Signed the Contract

Today I signed the contract for JUICE AND THE HIGH SCHOOL GHOST.  It feels good to have a second book going into publication.  I feel validated that my writing has transcended the "hobby" phase of my life and entered the "possibly could be making my living for me someday" phase of my life.  I realize it won't happen overnight, but the ideas and outlines for future books are coming at me so fast, I can hardly write them down quickly enough.  I must be in my "blue" period.  Lol.

I am also only days, or possibly a couple weeks away from concluding the second book to SPELLBOUND.  I used to call it the sequel to SPELLBOUND, but more and more I can see where the story would continue to a third installment, using the developing characters and plot points from the second.  I'm not really an outliner, more of a pantser, which is the terminology for a seat-of-the-pants writer, someone who really lets her characters tell their own stories.  I have blogged before how sometimes I have felt that good writers tend to be a tad schizophrenic because their characters take over their own storylines and we, as the writers, seem only to be instruments through which the story comes out.

But as I get to the end of the second installment, the third has been shaping itself in my head, as if the characters are planting the seeds of development in my brain.  I find myself taking notes in my pad or tapping them in the tasks section of my blackberry.  I'm not entirely convinced there will be a third book yet, but they are relentlessly chipping away at my resolve.  I am out numbered and they are ganging up on me.  It is not a fair fight.  Check back and see if I cave in in the next month or so.