Manuscript Madness

I'm a bit of wound up nerves this morning. You see, last night I finished my first draft of LEGACY. Friday I thought I had 5 ½ chapters left, but on Saturday, Athena, the little minx, dived right into trouble instead of giving the villain his full-on chase. It has ended up far creepier, therefore I hope better—not the ending I originally envisioned exactly, but it made way for Athena to get to clean house a little as the novel wound up, and to set up one of my OTHER characters, who will be featured in PoV next novel, to have some ANGER ISSUES.

 I can't believe the speed with which this book has fallen out of my pen.  CONFLUENCE took nearly 3 years (once I actually got to WRITING the thing--it simmered for 4 years before that).  This one got a vague plotting (of what is now book 2) last winter--character profiles for people in two families, and then in August, this Athena character started bugging me, poking me, prodding me, and drove this INSANE writing pace.  She wasn't even planned!  But she IS central... you see, she ties everything together... connects me to the bad boys...  LEGACY is 310 hand-written pages.  Typing thus far indicates I lose about 10%, so 280 pages, when typed.  My son assured me that is far more reasonable than my 800 page CONFLUENCE.

So what is LEGACY about? In brief... (and this is my first shot at this, I think, so nowhere near query ready... then again I don't even plan to EDIT until the Trilogy is done)


A young boy, watching through the vents, witnesses his father's execution-style murder. A thirteen year old girl cowers in the closet as her mother tries to trade her daughter's virginity for a drug fix. Peter Nayev and his siblings retreat to hidden rooms in their family home, and Athena flees to the streets to escape the dark legacy their parents have cast upon them. By chance, a meeting in Portland's Pioneer Square, brings these children together, and makes them realize their lives have been intertwined since before they were born. Together they try to solve some of the mysteries, just hoping they can find a way for the world to be safe again.



This book was from the PoVs of Peter (8) and Athena (13). The next one will be Kade (Peter's older brother, 14) and ___ (the mother from the family who buys the Nayev house), and the final one might go back to Athena but then will feature the mother of the Nayev kids (she has disappeared as of the beginning of LEGACY)

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.


Meeting Mari

And then I'm ALSO excited to pick Mari up from the airport tonight (SQUEEEEEE!)and take a few days off work (SQUEEEEE!) showing her the thrills of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is not a 'destination' kind of place. People don't come here to vacation. But it is a quaint and sometimes quirky town, and I think we can definitely find enough to do to keep busy for a couple days. It will be interesting too, to show somebody who has read CONFLUENCE the places that the idea originated from.

So I suppose I will be taking a few day hiatus from writing, but that is okay, because the novel is DONE! Woohoo!