My so-called career.

I've realized halfway through writing my November book that the tone I'm using, the first-person voice, was the tone I was trying to reach with the first book I attempted after coming back to writing.

I just couldn't quite get it right then. Or maybe I just doubted myself. I went away from that tone, turning it to 3rd person, making it more serious. I didn't think of myself as a humorous writer.

I still don't think I'm a humorous writer, and yet humor slips in. Maybe that's the trick. Not to try to be funny, but let the funny happen when it happens. That first started showing up with Tuskers -- unintentionally funny scenes. That is, I thought I was being flippant, but I was getting actual laughs.

Maybe the trick to fixing Faerylander once and for all is to go back and regain my flippant voice and write it in 1st person wherever possible.

I chose 1st person for my November book because it is easier -- and yet, I don't have any other books in 1st person for structural reasons. I like to have multiple characters usually, doing things all over the place.

Yet even in my Virginia Reed novels, I manage to do quite a bit of 1st person narration through the use of letters and journals, and the technique brings the books to life.

This was going to be a short book, and I thought maybe I could pull it off. So far, so good. So good in fact that I can see myself writing a lot of books with this method.

Here's the thing. I have no end of stories, apparently, and I can write them fast. I've resisted the impulse (though it may not look that way) and each book I've put out so far has had much more effort expended.

But I'm thinking of a two tier approach to writing. These quick and fun books, and then the more serious books.

Whether to use a pen name for one type of book and my own name for the other kind of book, I'm undecided.

So far, I'm sitting on a number of finished books, waiting to see what happens to my so-called career.