Exploring the Depths of Paranormal Crime: How Did Lark Hendrix Come To Be?

How?

Oh, how, indeed.

This whole journey to bring Lark to the page in The Softwood Hour was one which I wish I could say was filled with intense planning, brain-numbing forethought, and strict parameters. Nay-nay. Lark was a whim. A whim that took me on as much of journey (if not MORE) as you!

Let me back up and give you the broad strokes. We'll get into the finer brushwork in later blogs.

Horse, naughty. Brain injury, bad. Memory, f*cked. Fix it with writing fiction because let's pick the hardest thing I could possibly imagine. Choose a genre I know nothing about. Pick a premise I don't believe in. Write. Write more. Write everyday. Get attached to the characters. Sh*t-sh*t, f*ck! I need to do this justice! Panic. Panic more. Panic everyday. Then realize that having world rules and an outline would have been a good idea at the outset. C'est la vie, c'est la mort.

I wish it were more romantic and regimented than that, but the truth is that it was gritty and feral and exciting. It was my first foray into fiction, and I let the current take me. Did I mess up some things? Oh, buddy, did I. Did I fix them? As many as I could. Do I wish I would have done things differently? Definitely. Did I learn? Yes. I. Did.

And then The Cold Clock came. It was better. I had the rules. (Okay, maybe more guidelines than actual rules...) The characters had come into their own. I learned about making readers hurt and cry. And then that current took me. And I learned some more.

The Aspen Sundial is without thought of question the most fully realized novel I've published. It is complete and contained and cohesive, lacking the wanderlust of its two predecessors. But if I'm honest, it scares me.

I've spent the better part of five years circling The Hawthorn Clone. And not because I don't know the story. I know exactly what needs to be done and how, but success breeds doubt when you're me. Aspen has me fearful that Hawthorn won't live up to its big sister. I've blamed my procrastination on personal hardships (and there have been many), but the true reason I've allowed those to be my crippling factor is because of self-doubt.

But the [insert metaphor to show that the time is nigh], and I need to kick myself in the ass. For readers. For the story. But mostly for myself. I've poured so much of myself and my recovery into learning how to do this thing that it seems to be a bit of a betrayal of my journey to let the thing sit on the shelf, half-done and rotting.

So...onward. Hawthorn, here I come.