A writerly update

I've been struggling a bit this week – a combination of being in the third quarter of the novel and being a bit over it all, the lead up to Christmas, too few days off recently and menstruation. I've not been helped by the fact that my editing brain is starting to chaff at the bit – 'I know there's things wrong with this story, I can see it, see it's too slow there and it takes too long to get to there and just let me fiddle, just a little bit'. I've told it to stay in its place – that's good that it sees that stuff, and I've done a bit of tweaking but it can just sit and wait cause I don't trust its objectiveness at the moment.

Then there's the fact I've come to an important part of the book and working out how it will happen is proving a challenge. I mean, if you were human and you were trying to pull one over on the guardians of the gadda, how would you do it? Those guardians can do just about anything!!!!

Last night, I was driving from Queanbeyan to Dunlop to visit a friend (for those who don't know, that's clear from the eastern side to the western side of Canberra – the only way to get a longer trip is go north to south) and on the trek across (admittedly still only about 50 minutes, so that tells you how big Canberra is) I took the opportunity to muddle it all through in my head.

And you know what? Not only did I work out how they were going to do what they're going to do, but I worked out how to pull in an intriguing little truth that I learnt earlier in the book.

This series is set two years after the events that conclude the Dream of Asarlai trilogy. Without giving anything away, I will say that as I wrote Dream of Asarlai, I was quite determined that at the end things weren't going to just go back to normal. Some really full on events happened in the course of the three novels and regardless of who wins (the guardians or Asarlai or maybe both?) things just aren't going to be the same again. The three couples get their happily ever after (these are romances, after all) but as for the world of the gadda and the individuals within the story – well, they've got stuff they've got to deal with.

I thought when I started writing The Free Ones that I knew what all those consequences were. Then two of the characters showed me that some really insidious stuff was going on and that's about to come out. The shit, as they say, is going to hit the fan and for a series favourite, it's gonna suck big time.

It's moments like these that I really, really, REALLY love my job.