The Hinges of Hades

Tracy here.

When the local weather people issue a heat advisory warning in Mobile, you know it's hot! Yesterday, my outdoor thermometer read 104.1°--in the shade. With the heat index (think hot AND humid!), we're running about 110-115° in these parts. And, yes, as a Yankee* who grew up in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I ALWAYS complain about the heat. But there is a writing connection to this latest bout of grumbling.

During this heat wave, with my flipflops melted onto the pavement, my hair frizzed like Little Orphan Annie's, and sweat pooled around my feet (and I'm talking inside with the AC blasting), I'm trying to imagine snowmen and mittens and ice skating on the pond while I come up with a Christmas story submission for Excalibur's anthology (see cj's post below for more info). Instead, I keep having visions of Santa, eyebrows singed and his red suit smudged with the ashes, in this case not from a chimney but from the flames of the Inferno of the Damned. Actually, the story's shaping up into a great horror tale, but the anthology is not called Halloween is a Season! 2009.

Even cranked down to Ice Age temperatures, my old decrepit AC system is barely managing to cool the house off to the mid 80s. (But I LOVE you AC—please don't break down on me now!)


So, for now, I'm going to work on my current WIP, a mystery I call FM. My old WIP, the still-unfinished-after-so-many-years Young Adult novel PI is still close by. I jot down a note or 2 every now and then. But I'm hoping that the structure of a genre novel will help me actually complete an entire novel. Then, with that confidence tucked in my pocket, I can go back and finish the YA book that keeps getting away from me. (I have written at least 10 different ways to get my protag from his home to the island where the actual story takes place, but then I can't seem to figure out exactly what to do with him. Or more likely, there are too many things I'm trying to incorporate and can't seem to manage writing any of them.)

Can you work on more than one project at a time?
I didn't think I could, but I'm going to try.

My writing goals for this week: write 15 new pages on the mystery WIP and figure out which of the 5 Christmas stories floating in my head to write.

Good writing!

Tracy

*We New Englanders don't like to refer to ourselves as Yankees, but not for the reason some may think. As Red Sox fans, we are loathe to associate ourselves in any way with that team in the Big Apple who stole the Babe (and Johnny Damon).