One of the hardest questions I get is How is the book going? The person asking is probably doing it along the lines of Hi, how are you?, but this isn't as easy to answer as they think it is and it requires me questioning them in return.
Which book? Do they mean Edge of Dawn, my book that came out earlier this year? It's a little early for sales results and I find the royalty statements confusing anyway. Hey, there was a reason why I majored in Advertising Copywriting in college--math is not my strong point.
Or are they asking about In the Darkest Night, the book I finished writing in March and that will be released April 2010? This book is completely finished on my end. I've gone through copy edits, I've checked the page proofs, I have a cover. All that I have to do now is promote it.
There's a chance this person is asking about what I'm currently working on. This makes it even more difficult because I'm in the proposal stage where I'm contemplating about three or four different projects seriously enough to maybe mention them. I could mention my proposal for my next paranormal romance is with my agent. I could mention that I'm working on two more ideas set in the same world as my short story, Blood Feud in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, or I could talk about the romantic suspense idea that is still in the planning stage.
So this question the other person thinks is simple is really complex and involved as I try to figure out which particular story they're asking about. Writers are always juggling multiple projects. Last Friday I was working on my paranormal romance idea. On Saturday, I was organizing notes for the romantic suspense. Sunday I started writing a proposal for the vampire world from Blood Feud. Monday I was making notes on a second story in that vampire world and worked on the synopsis for the first one. That's four days, four stories, four sets of heroes and heroines along with assorted secondary characters.
Now, granted, this is a little crazier than usual. If someone had asked me last February how the book was going, I would have assumed they meant In the Darkest Night because it had a March 1st deadline and it was the only thing I was working on then. And even if they'd meant, say, In Twilight's Shadow, they still would have heard about Darkest Night because I couldn't think about anything else except that one story. (BTW, I totally heart that hero, Kel.)
