I miss it.

Facebook and Twitter make it easy to be off-handed and clever (or what passes for such around here), but I admit to missing my longer blog posts, where I tried to be off-handed and clever in more than 140 characters.

I’m also pondering a new domain name.  I know.  I already have, like, twelve.  Why another one?  Because a lot of who I was three years ago has changed, and is still changing, and the old domains just don’t fit anymore.  Domain names!  Like tattoos, without the regret.

Anyway.  I am pondering The Wind Through the Keyhole and whether I want to read it, and the answer is, probably, yes.  Understand that The Drawing of the Three and specifically the characters in that book are some of my favorites in literature, and I was absolutely disappointed by the way The Dark Tower ended.  Not the end-end (I thought that was right), but the ultimate final showdown with the Crimson King, the seeming uselessness of Song of Susannah, and the weird spider-kid whose only purpose seemed to be to “meaningfully” kill off  a couple characters.

But King has always had issues, it seems, with ending stories, and The Dark Tower as a series started to show structural weakness around Wolves of the Calla, so the ultimate decline and decay of the story doesn’t surprise  me.  (Given the themes of the series, it almost seems inexorable.)  If there had been no Crimson King showdown at the end, I think I would have actually thought that final book perfect, and just ignored Song of Susannah.  Ah well.

But yes, I will probably read Keyhole.  Because as I said: Roland’s ka-tet are some of my favorite characters ever, and I am a sucker.

Writing-wise: not going to talk about it.  Just safe to say whatever I’m working on right now is brewing in my brain.

I got married in September. To the surprise of no one, I wrote my own ceremony and vows, a rare collaboration with my (now) husband and our officiant.

Wedding planning took a lot out of me. I basically didn’t write for months, or wrote sporadically, and what I wrote didn’t sing to me. I played with concepts I’ve been wanting to write about: princesses posing as princes, shapechangers posing as gods, all manner of creatures that have been poking about the haunted wilds of my mind.

There was a point where I could feel panic rising. I’ve lost it, I thought. I’m never going to find a compelling story again. I’m going to be stuck trying to make cross-dressing royalty work, and it’s never going to happen. This was a real concern, and I can remember sitting there, staring at a chapter, begging it to work for me — but it didn’t.

[CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC]

Until last week.

I am still convinced that letting people in on a story too early is the surest way to kill it before it has had time to hatch, which is why I won’t be telling you much about my latest gambit. I will say this: it involves vampires, which has got to be the stupidest move my muse lizard brain has ever made. Vampires are so played out. We all know that. But this is what’s inspiring me right now, and I’m not under any deadlines, my livelihood does not depend on it, so — vampires it is.

Vampires. Why’d it have to be vampires?

::pokes brain::

::ideas squirt out::

….ewwwwww.

Still working out ideas. I’m giving each story its time. Outlines starting in a week or so, due to hijinks with birthdays and V-Day and so on.

That’s what I always ask myself after every completed project. Okay. What now?

I did a leisurely cruise through my old (1 year+) story starts and…I love three of them. Possibly even four. I can’t write three (four) novels at once, though, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last ten years, it’s this: there should always be more irons in the fires and no story is your darling.

(Except when it is your darling, but I suspect you can only ever let it be your darling when you have five bestsellers published and the NYC editors breathlessly waiting for your next submission — but that’s for another time.)

I used to let a novel be my darling, and I would ruthlessly write, and rewrite, that one story until it was a tattered flag waving in the wind. That way, my friends, lies madness.

No story is my darling anymore, but I still love three (four) of them, and the conclusion I’ve come to is I’m going to outline all three (four) and then decide which one to write. And once I finish one, I’ll have an answer to “What now?” Move on to the next one, of course.

Him, from the bedroom: “It’s quiet out there.”

Me, on the couch in the living room and typing: “Yup.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m writing.”

A pause. “Writing writing?”

“Mmhm.”

“Ohhhh.”

There have been many serious discussions between me and The Guy about personal time, which both of us — being older adults, being solitary creatures — need on a regular basis.

I have told him I’m not the kind of chick who needs to be by his side 100% of the time, and he nods and says he understands, but I suspect over the next six months he will really come to understand as I slide back into writerly things.

I’ve been dealing with deadlines from hell and The Guy moving in, but I do actually hope to get some substantial writing on Lelia done this weekend. And if not this weekend, then certainly the next, when the first round of holiday visitations end, and I can pretend things are normal for a little while.

I caved into my inner geek and bought a laptop. The economic stimulus and story sale for the Valdemar anthology both helped in this decision.

I’ve been writing, I just haven’t been blogging.

All is well.

Sleep now.