1. It’s really fun to be able to string out and develop minor characters into main characters in another book.

2. It can really be a pain in the ass to try and remember everything you’ve written before so everything matches! (So that character had blue eyes in the first book and had brown eyes in the fourth book… ack!)

3. I love glimpses into characters’ lives that have already been “wrapped up” in previous books. In the fourth Ilyrian book that’s next up we actually see how Brooke and Bethany are getting along in Ilyria. It’s fun!

4. Sometimes series can seem so involved and detailed. Good in its own way, but can make it a challenge to not lose a reader who might not have read the other books in the series. You want them intrigued and interested, but not overwhelmed. A tightrope balancing trick at times.

5. Though it’s fascinating (in my opinion) to see previous characters as they’ve changed since “their” book, they’ve got to be in later books because they add to another’s story, not just because it’s fun to find out more about them after their Happily Ever After.

6. And finally, sometimes the storyline keeps options limited, it is a nice feeling to be able to wrap up loose ends that didn’t really fit into previous stories.

or so it seems. A mountain of paperwork, childhood sickness (that my youngest seems intent to check off one after the other during this, his first year of school), and personal stuff – like when you fall down one flight of stairs, break one teeny little bone in your foot and there’s just all kinds of problems. Sheesh. Anyway, life happens, right? Good stuff too – like picking out an engagement ring – woohoo!

And…yes! Connyn’s story is finally in the works. No timetable yet. Or promises. I might have a lot of work to do on it once my editor reads through it. Or it could be chunked. One never knows. I hope not of course. I think everyone’s going to love seeing Connyn meet his match in his mate!

I loved writing their story. They both are such strong characters. Like steel on flint – and the sparks fly everytime they get together! I’ve already posted their first kiss (well, part of it anyway ), but here’s a little excerpt of Aurora getting to know Connyn better. (Unedited and unofficial)

The man had enough ego to sustain a revival of Sparta. She eyed Connyn over the top of her cheeseburger and wondered just how closely an Ilyrian could be compared to that ancient civilization. Were they all merciless warriors who considered themselves unbeatable and the gods’ gift to all things military?

Connyn’s right eyebrow arched. “Yes?”

“I was wondering about your world?”

“Our world.”

“Right. Exactly my point.”

“You haven’t stated a point my comment could either support or negate. And I have been tutoring you in our traditions, lore and history for the past several hours.”

True. He’d been lecturing her in the car since Lubbock and would have made a great professor. He had the arrogant didacticism down stone cold. She appreciated the information, just not the delivery. However, at this point, she would take what she could get. Aurora put down her cheeseburger. “Are you the norm for Ilyria?”

“Excuse me?”

“The norm. Usual. Are all the men and women like you?”

“Your question is too vague to be answered adequately. What exactly are you referring to?”

Aurora picked up a french fry and waved it around in an exasperated circle. “Just like that. The way you talk—”

“What’s wrong with the way I speak?”

She bit the fry in two. She had his complete, if irritated, attention. “It’s very…royal.”

He sat back against the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. “Of course. I am a Royal. Heir to the Third House of Kilth.”

“I mean you tend to be condescending.”

“I do not.”

Forgetting the other half of the fry she had just stuffed into her mouth, she snorted and nearly choked herself. Connyn started to rise, but she gestured him down and eased her coughing fit with a drink of Diet Coke. When she could breathe again, she nodded her head. “Yes, you do. For example, you assume you’re always right.”

“Being right is not the same as being condescending.”

“No one is always right.”

He simply responded by smugly raising his eyebrows.

“See? Right now. You’re doing it.”

He frowned, but it cleared as quickly as it had come. “Ah.”

“Ah? What the hell is Ah?”

“You are obviously upset because you’ve been wrong about nearly everything since we’ve met and are feeling embarrassed about it. So your typical feminine response is to try to find fault with me.”

Aurora’s jaw dropped.

“Don’t worry,” he continued when she couldn’t force sound past her indignation. “I am well able to handle your emotional variability and occasional irrational outburst.”

