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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Falling Into the Story

My galleys for In the Midnight Hour arrived yesterday. The galleys are test printing of the book that need to be proofed for accuracy. I swore to myself that I wasn't going to read them last night. I put them in my bag to take to the EDJ (Evil Day Job) and did other stuff last night. But at 9pm, when I should have been on my way to bed, I caved. I couldn't help myself.

Part of it is that this is probably my favorite stage in the process. All the hard work is done, and while proofing takes a lot of concentration, it's all left-brained stuff. Besides, this is when it really feels like a book and not just one of my stories. I wonder if other published authors feel this way or if it's just me? I'm the one who walked around with my first book for two weeks after it came out because I couldn't believe it was real.

The other part of it is that I really like this book and these characters. I love all my stories and all my heroes and heroines, of course, but Ryne and Deke just a tad more than usual right now. Maybe it's because it took me so long to sell this story and I wrote two others in the meantime. I'd look out the window at the EDJ, see the cemetery where the opening chapter takes place, and long to write this book. Of course, I've been asked which book is my favorite and my answer always is the last one that I've finished. It's fresh in my mind, and like I said earlier, the hard work is done.

Whatever the reason, though, I caved in and picked up the galleys last night. I just wanted to check out one of the quotes the publisher used on the opening page, since I'd just checked out the source and I wanted to make sure it was right. And since I had the galley out, I thought I'd check out a couple of my favorite spots. Just real quickly.

I ended up reading pretty much the entire thing. At least all the character stuff. I did skip the action scenes. My weakness is the h/h and how they interact with each other. That's my absolute favorite part of writing. And I love how Ryne and Deke do it. They're just so, well, cute together. (And I say that about all my h/h, but then they always seem to fit each other perfectly. I figure I can say that since they come in as fully formed people and I have nothing to do with it.)

So it was after midnight when I put the galley back in my tote bag and I had to get up this morning at 4am. I'm dying here and it isn't helping any to remind myself it was self-inflicted.

It also doesn't help to think that if I was going to stay up that late, there were a million other more pressing things I should have been doing. Starting with writing the WIP and ending with the billion and a half emails and MySpace messages I need to reply to and/or write. Gah! I've reached the point where I whimper when I see I have new notes because it's just overwhelming right now.