Why is Perfect Nightmare Taking So Long?
An excellent question, and I get asked about a release date and/or the status of this book multiple times a day. I figured it was time to make a post about what’s going on with this book.
There are many, many reasons Perfect Nightmare is taking me for-freaking-ever to write. Allow me to list them:
I have chronic health stuff going on (migraines and some unfortunate undiagnosed stomach/digestive thing that makes life rough more often than not. Despite going through a bunch of testing this last year, I still don’t have answers about what it is, but it’s safe to assume on any given day I’m feeling like trash).
I also have ADHD. My brain does lots of wonderful things, but it also has a raging case of Shiny Object Syndrome. I spend more time than I should falling down internet rabbit holes of research, taking all sorts of marketing, writing, authoring, etc. courses, going to virtual conferences, trying to refine my writing process to make it faster/better/whatever new thing I think will help. Focus is a really big problem for me. I work every single day that I’m not too sick to (day off? What’s that?) and still only managed to put out two books so far this year.
This book has high expectations which means I’m overthinking every single part of it. I knew going in this story line was going to be rough. I don’t think it’s going to be what anyone expects out of Tristen and Waverly, and yet it’s the only way I could see their story going. Originally, I’d imagined starting the book with the two of them hooking up and then time jumping ahead by, like 18 months. Then, I’d cover what happened in those 18 months in flashbacks in the rest of the book. The problem with this is that I HATE flashbacks in books as a reader, so why would I do that to my readers? And when I was brainstorming and working out the plot details with my developmental editor before I started writing, I realized so much happened in that time period, it needed to be covered.
So, I covered it. And posted the chapters to Patreon. I decided to split the book into two parts. Part 1 is before the original “time jump” and part 2 is the after. Almost the entirety of part 1 was going to be told from one character’s POV where we really didn’t see the other. But my Patrons really didn’t like that. They missed the character and the impressions of them left behind were not good in a way I didn’t think I’d be able to make up for later.
Enter rewrite number one. At that point, I was at, I’d guess, about 30,000 words into the book. I had to do some major plot overhauls, rework all of part 1 of the book and add a bunch of chapters in. I (and my Patrons!) was much happier with this version.
But. Now I’m at nearly 50,000 words and one of my beta readers brought up a good point that’s hit me: She didn’t feel as connected to these characters as she did with the characters in Beautiful Carnage and Sweet Destruction. And I knew exactly what she meant when she left me that comment because I knew there was still something wrong with the book but I couldn’t put my finger on it. When I got that feedback, I’ll admit I was like WTF because this book has just been a series of someone not liking some part of it after another after another. It’s like Whack-A-Mole - every time I fix one plot or character issue, another one seems to crop up. But after a few deep breaths, I realized she was right. When I started the pre-writing stuff I do before I dive into putting words onto the page, I cut corners on the character work I normally do. I realized I didn’t know the characters as well as I usually do.
Which means I need to go back now and get to know my characters. It’s a whole process I do, learning about their wounds, flaws, lies they tell themselves. Their backstories. Their personalities. It’s a whole thing, but I’ve learned it’s essential to my process.
Once that’s done, I’ll have to go through everything I’ve written so far and tweak/edit/rewrite things to make sure the characters come through strong and unique like I want them to. THEN I’ll have to go through what I have plotted coming up and get that all ready to go. I’d show you what it look like for another book I’m working on when I do this, but I don’t want to spoil the plot. Maybe in a future post :)
So, there you have it. That’s why this book is taking so long to write. In the meantime, I’m working on my dark hockey romance (with lots of breeding kink!), Dirty Hit. Right now it’s about 26,000 words but I’ve got it ready to go and will finish it before I go back to work on Perfect Nightmare. I honestly just need a break from that book and I’m hoping Hayden Vaughn can snap me out of it.
Questions? Leave ‘em in the comments.