need to go back and take a second look.

Hopefully, Witch Craft will require less poking that Second Skin, but I took more care with the initial draft to head off the two massive rewrites required for Book 3.  I tried to actually do my job this time instead of sitting there pouting in the back of the class, writing a book I didn’t want to write.  And Second Skin, once I started giving a damn about it, turned out really well.

Tomorrow I get to start writing “Ashes to Ashes”, the demon hunter novella with a side order of mental trauma and the mental institution to go with it.  Third person present tense, a completely different character to work with and a nice switch up from Luna & Co before I dive back into Spell Bound on the 20th.  Without RT and my natural procrastination, I won’t have to push myself quite so hard from now on.  4,000 words a day is nice, but my brain feels scraped from the inside out after this.  A week of easy work on the novella will be nice, like a writer vacation.

Mai schedule, let me show u it:

1. Write “Ashes to Ashes”
2. Finish editorial changes for “Ginger”
3. Write Spell Bound (Book 5)
4. Revise Death Wish
5. Write Conjure Man (Black London, Book 2)
6. Revise Iron & Ice

That carries me through October 1, at which point I’m sure I’ll have more Very Exciting News.  For now, I’m going to enjoy the rest of my night off.

I actually have no idea how good this book is, but my feeling at the end is “pretty good”. Mostly, the continuity is borked, but that’s an easy fix, just a matter of combing through and fixing the nitpicky details so they mesh. I like the story. I like the characters. I LOVE the worldbuilding. The dreaded love triangle needs a little more screen time, and the final fight could use a tweak. A few sentences here and there to remind people what’s happened in Books 1, 2 and 3 to allow X to happen in Book 4.

But on the balance, for something I started off hating so very much, I think this turned into a damn good story.

Witch Craft (Nocturne City, Book 4)

I wrote 4,000 words in a little under three hours today. I have some errands to do, so I don’t know if I’ll continue working, but I left off at the OMG CLIFFHANGER portion of the climax, and one very awesome bit is about to happen, so we’ll see how tired I am. It would sort of be a shame to lose momentum now, but I don’t want to break my brain and I do have all of tomorrow to wrap this up…

Here’s the new hotness:

Witch Craft (Nocturne City, Book 4)

As in, I’m pissed off and feel like I want to smash something. I’m not going to say what it is because it’s writing-related and I’m a motherfucking professional, even if some people seem to be laboring under the impression that I am not.

Hint: it has to do with a large book retail site.

Hint2: some people shouldn’t be allowed access to a computer.

That is all.

Grr.

It’s 3:21 a.m. and I’m going to bed.

Witch Craft (Nocturne City, Book 4)

Suddenly, there’s a lot of threads to tie together as the climax ramps up. This book is most likely going to run over 80k, which is just fine, as Second Skin ended up being 88k. If I have discipline tomorrow, I’ll have most of Saturday to add in those extra words at the end. Now to have the aforementioned discipline…

I’m at the scene I’ve most looked forward to writing (aside from the kissy scenes…what can I say, I’m a girl that way.) It’s a very Jim Butcher scene. That’s the only way I can describe it. Except for perhaps “metal”.

One last reminder: Tomorrow at 7 pm, at Beaverton Powell’s, I will be signing and reading with Miss Richelle Mead. You know you want to.

I did about 3,600 words today, hit my stopping point, even managed to do a touch of laundry so I have something decent to wear tomorrow. Skipped the gym, but had a walk. Feeling very accomplished.

Here’s where we are:

Witch Craft (Nocturne City, Book 4)

4,200 words today, or thereabouts. Excellent work on Witch Craft, and I made it to the start of the climax. Big Reveal, Big Shocker, all of that, and soon someone dies. Yay character death! Fun for the whole family!

Also, for you Street Magic fans out there, the opening of Conjure Man came to me today, much like the opening of the first book came–a long time waiting for it, but when it did arrive, it arrived entirely right. This bodes well for the actual writing, which is going to happen some time in July and carry on until the book is finished. Which is sort of obvious, now that I think about it. Anyway, here it is:

A crow sat on the dead branch of the dead tree that watched over two gravestones in the corner of Brompton Cemetery. It watched Jack Winter with its black eyes like beads, and he watched the crow in turn, with eyes that most people called ice, but that he called simply blue.

And with that, here’s where we are today:

Witch Craft (Nocturne City, Book 4)

Taking a quick break from typing to…type more stuff.

Thursday I’ll be signing at Powell’s Beaverton (that’s in Oregon, kids) with Richelle Mead.  7 pm.  Reading and hijinks expected.

I’m one of the new Reluctant Adults at the League of Reluctant Adults, like so:

There’s a contest.  Go check it out.

And lastly, May is Caitlin Kittredge Month! (At least at the B&N boards.)  Join, discuss, and I’ll be popping in periodically.

Back to my word cocoon…

And how. I didn’t sit down to work until 7 pm and consequently am just finishing up. I’m in serious hibernation mode, angling for the book to be done (on time!) on Saturday. Laundry and everything except essential errands have taken a back seat. I don’t like doing this, because it means I haven’t been managing my time very effectively (self employed = making time for stuff that needs doing and not letting the Batcave devolve into how it was before Bruce Wayne rappelled down there.*)

But fortunately I’m not scrambling to catch up, just buckling down to get finished, so I can take a day when the book is done to clean, take care of outstanding real-life issues, blog meaningfully instead of regaling you with inane stories about my day and get back to the gym every day.

Soon. Just 5 more days…

On a brighter note, I wrote about 4,000 words today, so I’m pretty happy on the writing front, and we’re perilously close to the start of the book’s climax, and climaxes mean endings, and they cannot come soon enough.

Here’s where we stand:

Witch Craft (Nocturne City, Book 4)

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*Yes, I really am this big of a geek. Blame Iron Man. I’m still surfing that wave of geek love.