Readers are often interested in aspects of the “writing process.” Sometimes it seems as though writers are regarded as some other breed of cat or maybe even as aliens from another planet altogether.

Often the same questions are asked over and over. I know I’ve answered them at both live and virtual events, and it seems likely that I’ve previously answered them in the blog as well, but since there’s no way for me to figure that out, and at risk of chewing my cabbage twice, I’m going to re-answer some of those inquiries here. If you have no interest in the “writing process,” feel free to give this blog post a pass.

Last week someone wanted to know how, as I’m writing a book, can I possibly know the exact percentage of forward progress. Easy. Arithmetic.

Books that are approximately 100,000 words in length fit into standard-sized shipping boxes. Longer books don’t, so I aim for 95,000 words, knowing that by the time editing is over, I’ll probably be close to 97,000 but not over the magic number of 100,000. Standard-sized shipping boxes rule!

Someone else asked if I write more than one book at a time. No, no, a thousand times no! That would drive me nuts. But that doesn’t mean I’m not involved with more than one book at a time. Usually I’m juggling three—writing one, editing a second, and promoting a third. That’s three entirely different functions.

Yesterday I had my nose to the grindstone and was working on the next Joanna Brady, By Reason of Insanity. By the way, I’m currently at 50,522 words which amounts to 53.18% of the whole book, but who’s counting?

Over night last night I realized that I needed to add a critical element into an earlier scene in BROI, so I did that first thing this morning—before I even looked at my email. When I did so, the first item there was a request from my publicist at HarperCollins asking me to write posts—thousand word essays, really—for two separate publications as part of the lead up to Den of Iniquity.

What that means in terms of brain power is that I now have to turn away from the book I’m currently writing and try to comment sensibly on one I wrote almost two years in the past. Good luck with that.

Before I could even think of starting on the essays, another email came in, this one from my editor at Simon and Schuster, the publisher of the Ali Reynolds books. I submitted the manuscript for Overkill on June 23rd. It’s a book that I worked on for FIFTEEN MONTHS!!! and one that fought me every step of the way. Since it took so long to hear back from my editor, I was beginning to believe that she hated the book.

What she sent today is called the “editorial” letter saying that she loved the book and suggesting a few things I might want to change. For the record, some of those seem like good ideas.

So today I handled two of the book issues. I fixed the problem in By Reason of Insanity and wrote the two essays for Den of Iniquity. Although I generally write the blog on Wednesdays or Thursdays, I’m doing that tonight so that tomorrow I can be all in on Overkill.

See what I mean? All three balls—four counting the blog—are currently in the air, and I’m going to keep right on truckin’.