The King Is Dead; Long Live the King (Patricia Potter)

I'm killing people today!

Yep, really.

There’s a strange phenomenon for fiction authors, or at least for this one.
(I truly hate to apply my oft-peculiar habits to another unsuspecting soul; they could be mine alone ). Once a book is completed I totally erase the characters from my mind, and that's my job for today. I'm doing away with the Maclean clan and moving five hundred years forward.

Ask me who the hero is from my last book, and I hem and haw and look daft (forgive my language, I just finished a Scottish historical). Every once in a while, someone will come up to me and say they loved a particular character or scene, and for the life of me, I cannot remember. That happenstance occurred not long ago when a reader mentioned how much they liked the Scottish cattle scene.

Cattle scene? What cattle scene? I don’t remember a cattle scene.

Eventually I did, but it took a lot of effort to dredge it up, and the person had long since disappeared. I think it’s protective mechanism. Once you pen "the end" (thankfully) to your work in progress, you have to kill off all those characters (at least in your mind) to create totally new ones. There is no funeral, no formal goodbye, but rather a ruthless dismissal. “You’ve done your job, now go away and don't return (unless you’re in a series; then you have a reprieve).”

Stated so baldly,I must say I feel rather bad about it. `Tis a sorry way to treat people you created and lived with for six months or longer. And loved. Yet, it is a necessity. They have to make way for the new population.

Finishing a book is kinda like having a child. Full of excitement, promise, uncertainty, discomfort, pain and finally jubilation. It’s done! But there the comparison ends. You can’t hold onto the baby. The jubilation of birth ends rather quickly when you realize you have another contract to fill.

The cycle begins again. I’m filled with excitement at creating new life. Fingers race over the keyboard, and nights and mornings are filled with plot elements and wonderful pieces of dialogue (I hope). It’s Christmas. and each day I’m opening packages filled with fresh ideas.

I’m creating the new king and queen.

And a new setting. I’m going from the 1500's Scotland to today’s Atlanta. It takes a little adjustment as you can tell by my language. I seldom use contractions in a historical. Must use them in romantic suspense. Different tempo. Different feeling. Different style of writing. It takes time to adjust. Several chapters, in truth.

But fun. I love the change, and will love the change again when I return to Scotland in six months. After I bury the new characters now so alive in my mind.

Long live the king and queen.

Until the next book.