So What Now?

Well, we sure shot through subplots in a hurry. No follow-up questions or nothin’. Y’all are letting me get off easy. When has this BG group ever gone through a topic in one day?

Are you all out there a week post-conference brain dead? Or is it just me? Honestly, I can’t think of one fiction craft issue we haven’t yet covered. Done POV? Yeah. Story structure and plotting? Oh, yeah. Dialogue? Uh-huh. Complete with subtexting. Backstory? Yup. Chapter hooks? Twists? Yup, yup. Character emotion? Uh-huh, check our AS (action scene.) Sentence rhythm, tight writing, strong verbs—done them, too. What’s left for us? Is this blog hitting its natural end? Will the BGs go out dancin’ their Nights on Broadway, vowing they’ll be Stayin’ Alive?

Talk to me, BGs. I’m out of ideas.

Meanwhile, I will tell you what’s up with me. I’m supposed to be plotting book two in the Kanner Lake series. Yeah-supposed, as supposed to start last week. But I’ve had so much conference follow-up to do, plus various volunteer things, plus a bunch of marketing stuff. And Friday I was on a plane again--going up to Idaho for the weekend. (This, I will never complain about.) So, well, I ain’t started yet. But I will. Soon. Really.

Meanwhile my editors out there are reading Violet Dawn. I should be hearing back from them in about two weeks. Ye ol’ editorial letter. Which leads to ye ol’ rewrite. Sigh. I figure I’ll give that a couple weeks. Before then, I really should have a week’s worth of work done on book #2, which means I should start next week. But, hey, how do you start when you don’t know what you’re writing?

I have today and tomorrow to figure out something. Then Thursday I’m off traveling again—this time to the Zondervan novelists’ retreat in Michigan. Be back Sunday. At the retreat we have two days of meetings at the Z headquarters, learning what’s up with the fiction dept., marketing, etc. Hearing from folks in the industry regarding book sales and bookstores and general state of the market. Interesting stuff. Plus, we’re a bunch of crazy novelists, so naturally we’ll have fun. And we're wined and dined--very nicely, I might add--on Z's tab, so, hey, who can complain?

Next week I’m stuck back in my California office. Supposedly writing my new book. The plot I don’t know yet.

We covered plotting on this blog, right? Maybe I better go back and read the stuff. Maybe I’ll learn something about how to plot a book . . .

While I’m at Zondervan, I’ll be talking to the marketing guru about marketing for Web of Lies. Oh, yeah, BGs, that book’s a-comin’. (February pub.) There’s some ideas cooking about the WOL marketing. If we decide to carry through on these ideas, y’all will be the first to know.

My newsletter, Sneak Pique, will be released next week. If you’re an author and had a novel release in August or September, send me a paragraph blurb about it so it can be included. Actually, send it to my assistant at: gayle@brandilyncollins.com. If you’re not signed up to receive SP through email, you can sign up for it on my Web site. It’s an easy way to keep up with the new Christian novels, as I cover new releases in all genres. Also, my assistant informs me we still need an author question for the newsletter. If you want to ask a question about some Christian novelist—what’s his next series, what happened to so-and-so series that suddenly stopped, whatever—please email the question to me. I’ll contact the author to find the answer.

So there you have it. My news up to date. What shall we talk about tomorrow?