They have cut me off at the pass. They won’t leave me alone. They arrive at all hours and demand to speak to me. I feel that way too much of my life is currently in ransom to them.
And they’re not even flesh and blood!
Before you call the zombie apocalypse team or the ghostbusters, I will confess that these pesky creatures are of my own creation. When I started writing The Pale, I had no notion of how much attention these folk would claim.
My plans for February were: send Pale #2 (‘Broad Plain Darkening‘, or BPD to those in the know) to my wonderful beta readers, and give the manuscript a rest from me for a while (and vice versa). In the meantime, I aimed to spend time spruiking The Pale and attending to the thousand and plenty follow-ups. I also created quite a few questions for my beta readers to address before I embarked upon the next book in the series. I thought that their answers would help inform the action and the character development that I had loosely mapped out.
However, I planned without the consent of my characters themselves. They have insisted, and I have complied – Pale #3 has begun. Yes, it has a working title – but that’s way too embryonic for any other gaze at the minute.
Oh, and my jotted mapping of Pale #3? It may just go out the window. Character X really doesn’t want to do Z, even though it’s what I planned for him. He says he doesn’t want to head in that direction, and I have to listen to him.
Especially at 4 am.