Weird to think that April was the first time I had touched Book #3 (which may or may not be called “Saturnalia,” publishers are hoping for something a little more X of/and X to match the first one… we’ll see… ooh how’s “Ides of Saturnalia”???) since NaNoWriMo last year (November, of course) in which I whipped out the first 50,000 words of this sucker.

By the time April rolled around, I was keen to get going, though a touch alarmed at my utter lack of an ending. At the end of this April, I am still no closer to an ending (well, okay, I have a bit of an ending, but not an ENDING ending, I definitely know what the climax will be) but I have a lot more meat on Saturnalia’s bones.

It’s only 20,000 words, but it was a key 20,000 words. And, you know, past the halfway mark, presuming the book doesn’t get delusions of grandeur. All good things.

At this stage I’m planning/hoping to have the whole thing wrapped up sometime in June, with enough time to redraft, polish, and make it awesome instead of merely ‘there.’

Third books are extraordinary things. You have to pay off everything that has come before, but also ideally it is a creature in its own right. I am hoping that each of my books has individual identities, but I’m pretty sure this one has lots of twists and turns coming that no one knows about. Which must be soooo fascinating to read about given how I’m not actually giving any information up at all.

The good news is that I got in a sex scene I wasn’t expecting, between two characters who definitely weren’t supposed to do that, but I can hardly blame them, as they had time to kill, and who wants to read half a chapter of two people waiting around? Not me! I’ll be interested to see the outcomes & ramifications of that little incident, I can tell you! Yes, writing a book is actually much like reading one, only it takes a lot longer.

I’m still building structure and plot and even a little extra world under my feet, so not yet at that exciting running downhill fast part of the book, but hopefully I will get there soon.

The writing part itself is getting harder, as in the physical act, because even as the book sucks me in and is inspiring me greatly, my baby has learned to crawl and is attempting to nap less, which means my 8:30-2:30 work day is shrinking into occasional bouts of 45 minutes or so at a time. All this and I have discovered that actually I really like having a clean house (and it does make baby crawling less stressful to have tidy floors) which SUCKS because as soon as the baby goes down for a nap my brain is all ‘yay, now we can CLEAN’ which I suspect means there’s something deeply wrong with me.

I have no idea when my edits for Book 2 are going to turn up, and I want to get as much of Book 3 as possible drafted before that happens. I’m trying for 30,000 in May given that 20,000 in April worked out so well. May and June especially will be all about Book 1, which will be fairly distracting…

Then, come September, though there will still be editing and proofing and all that stuff to do for 2 & 3, I will be able to write something new. Even possibly to sell something new, as I’ll be trying to sell on proposal first. I’m also putting in grant applications this year for a Nancy Napoleon novel, since I adore her and the timing is pretty good for some more Hobart Noir. New projects are afoot, haharrr. This writing thing is pretty awesome.

So no, as it happens, April Tansy does not grudge March Tansy that month of time off and getting her head together at all! Apologies to those of you hoping for a slapfight. I seem to be juggling things reasonably effectively right now. Though April Tansy is still snickering about the fact that March Tansy entirely failed to plan for those school holidays right at the beginning of the month. There are some in June too. TAKE NOTE, FUTURE TANSY!

Tags: creature court, jem, mama writer, saturnalia, writing