A new direction
So last week I was continuing to slog through my current manuscript, which has not been going well. Sometimes it feels like a round peg in a square hole, pulling and squashing and snipping at story threads till I'm not sure what I'm doing or why. Not a good feeling. So on Thursday, at 16,000 words (where I'd more or less been stuck for about three weeks, endlessly changing and revising what I'd already written) I decided to scrap it. Not delete it, but not continue working on it either. I've actually never done this before. My deadline is Dec 15 and five weeks from this date I started something entirely new. Panic!!
Actually, the new story fell into place pretty quickly, in part because I'd been thinking about the characters off and on for awhile. I'm at 12,000 words now, and still hoping to make my deadline. Of course, children and Thanksgiving and that little thing called CHRISTMAS might conspire against me...
Speaking of Christmas, I'm blogging on
Iheart Presents about my November release, Royal Baby, Forbidden Marriage, and Christmas traditions sometime this week--not sure when it will actually get posted, but I'll let you know.
In the meantime, Sri, please e-mail me again with your contact details. My mailbox was full but I've fixed the problem now! Sorry!
And here is the first line of chapter 4:
Phoebe followed Sven up the thickly carpeted stairs, the long velvet curtains drawn against the night.
Are you all wondering who Sven is?! Enjoy!! :)
posted by Kate Hewitt at
Sorry for the silence!
We have been, for the last week and a half, laid low by the flu. It started with my son, then moved to my middle daughter, then my oldest daughter, then me, and now the baby. The only person who has resisted it is my husband, which is fortunate as I was bedridden for 5 days, which is three more days in bed than I had when I gave birth! I hardly ever get sick, sick enough to be in bed, and I always find it frustrating because while a good rest sounds rather nice actually, when my head is stuffed up and my chest feels like there is a knife in it and my whole body aches so I can't even sleep, it's not nice at all. Plus there is the whole mother-sick syndrome. Do you mothers out there experience this? While my husband is wonderful and valiantly tries to cover all the bases in my absence (or bedridden-ness, really), some things fall behind. Like laundry. And cooked meals. And keeping track of homework and hamster cages. You know? Sometimes I think about all the things in our family that only I know--like when my oldest daughter's book report is due, or when the hamster cage needs to be cleaned, or how much bread we have. It's all in my head, and no one else's.
All this to say I'm mostly better and back. No writing has been getting done, which is unfortunate as my deadline is 5 weeks away and I'm only at 15,000 words. This book has not been easy to write. I rewrote the first 5,000 words about six times before I abandoned all attempts and just kept plowing ahead. And then my characters started to misbehave--my heroine is supposed to be a play-it-safe type and she's not. She's acting entirely out of the character I created for her, which is annoying and delightful at turns, because it's good when the characters speak for themselves, but bad when it means more revision. Anyay, I'm still storming ahead so we'll see what happens.
SRI, you are the winner of my chapter three contest--hooray! Send me your details.
And lastly, we recently had our photos taken in Central Park and the photographer put up a video montage of us all that is rather cool and makes us look so nice and shiny! It's mostly of the kids and you can see it here:
Melanie Wesslock Photography. Enjoy... ;)
posted by Kate Hewitt at
