Getting the itch again

It's been a month. Almost to the day.

In early July, I finalized and delivered my spring 2016 novel, Destiny's Pawns. Then I wrote a 63-page screenplay, a pilot for a would-be TV series featuring my heroine Peyton Cote. My agent is doing her thing with that now.

It's autumn. School has begun, and I run a dorm at a boarding school. That means I'm up late lots of nights. Recently, on those nights when my family has gone to sleep and the house is dark that little voice has been whispering in my ear again.

It's been one month since I've written, and there are stories to be told.

My three-book contract with Midnight Ink is up. Now we wait to see what they want to do and what I want to do. Do they want more Peyton Cote novels? Do I want to write them? I have more of them in me; I know that. And a single mother who's also a US Border Patrol agent in a region as interesting as northern Maine and who has a loony mother is just plain fun to write. So we'll see how it all shakes out. If Peyton doesn't come back I have another character who's been whispering opening lines as well.

As an aside, one thing I love about Midnight Ink is they let me do what I want: I've written three books in this series, and each is very different from the others – stylistically, structurally, as well as the pace in which the novel unfolds. In a day when branding seems to mean so much, it's great to have artistic freedom to stretch yourself.

We'll see what the future holds for Peyton Cote. But I know it's time to start writing something.