Ferguson and Madeleine -- the Story (Finally) Continues

I finished editing AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE yesterday, and while it would be nice to take a break, there's no rest for the wicked (or rather, no rest for those who dream of publication). So, I woke up early this morning and spent an hour at Starbucks before going into the office so that I could focus on Book Two.

The task for today was to reread what I had written of Ferguson and Madeleine's story so that I can jump back into the first draft where I left off in March. The Golden Heart hoopla and all of the chaos with my day job took its toll on Ferguson and Madeleine, and they've been chilling in limbo for the past six weeks. So imagine my delight when I picked up the manuscript again and realized that I already had 177 pages written; my memory thought that it was ~100 pages, so I'm much further into the book than I thought I was.

Even better, I genuinely like most of what I've written. While there are things that I will need to go back and change (including the addition of a whole bunch of historical detail; the first draft is full of incomplete phrases like, "Madeleine paused, savoring the taste of [taste] on her tongue," where I've used brackets to indicate a missing detail that I need to figure out), I'm very happy with the characters themselves. In fact, I adore them both and want only the best for them, and so I'm going to have to embrace the dark side while I put them through another 200 pages of torment before granting their happily-ever-after.

I'll keep you posted on their progress, but sleep is vital if I'm going to help them along their merry way tomorrow...