No, I’m not going to look at the date of my last post; it will only depress me. Suffice to say, life has been busy with the rent-paying job. However, I have managed to discover a few things along the way:

1) I cannot resist the lure of new yarn, especially since I’ve discovered lace knitting. I now need more storage space.

2) The shiny new project? Not so shiny. I started working through my “whys” and discovered a great big pothole that probably would have derailed me about seventy-five pages in. Not insurmountable, but it’s a bit on the back burner until I get a chance to figure things out — which won’t be for a while.

3) My other contemporary romantic comedy is moving forward finally, and the characters are starting to “speak” to me. This is a good sign.

4) The historical I’ve been editing very much wants to become a romantic comedy. There’s a problem; the way it’s originally plotted, we know that two of the characters we’ve seen on stage throughout the book (not the hero or heroine or the secondary leads) are going to be executed at the end. One doesn’t worry me so much, but the other came out as a tragic figure beginning to end, a bit mentally unbalanced and subject to the demons inside him and the political agenda of those around him (including his mother). Not the way to end a book that I’m hoping the reader will have been laughing through. That means I need to make some major changes.

That book was written several years ago, and it was only recently that I picked up the hard copy and decided to give it another look. I was trying to be “dark” and “edgy.” One thing I’ve learned since then; I ain’t dark and edgy. I can give you an intense situation. I can torture my characters with the best of ’em and send them crawling over broken glass — but they’re going to do it with a laugh. Not jokes, but humor born out of people and their reaction to the situation around them. Ever see the show Coupling? Written by Steve Moffat (yes, the same one who’s currently writing Doctor Who), it’s a comedy about the relationship of men and women as they do the mating dance. The show is both funny and painful, but there aren’t the usual sitcom jokes. Instead, it’s how the characters react to one another. For example, Sally asks Patrick (whom she doesn’t want to admit she fancies because a) he’ll sleep with any beautiful woman that comes along and b) he’s a Tory) what he calls people he goes out with but doesn’t try to sleep with. In all innocence, not being condescending or snide, Patrick replies, “Men.”

I’ve met guys like that and you probably have too. It’s not all men or even a majority, but it’s funny because we know there is truth in the words and it’s true to his character. That’s the type of characters I like writing and that’s not conducive to a story ending in a rebellion and executions. So, the story is going to have to shift a few years previously which will allow me to keep pretty much all of my characters and while things aren’t going to end well for some folk, it’s a setback, not a final end.

I love writing, right? Just asking because at moments like this, I need reminding.