Well well well. What have we here?

If you have granddaughters that watch "The Nightmare before Christmas", you'll know this is Oogie Boogie with his introduction. 

LeeLee, oldest granddaughter, would sit in my office chair and wait for me to come out of the bathroom JUST to swivel in said chair and say these words. I would crack up every time.

But. What HAVE we here?

Oh. This author typing around 5000 words yesterday on "Out of the Shadows." 🥳

When you write multiples, there are many things you need to do.

1. Keep the pace. Can't let any of the books fall behind in sense of urgency. Solved a problem? Create another. Immediately.

2. Character arcs. If you're not arcing, I'm not reading. Characters pull me in, followed by premise. If I'm not cheering or hissing, why bother?

3. Consistency. Oh, I'm awful at this, sometimes. I DO blame my ADHD for this one. Sometimes I forget eye or hair color, especially with multiple characters. Descriptions I've used. That's why I use OneNote and often copy pictures that resemble my characters.

4. If you introduced it in book one, you better explain it by the end. Loose ends are bullshit. This is also another one I struggle with, occasionally.

5. Closing. All. The. Doors. Unless you've decided for a spin-off of some sort. Readers need closure. I need closure.

Sure I've mentioned it before, but I used to write chronologically. Since the house fire of 2006, I write whatever scene pops for me. Sometimes, it is straight up linear. But never the whole book.

I wrote down "tie-ins" that I needed to cover before wrapping this big bad book up. There are 17.

😬 

Is this awful? Not even close. I have about half of the book to write to finish. And a lot of these items happen in the last half of the book. But it's a daunting list when you're eyeballing it daily. 

What we have is me finally immersing myself back into the story and not playing with all the shiny new things, like my older books which need revising. 

I'm back in the game. 🥳