Damn, every book is different.

It's a cliche but true.

It's like I've never written a book before. The process comes out different, the writing seems different, the plot development and characters arrive differently.

I'll be damned if I can make sense of it.

"Shadows Over Summer House" in some ways is very leisurely. I'm not pushing it at all. I even went back and wrote the first 15 chapters from scratch. No hurry. Spending time with the characters, lots of little day to day detail, not worried about Michael Bay-ing it. Letting nothing happen if that's what needs to happen (or not happen.)

It's mostly a love story. Who knew I'd be inclined to write that? But it seems to be showing up more and more in my stories. Then again, I remember the first book where I felt like I was "getting" it: "Freedy Filkins," I had a nice little love story in it and it surprised me how easy and natural it was to write those scenes.

As I've mentioned, I feel like I've rediscovered the joys of narration. This happens and then this happens and yes, I'm telling you but isn't it nice to cover all this territory and not have to jam it into a scene?

This will be my third 1st person POV novel. But this is the first one that has felt totally comfortable. I've gathered so many characters around the protagonist that I don't feel like I have to go off with secondary and tertiary story lines like I usually do. 36K words in and I'm still developing the story, still new characters and situations.

I really want to develop these characters so I'm going to try to put some character interaction chapters where the "action" isn't forefront.

Just looking forward everyday to getting something down, and I want to make sure I don't take any missteps.

Oh, by the way, I wanted to talk about that.

There comes a time in every novel where I feel like I went off track, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot.

Some books I make it all the way through. "Rule of Vampire" for instance was perfect the way it was. I really like "The Last Fedora." "Tuskers IV" was exactly what I hoped for. Most often I can fix a book by dent of effort and rewriting. But I sometimes have elements that didn't quite work and there was no way of knowing in advance and no way to change it.

Well, with this rewrite I now feel like I've made it halfway without going off track, so I'd like to continue that if I could.

Every chapter needs to feel right before I proceed.

At the same time, I'm beginning to think that this book isn't going to be what people want. I mean, I want it, and Linda likes it, and I think if the right people found it they would like it. But I doubt it is the thriller that will open the doors.

But it doesn't matter. It's the book before me and I'm very into it, and that's what counts.

There's another book after this one, and then another, if I'm lucky.