I’m nearing completion (I hope!) of my 14^th Jeri Howard novel, The Things We Keep. Fellow Ladies of Mystery author, D. Z. Church read the latest draft and pointed out words I’d left out and words I’d repeated. She pruned instances of words I habitually overuse – “so,” “then,” and “now.” She also took out many of the commas that I love to sprinkle all over my work. More importantly, she indicated several rough spots requiring attention. Yes, we all need that second pair of eyes. I’m now in the process of revising the draft.

I’ve been working on this book for nearly two years and hoped to finish it by the end of 2021, but as we know, life intervenes.

Once the book is finished, there’s the whole prepublication drill. Already have a cover – here’s a first look! I’ll create the front and back matter, format the book and write snappy descriptions that will make readers want to buy the latest Jeri. Publication date, copyright – a lot to do.

After that, what next? That’s a question recently posed by several people. A good question, since at any one time I am juggling six or seven plots in my head, always looking ahead to the next project.

I get emails asking if I’m going to write another book featuring Jill McLeod, my sleuthing Zephyrette, who solves crimes in the early 1950s while working on the streamliner train known as the California Zephyr. The short answer: yes, I have a plot in mind. That answer also serves for Kay Dexter, the geriatric care manager protagonist of my book The Sacrificial Daughter. Then there’s Maggie Constable, the retired San Francisco Chronicle reporter from my novella, But Not Forgotten. I like Maggie a lot and she needs a book of her own. In the meantime, she puts in an appearance in The Things We Keep.

Other characters clamor for attention. One of them is Mrs. Grace Tidsdale, the redoubtable Tidsy, who appears in several Jill McLeod novels. She’s a woman of strong opinions and actions, with an interesting past. That’s a trait she shares with Rose Laurent, the former stuntwoman, actress and director who appears with Jill and Tidsy in Death Above the Line. Both women have backstories I want to explore.

Characters and plots roam through my head, the characters with their hands up, waving, and shouting, “Me next!”

I have ideas for several standalone novels and pages of plot notes and character sketches to go with them. The Mendocino book, which takes place in that remote village on California’s north coast. The Guam book, which harks back to my days in the Navy on that Western Pacific island. The dysfunctional family book simmering on the back burner for years.

Well, you get the idea.

What comes next? I suspect it will be the historical novel I started two years ago. I was already several chapters into it when I got the idea for The Things We Keep, which appeared in my head and jumped the queue.

Once I return to that book, I’ll be steeping myself in New Mexico history in the late 1870s and early 1880s, doing research from a whole pile of books I’ve collected over the years. That will be quite a change from Jeri Howard in the 21^st century.

Have you ever found the bag of yarn for an afghan you planned to knit/crochet during the winter months but not the instructions? That’s what it’s like to write a book. Every time you open the bag, it is full of tangled skeins of possibilities, different yarns, weights of yarn, and colors waiting to be knitted into a cohesive whole that matches a picture you’ve concocted in your head.

Add to the various yarns and colors, different sized knitting needles and crochet hooks, the use of which results in different size stitches, different thicknesses of fabric, and different lengths and widths of the finished product that enrich and add depth to the design.

So, you pull out the yarn, decide on the main colors (characters), secondary colors (second bananas), and pattern (plot). You’re knitting this one in twenty squares. You test the gauge of each yarn against the ruler, so you know how many stitches per square, ensuring they will fit together.

Your design set, you wait a day, look at it again and realize square five needs to precede square four, and what the heck were you thinking on square eleven. You move things around a bit, then start. Square one measures the right size, it follows the theme and color scheme, so you move on to square two. About square five, you unravel square two because the pattern doesn’t add to the flow. As you knit, you revise the design, unraveling on occasion, recasting, and reknitting.

When you have all your squares done, you sew them together. And though you took the utmost care with the colors, size, and pattern of each, it turns out you need a new square sixteen to fill a hole in the pattern that foreshadow the red in the last four squares. Now, you have one too many squares. And square six needs more blue, seven more green, and ten through thirteen more white, then you notice that square nine muddles the whole pattern (what the heck is all that purple). You do the fixes, add square sixteen, remove square nine, and voila, you have a gorgeous afghan.

You take it to your knitting club for review. The first reviewer asks why there is so much red, and the next why there is so much green. They shake their heads at your explanation. Steaming, you take your afghan home, hang it on the wall, and stare at it for a few days. In the end, you unravel some red, leave the green, pull out square fifteen, add a new square with a tinge of purple, and try again. Your reviewers love the changes.

You take a photo, write an ad, attach a price, and place it on Amazon. The first Amazon review reads it could have used some red in the square you removed it from at your reviewer’s request, and what about that dropped stitch you missed? You snarl. Then start square four of your newest creation, purling instead of knitting.

You unravel and start over.