Creative Procrastination

So I was a couple of chapters away from finishing Revenge Tango, I knew where it was going but found myself stuck, suddenly couldn't write a damned word. Writer's block. Nah, I don't really believe in that. I forced myself to write a couple of scenes, and it was a tedious, tiring experience. Finally, I decided to let it go. It was time for a little creative procrastination.

One of the things I learned over the years is how much of an important ally is the subconscious is. By letting go, I let my imagination stew for a while, let dreams take over, let random thoughts do there thing.

Answers started to come to me. New ideas and new scenes started to develop. It was no longer simply about filling plot points, It was about deeper ideas, subtle emotional changes, it was about the characters transforming. Endings can make or break a novel, and I knew that I had to leave the reader not only emotional satisfied, but emotionally moved by the characters journey and that they'd be willing to follow Esperanza on his next adventure.

I don't consider the Ezperanza novels a mysteries series. I consider them noir novels. While mysteries are more concerned with the whodunit, noirs are about a characters journey into darkness. Subconsciously, I understood that all the action the climax of the novel contained wouldn't matter if Esperanza wasn't as emotionally impacted by the entire experience as he was in the first novel. That's why my mind put on the breaks, and gave me the time to think deeper, to find the emotional truth of the climax and hopefully make it a much stronger novel.

A few weeks later, I finally finished the first draft, and though not perfect, I found it to be pretty solid and that it would give me a really solid foundation to work from. Now I plan to test it on some "first readers". These are people who read The Devil's Mambo (I'm talking about editors or writers, I'm talking about the folks who'd go buy the book). Also gave it to a couple of people who didn't read the first novel to see how well it works as a stand alone.

ARCs

A couple of weeks ago I received a box of Advanced Reading Copies (or galleys) of The Devil's Mambo. I've seen plenty of ARCs before and they usually have a plain, grey-colored, card stock cover with the title, author name and the words Uncorrected Proof. ARCs cost the publisher something like eight bucks each (while the final version is around $2.00). Though my editor told me that my publisher was printing ARCs with full color, glossy covers, I was still stunned when I pulled out a copy. A thing of beauty. Looked like the final product. The fact that Kensington spent serious money on the ARC, was a huge vote of confidence in me and my novel. Usually, that kind of treatment is reserved for bestselling authors, so I was both proud and flattered.

Holding the book in my hand was an emotionally overwhelming experience. After all these years, all the drafts, the rejections, here was the novel. Finally. Seemed utterly surreal and brought tears to my eyes. And to think, it's still not the finished novel. Makes me wonder what it'll be like to walk into a bookstore and see it on a shelf. Can't wait.