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I'm at the annual continuing medical education conference that I go to. I'm required to have 20 hours per year in order to maintain my medical license. I go to the same one every year. It's very good. This year, I've learned all kinds of cool stuff about diabetes (there's always more to learn about this), Parkinson's Disease, concussions, menopause, thyroid disease, and several other things. And it's not even the end of the 2nd day!

I've also written about 3000 words. Maybe 2000 in Earthquake and 1000 in Rarity. My chapters are usually around 1500 words, to give you an idea of how long that is. Common was about 55,000 words total, and Wildfire was around 80,000. It doesn't sound like a ton, but it is.  Every word brings me closer to the end of the book.

I've finally gotten over the "start of the book" hump in Rarity, so I think it'll be a little bit easier to write from here on out. The middle of the book is usually easy to write. There's always writer's block, of course, but the middle is usually pretty smooth sailing. The end is.... I'm not great with endings, as you know.  I find it easy to get there, but difficult to get them exactly the way that I want. I'm not surprised by the "it just ends" reviews I've gotten. But the beginning... It's so hard. It has to get you interested. It has to make sense. It has to set up the rest of the book: the characters, the tone, the pace, the plot... You know that in Rarity that it's going to start with the midwinter ball.  I've known this for a couple years.  But how did Catty and Lora get there? Did the craziness happen right away? Was it mellow? Who's in the scene? How long is the scene going to be? Well.... Now I know. At least partly.

I've also been scouring Shutterstock, which is where I've been getting my cover photos. I have the image for Earthquake that I want to manipulate.  It will have the same lightning circle overlay as Wildfire. I've been talking to the photographer who took the cover photo for Common. We may or may not come to an agreement about more photos with the same model for Rarity and other Lora Fletcher books. I'm excited either way. The cover is usually the last thing I do, but I'm a planner. I like to have everything just so from the get go.

I'll send out another update on Sunday hopefully.