So I’m all geared up and ready to go (desk is almost cleaned off, floor not so much) and I realized that since these novellas are interlocking, I have to figure out how Mare’s story fits with DeeDee’s and Lizzie’s.

Here’s the plan:

Eileen’s story opens the book and it’s the three sisters at breakfast. Then Something Happens, and the sisters scatter–in Mare’s case, she goes to work at the video store–and the stories play out simultaneously. So you get DeeDee’s story from Eileen and then you start the next novella and it’s Lizzie’s story but it doesn’t pick up at the end of DeeDee’s, you go back to the beginning and read what happened to Lizzie while DeeDee was going through hell. Then you get to my novella and go back to the beginning to find out what Mare was doing while DeeDee and Lizzie were fighting the good fight. So we all need to have our ducks in a row from the beginning, which means I have to double check to make sure that the plan is still to start Lizzie and Mare’s stories starting right after DeeDee’s first scene. There’s a reason we’re spending three days in New York to figure out how this works, and it’s not just because Eileen wants to see Gabriel Byrne in A Touch of the Poet although I am not going with her because, sue me, O’Neill leaves me cold.

Where was I?

Right. So I have to find out what Mare’s first scene is. Then I have to find out where Eileen and Krissie want the sisters to meet together right before the Big Finish. And then there’s this Huge Revelation that will alter events. I need to know when that happens.

Basically, because I cannot plot, I try to have four big scenes in my head: the turning point scene at the end of the first quarter (first act), the midpoint scene at the end of the second quarter (second act), the dark moment scene at the end of third quarter (third act), and the climax at the end of the fourth quarter (fourth act). So all I need to know is, which of those big scenes is the Huge Revelation? I’m hoping it’s the dark moment turning point, because otherwise, I’m going to have to follow it with a Huger Revelation and then a Hugest Revelation, and that could be tricky.

So for my hour today, I blocked out the romance which is the main plot of the novella (which Eileen pitched as a paranormal erotic romance anthology, so I have to get sex in there, too–and did I mention during Trudy that’s it’s damn hard to get people into bed in 20,000 words so Mare knows Crash from three years earlier when he almost got her killed coming home from prom–and wrote an e-mail to Eileen and Krissie with the three plot questions.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it really did take an hour.

Also, I realize those pictures of my office were appalling, but get over it. This means you, Mollie Oh-My-God-Is-That-My-Mother’s-Desk Smith, and Susan Elizabeth I-Must-Forward-This-Photograph-To-Everyone-I’ve-Ever-Met Phillips. Yes, Mollie, I know this reminds you of the house you grew up in where I often lost you in the debris, but you’ve turned out to be an amazingly strong, intelligent, resourceful woman and I’m sure it’s because you had to dig your way out of the house every morning to go to school so you owe me. And as for you, Phillips, not all of us have HGTV-gorgeous offices the size of an Olympic swimming pool with built in cabinetry and a ceiling so high that there’s a balcony off Bill/Charles’s office so he can shout things down to you at will, so let’s be kind to our lesser sisters, shall we? In fact I double-dog-dare you to post a picture of your office RIGHT NOW, no cleaning up. :p

Jeez.