Started. That's the operative word. Because I can't seen to get all that far along, and the reason is that this book is part of what we call in the romance biz, a continuity. A continuity book is one where the publishing house provides what we call a "bible." That's the basic info about what the story will be like and who the characters are. The author then takes the basic info and makes her own story from it. A continuity is always a series of books. As a rule, each of these books in the series is written by a different author.
Issue here: basic info. It keeps changing. There are many really good reasons that it does, because my hero is the brother of two other heroes from other books written in 2009 by two other authors. Those authors changed their "bible" to make better stories. They even agreed together on the changes they would make. And then, as so often happens in life, agreements were either forgotten or math errors were made as to ages of characters and what happened when. All this, I must tell you, was done in good faith by everyone.
Then we add in the fact that we're kind of pushing it scheduling-wise on this particular branch of the continuity. The books are very successful and the publisher wants more so we're going ahead with another six books by another six authors before the past six books are all on the stands. This creates no end of trouble for the editor writing the new "bible" and also for the first book in the new series--written by moi.
All that to say, the new "bible" is not ready yet, though my book is due way too soon. I have trouble writing my book without stats and backstories to agree on. I'm just funny that way.
Yes, I realize that this is my opportunity to relax and go with the flow instead of being such an anal control freak. And I am relaxing. I am. I really, really, am...
What's that screaming sound? Do you hear screaming....??!!
