I call her, Ms. Reed.

I finally got my rewrite of book 11 done on Tuesday, and it's ready for my editor.  That freed me up tremendously, and with nothing huge scheduled to land on my desk for a while, I can NaNoWriMo!  I've often played along, but never officially participated.  This year, I signed up, so if you want to be my writing buddy, I'm there under Kim Harrison with the burning bunny avatar.  I've got two buddies the last time I looked, and both of them are leaving me in the dust as far as word count.  I can really see how this can keep you motivated.  I've got to get some words down.  Someone help me here . . . do I have to search my current writing buddies out and "buddy" them as well, or is it automatic?

So if  you've been to NaNo and seen me there with my paltry 100 words, you will note that I'm working on something not Hollows related.  My editor was not wowed by my offerings this September in terms of possible next-series, and I came up with something new in the interim.  I can understand why she wasn't roses and candy.  I suck at writing, I excel at rewriting, and much of what I gave her was not what I'd be writing on in the actual series in terms of characters anyway.  I gave her worlds and magic systems, and I'm character driven when it comes down to it.  My schedule has gifted me with time, so I'm dropping back and just writing a damn book–for me.  It might never see the light of day, but I'm up an hour earlier this morning, sitting at my keyboard, dying to get words on paper, so I don't care.

I got much of my prep work done yesterday, picking out a title (which has changed already), names (most of them are weaving terms), assigning rules to the magic (because without rules you are at a severe disadvantage in what-comes-next), getting the beginnings of character profiles in my thoughts, and writing out a three-page synopsis.  I usually will take a few more days at this point and write out more detailed breakdowns of each chapter, but because it's so new, I'm going to forgo that this time and begin writing from the synopsis.

The one thing that sticks out in my mind and makes me like this project more than the others I could be working on (besides the last Hollows book) is that my main character is happy with her life and herself.  She is productive, and good at her job, and is in love.  She is, again, the girl next door–before everything falls apart and she has to scramble to figure it out.  I know her issues, and I like her already.

I'm writing the first chapter today, and her name is Taylor, Taylor Reed.

 

P.S.  Pictures of the event at Nicola's are up.  They have lots of signed HOLLOWS INSIDERS and will ship.