“Emotional var—feminine re—embarrassed?!” Slowly she lowered her hands to lie flat on the table and leaned toward him. “Listen here you arrogant son of a—”

He cut her off by standing abruptly. “We can continue this conversation in the car. You are drawing attention to us with the rising tone of your voice.” Before she could say another word, he turned and walked out of the fast food restaurant, leaving her staring at his back, completely furious and completely stunned. Mentally groping for a word beyond supercilious, and asshole, and bastard, and…well hell. The English language didn’t have one that she knew of that did him justice. Perhaps she’d find a new word in Ilyria. 

One of the best things about all the sparks between these two? They always start such a delicious fire!

I multi-task. Almost obsessively. I find it almost impossible to sit and do a single thing. I’m almost always multi-tasking while trying to write. However, I’ve discovered a few places where just thinking or brainstorming through a story or scene is better than actually trying to write. For example, it’s hard to follow a telephone conversation when I’m writing, red lights tend to turn green with people honking before I notice, I completely lose track of what’s going on in a meeting, and tonight I discovered that trying to write while taking a nice soothing bubble bath isn’t such a hot idea. After one paragraph, I managed to drop my notebook in the water. At least I didn’t lose more than a paragraph of new material. And the bath isn’t quite as relaxing as the advertisement for the bubble bath promised once you spend half the time spreading out notebook pages on the counter to dry.

But I’m not complaining. I’m feeling quite relaxed after this weekend regardless of the bubblebath fiasco. RW (my SO) returned from Germany. (Yay! Big smile!) For some reason, him just being here has a way of releasing me from my obsessive need to multi-task. That little squirrel on the wheel in my brain that’s constantly running crazy chasing down all the “to do’s” on my never-ending list every other normal day disappears when RW is here. Plus, RW’s “relaxing” beats the hell out of any bath, bubbles or not.

Such a dramatic sounding title. That’s how I feel the very first day of school. It’s not the first day of meetings, setting up the room, or ritualistically burning the list of things to do over the summer that never got done that marks the beginning of the year for me. Not even that first required district meeting that tolls the End of Summer bell. My year doesn’t follow the January-December model, but the August-May model. And it never officially begins until I actually step into a room full of students that first time. Then the dance begins. It’s a thrilling, whirling, frustrating, wild and maddening dance and I think I’m addicted to it. I love it. And I feel extremely lucky to get to work at something I truly enjoy. Which leads nicely into notes about my writing…

First, for those of you who comment and email – I’ll be answering this week. I’ve been traveling around all summer, more thanI even thought I would and have not been on the computer much other than to deal with necessities. Also, just FYI – your comments are put in moderation because there are still some of my ex’s groupies out there who make special trips to my blog to make accusations and threats – and I don’t care to host or post their rants here.

Second, regarding Connyn’s story – it got delayed because I had to rewrite large parts of it. I will try to post some *unedited* excerpts soon.

Hope you all have a great week and a fabulous year!

One of the things I love about summer is not having to know every day what day it is, or even what time it is. In fact, I was shocked to learn just this past weekend that July was half over. I thought we were still around the 7th or 8th. This is one of the reasons I would find it very hard to ever leave teaching for anything but full-time writing or full-time lottery-money-spending. Yes, I do love teaching – absolutely, and I don’t teach for the summers – but summer break is a HUGE bonus/blessing and I’ve never wished it were shorter or gotten bored. Heck, I bought a new house and have barely seen it so far – too much traveling and out-and-abouting. This is the first really “calm” and at-home week I’ve had this summer. (Which possibly accounts for me finnally realizing the date.) Of course, I may be expecting calm too early – it is only Monday.

I would never suggest that a teacher buy a house and move in the last month of school. It’s crazy. Insane. Bordering on stupid. But sometimes unavoidable. I started out thinking, wow, I could do so many cute things in this room, and I could put together a great patio for entertaining framed by those two large trees out back and oh yes, there are at least six ideas from that last Home and Gardens show that would work perfectly here. And now, about two weeks later I just want to find my silverware, my CDs, favorite pair of black work heels and a place to sit that I don’t have to clean off first. And then, the day after school is out, I’ll be traveling for approximately the entire month of June. I think I need to have a chat with my secretary. Oh yeah. HA! That’s me. Ok, I have boxes staring at me and I really would like to quit eating sandwiches…

More to come… eventually.  

