Were you to take a freeze frame snapshot of my current writerly existence, you would find a still image of much juggling. No, not bowling pins, chainsaws, and rat terriers but rather a flurry of writing projects — and, as it turns out, a goodly portion of those projects are in fact novels.
BLACKBIRDS is at the publisher. I just finished the first draft of something with a codename POPCORN. I’m in the midst of doing a final editing pass on DOUBLE DEAD. I’ve got word count down on MOCKINGBIRD. I’ve got a bucket of notes on a little something-something called THE BLUE BLAZES. I’ve got the first novella in my Atlanta Burns series done with the second in the conception phase.
All this fails to mention the dozen-plus novels existing across various outlines and synopses.
Fuck turtles.
It’s novels, all the way down.
And so I thought, for those of you looking to write novels, that this was a good place to pause and have a look around. Let us gander at the wondrous miracle that is the birth and life of the common novel.