I’ve been struggling to want to write lately—“lately” as in the last six months—and if I’m being honest the year before that was no cakewalk.

I had great fun writing All the Way to Shore, my tropey cruise ship romance, and had gotten quite a bit done on follow-up story In Over Our Heads before the disastrous 2016 election took all the fun out of everything. Still, I was able to finish and get In Over Our Heads published last year. I knew the 3^rd story in the Stories from the Shore Series would be about Miles, the genderfluid sibling of Walter Elkins.

I launched in, writing 50,000 words on the untitled Miles’s Story during NaNoWriMo last November. But I came to a screeching halt when I started to edit it. Turns out that pouring out words with no regard to plotting can seem productive, but in this case I couldn’t seem to wrestle all those words into a coherent whole. And I’m here to tell you that reading plotting books and trying to map their wisdom on a big old sprawling mess of words after the fact is an exercise in frustration.

After deleting 8,000 words, I had a “revelation” that I had the wrong love interest for Miles altogether. And promptly didn’t write another word on it ever since. Now I think I was being too hard on poor Chad. Yes, he’s kind of staid and boring, but to cut him out completely seems harsh. You can tell I’ve been in some kind of existential writing crisis, right? I was beginning to think that 2018 would be the first year since 2011 that I would have nothing new published.

We interrupt this tale of writing woe to share one of my favorite pictures from the LA Festival of Books. That’s me with Dreamspinner publisher Elizabeth North, editor and Harmony Ink publisher Anne Regan, and author extraordinaire Rick Reed. I love these people!

When in doubt (about if you’ll ever write again), check your drafts folder. There I found an old story that I really loved involving two college guys being forced roommates. I polished it up and sent it on to Dreamspinner. I mentioned last month that I’d gotten a contract for it. It’s now in edits, with an expected publication date of Oct/Nov 2018.

Here is the blurb for The Kinsey Scale:

Life is good for Eric Brown. He’s a senior theater major, an RA for a freshman dorm, and has a great circle of friends. Single since sophomore year, Eric isn’t looking for love. Then Will Butler—fellow senior, co-RA, and the cutest guy Eric’s ever seen—walks into his dorm. Will has a girlfriend he sees off campus—a minor disappointment that becomes a major problem when a housing shortage causes Will and Eric to become roommates, and Eric is forced to witness Will’s hotness day in and day out. For protection, Eric asks Jerry, his ex-boyfriend, to pretend they’re still together. Jerry warns him it’s a stupid idea, but he reluctantly agrees.

 Too bad it won’t save Eric from losing his heart.

 Will Butler has never believed in himself. His dysfunctional family saw to that. Although Will has loved music since childhood, he’s never seriously considered pursuing it, and the person he’s dating doesn’t encourage him. Then he and Eric Brown become roommates, and everything changes. Eric believes in Will and his talent. He’s also  gorgeous and playful and fast becoming Will’s best friend. And that’s not good, because Will is hiding some big things, not only from Eric but from himself.

What will happen with Miles’s Story? I think I’ll run it by a few writer friends to see if they can tell me what the problem is. Stay tuned!

CJane

After years of hearing characters chatting away in her head, CJane Elliott finally decided to put them on paper and hasn’t looked back since. A psychotherapist by training, CJane enjoys writing sexy, passionate stories that also explore the human psyche. CJane has traveled all over North America for work and her characters are travelers, too, traveling down into their own depths to find what they need to get to the happy ending.

CJane is an ardent supporter of LGBTQ equality and is particularly fond of coming out stories.

CJane is the author of the award-winning Serpentine Series, New Adult contemporary novels set at the University of Virginia. Serpentine Walls was a 2014 Rainbow Awards finalist, Aidan’s Journey was a 2015 EPIC Awards finalist, and Sex, Love, and Videogames won first place in the New Adult category in the 2016 Swirl Awards and first place in Contemporary Fiction in the 2017 EPIC eBook Awards.

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