Sometimes you just have to sleep

This is the time of year when you’re more likely to see zombies than normally. I know—I was one yesterday. The cumulative lack of sleep caught up with me. The sleep that gets sacrificed because I get up early in the morning to write before I go to work. I was in a trance. I left the house and forgot to close the garage door, for example, and that was just the first of a number of numb-headed things I did. I decided to skip my morning writing session today and catch an extra 90 minutes of sleep instead. Those batteries need recharging every now and then.

I printed out the third draft of Missing Persons yesterday (94,000 words, 330 pages) and I plan to spend the weekend reading through it to look for places to implement some changes my agent suggested. Then I’ll send the whole deal back to him once that’s done and he can read over the modifications and the final 100 pages of revisions that he hasn’t seen lately. Maybe by the end of November it will be ready to shop around. I hope.

I’m getting eager to start working on the next novel. It’s all I think about in my idle moments these days. Still haven’t come up with a good title for it yet, so I think I’ll just call it West of the Pecos for now, which is where it is set. I’m seriously considering taking a 3-day road trip in later November to review the setting and get some local color. There’s only so much you can do from travel books and internet searches, and it’s been a dozen years since I traveled the road that will be a focal part of the story. If the book takes off on me, I’ll pack up my laptop and do some on-the-ground research, perhaps during Thanksgiving week while trying to meet my 1700 words per day goal for NaNoWriMo.

I received my official invitation to take part in the Signatures event in The Woodlands on November 29th. The organizers are expecting 500-700 people, and the main draw is former first lady Barbara Bush. It’s a daytime event, and I get to sell and sign during a couple of breaks. I may also be doing a chat for Biting Dog Press the evening before that—I’ll have more info about that later once the date and time is confirmed.

Here’s some fun news: Stephen King is producing a Dark Tower graphic novel series with Marvel. Check out the news release and some sample artwork here.