Time for another bit of Evie Busk wisdom.  For a time my father ran a contracting company.  He built and remodeled houses.  As for ours?  We were a family of nine living in a two-bedroom house.  There had been discussions about taking down the block wall between the living room and one of the two sunrooms and closing in the front porch, thus creating a larger living room and turning the second sunroom into a bedroom.  But, as they say in Texas, “It was all hat and no cattle.” In other words, nothing happened.

Then one afternoon, when I came home from third grade, I discovered that my mother, dressed in a pair of my Dad’s overalls, had enlisted my younger brother—home from kindergarten—to jumpstart the remodeling project by demolishing the living room’s block wall with a sledgehammer and chisel.  When I asked what was going on, these are the words she muttered:  “If it is to be, it is up to me.”  And she was right.  With a gaping hole in the living room, the remodeling project got into high gear. My younger sister and I finally got out of the “kids’” bedroom and into the “girls’” bedroom.

So where am I going with this?  Last fall, having submitted the manuscript for the next Ali book, Smoke and Mirrors, I learned that a decision had been made by Simon and Schuster in New York to postpone publication until 2027, meaning that I wouldn’t have a book published in 2026.  That potentially put a big hole in our finances.  

Shortly before Thanksgiving, I consulted with my editor at HarperCollins.  She said that if I could write the next Beau book by the end of January, they could publish it in the fall of 2026.  That’s when I went to work—see Evie Busk above.  Of course the holidays were coming.  I made arrangements for someone else to put up and take down the Christmas decorations. I hired a caterer to handle our family’s big Christmas celebration. My Christmas shopping consisted of buying a whole raft of fancy cards and putting checks in them.  

But here’s the thing about writing books—I have to THINK them into existence.  The various characters, both good and bad, have to come into focus.  I need to know everything about them—who they are, where they came from, how they were raised, where they’re going, and what are their motivations.  Not only do I have to think all that stuff up, I have to keep all those details straight in my head. Then I have to see how the action unfolds. Does it follow a reasonably logical path?  Where and when will it end?  How will it end?  And somewhere around the fifty-percent mark, I find myself wondering if it will EVER end!

A lot of those above issues aren’t resolved when I’m sitting in my writing chair with my fingers on the keyboard. No, they come to me in the wee small hours of the morning when, instead of sleeping, I’m wrestling with the story.

Trust me, January has been a marathon.  I’ve left the house exactly four times—once to attend a play with my daughter; twice to go to the dentist; and once to go to the hearing aid store.  That’s it.  The rest of the time, I’ve been here working.  I know new seasons of several TV shows have started, but I haven’t seen them.  With no football this weekend, maybe I’ll have an On-Demand marathon and catch up with some of those.

But as of eleven PM last night, January 28!!!, The Taken Ones is finally finished, all 93,000 words of it. It’s J.P. Beaumont #27 and Twinkle Winkleman #3, if you count both Den of Iniquity and the separate novella, Girls’ Night Out.  (Twink was one of those engaging characters who was supposed to make a cameo appearance in a single book and then refused to exit stage left.)

The Taken Ones has been a challenging book to write but an interesting one, too. It comes with plenty of murder and mayhem with a heaping helping of geography on the side.  Right now, though, before I launch off into the editing process on not just one, but two separate books, there are a few other things I need to do—like have my nails done, for instance.  They’re a mess.  And I also need to get back to the hearing aid store, because the part I ordered has finally arrived.

But this coming fall, when you settle in to read The Taken Ones, most likely in a matter of hours, I hope you’ll remember that creating the story took a big chunk out of my life, and without Evie’s shining example, it might never have come into existence.