Keeping Upbeat on a Monday Night

I’ve made it to the other side of 15,000 words. Yahoo!

Even though I’m feeling good about it, I still feel like I’ve been struggling to get the words and the plot of the sequel down. Just writing the first book was a big step. Now I have to figure out how to keep it interesting and not have it be redundant.

Drowning in the Dark takes place in a small town on the Oregon Coast. And of course, there’s only so much you can do in a small town without things getting boring. I imagine that’s why there’s so many urban paranormal books out there. Cities do keep things interesting.

I think even big authors have trouble with this in their sequels. Like Charlaine Harris did that in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The second book in the series mostly took place in Dallas, leaving behind the small town of Bon Temps. Or of course in the Twilight series, Bella leaves Forks to go after Edward in Italy. And then it seems that in the third installments, the characters return home.

So these are things I’ve been mulling over while writing the second in the series. I think too, keeping that romantic intrigue without hitting the readers over the head with it is tricky too. I myself only enjoy a splash of romance in what I read – for me, less is more. But at the same time, I understand that it really drives most stories.

On a side note, I’ve discovered that I’m really not the reader I thought I was. I recently joined Goodreads, and was adding books to my library, when I came to the realization that I really have read very few books in the paranormal genre. I’ve read a lot of the greats in horror -- Stephen King, Richard Matheson and Ann Rice, but there are some definite holes in my reading. Holes that I want to fix soon! If I only had the time… Sometimes I’m faced with the choice between reading or writing. And these days, I’ve mostly been choosing writing.

Anyway, those are my ramblings on a Monday evening (just about a Tuesday morning by now.) Perhaps I’ll check back in on the other side of 20K.