Welcome to The Inside of My Head (reposted)

The full moon rises, I've just watched two episodes of Moonlight... Gotta love that Mick St. John. Yum...

Okay, we won't go that far into my head tonight.

So, I was thinking how we writers are like vampires. Yeah. We are. Not that we drink blood or anything like that, or are going to live forever (but when you think about it, our words will live forever), but we're in this private club. We understand one another, what makes us tick and if I say something like I killed off a character, you all get what I mean. Right?

The voice inside our heads is okay, because we put it down on the page. So that makes us only slightly psychotic, and when we do kill someone off, it's only on paper. Er... yeah.

I've been working on edits—which make me more psychotic than usual. And making notes for the next book (WIP) that I'm sort of allowing to unfurl like a rose. No sense in letting this one hammer me to death. Hey, I wrote the 4^th one in 3 months—never before or since could I have written something that came so easily to me. Every book has usually taken me about 6 months to a year to complete. No telling how long I'll have to monkey with this one. Things are coming, but not fast and furious like the last 4. I think Sabrina wants to relax in a hammock and float like a dream. I have to wake her up once in a while to remind her I'm watching her and that she'd better get cranking something out.

Well, you all know how you get a book down. You got the ideas and they either work or they don't. When they don't you shouldn't pound your head on the wall or desk or whatever. No. Don't do that. First of all it's very painful and you might ruin the finish or the paint, or something. And your significant other/children might begin to worry about you. Not to mention the neighbors who might be able to hear you screaming: “What? I have to re-write this whole effing chapter!!! Arrrrrg!”

Or something to that effect.

Speaking of which, getting ideas is something you have to do your own way. I do it my way. Which is to keep my eyes and ears open. When I see something that speaks to me, I know. I was about to use some characters from a previous book (you wouldn't know, since you haven't read these books, since I've not published them, but sorry that I write way ahead of myself, but that's just how it is). But these characters were somewhat ho-hum for this book. I needed something better. Something more dynamic and by golly when I saw the characters renderings it just was a drawing in black and white, on someone's blog. I thought “They look sort of cool”, and I had to abscond with the pic because I just knew I wanted to ponder it a while. There was this odd blinking above my head, but it might have been the full moon, but I'm not really sure.

The renderings are done by an artist and I'm not sure who, but I've seen such pictures of character's before, but it makes no difference. It was two guys dressed as butlers. Sabrina seems to have more than her share of men in her life, and so I didn't want these guys to be straight. They had to be gay. I needed this because they were going to be her house help in this book because she actually has a broken leg. And she needed someone to cook and clean for her and maybe do a few other things. But I had to have a pair of them so that they'd volley some interesting dialogue between them that would be entertaining. At least that's the whole idea.

Back in the first few books, I had the twin vampires, Heath and Leif, but by this book they aren't around, so I needed this playful bantering between two guys... it just might work.

So, the moon is rising a little higher out there and there's this fog too. Oh, and the moon is very close to the earth, so much so that it's playing havoc with the tides and flooding places. My husband had no idea that the moon's gravitational pull could do that. He just thought it merely hung around up there in the sky. Ho-ho. Sort of like my brain, it's not just laying around in a heap of gray matter. It's working. Always at work. So much I may just have to take me a sleeping pill. Of course I'll blame my wakefulness on the full moon. It has that effect of me. Odd, but I felt drained earlier in the day and now I'm just unable to go to sleep right now.

OoowwOooooo!

Stop that.

Okay, I'm back.

Oh, and that afghan I began a few weeks back is going fine. It's an interesting pattern. I only had to rip out a line or two a few times. My husband rolled his eyes like I was mad. “You have to get it right or it won't look right in the end.”

Sort of like writing a book. All the rows, stitches matter. Every little bit you put in there is for a reason, even if the reader hasn't a clue. Sort of like the moon's magical pull on things.

Did any of this make sense? I hope so. And it's not even that late, as it's only 9pm. But I've been up since 4 am, so, maybe I'm a raving lunatic by now.

Well, thanks for visiting my brain tonight. Do me a favor, if you're still up and look outside at the moon. Wave. I'm seeing the same moon here in Illinois.

Good night!