Heather Ames's Blog

Maine Issues, the 4th book in the Swift/Roberts series, is currently at the end of its 3rd draft. It will need a 4th and final draft/read-through for rechecking continuity and a seek-and-destroy mission to catch those pesky typos that persist in all books, even the traditionally-published with their eagle-eyed copy editors.

Trick or Truth, Book 4 of the Ghost Shop series, is on a slower track but progressing. Jumping from one set of characters so different from those in the Swift/Roberts series has proved to be as difficult a feat as it was when I tried this once before. I abandoned one project for the other at that time, only to lose 100 pages when my desktop computer crashed without warning.

The goals for 2025 are to publish both books. Maine Issues has a projected release date within two months. Trick or Truth, which will have 100 pages under its belt this week, should be ready for publication by the Holidays.

Sometimes, life really does interfere, and the last few months have been a stressful emotional rollercoaster for this writer. Two very close, very ill friends became one with the passing this month of my longtime Texas writer friend, Vikk Simmons. She will be missed by all who knew her. My other friend has recently had another set-back, but we had a good visit when I flew down to Florida for a week at the beginning of January.

Life can throw curveballs that temporarily derail the plans and concentration level of even the most dedicated writers. Speaking as one who deals closely with the emotional lives of my characters as well as the plots that drive their books, taking the time to grieve and the time to acknowledge the impact those closest to us have on our lives when they are in crisis is as necessary as returning to our own everyday activities.

Tread Softly is available in paperback already, and I have 4 events coming up. It was a scramble to get this book ready in time, and I am still holding my breath that the books will be delivered in time for the Portland Holiday Market at the Expo Center, Portland, Oregon November 17-20. All my books will be there at the Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA) booth.

I have higher hopes that the book will be available for Geek The Halls at the Doubletree Hotel's convention center in Portland, Oregon the following weekend (November 26 & 27) again at the NIWA booth.

The Saturday following that event, both Tapped By Fate and Tread Softly will be at Wytche Daye in Portland's Oak Park on December 3 at the NIWA booth.

I will be at the Portland Holiday Market all 4 days, and at Geek The Halls the entire weekend, so I can sign books, dedicate them as requested, and chat with readers. I cannot be at Wytche Daye, which has limited space and 3 other authors had already requested to man the booth. I will plan to autograph the books going to that event.

Last, but far from least, I will be at the Oregon Historical Society's Holiday Cheer on December 4 from Noon - 4:00 PM. I will have Tapped By Fate, Indelible and Night Shadows available for purchase, signing and dedication. Many authors apply to be included at this event, so I feel very privileged to have been chosen to participate. Since I had no publication date for Tread Softly at the time I completed the application, I will not have that book available, but if anyone attending purchases it prior to the event, I'll be more than happy to sign copies brought with them.

The Kindle version of Tread Softly is available for pre-orders. Publication date for that version is November 15.
https://www.amazon.com/Tread-Softly-G...

A very busy time of year! I'm very happy to be launching a new book and having the opportunity to participate in all these events.

Tread Softly, Book 2 in the Ghost Shop Series, has been completed and is in the process of being formatted. The cover is ready to go for print and e-book.

Bringing this work to completion took longer than I envisioned. I haven't posted a blog in a considerable amount of time. Life definitely interfered.

My son convinced me to go to Europe in late spring. We had a wonderful trip. 5 days in Paris wasn't enough for me. I had lived there many years ago, and I still love the city as much as I did then. We also toured through Spain, where I had lived for 4 years, revisiting Barcelona, Marbella (where I had spent a summer,) and Granada, so much larger now than I remembered. We finished our trip with a stay in Portugal, visiting the Algarve region before a couple of days in Lisbon. I returned to the U.S. with difficulty focusing on life here. I yearned to be back in Europe again.

Then the vision in my left eye became increasingly foggy. After almost 2 months of peering at the computer screen for what deteriorated to an hour a day, I had a successful laser procedure.

Also during that time, the health of my beloved companion cat, Lilly Bean was deteriorating. She had become chronically ill soon after the pandemic started. Despite my best efforts and excellent care from the veterinary clinic, she passed away in August.

Recovery from both those events was difficult. My writing had slowed dramatically. I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps and regain my concentration. Being a member of a critique group meant producing pages on a regular basis. It was the best medicine for the completion of this book.

