So it's only been about six months since my last post. Sue me! Actually, I don't mean to be rude. I admire people who blog regularly. I can't seem to get the hang of it for longer than a couple months at a stretch, if I'm lucky. Still, it's not that I don't think about blogging. I just somehow never make it there.
Today I am here because: 1) I am between jobs that require me to leave the house. 2) My grandson is home sick so I need to be home. 3) Said grandson is also asleep so I get to be on the computer instead of checking on him while he watches Angry Birds videos, and 4) I am avoiding doing the breakfast dishes.
Mostly I came to say, to any reader who may happen upon this, that I know my follow up book is taking far too long and there are any number of reasons for this. But here's the primary one. (Readers who have emailed me and gotten a response -which should be most of them- will already know this story, but please bear with me.)
When I launched the Bridgeton Park Cemetery series, the only continuing character I intended to have was Bridgeton Park Cemetery itself. I don't tend to think of my work in terms of book series, and believe it or not, the ending to Haunted was the ending I intended. Anything after Steve's last statement would mean the beginning of Steve's story and the end of Cassie's and Michael's. So I stopped there and went on to the next, a work entitled Ghostwalk that involves an entirely different group of people. And the same cemetery.
While I was working on that, some interesting things happened with Haunted. Buddy and very wonderful and successful writer Terri Reid gave Haunted a review and a hell of a boost. The good news is that I picked up some of her readers and they wrote reviews for me, so my sales left me flabbergasted. The other hit-me-with-a-brick news? Everyone seemed to think there was a sequel coming with Cassie and Michael in it. I even had readers writing me to ask when that would be available. The technical term for how I felt when I read these messages is "freaked out." Here I was, chapters into the new work, and readers were asking for a completely different story with characters I had already bade a fond farewell to.*
After a LOT of moaning and groaning, I started work on a new Cassie and Michael story, Dead Voices. How's that going? Slowly. I'm just not as fast as Terri Reid! But please bear with me. I hope to finish this thing ASAP because I think some of the scenes coming into my head belong in book three already.
Sigh. Yes. I am now writing a CassieValentine/Michael Penfield series under the catch-all name of Bridgeton Park Cemetery. I never would have seen this coming, but here it is. Thank you to everyone who offered me an opinion, even those who let me know in no uncertain terms how much Haunted displeased them. I guess that qualifies me as a real writer! In the meantime, I hope to do better with this blog. Next week I'll try again for a scary topic, and from time to time I'll let you know what's up with the next book. See you next week!
* Read an article recently that said it is not always incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition. Don't know if everyone will buy that, but I thought I'd give it a try!
