Bringing Down the House

This is a post that I feel I need to write, because I know, at least in my real life, there’s been a lot of confusion. So, today, I’m going to tell you the story of why I postponed my book.

Spring Break was in early March and I realized that my book was going to be out in two months. And I didn’t feel good about it. But I felt even worse about the fact that I would just push the deadline back and keep the cycle going. It seems like every time I would announce a release date, the date would come and go and there’d be no book.

So, I was done. I decided to pull it, and this time, I didn’t put a time on myself to get it done. I knew that I would be busy with school for the remainder of the time between Spring Break and my release date (I wrote ten papers in two weeks at the end of school – just to put that in perspective of how busy I was). I told one friend and she agreed with me. Told my editor and she was shocked.

But that’s not the main point of this post. A lot of people have wondered, “what’s next?” So, here’s your answer.

I start all over. I mean, all over. That wasn’t my intention. When I decided to pull the book, I wasn’t planning to touch it for a few months, if at all the rest of the year. But a week later, in my creative writing class, the wheels in my head started turning and I thought about things I could change. What if I moved the story’s setting? What if Cassie was older? And so many other questions.

These questions I kept asking myself were questions I knew I needed answers to, and I quickly scribbled down some ideas, not sure where it would go.

The Assassin has gone through many incarnations, usually the big changes in each incarnation are Cassie’s age and the location. There’s the one major plot that always stays the same. If you think of a story as a house, with the main plot being the bare frame, subplots being support, details being the decorations, I threw everything out except the main frame.

It was awesome. My only regret was in the two months of imagining this, I didn’t get to dabble with it more because school was absolutely crazy. Now that school is out, I get to dedicate my free time to the book.

Then yesterday, in my seven hours of road-tripping with my dad, I started wondering, what if I threw out that main plot line too? What if I tucked that in my pocket and saved it for another book, like a sequel? The more I thought, the more I thought that made sense.

So, as of now, I have no story. Well, okay, I have a story, I just haven’t found all of the pieces in the fog. It’s terrifying and amazing at the same time. I took the last bit of the frame of my house and threw it out. I brought down the house and I can’t wait to rebuild it.

It’s pretty much a brand new house anyway.