Deep in mid-book

After Christo having led me a merry chase for the past month, during which he has gone down the beach and I have gone after him, and he has gone surfing and left me to fend for myself, he's back -- with a vengeance.

Finally.

And now he seems to be waiting for me to catch up. So I've grabbed my notebook and pen and I'm following him and Natalie into the kitchen where they are deep in discussion -- one that she wants and he'd just as soon avoid.

But then, as I pointed out, if he'd cooperated a month ago, we might be well past this now and he could be having a good time instead of having his world turned on its head.

Poor Christo.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!

Knitting and Character Development

I don't knit.

Well, I do. Or did. Badly.

I tend to increase. No matter how many stitches I start out with in the beginning, there are always quite a few more at the end whether there are supposed to be or not.

When I was first learning (or should I say, when I began to try to learn before it was determined that I was hopeless), my friend who was teaching me said, "We'll just start with a square."

I think she meant a rectangle, but no matter.

What we ended up with -- or what I ended up with -- was a trapezoid. And no matter what I did with it, no matter how many times I unraveled it and began again, I still had more at the end than I did at the beginning.

The question soon changed from, could I knit? to could I count?

Well, math was never my strong suit, either.

And, sad to say, character development is a lot like that. It seems straight-forward. Christo seemed perfectly straight-forward when he breezed into my life, tried his darnedest to knock Seb out of the way and muscle onto the page.

Hold on a minute, I said. Wait your turn.

And he did. He cooled his heels, muttering a bit. But he seemed to be perfectly clear about his story. I only had to write it, he told me. How hard could it be? He and Natalie. Meant to be. Piece of cake.

Yeah, right.

Turns out it isn't quite like that. It never is, of course, but they sucker me in every time. They promise me easy chapters, words that will flow like honey, completely transparent backstories that will make my life -- and theirs -- easy-peasy.

Ha.

Can't trust 'em. None of them. Well, except maybe for Aidan Sawyer, nearly twenty years ago, who did exactly what he said he'd do in The Marriage Trap. And Austin Cavanaugh in Marry Sunshine who might have driven Clea crazy, but to me was the soul of cooperation.

Was I living right twenty years ago? Or were the fates just on my side for once?

Because, as far as the rest of them go, Cooperation Rn't Them.

And Christo is no exception. He who seemed transparent when he was a test pilot, turned in his test pilot badge before we ever got out of scene one.

Now he's a lawyer. A rat of a lawyer, if you ask me. Why didn't he tell me the truth? Why did he say he was a test pilot, then make me nuts trying to figure him out before he told me the truth.

And what about the girl in his bed?

What girl in his bed? I demanded.

He shrugged. Didn't think it was important, he said finally when I twisted his arm. Wasn't going to happen again.

Oh, really?

Who's writing this book, anyway?

Sneaky hero.

He doesn't even look like he used to look! He's edgier. Smoother when he needs to be (like I said, sneaky), but submarines could get lost in this man's depths.

He looks a lot like Hugh did in Erskineville Kings. I noticed that as I was hunting up Hugh photos for the Hugh Jackman tour. Especially when he (Christo) started talking as I stared at the picture. Hmm.

Wonder what else he's hiding from me.

Right now, he's making the knitting needles look tempting. Not to start knitting with -- to poke him where it will do him the most good.

Business as usual mid-book, in other words.

Argh.

Going Home Again

I grew up in Manhattan Beach.

If I haven't been back in a while (say, six months), it changes. Businesses come and go. Houses go up. Others get torn down. And bigger houses go up where those were.

It looks a lot different than it did when I grew up there. And yet, in some ways, it doesn't change a bit.

It's a beach town. A faster-lane beach town than I remember. But still an informal, easy-going place where shoes were never really required, except if the sign said so. If our feet were tough enough to endure the heat of the pavement or the sand, well, then we went bare foot. No one really cared.

It's a town where people from all over the country -- and at this point, probably the world -- come by themselves and make new lives. They graduate from college and leave Iowa or New Jersey or Texas or New Delhi or Glasgow or Copenhagen -- and they never look back.

It was rare, when I was growing up there, to be a native. I can't imagine that's changed. It's very impermanence is a part of the permanent face of it that I remember the most.

I loved growing up there.

I'm revisiting it with Natalie and Christo. I'm wandering down to the beach at 10th Street where I used to go every day.

I'm walking out on the pier, doing a bit of body surfing, letting Christo take a surfboard out early before he heads off to be a high-powered hard-edged Presents hero. It's humanizing him. And it's giving me a mini-vacation in my head.

