The Day
I thought this day would never come. Today I pushed the button and released Dead in Dubai to an unsuspecting world. Not really unsuspecting. I’ve been posting everywhere and will again, but I did think the day would never come.
They say the second book is the hardest. At least with a series you know where your next heroine is coming from. I’d written part of this book while I was hiding from The Spider Catchers, but I beat myself into getting that one in shape and published. Then I had to choose among three partially written manuscripts - one in Dubai, one in Istanbul, and one in Viet Nam. I really had been in flight from Spider, hadn’t I? Or I could start another book entirely. Does everyone have a bunch of orphan chapters lurking in the bottom of a Word file – the moral equivalent of the bottom desk drawer?
I chose the Dubai chapters, and, never a plotter, I set out to teach myself how to plot. I had a new book on how to get your plot written in thirty days. (Why do I buy these books? Looking for a magic bullet? A topic for another blog.) I set the goal of publishing at the end of October 2014, a year from when I published Spider. Lots of people publish two books a year; surely I could do one.
I started sketching the rest of the plot, inventing characters, finding Arabic names on the internet, playing with Google Earth and the Dubai guidebooks. I knew where I wanted to get, and I began to jot down chapter lines. And then I got sick and was in the hospital and in rehab all spring. By the time I got my laptop to rehab and got back to work, the plot lines had gone slack in my hands. I tried CPR, but it sidn’t work. Once you lose that forward motion, it’s hopeless.
So I tore it all up, metaphorically speaking, and started again. What I published today is an entirely different book. The only thing that remains from the first book is the problem of why George Branson is dead in Dubai.
It’s also a better book. The Kirkus reviewer wrote, “The author’s appealing protagonist makes a welcome second appearance in a story that’s stronger and more riveting than her previous outing.”
Perhaps all the time I spend in the hospital I was plotting something other than how to break out of there.
They say the second book is the hardest. At least with a series you know where your next heroine is coming from. I’d written part of this book while I was hiding from The Spider Catchers, but I beat myself into getting that one in shape and published. Then I had to choose among three partially written manuscripts - one in Dubai, one in Istanbul, and one in Viet Nam. I really had been in flight from Spider, hadn’t I? Or I could start another book entirely. Does everyone have a bunch of orphan chapters lurking in the bottom of a Word file – the moral equivalent of the bottom desk drawer?
I chose the Dubai chapters, and, never a plotter, I set out to teach myself how to plot. I had a new book on how to get your plot written in thirty days. (Why do I buy these books? Looking for a magic bullet? A topic for another blog.) I set the goal of publishing at the end of October 2014, a year from when I published Spider. Lots of people publish two books a year; surely I could do one.
I started sketching the rest of the plot, inventing characters, finding Arabic names on the internet, playing with Google Earth and the Dubai guidebooks. I knew where I wanted to get, and I began to jot down chapter lines. And then I got sick and was in the hospital and in rehab all spring. By the time I got my laptop to rehab and got back to work, the plot lines had gone slack in my hands. I tried CPR, but it sidn’t work. Once you lose that forward motion, it’s hopeless.
So I tore it all up, metaphorically speaking, and started again. What I published today is an entirely different book. The only thing that remains from the first book is the problem of why George Branson is dead in Dubai.
It’s also a better book. The Kirkus reviewer wrote, “The author’s appealing protagonist makes a welcome second appearance in a story that’s stronger and more riveting than her previous outing.”
Perhaps all the time I spend in the hospital I was plotting something other than how to break out of there.
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message 1:
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Vicki
(new)
Apr 30, 2015 08:14AM
I have a friend who completely plots her books and then has fun. Sometimes, things happen in our writing and I like to think when it does in mine, it is for the best. Happy book!
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Thanks. I'm going to try to plot the next one. I am sure that it is a more efficient way of working. A new trick for an old dog.
