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, \u201cIt was all hat and no cattle.\u201d In other words, nothing happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then one afternoon, when I came home from third grade, I discovered that my mother, dressed in a pair of my Dad\u2019s overalls, had enlisted my younger brother\u2014home from kindergarten\u2014to jumpstart the remodeling project by demolishing the living room\u2019s block wall with a sledgehammer and chisel. When I asked what was going on, these are the words she muttered: \u201cIf it is to be, it is up to me.\u201d 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 \u201ckids\u2019\u201d bedroom and into the \u201cgirls\u2019\u201d bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So where am I going with this? Last fall, having submitted the manuscript for the next Ali book, Smoke and Mirrors<\/em>, I learned that a decision had been made by Simon and Schuster in New York to postpone publication until 2027, meaning that I wouldn\u2019t have a book published in 2026. That potentially put a big hole in our finances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s when I went to work\u2014see 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\u2019s big Christmas celebration. My Christmas shopping consisted of buying a whole raft of fancy cards and putting checks in them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But here\u2019s the thing about writing books\u2014I have to THINK <\/em>them into existence. The various characters, both good and bad, have to come into focus. I need to know everything about them\u2014who they are, where they came from, how they were raised, where they\u2019re 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of those above issues aren\u2019t resolved when I\u2019m 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\u2019m wrestling with the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust me, January has been a marathon. I\u2019ve left the house exactly four times\u2014once to attend a play with my daughter; twice to go to the dentist; and once to go to the hearing aid store. That\u2019s it. The rest of the time, I\u2019ve been here working. I know new seasons of several TV shows have started, but I haven\u2019t seen them. With no football this weekend, maybe I\u2019ll have an On-Demand marathon and catch up with some of those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as of eleven PM last night, January 28!!!, The Taken Ones<\/em> is finally finished, all 93,000 words of it. It\u2019s J.P. Beaumont #27 and Twinkle Winkleman #3, if you count both Den of Iniquity <\/em>and the separate novella, Girls’ Night Out. (<\/em>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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Taken Ones <\/em>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\u2014like have my nails done, for instance. They\u2019re a mess. And I also need to get back to the hearing aid store, because the part I ordered has finally arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this coming fall, when you settle in to read The Taken Ones<\/em>, most likely in a matter of hours, I hope you\u2019ll remember that creating the story took a big chunk out of my life, and without Evie\u2019s shining example, it might never have come into existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"If It Is to Be, It\u2019s Up to Me","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-SK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3395,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3394\/revisions\/3395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}