WiP Wednesday

There's this fun practice among some of my blog-buddies known as WiP Wednesday. I do it a lot -- or did it a lot -- over at kvtaylor.com. (Which, for the record, is the home of my evil half, KV Taylor, who writes dark fantasy and horror.)

Usually you post excerpts, but I'm up to my neck in edits and do not trust my words just now. So here's how the last Work in Progress went for Katey Hawthorne:

1. Finish edits on Riot Boy. Editrix says, "Oh my god, you can't give me a character like Malory and then just leave him all fucked up!"
2. I think, "No, that's true. I can't, poor kid. I know, I'll write a short story about him!"
3. I write a short story... and find Malory's voice really easy and his love interest really fun.
4. I go out for groceries with the Manic Street Preachers on my iPod and Malory Claremont on the brain.
5. This song on repeat:

(If you're seeing this on a feed: Manic Street Preachers - This Joke Sport Severed. Which, just for the record, is one of my favorite songs from my absolute favorite band. The one tattoo visible in my author photo actually says "SEVERED".)
6. I realize a short story won't do, and I must now write a book or suffer Mal's voice in my head for all eternity. I finish my shopping. Barely.
7. Come home, put away groceries, scrap the short, and begin writing a book.
8. I read a metric fuck ton (slightly smaller than the English fuck ton, but still substantial) of books about prison and community custody/parole over the course of one week. Talk about your depressing research subjects. Wow.
9. I corner a good friend who's just taken a job at the federal BoP, take her to dinner, and figure out the logistics of getting an awakened person into prison and keeping them there.
10. I disappear from the face of the planet and write 60k. (8, 9, and 10 happen in the same week, actually, then one extra week for 10.)
11. I end up with an extremely messy first draft about a character who is, for all intents and purposes, the bad guy* in another book.
12. Some weeks later, I re-open it and begin rewriting and nitpicking and bugging people and researching and listening to the playlist over and over. Especially this song on repeat:

(Feed folk: Kasabian - Man of Simple Pleasures. Who has tickets to a Kasabian show in March? Oh yeah. Me.)

Will this story ever end up being published? Hell, I don't know. It'll go through several beta reads before it becomes a submission to the Lovely Editor, and then it may not be any good, or it may not work for the publisher for some reason, or it may need an overhaul, or it may be a lost cause. And god knows there are several other finished books in line before it. But it sure was fun.

So that's where you find me today, happily drowning in edits. That's how a WiP goes for Katey Hawthorne.

I have no idea if this sort of thing interests people, but it seemed like something different was in order for the old blog. Also, it may explain why all my superpowered romances, both the ones already out and the ones in the queue, have playlists in the back. Because yeah. Both catalyst and integral component of the process. For serious.


*I don't believe in bad guys, exactly. Bad for the sake of being bad, ala Sauron, is kind of boring, let's be honest. I'm always more interested in where the "bad guy" is coming from.