Holiday madness, novel outlines, and cookies

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Hello Familiar Friends:



As the holidays explode and Christmas cookies and truffles destroy my healthy eating plan, I am still working on my tales. I have been writing a chapter a day of late. A good friend (Chris W you know who you are) acts as my unofficial editor as I burn up my keyboard. Thank you, Chris.   

I do not use a strict outline when I write. I have a basic rundown of what I want to happen and to whom, and rough chapter outlines as guides. But when I am writing, that's when everything clicks together and I take the story onward to its conclusion.  I know exactly what needs to happen to my characters for the whole series of "A Familiar's Tale," as I do for the newest series I am working on for Sky Warrior Books. The new series is about a Dwarven female heroine named Rose Greenleaf, (Bardess of Rhulon) and it should be out next year sometime. Am excited. Kudos to to my favorite editor, Carol Hightshoe, for editing my novels. She is the best. But I know the outcome of my tales before I sit down to write. The stories roil my head and are crammed into notebooks, but I know what to do. With me there is no guess work about what to write.

My biggest writing problem, like so many others I think, is procrastination. I am quite guilty of putting things off in favor of a good X-Files marathon or baking cookies. But when I am in writing mode, I'm a possessed creature, whose feverish typing curse is only broken when I reach the conclusion of the end of the novel. Also rewarded by cookies. Goodness, but cookies are on my mind aren't they. I blame the elves. Darn sugar cookies. Darn elves with high metabolisms.


So, as I finish up Fires of  Rapiveshta, A Familiar's Tale, Volume 3,  Enjoy a safe holiday season and beware of spiked eggnog and sneaky elves.  Tree of Bones is coming soon. Watch for it!

Cheers,

Verna McKinnon


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