Picking a New Book to Write

Still deep in the querying trenches with SHROUD OF DAWN, it’s well past time I picked a new project to work on. I have several (well, more than several) ideas and half-finished zero drafts, and I tried to Commit to one of them arbitrarily; that didn’t work, so I tried to Commit to another one arbitrarily. That also didn’t work.

So instead, I did what any rational person would do, and I became obsessed with the Anastasia Broadway Production for about three consecutive weeks. I listened to it on repeat, tried and failed to write fanfiction about it, and ultimately picked apart the character Gleb with tweezers in order to figure out why I love him so much. (Ramin Karimloo may be significantly to blame.)

With the intense caveat that this character has very nearly nothing whatsoever in common with Gleb—except maybe for how he dresses—what I wound up with is Munir, a fun little blorbo who doesn’t know just how very far in over his head he is. His story has gripped me so thoroughly that I no longer have any fear about not knowing which project to work on next. It’s Munir all the way, babey! Which is a horrible mistake, because I have no idea how to write intrigue. Well! No time like the present!

(I’m acting like I just made this decision yesterday. In fact, I made it about 19 days ago, am already almost 50k into the zero draft, and have just been able to tear myself away from it long enough to breathe for a second and write up this post.)