I just have to start with this:

Because that is just…ridiculously awesome. I don’t even have the words for it. Really. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that will add to the splendiferousness of that.

So, moving on.

My hubby made an interesting comment the other day. He said that it seems like I’m having more fun writing this new book I’m working on (super sekrit crazy dark project) than I’ve had since I wrote my first book. At first I wanted to deny it — I mean, hey, I love writing — but he’s right. It made me think.

When I wrote my first book, it was like an exercise in being free. I’d quit my corporate day job (which literally felt like it was sucking the soul right out of me) to write. Not only that, but we’d moved halfway across the country from Clearwater, Florida to Louisville, Kentucky.

I’d actually started a couple of other novels before that weren’t going anywhere, though I had learned things from them (one was a middle grade fantasy that I just kept making too complicated…there’s something to be said for knowing too much about a subject and the other was a high fantasy YA that I still might go back to someday, if anybody is even reading that anymore). But Sucks to Be Me was my first try at something in first person. And I just let myself go. I also had an outline to keep me on track for the first time.

Then I wrote it and was getting tons of rejections (mostly from people saying that vampires just weren’t salable…this was before Twilight hit). I puttered around on some other projects, nursed my bad back, and then we moved again to the Chicago area. It was pretty soon after we moved that I found out that someone did want to buy my book (yay!) and also that I was pregnant (whoa!).

So the next year and a half or so was pretty much revisions and pregnancy, then book launch and mommy-ing. I probably should have started another book during this time, but quite frankly, I was just busy being a first time mommy. Then I wrote Still Sucks to Be Me while still firmly entrenched in mommy-dom. It was hard. I knew more about what I was doing, but now I was writing with little Max. Anyone who tells you it’s easy to write when you have kids is either a) insane, b) lying, or c) trying to pull your chain. Or maybe they’re Mary Poppins, I dunno. The book came out, but I can’t say that I was enjoying it exactly.

Then I started working on Cat Girl Saves the Day and while I like the book, there were bits of it I wanted to kill (mostly the end, where I jumped my outline). And besides the pressure of writing with Max, we were also in the crazy limbo of are-we-moving-to-London-or-not for months on end. Then we were in the oh-my-God-we’re-moving phase. So writing the end of that book was more or less an exercise in freaking out and trying to hold it together. But I finished it. Whew.

Then I started on a new book, which will remain unnamed because it isn’t going to see the light of day since the publisher wound up canceling it (not because of me or my writing, but it just didn’t fit their catalog anymore). Even though I was trying not to admit it to myself while I was working on it (I only got about 4 or 5 chapters in), I had a bad feeling about it. I just knew it wasn’t going to work out somehow. Too many little clues. And it didn’t. I do love the characters, but I don’t think that book will ever happen and knowing that while I was writing it kind of sucked the joy out of it for me.

So that brings me to this book. I’m breaking all my rules. I started it without an outline (and have only done the barest bare bones one so far). I’ve been listening to music while I write. I’m letting myself be dark and awkward and vulnerable (or, er, the characters). I’m not trying to be funny. I’m just writing (and yeah, I know probably great huge hunks of this might be cut out later in revisions, but hey, that’s writing). And just writing is just joyful.

I feel like it is really flowing. I’m up to about 12,000 words right now in 15 calendar days (that’s not writing days, since I generally take weekends off for family time AND I’ve been ridiculously sick…in actual writing days, we’re looking at about seven real days of working on it).

So. I’ve got a pretty good feeling about this book. Some day, I hope you will too.

And just for a teaser, here’s a teeny, tiny little snippet for you (yeah, I know, I know, I said before I wasn’t going to share anything about this new book but it’s not a lot. Less than 150 words. Just a snippet. So sue me.):

“Ariel, isn’t it?”

“Aria,” I said. “A melody sung solo.” I gave silent thanks that the answer hadn’t come out any stranger than that.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. I guess I never paid attention before.”

“That’s okay. No one does.” I should have stopped after the first sentence. Now I sounded like I was asking for sympathy. “I mean it’s a strange name. Not very common.”

“Pretty,” he said, still staring at me. “I like it.”

I dropped my head forward so that my hair formed a curtain between us, but he wasn’t having any of that. He reached out a hand and tucked it behind my ear. I tried not to flinch, like boys touched me in such a personal way all the time.

“So,” he said, and he leaned even closer, his eyes on mine, “do you think I did it too?”