Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

Today was a free to claim day, so I snagged it. I haven’t blogged in a long time at Aphrodisia authors, mostly because I was so damn far behind on the deadline for Man After Midnight. That was one of the hardest books I have ever written, as I couldn’t seem to sit down and get started on it. This time it wasn’t a case of writer’s block. I knew what I wanted to do, even had it plotted from beginning to end. The problem this go round was a family member’s illness, coupled with the need to work at the SDJ (sucky day job). Juggling those two things, I simply could not pull it together long enough to sit down and write.

I’d actually started the book in plenty of time to meet my deadline. I wrote the first chapter–and there it sat on the hard drive for three months–those first 3000 words that should have been quite a good start to my story. But I couldn’t get back to it, just couldn’t find the time to get back to writing. Then the terrible thing happened. My computer crashed and wiped out the files. In my case, this wasn’t a total panic. I back up everything on a flash and it can all be reinstalled in a day or so. In this case, I puttered around with the machine, making tweaks and changes in the configuration until it was just right. But I still wasn’t writing. I just couldn’t seem to connect myself to the book, which is a sequel to Flesh and the Devil and tells Dani Wallace’s story.

And the days ticked off, and away and then they were gone. Months passed, and each day I was terribly aware I wasn’t writing.

Yes, I know. I felt guilty, terrible, that I wasn’t doing that thing I was supposed to love so much. But my emotional plate was full up and I just didn’t have the energy to pile any thing else on it. It’s very difficult to try and move into a fictional world and write for characters when your “real” life is so full of problems.

And then it happened. There came into my inbox a copy of the 09 Kensington catalog. I had to look and there it was. The book I had 3000 words on was in the catalog, cover and all. And Kensington had no manuscript from the author. Even the 3k was gone, the one single thing I had not backed up before the crash. And, OMG, I could not believe they’d gone ahead and listed it as a release. There was now no way to tell my editor that the book wasn’t done and beg for it to be moved to another month!

That is when the true panic set in. How could I let my editor down, knowing she’d gone ahead and gotten the book that far into production without seeing one single page of text? I couldn’t. So I did what I always do in these moments. I sat down and wrote through every spare moment I could grab. Hard. I didn’t stop to print, I didn’t stop to proof. I just wrote the thing, gut first and damn the typos. I had to make the September 1 deadline. I just had to.

I am happy to say that I did finish Man After Midnight and got it in to my editor, at the last moment. To my happiness–and relief–she did not send it winging back from NY with a pink slip saying “REWRITE THIS!”, which is my biggest fear. The book will release as scheduled, in late March 09. That month I will have a dual hit, as I am also lead author in the “Dangerous Ties” antho, with Jodi Copeland and Anya Howard.

Another deadline looms, but this time I don’t have to hit the panic button. Everything is back under control (for the moment).