Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, Loving Husband,
Happy birthday to you!!!

***hugs***

Ah, he’s still sleeping. He’s allowed to sleep in today.

So I’ve been going full-steam ahead on HELL TO PAY. Did about 4,200 words yesterday. Had a hell (ha ha) of a time with the current chapter — damned characters seem to have their own ideas about where things should go.

Thing is, they’re right.

Okay, see, here’s the trick: although you totally can force the characters to do what you want (you are, after all, god of your own book), chances are, the characters know what they’re doing. Seriously.

Take the current scene. Jesse was talking to a Fury, which (in my world) is one of the seven most powerful entities in the Universe. And as I was writing it, Jesse was talking in UFH (urban fantasy heroine) mode — irreverent, a little pissed off, not at all cowed. Now, she was pretty exhausted by this point (trust me, Jesse LOATHES me for what I’ve done to her in this book), so I told myself “It makes sense for Jesse to act this way.”

But it didn’t. So what that Jesse had been put through the physical and emotional wringer? There are some things you just don’t do. You don’t act bitchy to a creature that for 4,000 years you’ve feared like almost no other creature before.

And that creature sure as heck won’t let a succubus-turned-human walk all over her. No freaking way.

Another trick of the trade: epiphanies like this usually occur in the shower. Don’t know why.

So anyway, I’ve made some coffee and am about to read the sketchy scene I wrote last night. Tweaking time. And then I have to re-outline the next chapter, because the freaking characters went and changed the plot a little.

Damned characters.

Heh, in this case, literally.

Current book I’m reading: BUSTED FLUSH of the Wild Cards series, edited by George R. R. Martin