Anyone out there from MB? If so, speak up. Tell me what it's like for you now. Anyone visited recently? Let me know.

Christo is talking to his grandmother on the phone. I think he's saving the cat. I had no idea that was why he was doing it.

I guess if surfing doesn't make you like him, maybe the fact that he loves his grandmother will.

Thank you, Blake Snyder. I'm glad someone out there knows why I write the things I write.

On the road again . . . again

After you have written 61 books (which I have, apparently) and you are embarking on the 62nd, you begin to think you've been this way before.

Maybe not quite this exact same way, but some of the memories evoked are the same even if the sights along the way are not.

When I was reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit last spring I wrote several blogs -- one of which is here -- about it which, having gone back and re-read them now, make me recognize the efforts. It isn't that I wasn't aware of them before, but I think it's the ritual I am more aware of now.

There is, of course, the box. Or the collage. Or the heap of papers, books and sundry junk piled in the corner that is my treasure trove for the book. Every book has one. Or at least it has something -- some collection that I go to in order to discover the flotsam and jetsam that I will need to create the novel.

Oddly, though, when I did the collage for Flynn and Sara, nothing in the book turned out like the collage -- well, except for O'Mally and Liam.

Flynn changed as the book went on. Sara did, too. So did the castle. And the setting? Well, it started out in New York and never went there at all in the finished book.

Much the same thing happened to Sebastian and Neely and their box. The box is wonderful -- very impressive. And nothing much remained of the things I put on the box, either. The story took on a life of its own.

It began with the box, yes. But then it took off from there.

So starting over with Christo and Natalie, I don't expect to end up with what I start out with, either.

Just as well. It shows the characters are growing, developing their own story, finding their own way to their happily ever after.

At least I hope that's where they're going. They haven't seen fit to tell me yet.

But I'm turning up every morning -- and so far it's working.

The bus stopped!

Happily Christo and Natalie and I are no longer standing on the corner watching all the buses go by. Ours has stopped, the door has opened, and we have hopped on.

We have a story!

At least we think we do. And we're giving it a shot. It remains to be seen how long the euphoria lasts. But at least the bus hasn't passed us by. We even have something of a route map. Though I don't put a lot of stock in them as they've been known to mess me up before.

Still it's fun to be underway. Keep your fingers crossed that we have a good trip.

We get to go to Brazil for part of it. That should be exciting. Sadly I'm not going to get to go in person. Not this time.

But I have a friend who lives there, and a son who spent a year working there, and surely there must be some of you out there who would like to chime in with details I can't live without.

Christo's father is a former footballer (soccer player for the Americans among us) from Brazil. I haven't decided where he's from yet. Sao Paulo? Rio? Fortaleza? My son's friend from work was from Fortaleza so he spent time there. My friend lives outside Sao Paulo. I have another friend from Rio.

But Brazil is a big country. Suggestions, anyone?

I'm filling the box for Christo. And while I'm at it, I'm filling a couple of other boxes as well.

Remember George, the physicist who never comes out of the lab? He's on the list, believe it or not. He's actually going to get a book! He even has a heroine. Who knew!

So does Demetrios, his brother. Not the same heroine, I'm happy to report.

Three new heroes. Yikes.

So Christo and Nat and I have to get moving -- otherwise Demetrios and George will be misbehaving. Heroes don't like to stand around. If they have to wait in line for their books, they are inclined to be difficult.

Standing at the bus stop

That's what I feel like I'm doing.

Me and Christo and Natalie, all of us together -- not quite looking at each other as people at bus stops don't -- while we wait for the bus to come along and pick us up and take us where we need to go.

That would be to The End.

But first we need to have the bus show up, and then we need an open door. The bus had better show up by Monday when I intend to start C&N in earnest. The door had better materialize by then, too.

It feels odd to have a story and no way in. I usually have a first scene in mind long before I ever get to the book. And ordinarily that's good and works well -- except in the case of Flynn and Sara where it worked for about 35 pages and then not only the door vanished, but the bus did, too.

So I'm working at coming up with some scenes that will work for them -- something that will throw them right at each other -- so I can step back and let them carry on from there.

I like them both. They don't much like what they know about each other at the moment. So that's good. A little conflict never hurt anyone.

I hope.

Meet Christo

This is Christo.

He moved in last week. He's raided the refrigerator and has generally made himself at home. At least at home as he's likely to be anywhere.

He's been filling me in on his back story, and the woman in his life -- who is not Natalie.

Well, give him time. He'll figure it out eventually.

Keep good thoughts for us. We'll be working together this week while I'm in Missouri visiting friends and going to an art retrospective.

Stay tuned.