Where’s there? Today it was on a plane flying far overhead through the beautiful blue sky while I was stuck in traffic on Friday afternoon with two impatient kids in the backseat and a loooooong list of things to do for the weekend – with moving, ending school and all…. I don’t care where the plane was heading. Out of the city, state, country – didn’t matter. I just WANTED TO BE ON IT!!!

Ok, I guess I needed something else to fill in any spare moments in my life – so I decided to buy a house. YAY!! I’m so excited! Then I open my eyes and see all the paperwork and I’m slightly terrified. So I close my eyes again AND I’M SO EXCITED!! And going in a solid eight different directions and needing coffee more than ever! Since sleep is just out of the question at this point. But then again….YAY!!!

I’m so past the “Is it Friday yet?” syndrome and am SO ready for sum-sum-summer time!! I want to walk barefoot on the sidewalk at dusk and feel the warmth still held in the sidewalk. Smell freshly cut grass and suntan lotion. Switch my margaritas out for mojitos and enjoy long, sun-lit evenings. I want to shed the sweaters and jackets and pull out the tank tops, shorts and break in a new pair of flip-flops, preferably with cute little jingling jewels that match the new shade of bright polish on my toes. And this yearning for summer has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that I’m a teacher with a classroom bursting at the seams with wiggly, hormone-infused, stir-crazy, are-we-done-yet-this-is-boring-can’t-we-just-watch-the-movie teenagers with attention spans shorter than a gnat’s blink. Absolutely nothing. I promise.

HA! 

Notebooks that is. Sorry, not a love scene from one of my books. Though I did write a lot of sex today. But that’s a rabbit trail off the main path of this blog. I thought about what I had written yesterday and realized I didn’t have it exactly right. I can jump into a story pretty much wherever my brain has worked through a scene, but not on the computer. For some reason, when I type, it’s got to be “in order”. In my mind, those words echo with pompous authority the way a large and ancient bell tolls the hour for beginning classes across the lawn of a strict, Ivy-league prep school where all the students are required to wear suit coats and of course the hallowed halls are empty because tardiness is not allowed.

Wow. I’m really wanting to dart down those darn rabbit trails.

Anyway, I can’t type out of order. Maybe because rough drafts for me, lists of ideas, random wanderings, all fit more naturally onto paper. Where if I scratch it out, I can come back to it and see it, gather up the direction of inspiration, the starts and stops and AH HA’s!! even weeks or years from the day of writing. Arrows and stars and brackets and doodles all meander easily across a piece of notebook paper for me. But on a keyboard with electronic letters and delete, save, print – it’s gone, done, finished – even with the multitude of fonts available – it’s just not the same.

It’s not MY writing. I can look at something I wrote weeks ago and tell by the slant and shape of the letters what kind of mood I was in. From the complexity and number of doodles just how long it took me to pull a thought from my head in a manner precise and narrow enough for words. And I like to see my work spread out. I do a lot of flipping back and forth, moving whole scenes, descriptions, conflicts, paragraphs, and descriptions around. When I try to do that on the computer, I get confused because I don’t have the visual clues that I do on my handwritten pages. There’s no blue star with a number one in the margin and a note to call mom before the NCAA championship game starts (because of course, she won’t answer when the game is actually being played.) No coffee spill on page 62 or half-written poem along the margin where the scene being played out sparked inspiration for several other stories.

The computer is wonderful. I absolutely would NOT want to live a life in today’s world without it. It makes so many things faster and easier. (And in my notebooks, let’s face it – as much as I love them, they DON’T automatically correct my spelling when I’m rushing and forget the “i before e except after c” rule among others.) But there’s something about seeing words formed by your own hand that just draws me, entrances me. Keeps me reaching for that notebook one more time. When I hit a writing block, 9 times out of 10, I’m sitting at the computer. And 9 times out of 10, all I have to do is shut it down, grab a spiral and a colored pen, take a deep breath and dive into that clear, inviting page that’s been waiting on me.