So, this post is going to be chock full of news (and quotes):

First, I finished Lacey’s second story! When I completed the (then-final) draft of Lacey’s first story, The Incident Under the Overpass, I posted something in these pages attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

The second story is by no means ready to be abandoned yet. It is definitely a first draft, not-yet-ready-for-prime-time. Something I read years ago, in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, has stuck with me:

“You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up.”

Here’s another quote: “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” It appears that’s attributed to Jodi Picoult, though Goodreads attributes “You can’t edit a blank page” to Nora Roberts. Either way, in the latest story I wrote, all the characters and the elements of the plot are down. Some might go away, some might get added, but the bones, and a good bit of the musculature, are there. I’m just ecstatic I now have a complete story to revise.

Second, I signed a publishing contract for The Incident Under the Overpass! I signed with After Glows Publishing, a press “that offers page turning romances and urban fantasies that allow readers the escape from real life.” I’m very excited that Lacey will soon be appearing on After Glows’ bookshelf.

So, it turns out, I didn’t abandon Lacey’s first story after all: it will get re-edited, re-designed, and re-released later this year.

And finally, this is my last post from the U.S. for a couple of weeks! I’ll be in Germany for work next week, and then returning home from France the week after that. This upcoming travel was the main reason I was so determined to finish the second story. I knew I wouldn’t be able to devote any real time to it over the first two weeks of May. And I had a good bit of momentum going that would have been lost during that break.

Hopefully, the break will work out for the best, and I’ll be ready to jump into revisions when I get back.

Auf wiedersehen, (and au revoir), for now.