SHE WROTE: Still Trying to Figure Out Why . . .

Bob and I are still trying to figure out why the different characters in this book are doing what they're doing. They all had reasons once, and then the plot changed and the characters changed and that's good, it all got better, but now we're looking at each other and saying, "Why IS Doyle in the basement?" The good news is, it took us eight months to get here on DLD and we got here in about two (three?) months this time. We're speeding up our approach to total confusion.

Which was not helped by the SEAL thing. Poor Bob. I think he may refuse to get up and speak until I've announced that he is NOT a SEAL and made everybody cross that out in their programs and write in "Green Beret." And while they're at it, they can cross out all the titles for our presentations because we've never heard of any of them before. I think the program chair just made up a bunch of titles and stuck names under them. Oh, and that Green Beret song? Bob hates it. It's the "fighting men who jump and die" part. He prefers not to die.

But back to the problem at hand. Last year in Reno, I made Bob sit on a couch in the lobby and go through the entire book with me for each character. We walked each character through the entire plot--"Okay, it's Tuesday at noon, where is Stephanie, and what is she doing and why?" He was screaming inside and a couple of times he actually said, "I DON'T CARE!" but I made him sit there and at the end he needed a beer, but the book was tighter. So if you're in San Francisco this weekend and you see us sitting someplace and he's screaming, "I DON'T CARE," it's because I'm making him tell me why Doyle's in the basement. Not that I have a clue where Agnes is then, or Maria, or Baby, or Camille, or any of the characters I'm responsible for. They're all off doing good deeds or something. But Doyle, we need to know about Doyle.

Who wasn't a SEAL, either.

And now, since Bob has the master, I must go take the notes I made while watching Curse of the Were-Rabbit and fit them into the outline for the Mare novella, the first half of which I was supposed to have done a couple of weeks ago. But I can't write it until I figure out why Mare's in the video store . . .