Goodreads asked Terez Mertes Rose:

What are you currently working on?

Terez Mertes Rose Blogging keeps me busy, as does reviewing ballet performances during the ballet season (December to May). But I will always find time to write fiction—it’s my favorite writing practice. And at this time, I find myself in the unlikely situation of working on two novels concurrently. Whoops, not my initial plan! But there are follow-up stories popping up in my head about how all the characters’ lives and relationships come full circle, from both OFF BALANCE (Book 1 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles) and OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT. My original plan had been to focus on revising my first novel, completed in 2003. It’s about a ballet dancer who goes to Africa, thinking she can outrun her challenges back home, only to encounter worse ones there. Toss in a cross-cultural romance with a privileged, haughty African man that consumes and reshapes her world and world view. It’s a great story with lots of humor and emotional (okay, and sexual) charge. I’d like to inject more depth into it, coax out the ballet angle a bit more, and experiment with having a few of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles characters show up, through letters or flashback. The story is set in the late ‘80’s, so it would likely be one of the older characters, like April, a ballet master who appeared in both Book 1 and 2. It would give me the chance to reference a younger, more vulnerable Anders, as well, a scenario that fascinates me.
What’s great about the two-book conundrum is that the two projects can develop in tandem and enrich one other. To my relief, I’m discovering that working on one doesn’t lead me too far away from the other. It keeps me in the same world, although for the Africa novel, the Ballet Theatre Chronicles characters will remain in the periphery of the main character’s Africa experience. My plan is to finish and publish the Africa novel first, but at this point, who knows?! Maybe Book 3 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles will raise a clamor in my head and heart, and appear first. Most important for me is that I’m enjoying discovering new depths in each of the stories. Being a writer, for me, is very much about the journey, as opposed to the destination.

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