Wow! 2019 was pretty much a bust for me. After publishing Cry Baby Cry in mid-2018 I vowed to rework one or two old manuscripts that I thought showed promise. But either I was burnt out from publishing seven books since 2012 or the lukewarm reception of Cry Baby had me discouraged, because I barely looked at anything writing-related throughout all of 2019.

Often, though, when I take a hiatus from writing I come back stronger than ever, with renewed energy and ideas. It’s like my subconscious has been writing all that time without telling me. I’m a little concerned, however, that things might not work the same when the project I plan to work on is a rewrite, rather than generating new material. After all, rewriting uses the critical, editor portion of my brain, not the creative side which could have been working in secret.

I’d started working on the idea of this rewrite way back in 2016 and even blogged about it HERE and HERE. Then Cry Baby Cry started bullying its way into my thoughts and I got sidetracked. So for 2020 I’m vowing to get back to this story-line that was once important enough to me that I actually published two versions of it from memory: one for PersonalNovel in the U.K., Through the Dark, and a U.S. version released by myself, Eyes at the Window. The new title of this reincarnation is TBD, but I’m leaning toward something like WATCHER.

It helps that an old writer colleague of mine, LuAnne Bydalek, recently contacted me through this website. I believe I might have been working on this story, or a version of it, when we first met at a writer’s conference at IWU. Bringing back old memories might just be the kick in the pants I need to give this old manuscript a new look.