Into July Heat

I received this emblem in my e-mail last week for My Sister's Keeper being shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis novella of the year. I like the design. Winners receive an actual wooden hangman with movable parts as depicted below.

The third in the Anna Sweet series will be out in September, which seemed like a long way away when I finished with the edits in October, believe it or not  - almost a year before publication. I'm currently writing questions and answers for To Keep a Secret to coincide with its release. It's odd to be going back through the book after not having worked on it for so long.

I'm also plugging away on my latest Stonechild and Rouleau manuscript and am now at 82,000 words and heading toward the climax and ending chapters. I hope to be nearly done, if not done, by the end of this weekend. Then, I'll give the entire manuscript a read through and edit before submitting to Dundurn.

I do a lot of editing and rewriting as I go so the manuscript is usually in not bad shape by the time I finish the first draft. I know other authors who chunk the whole thing down in one go without editing, but I find that I can't work that way. I need to have a chapter fully formed and tidy before I move on to the next. The rereading and editing is the time when I plot the next chapter in my head. Working full time means I'm not able to work on a manuscript in a scheduled way and stretches out the writing. This means I forget details and have to catch plot inconsistences later when I look at the finished manuscript as a whole. A bit pain-staking sometimes, but such is life.

I've just been lined up to do an event in Perth on August 30. Capital Crime Writers is partnering with the Classic Theatre Festival to have two of our authors do short readings and have books for sale before the show on three separate Saturdays. The production this year is Dial M for Murder so suitable subject matter for crime writers. Alfred Hitchcok made the play into a movie with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland in 1954. Ted and I have decided to make a weekend of it and will stay overnight in Perth at a B & B. Could be a nice getaway for you too, Ottawa friends :-)

And another glorious weekend here in Ottawa. I'll be typing with the door and windows open and will take lots of breaks to go outside and enjoy the day. The weekends are never long enough to do all the things I would like to, but I will soon be on a three-week vacation with time to stretch out. Ahh summer.

So much to do, so little time.