Friday

Where have I been, you ask?

I've been down for the count ... since before Labor Day ... with a horrible chest infection. HORRIBLE with a capital H. This illness has knocked me for a loop, a loop I'm still struggling to get out of.

My doc says I have Viral Pericarditis. Good times. And the clincher is that if it was Bacterial Pericarditis, I'd probably be similarly sick BUT I would've been able to take an antibiotic. More good times.

So for now, I'm still in recovery mode. I'm putting this blog on hold until I have the release date for THE PROMISE, which is being announced next week. Now that really is a good time!

Kristin

Ugh.

I'm about to begin a very uncomfortable part of the novel I'm currently writing and I have to say, writing the "uncomfortable stuff" isn't my favorite. Creating an outline for a story line is easy. Yet when it comes to the depth, intensity, and seriousness of the conflicts my characters go through, that unpleasantness isn't felt until I'm writing it.
The second book of my latest series, STEPPING STONES, is no different. It'd be so much easier, more fun, more enjoyable to keep my stories light and happy, but that's not fiction. That's not romance or fantasy. And like every novel I've written, at least once during the process I say to myself, "I wish they hadn't done that," or, "I wish it didn't have to be that way."
I know, it's my story. But at a point that changes and it becomes "their" story; Brynn, Cori, Meagan, Landrie, and Aniston's. Other authors will attest to this, to the story being so big--in and of itself (<-Idiom, er ... WORD OF THE WEEK)--that regardless of desire, they have to write it through to fruition for the mere sake of it.

With STEPPING STONES, I'm there and I'm already tired.

Kristin

Ps. Some less-exhausting news - THE PROMISE is in the queue at the printing press. We're literally just a few short weeks away from release. YES!