A Revelation

I had one. I've been writing, folks, working on Book Three. I've a long, long way to go still. I mean a long way to go. But that's not anything I haven't budgeted for. I'm still planning on delivering this one with about the same gap as I had between books 1 and 2. Consistency, that's what I'm going for. But in this case that also means I'm in the fairly early stages of cranking this one out.

Thing is, I've been living with something of a conundrum for about the last nine months. I knew one thing that was meant to be the climatic event of one of the story lines. It's solid. It's there. It's the culmination of three book's worth of character and plot and history work. It's big.

Other thing is... I had this other plot element that in introduced in the first chapter. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Had an idea for how it tied in to the very end of the book, but the problem was that tie-in clashed with the previously mentioned conclusion. Seemed like I couldn't have them both. Until last night.

I gave my wife some stuff from the new book to read. She did. We were in the kitchen talking about it, and I got to mentioning this clashing plot idea problem. I opened my mouth and said, "So obviously it's not going to work to have both. I've tried but I ca..."

I literally paused in mid-sentence. Why? Because for no good reason at all I'd just figured out how I could have both things. Between beginning that sentence and getting four words into it the answer jumped out of hiding and starting do a shimmying hula hop victory dance right in front of my face. Just like that.

Weird.

And that, friends, is a bit of my creative process. I kissed the wife and danced around myself, and then stood at the sliding door staring out at the backyard for a while, amazed at how this whole process works.

I got my doubled-barrel ending. I'm very, very pleased about that.