Summertime Slow-Down

Elizabeth Andrews
Jun 12, 2014
4 min read

It’s not quite summer, by the calendar, but it’s close, and the hot, sticky weather here sure feels like summertime. June is normally a busy month here–end of the school year, Father’s Day, a birthday. This year, it’s just as busy, though the end of the school year was graduation for my youngest, so it was a bigger deal than usual. Now we’re just a couple days from Father’s Day, then another two weeks till the birthday, and then I get to spend a week at the beach with my crit partners again this year.

I’m really, really looking forward to the writing trip, I think even more than last year. It’s been a long year at the day-job, not to mention frustrating on the job-hunting front. And these rewrites on Medusa #2 have been much more complex than I anticipated when I started. Not that I didn’t know what was needed, but my twisted writer’s brain has found ways to make things even more messed-up for my characters, not just in this installment, but in the final book in the trilogy–and to make the third book work necessitates making further changes in the second, more than I’d originally figured on. So the rewriting has been coming very, very slowly, which drives me crazy, because the first draft writing normally goes like lightning for me. It’s like going from this:

( Photo credit: ShootNFish / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) )

to this:

( Photo credit: quiiver / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) )

And that frustrates me tremendously, which leads to even slower going.

So the first week of the month when we were dealing with graduation, I didn’t even look at my rewrites. This week, though, is another story. I’d really wanted to be done with these before my beach week, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Heck, I really wanted these done and gone eons ago. I have other stories waiting their turns, but I want these Medusas to have their HEAs first. Maybe that’s a flaw in me. I’m not sure, but I can worry about that potential flaw when I’ve finished this trilogy.

Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with me, I’m keeping this in the back of my mind as my motivation and positive reinforcement:

Last year’s writers’ retreat was a fun and very productive week, and I’m hoping and planning for more of the same during this year’s.

And, before I go, I have a little story snippet to share with you from Hunting Medusa. In case you haven’t read it yet and might still be teetering on the fence.

——–

She shook her head before he’d even finished speaking. “No.” “It would involve a little trust on your part,” he continued a little louder. “That I wouldn’t do anything to you while you were defenseless.”

Andrea kept shaking her head. “No.”

“What can I do to persuade you?”

She stopped walking and faced the sink, her head hanging as she braced herself on the edge of the counter.

He waited.

“There’s nothing.”

His heart sank a little. To protect her from his vicious cousin, he would agree to nearly anything. He tried not to think beyond that though, to the reason—whether it was because he still thought he should fulfill his destiny, or because he’d had sex with her. He just didn’t want Stavros to get his hands on her. That was enough for now. “There has to be something.”

# # #

She sighed, still staring into the sink. She unclenched her fingers from the edge of the counter, then traced a pattern on the surface.

“Andrea.” His tone was almost a singsong, with that faintest of accents. And it was nearer this time than the last time he’d spoken.

Andi ground her teeth together, counting to ten. It was stupid. She knew it was the start of PMS. She knew she was overreacting. Knowing didn’t make it better. She glared at the counter instead of Kallan. And counted ten more.

A small ding appeared in the granite. She shut her eyes. “I think you should go.”

He snorted, and it took every ounce of her willpower not to look up at him.

“Andrea.” His tone was low now, patient.

“Harvester.” Her own was not. Patient, that is. She almost felt like she could spit nails she was so angry. He was asking her to trust him when his sole intention in tracking her here was to kill her. And now he wanted her trust. She stared at the new divot in the granite.

His finger touched the ding. “Stress speeds up the process, I see,” he said mildly.

She nodded.

“What can I do to earn just that little bit of trust?” He slid his fingertip closer to her hand on the counter.

“I need a pair of scissors.” She didn’t know what had made her say it, but she did need them. Very badly. She knew she couldn’t trust him, and nothing he could do would change that. But she could pretend for the sake of getting the scissors.

He considered for a moment, his fingertip grazing the side of her hand. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

“I need a haircut.” Also true.

He bent nearer, his expression disbelieving. “A haircut?”

She nodded, trying to avoid his eyes.

His gaze slid to her hair, and she knew when he realized her reasoning. Awareness deepened the green of his eyes. “All right.”

She gripped the edge of the counter again, surprise coursing through her. “Really?”

——–

Reading that makes me feel a bit better now about torturing Andi’s cousin in book two. And in case it makes you intrigued, you can snag your own copy here or here.

And now, while I get some lunch, I’m going to pet my pretty cover art on my new business cards before I get back to work.