Life and Book Updates…BAH!

Crazy week.  I haven’t had time to post anything new, mostly I’ve been commenting on everyone else’s posts.  YEP!  I’m becoming “THAT” girl.  GEESH!  😉

My extended family has finally set a date for Grandma’s memorial service, towards the end of this month.  I’m glad for that.

Mostly, I’ve been trying to get everything in my life back on track, work, home, car, book, computer…EVERYTHING has been a little wonky as of late.  I’m not sure why this is, but I’m doing my best to roll with it.  I feel like I’m a juggler in the circus, trying to keep all the miscellaneous pieces of my life up in the air, picking them back up when they fall to the ground, all the time, juggling, juggling, juggling.  I think most people go through this, so I feel as though I’m in great company.

I’m procrastinating through the last bit of my book.  I know that I am, but I’m not sure why anymore.  It’s not like I won’t see my imaginary friends again.  I have eight more books lined up in the series, plus various short stories.  Yeah, I know, it’s a LOT excessive, but I’ve been playing at this for years, so it wouldn’t be me if I were doing this any other way.  When I started the madness, it was only supposed to be one short story.  I was writing it for myself in a notebook.  Funny how these notebooks multiplied!  One thing led to another, and my little story became a series.  The biggest problem I’ve had, I think, is that I realized it was going to be a series before the blasted thing was published!  I started thinking about the characters, how they will evolve, what happens to them in the future, and started mapping out future stories, writing paragraphs for these stories, then going back to the first book, and hiding “Easter eggs” in it.  I really hope there is a method to the madness, but so far, it mostly feels like there is madness to the madness.  Book two is mostly written, lots of chapters have been written for the others, and book one isn’t even out.  If I saw someone else do this, I would think, “That’s messed up!”

Ah well!  Currently I’m trying to write a chapter where my “old man” vampire learns about the pitfalls of putting a frozen bag of blood into the microwave, so that’s been fun.  Nothing like saying to your friends, “I think a frozen bag of blood would explode if you put it in the microwave for too long, don’t you?”  Of course, the first reaction is, “JULI!!!  Why do you even think about stuff like that?  This is for your book, isn’t it?”  Like I’d ask that question for ANY other reason?  😉  I seem so…normal.  I’ve been told I would have made a great librarian, then I take a poll like this and of course it makes other people wonder too.  I’m not willing to test this out in real life, but so far we all seem to think that exploding blood could be a possibility.  Do not try this at home! 

I’ve been reading stuff about editing.  I’ve asked myself, is a scene like this relevant to my book?  The truth?  Honestly?  Heck no!  But then again, how relevant is a vampire book anyways!  I’m not writing the “Great American Novel!”  My stories are for entertainment purposes only.  I want them to be fun and humorous, but also have a lot of real world stuff in them that people can relate to.  I have a lot of scenes like this that could be edited away, as the story would speed along much faster without them, but I think I’d lose the book’s flavor.  I like blending humor with tragedy.  That’s how I deal with stuff in my own life.  I tend to see the humor and irony in most situations.  I don’t think it’s always important to go from point A to B to C.  Sometimes it’s fun to take the scenic route!  I get worried sometimes.  What will other people think?  I’m NOT writing a traditional vampire story.  I write about what happens when you take your scary traditional vampires and try to make them fit into our modern world.  I don’t think it really works out all that well for anyone!  I like writing about “family” situations, stuff that happens in human families as well as my vampire ones.  I like writing about work related stuff.  Most of my vampires have jobs.  Those scenes have been fun to write too.  Crap!  The whole thing has been fun to write, even with me wanting to pull my hair out, and nothing getting done around the house!

As I get ready to let go of this first story, I worry about not fitting into the rest of my genre.  I don’t have battle scenes.  I don’t have coffins.  My stories aren’t very bloody in the traditional sense.  I don’t even bother to specify who’s a vampire and who’s not until ¾ of the way into the first book.  The only way people will know for sure that they are vampire stories, is the title.  For safety’s sake, all of the titles I’ve picked have the word “vampire” in them.  I told who was what in my first draft, but it didn’t seem very important in this last one.  People will have to figure it out as they go.  It’s not the most significant thing in my imaginary world.  Weird right?  I’m trying to combine the aspects I love to read about, but with vampires, so things sometimes get a bit skewed. 

I read enough blogs to know that EVERY writer worries over their book.  We’re all silly that way!  I remind myself that my book won’t even be a drop in the ocean of the millions of books that are out there.  I hope this is true.  I find that strangely comforting.  😉

Have a great day!

Juli