Last week I finished the first draft of my next book, the sequel to Murder For Me. I immediately caught a virus and have been unable to start the first rewrite.

I’ll start as soon as I get over this cough and can concentrate again. As I write, my characters evolve beyond my outlines, and if I’m lucky, beyond what I even imagined. That happened in this book, too.

Questions and Stories

At the end of Murder For Me, my readers had many questions. When I started the book, I intended to answer them. Marilyn was at the heart of many of your questions, and her story is revealed in the sequel.

I had other stories I wanted to tell, too. I wanted to write about families. Not just one type of family, though, but families as we all live in them, and about the way individuals within the family shape the others.

I also wanted to include Houston. I thought I lived in a big city until we went to China. It’s still a big city for America. If you don’t live here, you probably have some incorrect impressions of the city. I use my stories to reveal parts of this city you may not be aware of.

I expect my first rewrite to take at least a month. The first one is usually the most time consuming. Then I’ll send it to the beta readers, and begin the first draft of the third book.

With a little work, perhaps you’ll see it by Christmas.

AuthorTalk Podcast Book Talk

If you’re interested, I do a weekly podcast about writers and marketing their books each Monday with Sandy Lawrence and Aimee Ravichandran. You can find it on Russell’s Stories Facebook page and several others. It’s also on the AuthorTalk YouTube Channel.