I love it when it rains in LA. It just rained a bit ago. Not for long, but enough to wet the ground.
It’s such a rare occurrence, and I grew up somewhere with so much of it…makes me think of home. It’s a comfortable thing when it rains. It’s fresh. It’s clean. It makes the lights shine on the ground, and the cars hiss as they drive by. Mostly…it makes everything green. If I had one genuine criticism of LA weather, the land where it’s sunny every day, it’d be that I miss the greenery of home. Brown is fine…but green is divine.
I took it pretty easy today work-wise. It wasn’t exactly my intention, but that’s the way it worked out. Writing I knew was going to be impacted in the AM because I had so many errands to run…like, it’s hard to eat breakfast when you don’t have any food, you know? Stuff like that. But then there weren’t hardly any narrations in the queue for the to do in the afternoon either, so I just kind of took advantage of the opportunity to take it easy and get some rest.
It was a good idea. I feel rested. Recharged. Ready to get some work done tomorrow. Early returns are coming in from the Beta Readers about the book, and already they’re super, super helpful. They’re really going to make this book a lot better, thank you baby jesus. It’s probably a pain in the ass to get the story piecemeal like they are…but I have a core group that’s really stuck with it thus far. Plus, it’s really, really helpful to have these deadlines to meet with them.
A couple of them made some observations that kind of have my head spinning right now, so I must confess I do feel a bit distracted writing this 😛 and *genuinely* not “head-spinning” in a bad way at all. Quite the opposite. They loved what was happening…but they gave me ideas…and that tends to suck me down rabbit holes.
I can’t really talk about Escape From Red Tower much without giving certain things way…but there are so many layers of what’s happening in this story, it’s really, REALLY difficult to navigate. I definitely bit off a lot to chew on…hopefully not too much. This story, more than any other I’ve ever written, is like a house of cards…one element out of place, and the entire thing comes crashing down. I don’t recommend it, actually 😂 It’s so hard to keep it all tight, have it all make sense, not give away what’s happening, give enough misdirection so that nobody figures it out before you want them to, keep it suspenseful, have all the characters act consistently within themselves (even the new ones)…it’s tough.
I wish I could say that I love it right now…but not so much. I’ll LOVE it when I have it all nailed down and *tight* to my satisfaction. Getting there. One day at a time.
Speaking of which…I’m going to bed. I’ll read for a bit first, THEN go to bed. Night, night 😉