Sneaky Peeks

It's no secret that I'm grotesquely behind on Lavender, but what I have not shared with you is that I've spent the last month obsessing over something that should have been three days work. Maybe This Time comes out in trade paperback in April, and St. Martin's Press would like to put the first chapter of my next non-Liz novel in the back. Standard stuff, right? And it shouldn't be a problem since I know who the protagonist is, who the antagonist is, what their goals are, who the love interest is, the entire supporting case, the setting, the mood, the tone . . . I know a lot. I even know the title: Haunting Alice. So what's the problem?

1. I am incapable of writing quickly. If I get to a place where I don't understand something in a story, I have to stop and think about it. I can get a rough draft down, and then I look at it and despair because it's so bad, but I know the first scene and probably the first chapter will have to be rewritten over and over again, so that part's okay. I just don't know how to rewrite yet, I haven't found that rhythm yet, so I obsess. I think about the characters and where they've been before the scene and where they're going after. I think about the central conflict and where the juice is. I think about . . . too much. And then it's there in my head again and I tear after it, write the hell out of the scene, and then I look again and it's . . . not right. So I wander around thinking about the structure, where are the beats and why did this new character show up and how is he going to be vital later and maybe he should be a she . . . It's a miracle I ever finish anything.

2. I'm not actually working on this book right now. I'm working on Lavender, except I've been so obsessed by this first chapter thing, I haven't been back to her in a month. This is entirely my fault, by the way. If I told SMP I didn't want to do the chapter, they'd say, "No problem," and go away. I want to do this chapter. This is going to be an interesting book, both from the point of view of genre and character and all that good stuff and from the point of view of writing a real sequel: same characters twenty years later. I've never done that. But I'm putting in a lot of time on a book that I won't start for a year yet, maybe longer, unless SMP and I have a discussion and change things around.

3. Working on Haunting Alice means plotting Stealing Nadine, too, since this is that simul-quel project, the idea of writing two books that happen mostly simultaneously. So I had to block in what was happening in Nadine while I plotted Alice. What's fun about that so far is that the two books deepen each other so much. Of course, once I'm actually writing them, that's going to make things more difficult, but I think I can do it. But in the meantime, I'm up to my butt in Archers and Goodnights when I should be dealing with Dangers and Blues and that cop from Burney.

4. Finally, there's the fact that this isn't going to be the finished first chapter in Haunting Alice because I rewrite like a madwoman and by the time Alice hits the shelves, Wayne the Ghost By the Fireplace is probably going to be Eloise, the Ghost in the Mirror or something. Anybody who's ever read one of the first scenes I've put up here and compared it to the same scene in the finished book knows how that works. We workshopped some of those first scenes to death here. And I'm not alone on this one. Lani Diane Rich once put the first scene to her next novel in the back of a book she had coming out.

When The Comeback Kiss was in production, I was starting on the novels for the next contract. They wanted a teaser chapter, so I gave them one; the WIP was tentatively titled Hard to Get. The opening scene for it was a provisional one; I wrote it to get started, and once I got started, I changed the heroine's name, her location, her goal, her job, her family, and her conflict, and entirely rewrote the opening. Also, we later changed the title. So now, people read The Comeback Kiss, and even the ones who have read what Hard to Get became – Crazy in Love – write to me and say, "Dude, where's this book? I can't find it anywhere." And I have to explain that they've already read it.

5. Then there's the guilt. People are going to read this chapter and think, "Huh. Wonder when that's coming out." And the answer is probably 2014 or something. So that's annoying. On the other hand, you do get to see the MTT characters twenty years later, so that might actually be okay. But still, it's absolutely not a "Coming Soon" preview. It's a "Coming Sometime. Probably."

Argh.

So I am finishing this chapter today if it kills me because I need to get back to Lavender, I want to get back to Lavender, but the whole time I'm wondering, is this a good idea? Is it enough that it shows where they all are twenty years later, even if the chapter changes? Or is it just annoying? Does anybody even read these things?

How do you feel about those sneak peeks at the end of novels?