Since we got home in November, I have been the sole woman in a swarm of men as an army of worker bees have descended on our house to repair the water damage.  Almost daily we’ve had visits from the architect, the overall contractor and his regular guys, and the decorator along with a series of subs–the tile guy, the electrician, the plumber, the HVAC guys, the ServePro guys who came in to dry out the crawl space, the stone guy and his helpers, and last of all the carpet installers.  (These last ones, the carpet installers, were hired by us, by the way, rather than by the contractor.)

I work at home.  I don’t go to an office.  So while the construction project has been going forward, I’ve been working.  Not trying to work, but actually working.  I finished Second Watch, next summer’s Beaumont book, I wrote a thirty page background piece to accompany the book, and I wrote a novella, Pickles’s Papers, that will be available in e-book format prior to the on sale date of Second Watch.  It features J.P. Beaumont’s very first partner when he went to work in Seattle P.D.’s Homicide unit, a guy by the name of Adam Gurkey, aka Pickles.

We also did Christmas, including more than one visit and sit down meal with our collection of kids and grandkids–a total of seventeen when all are present and accounted for.

In other words, it’s been busy around here–Very Busy.  As I write this the generator guy just showed up to do the annual maintenance check up on the generator.  Remember that Christmas windstorm several years ago?  We haven’t had a serious wind event since we installed the generator a year later.

But now I’m starting a book, the next Ali book.

Wanting to be precise about this, I just counted the books I’ve written.  The total comes to 46, counting the books with both J.P. and Joanna in them one time only.

That means I’ve done this task forty six go-downs in the past.  You’d think I’d be getting good at it.  You’d think it would be getting easier.  You would be WRONG!!

Starting a book is complicated, even if it is book # 47.  So where do you start?  Okay, this is an Ali book.  I need to figure out where she is in her life and in relation to the last book I wrote, Deadly Stakes, which, although it is not yet published and will be new to my readers in February, is by now old hat with me.  Between the time I finished writing that one and started writing this one, I’ve written the Beaumont book that will be coming toward the end of the summer.

So I have to resort all the details of Ali’s life–her friends and relations–how old they are; what they’re doing; how what happened to them in the upcoming book will impact their lives in the book I’m writing now.  Got it?  There may be some kind of past perfect conditional verb tense that applies to this, but I can’t figure out what it would be.  Or maybe it could be called the future depensive, since the future in this book depends on the past in the next book which hasn’t happened yet.  And which is all FICTION anyway!!!

If you can’t follow that, don’t be discouraged, because I can’t follow it either.  Suffice it to say, starting a book requires the exercise of many little gray cells whose functioning capability may well be diminished by carpet installers spending six hours pounding on the other side of the wall from the family room in which I am attempting to work.  My dismay with the carpet installers was compounded by the fact that they did a terrible job–the runner on the staircase looks like your basic drunken centipede.  The bad job was made worse by the guy in charge whose cell phone rang approximately every three minutes.  His ring tone happens to be a meowing cat.  The meow is realistic enough that every time the phone rang, Bella went ballistic.

Let’s just say she didn’t care for the carpet installers any more than I did, but she has managed to train our contractor to provide treats on command.  She sits up in her astonishingly cute Dachshund meerkat pose which is her command to him to hand over the treats.  Works like a charm every single time.

But back to writing.  I’m starting.  As of today, I have a Prologue and a single chapter written.  Bill is reading it.  I’m biting my nails and waiting for his verdict.

If he hates it, I may go somewhere and apply for a job as a carpet installer.  The job I’d do couldn’t possibly be that much worse than the one done by the guys who were already here.

Okay.  Time for a short PS.  I wrote the first part of the blog last night.  Bill read the chapters.  He said, “Too much narration; not enough dialogue.”  He is a smart man, and I listen to him.  Now it’s morning.  For the first time in weeks, it isn’t raining.  As soon as I finish my second cup of coffee, I will go back to the beginning and start again.  As for the carpet?  The replacement carpet installer, dispatched by the company who did the work originally, will be here next Tuesday.

If he has a phone, I hope he has a ring tone that doesn’t drive Bella nuts.  And if he doesn’t get the job done, well . . . let’s see.  What could I do about that?  Wait, I know.  A carpet installer could turn out to be a bad guy in the book I’m writing.  Oops.  No can do because I already did that.  That was a previous home remodel where the carpet installer showed up days late.  He ended up being a suspect in the book even though he wasn’t the actual perpetrator.

Some of my readers are probably thinking, “Really.  A carpet installer?  Did I read that book?”  If you’ve read all the Beaumont books, yes, you did.

And if you don’t remember, I guess it’s time for some of you to haul out your old copies and reread them a second time.  That way, you’ll be fully up to speed when it’s time to read Second Watch and meet J.P. Beaumont the first time I met him in 1966.

As for me?  As of right now, I’m all Ali all the time.