But first, a little background:

For anyone who asks, I am an adamant outliner. This becomes a point of conflict among writers, whether we outline our novels or write by the seat of our pants (pantster). I proudly claim my obsession with organization in my need to outline. That said, I find it extremely difficult to outline a full novel in great detail. This is because the nature of writing, and probably any creative art, can’t really be contained within strict confines. The plan changes. Just like life. As we move through our scenes and get to know our characters in more depth, we realize that things need to happen or be explained that we hadn’t counted on before. For the most part, this manifests for me as fairly simple changes involving an event or object, but on occasion it’s involved other characters, and that’s when things get very confusing.

That’s my point for today. New characters. Some people laugh when they hear a writer say a character just walked into the story and started rearranging things, as though that character were a real person. But it really happens!

I experienced it the first time with that first novel, coming out later this year. I went into it knowing exactly who my bad guy was. Then, out of nowhere, one day I realized I’d been wrong. The real villain was someone totally different who I’d thought was innocent and benign. It changed the entire feel of the story, the emotions and interactions. Luckily, I realized it early on in that book and was able to roll with it, but then I came up against the same issue with this latest book.

I had everything nearly done, just needed a couple more scenes to clarify how my characters got from one point to the next. Then in he walked. A character I hadn’t even considered, had never seen before in my life. Demanding space and potentially strong-arming for his own follow-up book.

And that’s when life became stressful. I was on a deadline, plugging along right on task, but this character changed everything. He added a new dimension to the emotions of my main characters, and an element of backstory that drove the entire plot from one character’s standpoint.

I had nearly finished the book, now I was going to have to go back through and make the entire thing mesh around the specter of this new character!

Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about it. My hands are tied. So off I go to another cup of coffee and round of frustrated swearing as I try to patch it all together as seamlessly as possible in the hopes that you the reader will never know my plight. I’m looking forward with both excitement and dread to your reviews when Their Sweetheart City Love comes out (scheduled for June)!