It's been a long time since I was this excited over a writing project. It's all I can do to tear my fingers away from the keyboard long enough to do things like feed my family and wash some clothes. Sometimes I have to apologize to my friends and family because my brain wandered off and tried to get back to the book when I was supposed to be with them.
It wasn't like that when I was working on His Other Mother. There were days that I had to force myself to go back. I'd take a deep breath and dive in and come up gasping a scene or two later. Especially as the end of that novel neared, I procrastinated. It was hard, following Sherry through all her hard times. I felt for her so much. It was like seeing a beloved friend through chemo. Harrowing. Worth it, but harrowing.
In the end, I finished that novel by bribing myself with the project I'm working on now: The Change. I promised myself that if I could put Sherry to bed and get her ready to send out into the publishing world, I could work on something light and fun next.
The Change is a superhero novel, a genre I didn't even know existed until I met James Maxey at a writing workshop he taught at my local library. His superhero novel, Nobody Gets the Girl, was such fun! I really enjoyed getting the comic book world feel, but in novel form, where the characters were more fully fleshed out and I imagined the action for myself (as opposed to seeing another artist's vision of it in a graphic novel).
I've read several other great books in the genre since: James's sequel/side-quel Burn, Baby, Burn, Peter Cline's Ex-Heroes, and Mur Lafferty's Playing for Keeps.
It's my own novel, so it's not like I have distance, but I think it's awesome! You should see and hear me sitting here writing it. I laugh, I gasp, I grin maniacally. Damn, this is fun. I'm going to go write some more. I want you to get to read this, too.
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