You know you think you’re done with writing a book when you get a lot of pages stacked up on your desk. Ooh, you think. That looks HEFTY. Nice. But then you read through it and you realize, shit, that DOES NOT make sense. Or where the hell did THAT come from? And then you realize you have to go back and put in, oh, about three or four more chapters and shade in a couple more things so that the ending is SATISFYING.

Agatha Christie said that she would always think she was done, but then the book would be too short, so she’d have to go back “and put another murder or a kiss in”. I like how practical she was. Very unsentimental about her work. Story stuck? Kill off someone! Or make someone kiss someone else! Sure to move it along. (And by golly, it really does.)

So here I am, with ANGELS, so close to the finish line, but there are a couple more things I need to put in. When I first envisioned the book, I thought it would be like a “Great Gatsby” meets “The Outsiders”. Now it is “The Great Gatsby” meets “The Outsiders” meets “The Matrix”. If that makes any sense at all. The Great Gatsby because there is a shadowy figure who reinvented himself from a junior high nerd into the coolest party thrower in Beverly Hills, “The Outsiders” because the protagonist is a cool, skater girl from the wrong side of the tracks (ie, the Hollywood Flats) who meets a cute preppie boy from Bel-Air, and the Matrix because…well…there is an EXPLANATION for why the world is as it is. Or at least in my book, the web, Los Angeles, fame, money, cliques.

One of my favorite lines to describe a book is Paul Rudnick who said his first novel Social Disease was about “hair, sex, and the telephone.”

Anyway, I did promise my editor I would get it in on Monday, and I have to get this out of the way so I can finish Blue Bloods 2 Masquerade, so I should log off now.

Happy Weekend Everyone!
xoxo
Mel