I’ve been fairly horrible, both about keeping up with my substacks and about finishing books people are waiting for.
The reason is fairly (eh) simple. The Elly series is eating my brain. It demands that I write a chapter a night, or I don’t sleep.
This is a big problem, since I already have, on average, three full time jobs. (Okay, two full time jobs, and one part time one, cleaning the house, since I’m not that good at it, though I need to get on that, ASAP.
The problem is I owe a debt to my fans. Both the ones that subscribe to my substack (And truly, now that I’m almost over whatevertheheckthatwas (And it might have been auto-immune because apparently grief is fairly shattering) I’ll start feeding the substack again. Also I intend to give them free songs and free e-arcs, so there.) and the ones that are simply waiting for the next book in series x, or y or z.
I feel very bad about the fan who writes me every six months to ask about the next Musketeer mystery. Look, there was a time to write those, and I would have, if I hadn’t gotten ridiculously ill. But unfortunately the time was about 15 years ago. As with my Shakespeare series, when that got cancelled, I meant to write more. And at the time I could have. Right now, it would take re-immersing myself in the time period. Oh, surely some of the residuals of the research remain, but I’d still have to refresh it and that would take months.
Maybe the time will come if health improves (I’m working on it) and we move to a house with a smaller yard and easier to look after (working on that too, which is why the housekeeping might go way up, as I’m getting rid of a lot of stuff, mostly clothes and such being kept for if I ever become improbably thin.) But I can’t promise to, and I’m not going to.
The others? I’d like to at least finish the Kit and Thena cycle, (one more book) and yes, I have five to ten others plotted, one as a bridge, and the other as the next generation. And I should be able to.
The shifters? They’re becoming harder and harder to write. And yes, I know you guys love it, even though it’s my worst-selling series. (I think because it’s more cozy mysteries than a real urban fantasy, so it puzzles people.)
But the problem is that that series was a product of a particular time and place, and for some reason the “feel” of it got completely shattered by 2020. I will finish out the cycle — again a book more — then probably move to different characters. (Supposing it lets me. It should. Let’s face it, Tom is becoming uncomfortably powerful.)
Witchfinder — I have two novels almost finished (Witch’s Daughter and Rogue Magic) and I just need to throw Elly raw mea– I mean a chapter a day so it will it me run to the finish of those books.
Same with Dyce and Rhodes, which, at any rate, are shorter than the sf/f (and much shorter than Elly.)
Somewhere along there I need to learn how to do ads (right now reading it is like reading programming manuals. They aren’t so much nonsensical as a language I do not speak.) And the Little Pickle (younger DIL) says I need other publicity stuff done and I need to learn that too. Not counting the songs. (Sigh.)
Anyone have a spare body. What I obviously really need is a transmorgifier that creates twins for me.
Or I’ll have to become organized. Who knows? Maybe the pig will sing.
However what I started to say, way back in the beginning: sometimes I wonder if my fellow writers are readers, as well.
Look, I’m a reader. I know what it’s like to be left hanging when a conclusion to a series is promised. Even when it’s not promised but you really really want it (I’m going to get hit by both authors for this one) like Prince Roger where it was maybe lightly teased, but not promised.
I do realize I’m not the readers b*tch, yes. Even if I am the baddest assed bitch who ever jogged in reeboks. (Hattip P. J. O’Rourke.)
And I probably would get testy if you guys tried to control what I do, where I go, and whether I have a life beyond writing. Because of course I have a life beyond writing. I’m sitting here without showering and in yesterday’s clothes because as soon as I’m done with this post and the ATH one I’m going outside to collect the three killotons of leaves on our lawn. (Well, another 5th of the lawn, maybe. I do want to write this afternoon.) And no, I can’t get anyone to do it for me. If I could I’d be doing it and paying. We had someone who did it, but he’s a farmer in his rl and is erratic about showing up and it can’t wait. (Everyone else is much too busy for our little plot, I guess. Little for them, that is. And we don’t live in a fashionable neighborhood, so it is outside their normal range of operations. I mean, we don’t even get callbacks.) So, it needs doing, and I’ll do it, and TRUST ME ON THIS, I’d rather be writing. But yesterday we took the whole day off, visited museums and went to a nice dinner. (On account of it was my birthday.)
And there’s the cats, and the husband and the kids, even if they’re remote units now.
