Oh, I know, it’s TERRIBLE. I haven’t written a blog post in weeks! I am undoubtedly a bad person, or maybe at the least just a busy person. But, aren’t we all? Busy, I mean.

Anyway. I’m here now.

It has been busy. I’ve been in Seattle visiting my family for the last two weeks and it turned out to be a lot more go-go-go than I really expected. So, not much time for blog updating. Too busy living and doing and…well, eating. Yeah, did a lot of that. After all, it’s summer in the Pacific Northwest. That means raspberries and fresh carrots and peas. And beets. And chicken eggs from the coop, positively electric orange and rich. I was even lucky enough to pluck some early blackberries, plump from the sun.

I went camping at my favorite place on earth, Mount Rainier. I ate at the Willows Inn on Lummi Island (yes, more eating), possibly one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to (and those who know me well know this is *quite* a statement). I tried kayaking for the first time, and found out it makes me spectacularly seasick. I spent a lot of time with my nieces, who are growing up so FAST. I gardened and went walking and caught up with family friends.

I also wrote. My parents house on Vashon Island is perfect for writing. My mom is a gardener, well, really she’s an artist who happens to use a garden as her palette. The place is completely amazing. Like fairy story amazing. It’s a super beautiful, zen place to sit with a laptop in the shade munching raspberries and thinking deep thoughts.

Since I’ve finally finished ABSENT and begun the scary-exciting process of submitting it to agents and editors, it’s back to PROJECT AWESOME. I had previously outlined and then drafted about 1/3 of this new novel, but after submitting it to a few workshops there were changes I wanted to make. I spent two days reworking some of the backstory and further developing the magic system. Then I revised the plot, working especially on beats and structure. Then I reworked the first 30K to reflect the changes.

Now I’m pushing forward with the rest of the draft. I’m extremely excited about it. ABSENT was a blast to write – an adventure-y romp that let me use a lot of my knowledge of academia and prehistory to tell a great story. But this book is different. It’s dark and tackles hard issues, and I think it’s the first time I’m really baring something as an author that will truly surprise people. At least, I hope so.

In any case, it’s a thrill to be diving into something new after so long revising.

August is upon us now, which means summer isn’t much longer for this world. School starts up again on August 28th. So, till then, I plan to write, write, write.

How about you?

Oh, and before I go, I wanted share this great link from Laini Taylor’s blog. She talks about how drafting a novel is like a dance between what is Known and Unknown, and she describes it beautifully…take a look.