blinking

Wow. Way to make the writer lady happy, yo.

Update: this book - barring fire, flood or small asteroid falling out of sky because Bruce Willis didn't do his job and destroy it - is likely going to be done by Friday. How scary is that? I wrote Plainsong in just over six weeks, but this - yikes.

I'm already beginning to think about second book. There will be a lot of growth and changes on the part of the characters to work in there, the physical health issues, whether or not JP can continue to tour as part of a world-class band even though they do the Stones deal of only touring every few years, whether the occasionally infuriating Bree (yes, I know she's me, and I'm surprised he didn't throttle me with piano wire, if I as half as infuriating then as my character is now; "Bree d'Arc" is about right) can let him breathe a bit, JP hooking up with his local buddies to do some local touring stuff. Plus, I'm thinking the second book will involve Carla (their publicist/RunsEverything woman) and also a new character I want to write in, a Bay Area luthier.

Oh, and since the second book would involve a luthier (hi, Matt! hi, Nic!), it would have to be called While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I mean, dayum, what else, right?

I doubt sequels would have quite the emotional punch of the first one - so much came out in there, so much was looked at and worked through. But this is my AU, my "what-if", and they need to continue to grow, to learn, to deal.

PLEI! I am sooooooooooooo happy to be posting with you.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Oh yes. Love this. Loooove this.

I'll third (fourth? fifth?) all the others. This is reading to me like something already published. For a first draft, lady, you write damn fine. So it's hard to remember that when I finish a chapter, I can't hole up in the bedroom and just devour the rest.

Update: this book - barring fire, flood or small asteroid falling out of sky because Bruce Willis didn't do his job and destroy it - is likely going to be done by Friday.

Yowsa. No better that a book was callign out to be written, huh?

And I'll have feedback of the "meep" variety in a little bit.

I'm going to be very interested to see what my agent has to say about it, when she finally does sit down to read it. She had a couple of unscheduled weeks away from her desk (family crisis or something), and really does sound buried. A few of her clients have books coming out shortly; Laura Anne Gilman's Curse the Dark is in heavy pre-order mode, and I'm hoping the numbers for pre-order on Matty Groves pick up a bit, since the continuing life of Ringan and Penny may well depend on how well MG does in pre-sale.

But honestly, I'm so invested in the new one that everything else seems to have dropped away, a good bit, too. Which is probably a good thing, since otherwise I'd be fretting over it and obsessing over wanting to torch St. Martins.

Plus, I'm thinking the second book will involve Carla (their publicist/RunsEverything woman) and also a new character I want to write in, a Bay Area luthier.

More Domitra!!!

More Domitra!!!

Oh, yes. ita's avatar, complete with kickass shoes, will be there. One of the points I want to take on (thanks to Very Cool Husband for this suggestion) is what happens when Blacklight goes into the studio, records a new album - and the first single release is, basically, U2's "Vertigo".

You know? One of those songs, that pushes the CD itself into the stratosphere, which is what happened with "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb". Because when a release does that, the entire touring reality changes.

U2 is taking as relaxed an approach as they can for this tour. And they're going to play something like 240 shows over two years, on five continents. And Blacklight has the same ethic U2 does: every show they do has to be the best show they've ever done.

Well - JP has MS and he's 54 and he's had a mild heart attack. Would he stay with the band? He's already questioning whether it's fair to Blacklight...

I am so far behind in reading this. But I've uploaded the whole thing to my Palm, so I can snatch bits here and there, instead of waiting for uninterrupted spells of being home and awake. Which wasn't really happening.

Heh. ita, Dom is one of the pivotal characters in the way the story works. She's the one who essentially bitchslaps him out of his complacency; later on, she's the one who pegs what's happening to Bree; and boy oh boy, is she about to get a nifty thank-you present.

She's a sucker for really good shoes, by the way. Her Docs are custom made for her.

I'm already beginning to think about second book.

Yay! Agreeing with everyone else that this reads very much as a polished and perhaps even, in a very specific way, book that's been read before.

Let me clarify, if I can. Everything in this book has such a visceral immediacy it feels familiar. I've never been "in" on the music scene, at more than a local level ("I cut hair for the band" my bf was in back in the day, when barbers were distrusted), but the details of how the band's employees function, how concierges in top-class hotels function, the shorthand vernacular of musicians and performers, all that seems comfortably worn by the characters, rather than a "hey, lookit! Neat, eh?" sort of sensation. It feels like we know these characters, and are no more than one remove familiar, if not intimate, with their lives.

There's no "honeymoon" period of falling in love with characters, they're people from our youth, or from high school--well, to someone my age, at least--we knew back before they hit big, and there's no sensation of percieving them as "stars," though of course we understand that they are, to everyone else.

Maybe that's the charm of the book, that you bestow that feeling, that sense of entre on your reader, and then add the talent you have for storytelling and for unspooling a mystery, and how could this book--this series--not be a damn blockbuster?

This may be the most commercial thing you've written, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

But as much as I'm enjoying the roller coaster on this one? Part of me is still out at the construction site on the Isle of Dogs, waiting for developments.

Part of me is still out at the construction site on the Isle of Dogs, waiting for developments.

Yeah, well, according to Jen, they're waiting on the pre-orders for Matty Groves before they decide on Cruel Sister. And it's going to take a firm offer from St. Martin's to get me back to working on that one. I've worked my ass off for St. Martins, I've had damned little backup or support, and at this point, they either do it right or I wave byebye.

So the construction site on the Isle of Dogs stays exactly where it is until they make a firm offer and stop dithering.

I understand completely. Vibing hard, both for your purse and my sense of completion. I'm anxious to hear more of Ringan and Penny. I've grown to love them.