Lockdown

Look what I found! I decided to check my publisher's website today to make sure my new book was listed on their site. Lo and behold, not only was my new book, Royal Target, listed there, but so was my next book. Lockdown isn't even scheduled to come out until February 2009, so I never dreamed that the cover image would already be available on the internet.

I did know that the cover was done, but I hadn't yet seen a copy until I found it on Covenant's website.

Oddly enough, I spent the day working on another book, one that spins off of this one and Freefall.

I'm having to remind myself that it takes a great deal of discipline to write novels. I know that I will ultimately spend hours at the computer and that if I'm lucky, the story will take on a life of its own. I hope and pray that will happen, while dreading that possibility at the same time. I know that if a story is really going to work, it has to find its own life. The problem is that when that happens, I find myself putting everything else on hold so I can stay at my computer and find out how the story ends.

Seeing a cover image like this one, or anticipating my author copies arriving in the mail for Royal Target, reinforces the fact that all of the hard work is worth it. Now I just have to keep myself at my desk enough hours of the day so that I can get to the good part, whatever that might be.

A new project

I signed up for Tristi Pinkston's Book In a Month Challenge...again... and I'm determined to succeed this time. I have done it before, written a book in a month. In fact, in one particularly productive spring, I wrote three books in three months. I did a complete rewrite of The Deep End in March 2006. The next month, in April 2006, I wrote Royal Target, which will hit the bookstores any day. The following month, I spent hours at the computer only to have Freefall (Feb. 2008) magically appear on my desk.

I look back at that particular spring and I'm amazed that three completed manuscripts were created in that short period of time. I also keep wondering what I have to do to recreate the magic that happened in those few months. I remember getting up early each morning, beginning my day at the computer around 5:30 or 6:00AM. I wrote for an hour or two, taking many breaks to get my kids off to seminary and three different schools. My son was taking naps at the time and he went down for a three-hour-nap each day. He was good-natured enough that he often played for an hour before falling asleep and let me rob another hour of writing time in the afternoons.

Although the days of my son napping are long gone, I have resolved to wake up early again and try to recapture that quiet time before my house comes to life...complete with sound effects. It amazes me how much more productive I feel when I get up that extra hour or so earlier and have some time to myself doing something I truly enjoy. Now if I can just find that magic again and hope my alarm clock and I can get along for a whole month.