So, by now, if you're reading the blogs you can see that I'm cranking out about a chapter (and sometimes two) a day. I've decided to do that for the next 12 months actually, as I have a few books I need to crank out -- as it were. I have two blog books to put together, they've been "written" but I need to canonize them, format them, and just get them in the queue so they can be published. I have the Murder Book, 1211, the second Murder Book, the second Highland Romance, then there's a book I've been wanting to write for more than 30 years actually, that will be put together in the middle somewhere. It's a book about families and generations of families and their changes, challenges, differences, and traditions. It's a Hallmark movie if ever there was one.
This book, the first Highland Romance book, which I'm calling a Highland Historical Romance due to the fact that I have facts in the book and not just undressed handsome men holding their kilts at arm's length, I have now finished writing chapters 19 and 20. There is actually substance in this book! It's not just a bunch of bodies rolling around in the heather while making eye contact and funny noises. Nope, there's actually quite a little tidy little plot to follow. You may even like it. I'm hoping you like it. I love it. I've been having a blast writing it. Today, Aria (my heroine) finds herself blaming herself for having said words that later became prophetic, and she's thinking her husband's demise may have been her fault because of it. She's not claiming the "Secret" or anything, but she's saying she put it out there.
Tomorrow, I'll have the families leave Edinburgh and trek back to Glasgow and/or the moors surrounding it, but we'll also say goodbye to Michael Givens and his wife Jedelle who are planning a magnificent theatrical experience for the folks of Edinburgh in the very near future. It's absolutely sure to be a show-stopper and possibly considered illegal as well. What will the neighbors say? I need to find a way to add colors, flavors, tastes, and other sensory events such as hearing bells, dogs barking, and owls hooting...I do that sort of thing during the next step. What are the next steps? Well, first I have to finish the book which is going to happen in about a week. There will be 28 chapters I think.
After I finish the book I save each chapter right after the other into one file and "canonize" the book by doing so. Right now there are individual chapters in a file all by themselves. I need to put them into one file and format the canonized book into a larger font with much more space between the lines so I can take notes. I use a real pen to do that. Then I have to separate the dialogue so that the quoted statements take their correct positions, that's fun to do, I have to go back over what the characters said to each other, verify it, change the spellings if I want them to have specific accents when they speak, and say things like "she answered" rather than "she said" because I don't want to repeat myself too often. That's boring. I use a thesaurus anyway, but during the correction stage, I really use it. I question myself over and over again if I should use another set of words; I usually do.
After I do all of that, I go back over it, fluff it full of more facts, remove things, push things around, change entire paragraphs, and I may even delete events that I think sound redundant or silly. I'm not above a rewrite. I can rewrite it. I do that. My people could start out with one name on the working pages and suddenly before it's published I've found and replaced every instance from that name with a new name. I tweak and then I tweak again. This should take another week to complete. By the end of the process, I am ready to pay an editor to look it over and not listen to a DAMN thing they suggest. I'm hard on myself like that, thinking I should have been able to figure it out so I do.
Fun times again tomorrow. Fun times for the next two weeks. I think the book should be ready to send to the printers by March 1. That's the goal. We'll see. Oh, and I think I am going to keep the title "Of Kilted Pleasure". I like it.
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