Afterdead 2 -- let it snow.

So let's get off the whole publishing thing for now and talk about the next books.

I was whining to someone (yes,you know who you are) that I couldn't get any work done because I've been doing nothing but plow through publishing.

Which is why I'm about to start page 19 of AFTERDEAD 1.4, which is the last section of AFTERDEAD 2.

Dan says this is like teaching me to parallel park. He said I learned it faster than anybody he'd seen but I was still cussing because I didn't get it right the first time. I tend to beat up on myself more than is warranted (Recovering Catholic).

(Some of my readers mistake me for the sweet, patient, fatherly Peach or Stinz. I am much more like a cross between Udo and Leutnant Winzig.)

I had started the story sorta in the late summer, the trees touched with orange, mostly green. Then, while talking to a colleague on the phone, I remembered what the sky outside out window looked like.

Vancouver Island was frosted with snow. I can see this from my front window across the Strait of Juan de Fuca (NOT pronounced like that). I said, "There's snow on Vancouver Island. Oh, hell, the story should be taking place in the snow."

Which is why I changed page the pages up to 19 -- ah, the unifying wonders of a bright orange marker -- and put in a new page. I'd accidentally miss-numbered the pages, and had an extra I could either ignore or add. So I used it to surprise everybody involved that their little production was going to have to take place in the white stuff.

The prose writers reading this are scratching their heads and going, "Why didn't she just cut and paste?"

You don't cut and paste comic book pages. That would be like cutting and pasting tapestries once you'd gotten halfway down the warp. It would be like repainting the car once you'd gotten past the front doors -- and I'm talking a dragon-and-flame airbrush, not a nice metal-flake blue.

Speaking of prose, I'm seriously champing at the bit to get done with the AFTERDEAD book and start something in prose. I don't care what.

I should give my poor agent something a little easier to flog than the ENTIRE DESERT PEACH COLLECTION. Just as a break.