In its final phases, and with 4 upcoming events, 3 of them in-person, I look forward to Tread Softly's release, and a winter spent writing the 4th book in the Swift/Roberts series (working title Maine Issues,) while I develop a plot (and a title!) for Book 3 of the Ghost Shop series.

I just added Tapped By Fate to my list of books I'm currently reading.

Sounds a little weird, perhaps, or egotistical, but I'm not searching for accolades from within...really.

I decided to refresh my memory while writing Book 2 in the series (working title, Tread Softly, looks like it's going to stay.)

I'm finding it a very valuable tool. The devil's in the details, and I don't want to miss any of them.

I started writing the opening chapters of the 4th book in the Swift/Roberts series, with a working title of Maine Issues. I'm 12 chapters into Book 2 of the Ghost Shop series. Perhaps I lost my mind.

Only once before did I try writing two books at once, and that was because I was revising a Romance and a Romantic/Suspense. Two completely different books.

Even so, I found myself favoring one over the other. I got 100 pages of the rewrite done, and was really liking the plot, the setting and the characters, all of whom had been tweaked. I had originally written a complete first draft when I was agented and submitting short contemporary Romances. But it had issues that needed to be fixed. So I was busy fixing them, until my computer suddenly went belly up. No warning. Just a completely black screen, and, I found, sadly a completely irretrievable hard drive.

I never finished that manuscript. But I did complete the other one, and it did get accepted for publication. That book is All That Glitters, and in its 1st edition, it received 8 reviews from popular review sites, and was one reviewer's top pick for the week.

I am not planning to repeat anything but the reviews process for the current wips. I learned to back up on a much more regular basis, for one thing. And the reason I started working on Maine Issues is because I already had 50 pages that needed serious tweaking after I decided it was actually Book 4, not Book 3. The new opening chapters kept bouncing around in my head, so I decided to get them out of my head and into a file.

Whether I'll keep working on it in tandem with Tread Softly, Book 2 of the Ghost Shop series, remains to be seen. But when the muse taps loudly, I do listen. I will also write the scene that has kept popping into my head since I wrote those other 50 pages. It's a really good scene, and I think it will fit really well into the new version, too.

Sometimes, random thoughts and random images need to be written down and saved for future use. Not every book is completed in a linear manner. At least, not in this writer's life.

Tapped By Fate is available on Amazon both in paperback and e-book formats. My goal for the coming months in to increase my distribution, but for now, I'm relieved to have this book available for purchase. I had started it 3 times, but each time, the characters wouldn't come to life, and the plot wouldn't gel. I changed the location three times, too. Third time was really the charm on the location, but then I had to ground the metaphysical shop and get those characters to start talking to me, then to each other.

Once they started, I couldn't stop them. The stumbling block at 100 pages fell away. The opening scene stayed intact, but moved to Bush's Pasture Park in Salem. The male character's opening scenes completely changed, and I moved the action to 3 months after the sentinel events. Once I did that, the mists began to subside, and the new characters came onstage, enriching the story and making the book that wouldn't come together into the first in a series I am going to immensely enjoy writing.

Funny how that happens. I read an interview yesterday about a writer who changed from one who would never write an outline to a writer who will not start a book without one. If I had followed my initial (very sketchy) outline, I would never have gotten past those first 100 pages that kept getting rewritten, relocated and rejected. I tossed out 70% of the bathwater and dangled the baby over the drain.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I replaced the plug and wrote the book, mostly from scratch. Even the female protagonist changed her last name. I'm so pleased with the result. I hope my readers like it and the characters as much as I do now.

I finally found a title for the work-in-progress, stopped editing, and it is now a work-being-formatted.

Tapped By Fate also has a cover to go with the back blurb and the elevator pitch. This was definitely a marathon that didn't seem to have a finish line until the final draft. All these "f's" definitely gave it a theme to go with Fate.

There were a lot of firsts with this book. When the idea first came to me, I thought I was going to be writing a Romantic Suspense with a paranormal twist. Then I realized that the protagonists weren't going to become a couple in this first book, and might not become a couple going forward...or would they?

That was a first for me, too, because usually, my characters may fight, they may argue, they may not see eye to eye, and they always come from very different backgrounds, but they find common ground, and they always find each other. They may not always be together, but they work through their differences.

After I saw I had a platonic relationship between the two primary protagonists, I also saw I was writing the first book in a paranormal mystery series, not a stand-alone.

And then a cast of secondary characters appeared. Very well defined, and very different from any I had encountered in previous books. Some aren't even human.

