I was going to start by saying that I seldom get so caught up in a story that I have to stop everything else and just write until it is done. But, of course, that's a lie. It happens routinely. Last spring, I got the idea for a series about a geeky high school kid in Iowa. That was on March 15. I released the finished Team Manager SWISH! and started serializing it the 26th of May. And then I went straight into writing Team Manager SPRINT!
Then I got this crazy idea about a teenage wizard on an unorthodox adventure called Jackie the Beanstalk (Wayzgoose). It took a couple of weeks to get that written.
I immediately started back in on Team Manager COACH! (It started off being called SPIKE! but it isn't really about volleyball.) I got the first draft of COACH! finished October 27th and the editors have had a good time with it. It will be ready to post as soon as SPRINT! finishes.
It was important to get COACH! off my desk, because National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) started November 1 and I could hardly wait to get started on Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon. Is it obsessing me as much as the other books I've named? Oh, yes.
As of today (seven days) I've written just over 35,000 words in eleven chapters. It's going really well and I'm churning out about 5,000 words a day on the story. I'm about to write the last chapter (of four) about the Trojan War, only not really about the war. It's mostly about what Bob was doing before and after the war. Setting a few myths on their ears!
This story is heaps of fun, from running away with the king's new bride, to becoming a king, to rescuing (and screwing) the most beautiful woman on earth. And what comes next? The hanging gardens of Babylon? The abduction of Julius Caesar? or will I jump forward a few centuries to Bob's time in Australia where everything tries to kill you! I'll know soon, but it is not likely that it will be a simple progression like a timeline could suggest. As Bob says:
"To clarify: Four thousand years is a fucking long time. I'm a simple demon. Don't read too much into that word. I'm not dumb. I'm just not omniscient, omnipresent, or omnimnemonic. That last is a word I coined to mean "all-remembering." I'm not. I remember some things as clearly as if they happened yesterday. In fact, I should tell you what I did yesterday. It was… not this part of the story. Okay? Besides, at this point I can't always keep straight what century some things happened in. There was a couple in which I was so drunk I really don't remember anything that happened. And then the time I was stuck in the infinity room for fifty years. Esmira…"
Well, you get the idea. I have no foreknowledge of when this book will be ready for release, but I'm guessing it will be sooner rather than later.
My "Sausage Grinder" patrons are trying to read as fast as I'm writing with about 5,000 new words posted on my site every day. Let me just say, we're having fun now!