Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Book Buying Excursion

Kelly was eager to get to Barnes & Noble in Holyoke this evening after dinner to see if they had the just released fifth Johannes Cabal, Necromancer novel by UK author Jonathan L. Howard.

We got to the store and went upstairs to look first in mysteries. Sometimes his books are there, sometimes they're located in fiction. His book wasn't there but she found the new Alan Bradley Falvia de Luce novel for me. I also found a Kylie Logan cozy Irish Stewed. I've read all of Logan's button collector mysteries so have started reading this series. Kelly found a Moriarty & Holmes collection. She is a huge Sherlock fan and actually saw quite a few books by various authors with Holmes as a character. She passed up a few but plans on purchasing them during an upcoming trip to New Hampshire where they don't have sales tax.

She wandered off to Sci-Fi/Fantasy and I meandered over to new releases in fiction. I was looking at a book when she came over to show me another book she had found. I asked her if she had found the new Howard Cabal book yet and she reaches past my nose to grab the book right next to the empty place where I had taken the book I was holding from. Duh! That was easy!

I brought home four books plus the moleskin journal I'd tagged along with her to purchase to jot some notes in for my upcoming NaNo novel. I don't usually write any notes first but do skim through my novels and write notes after because some of my books have sequels and basically, I can remember main characters and what they look like, but places, events, minor characters, etc...zip- it's out of my head. So if I need to refer back to something I use the little journal full of notes that are organized by subject matter- much easier than paging through the novels trying to find a tidbit of info that could be easily missed.

Anyway, this year the novel has a huge cast of characters. The grand resort hotel is sprawling with multiple restaurants and shops on the main floor. There are outside locations and a lot of things that will be going on so I need to get organized prior to writing this time around...totally out of the norm for me, but since the novel is what the spinoff The Winter Solstice Ball, a Christmas story in Always Christmas in My Heart is based on (okay, confession time, I once started to write this novel but trashed it. However, I used the location and characters to write the holiday novella...therefore, the characters exist in that story, the location exists and some of the things that will be in the novel are mentioned as having occurred but will be occurring int he course of the novel. It's sort of like backwards. No, it is backwards. Usually a novel is written and then the holiday story evolves afterwards. There was a partial novel but it wasn't going the way I wanted it to so it was discarded. I am starting fresh November 1st. The Winter Solstice Ball was written after the original version of the novel was scraped and can stand alone, but if some sharp-eyed reader says, oh, I know these characters! I want the two to be connected.

What I'm doing is clear in my mind but may still be murky in yours. It's okay- the novel will be typical of me- romance, humor, drama, action, scandal, twists and triumphs.

At least I hope so!


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