Eleven days till
DAYS OF BLOOD & STARLIGHT!
Yowza! I am so excited!!!
So soon! I have some cool announcements and antics planned for the next week and a half, but for now, I thought I would mention Book 3, which as of yet has no name, and which I am working away on. Want to see my notebook?
Ever since I got serious about writing novels, I have been doing these notebooks, always hardcover Clairefontaine journals from France, and I like to collage the covers to sort of christen/dedicate them.
Anyway, with much chaos last year, I never fully dedicated a notebook for DAYS OF BLOOD & STARLIGHT or did a cover, but as I got into the nitty gritty of planning out Book 3, I really felt the need for one, both for inspiration and organization. They somehow work as a sanity-holder during the early planning phases. I have lots of computer notes, but I can never find anything in those when I need to. The notebooks are tangible and flippable, they're sort of my permanent reminder of the process of writing a book, and my go-to for logging ideas as they come to me, and so much else. Lists of possible character or place names, notes on various things I look up, like mythology or science. Scene ideas. Etc.
Here is the stack of oldies behind my desk chair, in easy reach. (I leaf through them from time to time. There's stuff in these I'll likely be referring back to for the rest of my life.)
And here's the new one, nevermind where it says "tequila". I'll probably paint over that at some point. The book has nothing to do with tequila. Hm. So far ...
Main image from a postcard by Dave McKean, top image from a wine label. Hm. Tequila and wine? What is going on here??
By the way, one of the first things I think about, when I'm starting a book, is what I want the prevailing FEELING of the book to be. I write about that to myself (in these notebooks), trying to formulate the general atmosphere of the story, the way (you may imagine, even if you haven't read it yet) DAYS is more grim than DAUGHTER, for example. So far, descriptions of the feeling I'm striving for in Book 3 include ... "rich, juicy, delicious" and "asskickery". Ha! Also: "Like a thriller, battle of wits, deception, layers, intrigues" and ... I like this one: "power anthem".
Oh. And, you guys ...
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ELEVEN DAYS TILL DAYS OF BLOOD & STARLIGHT!!!