Heather Masterson

Nineteen days out, and we hit our first major snag. The proofs should have arrived yesterday, and by now, I should have had any final tweaks finished and ready to go. UPS, however, seems to have lost them entirely. They were last seen wandering around New Jersey at 2:30 AM on Thursday, and they haven’t been seen or heard from since. Perhaps they met with foul play… but I keep expecting to hear about some poor innocent who was accosted by unknown assailants and suffered numerous paper cuts before escaping.

Snag #2 followed right on its heels: when I tried to get them to rush me a new proof, the ordering system suffered some sort of hiccup last night and wouldn’t acknowledge my requests. We didn’t get that straightened out until noon today. Arg!

There is some good news, though. I mentioned the cringe-worthy video promo yesterday. Last night, while working on a replacement, we stumbled across some music that synchronized so perfectly with it that it was downright spooky. The resulting video is simple. Small. Very basic. Almost cute. A little odd. I freaking love it.

It feels like there are a million things that I need to do, but the reality is that we’re in a bit of a holding pattern until we can approve the proofs. That’s when things will get a little crazy again, but we’re nearly there!

In other news, something interesting happened yesterday. I was working on the second book, and I actually teared up a little while writing it. Usually, the left-field stuff that the characters dish out is surprising, because I didn’t see it coming… or nasty, because I really didn’t see it coming. Yesterday, a scene that I thought was going to turn seriously ugly ended up going in an entirely different direction, and I actually misted up a little. It’s been a week of interesting payoffs: just two days before that, I hit a twist and came out the other side with a bit of an adrenaline rush — an actual pulse-pounding high that lasted a couple of minutes. Writing can be a slog through murky swamps sometimes, but there are plenty of moments when it’s a heck of a lot of fun!

I drew this during an exceptionally boring meeting one day. I usually just erase my doodles, but I kind of liked this one. (Spoiler: I can’t draw.)