So, yes, I have a life beyond writing and if y’all tried to slam me every time I did something else, I’d take offense.
On the other hand, I do owe you something. We all do. We open the door and invite our readers into the worlds in our head.
It would be rude, not to say churlish, to then kick them out before the story is over (or at a logical stopping point) and lock them forever away from the world we invited them into.
So, yes, I have debts owing. I’m conscious of them. And I’m trying to so arrange my life that I can pay them more regularly.
Wish me luck.
Mad Genius Club 
12 responses to “A Debt, Owing”
I hear you about the leaves. I disposed of 1/10 yesterday, have the rest in heaps on the lawn, and need to get them moved before the rain starts*. And the radar shows rain already moving in.
*90% chance means “three drops and a fond farewell.” 10% means “Alma, how well can you swim?”
Leaves moved, gutters partly cleaned (the worst bits). It can start raining now. (And it won’t.)
I fought and vanquished a gazebo. It was a metal gazebo. It rusted. it fell during a storm I want to say May. I finally broke it apart. Took tin snipes AND hammer and ax. Now we’ll need son to dig up the whisteria to move.
I only did about 1/5th more of leaves pick up because I ran out of batteries.
I looked at the pine needles I raked into windrows last summer, but didn’t get to picking up because bum knee. Those have been covered by the fall harvest of pine needles (lousy cash crop, I say), but I’m a) good for maybe 1-2 hours of light work a day while the fixed (for values of “fixed”) knee recovers, and b) Almost Winter is threatening to turn into Early Winter. With luck, I’ll be able to burn some of the burn piles to make room for more slash & stuff, but Murphy’s been saying nope.
The real priority is to get the dog kennel repairs at least partially completed, needing new joists to brace the two replacement posts, because of last winter’s fun and games.
I probably should be knocking off the other novel/story ideas in the Hunter Healer King setting while it’s still fresh in my mind, but the ruritanian mystery and the space regency have been going on at a brisk enough pace for the last three weeks that I feel like I shouldn’t interrupt them.
I definitely know that feeling. I’m still wrestling with the 4th ‘Texas Navy’ book, and it’s been over two years since book 3 was released.
I’ve got several books started, promised . . . I think I’m going to wrap them up as short stories and kick them out the door. Not kidding. Cannot get my head back in that space.
I can, but it takes effort
and Elly is LOUD.
I have at last count SIX that want writing immediately (most impatient, these) and one that’s getting harder to finish. The tone changes in the second arc of the story, bit by bit: yes, when you go from the Last Man on Earth (in space) to ohmygoshtheresPEOPLE then there are the necessary bits where they talk. A lot.
The shadowy hints of the young man with a bent towards teh stupid coming out and having a breakdown happened, and it needs cleaning up. Always the editing. Out of nowhere, now there’s the newest survivors that dropped on our heads. Nope, not planned at all, but here they are. Now in order to meet them, there’s going to be another action sequence. Which is fine, I do action more or less okay (nobody has complained yet, and the readers that drop the story never do on the action chapters).
I need to find the time for another 40,000 words or so that this arc needs to wrap up neatly. But the time just is not there. Not between hospital visits, emergencies, work that demands I be triplets to have enough attention to keep my little duckies in a row, sleep has gone down to about 4hrs a night. Which was fine when I was thirty. And forgetting to eat does bad things to things like concentration and attention span. And creativity.
If I die of a heart a attack, it’ll probably be in this chair, writing a story. Which’ll suck because it won’t be finished. Which means “write cleaner the first time, spend less time editing.” Because writing *faster* is not quite probable.
I sure hear you about that story was of a certain time and place, and needing to get back into the milieu. When I wrote “Gnawing the Bones of the City” and “The Shadow over Leningrad,” I sort of knew there should be a third story to close it, but no anthology open call offered an opportunity to write it. Fast forward a decade and a half, and I got a prompt that suggested it — but discovered that I’d been away from it too long, and didn’t have the time to do the necessary reading to get back into that mindset. So I have a beginning and a bunch of notes, waiting for when it’s possible to re-immerse myself in the necessary material.
Quote: “for some reason the “feel” of it got completely shattered by 2020.”
Ah yes, the infamous ‘some reason’…
But yeah, the world that existed before 2020 is dead. And the Shifters are set in that now gone world. And I don’t think any of us really know the shape of the next one yet.