Marginally connected to that, I’m aux anges with the set-up of a KVM switch between my two machines, so that I can now write in Scrivener on the mac and still do everything else on the linux box WITH ONLY ONE MOUSE AND KEYBOARD. This makes my life so much easier.

Anyway, that’s my January update. I’ll now go back to shoveling snow.

Oh, wait, before I forget: I didn’t do a best of my reads of 2016 (sorry, I was swamped), but you guys will have to read Kirby Crow’s Malachite. Trust me on this. It is easily the best thing I read in 2016.

As for the Bluewater Bay novel, I wrote synopsis and blurb last weekend, and finished the cover art request, so that one’s out of my hands until the dev edits come back.

That leaves me free to work on Black Box. I started writing that one around Christmas, but fizzled out after only a few hundred words. The plot outline I had was just not working. The beginning bored me to tears. And if it bores me, it’s going to bore you, which is not acceptable. I’d been more or less idly kicking that one around in my head for the past few weeks, the muse feeding me stingy little bits and one-liners that ever so slightly shifted the characterization of both protags. Today I sat down to redo the outline. I threw index cards around like confetti, rearranged them in elaborate mosaics, scribbled here, scratched out there–in short, I made an inspiring creative mess of things, and I’m much happier with what I have now. I should be able to do at least the first few chapters, before I run into a couple of looser points that need to be tied down still. We’ll see.

Then another one that dragged me along by the sheer synergy of great minds plotting. That seems to have petered out a bit due to everyone having to fight on more than one front, and I can’t say I’m all that sorry for now. All those ideas and words are still there, still waiting to be dealt with. They’re not lost; they’ll be picked up in good time.

Meanwhile I’m ruefully returning to Alex and Bengt who I’d lost touch with a bit. It took a few days of (re)plotting and pouring my brains into some plot holes I’d been carrying around from the beginning. A box of crayons and a role of paper later, I’m finally back on track and starting chapter 8.

Other than that I’ve been researching police training, deciding on names for secondary characters and generally fleshing out the plot line; I put together a desktop for the new book and am working on the playlist. So, a bit of disjointed dickering everywhere, but not an unproductive day.  I like it when I can feel the haze take shape and coalesce, when plot is motivated by characters, I can see the theme running through everything and get an idea of the mood of the piece.