My Mistake -

I have a novella out to beta readers which is coming out for Christmas.  Falling for Grace is with Catherine, and she's working her magic. I was wanting to finish the Christmas novella before I started one of the outlines that I have simmering, because once I start a rough draft, I have a hard time stopping.  Especially one I've been thinking about as much as I have lately.  I knew, I just KNEW that once I started, it would take over.

Because I really want to tell Brent's story.

Brent's story is a common one.  Most addiction in the US today is to pain-killers.  I have some personal experience with dealing with addiction, and it has come up in a few of my stories (Neighborly Complications, Falling for Heaven).  I wanted to treat it from the pov of one of the main characters though, and his struggles to stay clean, because I have seen first hand how difficult it is, and how the mistakes made can really twist a person up.  And pain killers are easy to get addicted to, easy to continue getting, and one of the most difficult addictions to treat.

At any rate, I wanted to write this story.  So yesterday, my husband stayed home sick, and was sleeping all morning long, and since I didn't have anything I was working on, my plan had been to clean.  But cleaning is noisy (running all the water, cussing at messes I find that people should have picked up themselves, playing the music at unhealthy decibels), so to save my husband, I decided to start My Mistake, Brent and Casey's story.

Once I started, I couldn't stop.  I didn't stop until it was time to make supper.  I'm am now at 11,000 word count, and a third of the way through my outline.  But I haven't gotten to the hard stuff yet, that's going to happen today, so it won't be as easy today.  Yesterday was building chemistry between the characters, establishing setting, throwing in some backstory, yadda yadda yadda.  The second chapter I write today will find the heart of the conflict, and while I'm not dreading it, I do know it will be a little difficult to write honestly.

But that's what I'm going to try to do.  Last year, I started reading The Walk the Right Road series, and I had to stop.  The writing depicted addiction, and it depicted it well, just not in a way I enjoyed reading.  That sounds strange, but I've been wanting to write a book that did it differently.  I wanted to depict addiction as something to embrace, as a part of a character, because in actuality, that's what it is.  Addiction is part of a person's psyche, it's a big part of who they are.  It can't be defeated completely, but it can be overcome, and managed.

So that's what's on tap for today.  My Mistake, not scheduled to come out until early next year sometime, is going to be (hopefully) a book I can be proud of in a way that my other books haven't touched.  Because this time, it's personal.