There are times when being a writer feels like the best damn job in the world.  Seriously. I mean, you’re hardly ever bored.  You can look at a corkscrew and get an idea.  You can ride the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World and have an idea for a book (or two).  You can go to Disney World and write the whole damn trip off because you had an idea (or two) for a book–then sold it!

But then there are times when you’re up until 3am-because the voices in your head just won’t shut up.  Yes, voices, because that’s how my stories come to me.  People talk to me.  These are my characters.  I’ve mentioned before that I feel more like a narrator than anything else, because I’m just taking down the notes for the people who are living out the stories that happen in my head.  So imagine these people…living in your head…and they never shut up.

That’s been my head for the past month.  Several shiny, dazzling new ideas and I’m letting them all out to play before I knuckle down and get to work on RS project #2.

Which I have to start on this week.

The problem with letting them all out to play is that they don’t want to stop playing.

They don’t want to shut up.

They don’t want to let me sleep.  They don’t want to let me think or read or do anything but write their story.  They’d take me over and turn me into a…a STEPFORD writer or something if I let them.

O.O

Maybe this shouldn’t be a down side to be a writer, but it’s exhausting.  Too many noises inside the noggin.

So this weekend, I shut down.

I barely read email, I didn’t open my laptop.  I took a bubblebath or two.  I watched tv.  I read books.  I went to church. I went to the mall.

On Sunday, I did glance at my email….

And I saw one I’d been hoping to see.

From editor M. with St. Martins.

About RS book 1.

I’m loving this…

Hot damn, yes.  This is the upside to be a writer.  When somebody loves a book.

Now maybe I can shut up those many voices and focus on the one voice I need to focus on.

Here… snippet.  This is from book #1.  Right now, I’m calling it Nothing but Trouble, but that title might change.  No release date, etc available right now.

But let me introduce Neve McKay.

~*~

 

Home.

Her throat clogged from the memories and she blew out a breath.  She’d let herself get all sentimental and stupid later.  For now, though, she was going to have herself that damn beer and figure out her next step—and decide if she was going to call her brother sister right away, or wait until tomorrow.

Some frisson of nerves twisted inside her at the thought of trying to deal with the rift she’d caused in her family, but she’d deal with that when the time came.  All of that was for later.

Tonight?

“Just a drink,” she told herself.

And with that in mind, she started toward the door.

She had to take a minute to acclimate herself once she ducked inside.

The few glimpses she’d had inside the dive that had been Treasure Island didn’t match up with what was before her now.   The servers wore kilts—shorter lengths for the girls, although nothing that would make their mothers hide their eyes if they bent over—while the guys had a similar style that hit the knee.

She smirked, amused.  So they were going for a Scottish theme?  And still using the name Treasure Island?  Oooookkayyy.

To each their own, she mused as she wound her way through the crowd, ducking her head when somebody looked at her too long, averting her face when somebody looked familiar.

She had to avert her face a lot.

Treasure wasn’t a big town—population at the last census was just under nine thousand.  Her graduating class hadn’t even topped two hundred.  Just in the short walk from the door to the bar, she’d heard several familiar names and seen people she hadn’t seen in eight years.

But she hadn’t seen the people who counted the most, and that was all that mattered.

As long as she could brace herself before she had to see them, then everything would be just fine and dandy.

Spying an empty seat, she slid onto and looked up at the bar.  She hooked her backpack on the little hook in front of her and shifted to keep it between her legs.  She’d had people try to relieve her of her belongings more than once.

Breathing out a sigh of relief, she let herself relax.  Now…for that drink—

“Well.  ‘Allo.  What can I get you?”

At the sound of that voice, a shiver raced down her spine and a punch of heat—something she hadn’t felt in far too long spread through her, warming her from head to toe.