I’ve spent the week working concertedly on the Angel Arias – book two the Burn Bright series or The Night Creatures trilogy as I think it is going to be called. The larger part of this novel takes the main character back to her home in Grave. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that she’d be spending some time at the beginning of the book on a pirate’s island. It never fails to fascinate me how the things you set up in stories take on their own life – and from there grow their own catastrophes and triumphs. The pirate’s island, which until now I’d hadn’t thought about in much detail, has suddenly become a world of wonderful test and turmoil.

Meanwhile, my Peacemaker sample is nearly ready to go back to my agent and hopefully on to my publisher. I’m already very close to this story, which is a nice feeling. It’s like a friendship almost…

Firstly, thanks to Anne Bishop for sharing her plans for the future, the huge amount of hits on Anne’s post are proof of the love and interest her books arouse in readers.

Thanks also to those that came to say hello at the Victoria Point A&R book signing yesterday. Stephenie and Kevin were wonderful hosts – I do love visiting their shop. Unfortunately we were competing with a tiny tots contest or some such thing. The Bayside Bulletin were terrific in promoting the event and supporting local authors.

I’ve done a little work on Peacemaker over the weekend and I’ll report on that, and my Angel Arias progress, tomorrow when I’m in full writing groove.

For now… enjoy Sunday and value your loved ones.

I was doing my weekend work on Peacemaker and passages kept stopping the narrative from where it was going. Not de-railing it exactly, but making it take longer than a mere ‘a’ to ‘b’ as-the-crow-flies type of journey. That was because the minor characters started having things to say. Sometimes in first draft, I find that the minor characters can be fairly quiet and they get noisier on subsequent drafts. When they start having a presence in first draft it can be a really good sign for me. It tends to mean the story is much closer to my front brain than normal and easier to tap.

It’s times like these I wish I could just sit for a couple of days and let it pour out but that is not the way of things, young grasshopper. I’ll just hope that the next time I sit down to work on it the front-brain magic is still there.