Writing: What I'm Working On (Shhhhh...)

I haven't been talking much here (or anywhere) about my current Work in Progress (or WIP, as us professional author types call them). But don't let that fool you into thinking I'm not writing :-)

I have been busy catching up with the non-fiction (articles for next year's Llewellyn annuals, my regular column in Witches & Pagans Magazine, stuff like that), and trying to keep up with the garden, which sucks a lot of time in the summer. But I'm also about a third of the way through the next novel. It has already made one trip to my agent Elaine Spencer for comments and input, and been revised in response. I've finished a full outline and I'm at the point where I'm going to dive back in and finish this sucker.

So why haven't I been talking about it, you ask? Is it that bad?

On the contrary....it's that good. Seriously. I am LOVING this story. Elaine is LOVING this story. Lisa, my critique partner and Judy, my first reader/editor all LOVE this story. I am more excited about writing it than I am anything I've written in ages, even though it is in many ways a tougher manuscript to work on, and much slower going than usual. [That's not bad--each book is different. This one uses language and layering differently than any of the others, which is part of why the pages are going more slowly.]

One of the reasons I haven't mentioned the title or any specifics is because we haven't seen anything like this out there yet, and I don't want to give away the idea. (It's a tough world, publishing. Very competitive.) But more than that, I guess, I just don't want to jinx it. Not quite ready to share. But when I am, I promise you'll hear about it here first.

In the meanwhile, I'll just keep updating the word count and talking about the garden, jewelry, and putting up cute pictures of my cats. Thanks for your patience.