Well, that was something very new to me, and pretty exciting. In the case of one character, even unnerving. I got chills during the first couple of drafts when he walked onstage and into the lives of the other characters.

I didn't sew up everything with a big bow at the end of the book. It would have been impossible to do, and that's what makes me want to dive back into the strange world of The House of Serenity and its very mixed group of returning characters. To see where they go, and what happens next.

It'll be a really interesting ride.

This strange year slowed everything down, including my writing, which until 2020 continued on through floods, freezes, heat waves, broken pipes, broken heaters, inadequate or no air-conditioning, multiple moves, life-changes, etc., etc., etc. Last year, I found myself unable to tolerate sitting at the computer for more than an hour or two. I finally decided if I had finished one chapter, I could leave and go do something else, even if it was cleaning up the kitchen or another mundane but necessary task.

I have come to realize I was not the only writer suffering from a drop in productivity or a decline in the urge to write. Despite writing being a so-called lonely profession, most writers don't create in a vacuum. They don't sit isolated in garrets so they keep up their page counts or their same level of dedication to their craft.

They meet with other writers and readers. They attend conferences, conventions and write-ins. They draw inspiration and gain momentum for their own writing by absorbing energy from others.

Last Saturday, I received my 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Yesterday, my car went into the body shop for repair after someone tapped my Escape up the back at a railroad crossing several weeks ago. When I have my car back, I must start going out on a more regular basis. I'll still be masked, but I won't need to try going out when the least amount of people are also in public.

I can take the trip to Lincoln City I need to decide on the final location of a house that features in this book of mine that is finally taking better shape, and while I'm at the coast, I can walk more freely at the beach, visit the outlet mall, and enjoy the day (as long as it's not raining cats and dogs) while I gain that inspiration to make the imagery of that pivotal scene feel real to me and to my readers.

I'll be back in the saddle again. A better and more motivated writer. Looking forward to the publication of this book, which still doesn't have more than a working title, except for the series, and to presenting it to readers in person at events as this country slowly but surely ramps back up to a new normal.

Here I am, over 200 pages into the second draft of this book, and I still don't have more than a working title.

This isn't the first time I have had this problem, and knowing me, probably not the last. With this book (which was started not once but twice without progressing past the middle of the book,) changing the plot, the sub-genre, the characters and the setting (twice) had its challenges. I had a title I really liked, and so did other people I told about the book. But by the time I had thrashed my way through to the middle of said book for the third time, I knew this was not now a romantic suspense, it was a paranormal mystery with its fair share of suspense. The way most of my books tend to be.

The other revelation was that this wasn't a standalone. The characters had finally started talking to me, I heard them clearly, and as soon as another, very strong and very creepy character joined them, they became a cohesive group that wanted to go further than one book.

They clearly knew they had enough conflict, paranormal experience and guts to go on to solve other cases, help other victims and family members find resolution, and figure out how to live with special gifts and the consequences of those gifts. Gifts frequently have strings attached, and those lead to some dark places in the soul.

After all those weighty revelations, you would think I could find a title for this first book. But I used it for the series. So now, I'm still waiting for an epiphany to come down from the ethers and slap me up the side of my head. Until then, it's got the working title of The House of Serenity.

There's nothing serene in that establishment, by the way, folks. Things move around, fly around, appear and disappear. Transport, teleport, and everything else. Tea swirls, ethers swirl, and spirits manifest. A very different ride now the setting, the characters and the plot have coalesced.

This book proves that there's a reason, or in this case, many reasons, why a writer can't finish a book the first time or the second time. Like fine wine, some books just won't be ready until it's their time.

Now, about that title...

Three books published in one year. Not an event I want to repeat anytime soon. My office still looks like something volatile dropped inside it. But I'm working on cleaning and reorganization, or maybe just organization after a year when I moved, had rights returned to me on two books while working on the next book in my current series, and arrived in a new town, where I joined a new-to-me writers' group, had a one hour trip to visit Portland, and finally had a house to myself for the first time in over a year.

It has been a colorful transition. I'm taking the rest of the year to achieve all the smaller items on my to-do list, hopefully. I have a friend visiting next month, so my office/guest room will need to be ready. That'll keep me busy for the next few days. There's enough dust and cat hair in that room to satisfy any haunted house.

Very in keeping with this time of the year, and probably with my upcoming debut novel in the Ghost Shop series, but it's going to have to leave, and stay gone.