Welcome, 2016! (+ li’l announcement about Book #3)

Merry 2016, dear readerfriends. I hope the new year finds you happy, healthy, and in possession of a stack of shiny new books to tear into. (With your eyes. Not your teeth. If you use teeth on books, WE CAN’T BE FRIENDS, unless you’re under the age of two.)

So: resolutions. Do you make them? I usually don’t, in any orderly way—I mean, I have a bunch of them in my head for sure, but writing them down means committing to possible observable failure at the year’s end, and I already have enough things ringing my internal shame bell. But one goal I do want to publicly commit to is finishing novel #3, so here goes. An official-esque announcement where I tell you shit about it, and maybe a person or two gets a little excited, and I can funnel that excitement directly into the elaborate Wallace-and-Gromit machine that moves my typey fingers until DEADLINE REACHED and MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

*deeeeeeep breath*

SOME STUFF ABOUT NOVEL #3

Category: YA/NA contemporary f/f romance

Working title: A&B

Annoying Hollywood pitch: “It’s like Amadeus, but with super-ambitious teenage singer-songwriter girls. Who like to kiss other girls.”

The basics: So it’s about this big tall weird optimistic girl, eighteen-year-old Barrie, who is fanatically devoted to a single goal: securing a slot on and winning Pop University, a reality show for singer-songwriters helmed by her #1 idol. When she humiliates herself on national TV and loses a spot in the finals to sad balladeer Ava Alvarez, the door to Barrie’s well-hidden dark side swings open. Ever resourceful, she uses her bitter envy of Ava to shape a bold new artistic direction, and people love it. But when Ava ropes her into a secret collaboration, it sparks feelings neither girl expected—feelings that might threaten their creative identities and distract them from their professional goals. Can love and ambition live side by side? Is happiness an art-killer? They’ll figure it out with the help of a blue guitar, a keyboard named Rosalinda, and a few unlikely new friends.

Why I’m excited about it:

1. This is my first f/f and my first time writing a bisexual MC. Yeah!

2. The book deals pretty intensely and explicitly with professional jealousy, which is like the ugliest of ugly feelings and something most of us struggle with at some point and to some degree, and if you don’t then hang on and let me get my sunglasses because man your halo is blinding. It’s been kind of terrifying to poke around in those dark corners. But I’m trying to challenge myself to do more dark-corner-poking, because why write otherwise?

3. Brandon and Abel are in it. The book is set 10 years after How to Repair a Mechanical Heart; Barrie comes into their orbit and they all help each other in different ways. It’s been great hanging out with the boys again and imagining their futures, and I hope HTRAMH readers will think so too. 🙂

So my goal is to have this book out by summer-ish…NO. STOP THAT, SELF. SUMMER 2016. (Which isn’t technically over until September.) I’ve been working on it for close to a year so you’d think that would seem ridiculously achievable, but this book’s been kind of a bear. Lots of moving parts and story threads to juggle. Lots of stops and starts. Lots of I SHALL NOW SET FIRE TO ACT II AND MAKE BITTY NEW BEGINNINGS FROM ITS ASHES.

I’m in a pretty good groove now, but like the rest of you guys who’ve pledged to finish a book in 2016, I know I’ll have to change a few things to make this happen. Carving out more evening/early morning time for writing. Setting concrete short-term goals. Saying no to distractions (UGH SO HARD). And probably cutting down on blogging, too. Months ago I decided to see if I could stick to an every-Monday blogging schedule, and with the exception of my holiday hiatus, I managed to stick to it. But as much as I loved seeing posts stack up Monday after Monday, I found myself scrambling to put a post together some weeks, and it didn’t really translate into a significant bump in readership—at least not enough to keep pouring energy into it every week. So I’m gonna go back to “blogging when I can” and slide my slivers of free time into book #3, ’cause it’s totally okay to say “well, that didn’t work” and revise your plans any damn time you want.

How ’bout you, writers? Have you resolved to finish a book in 2016? Do you need shouts of encouragement, stern reproaches, or synonyms for “canoodle”? Let’s cheerlead each other on Twitter all year. (You too, George R.R. Martin. We got your back.)