I’m getting so many lovely emails from people asking when Book Two will be coming along, so I thought I’d share a bit about where it is now. This first picture is where book two was yesterday.

That’s all of the themes, major plot points, character drivers, conflicts, and random ideas that have come from the work I’ve done so far. When I work on a book, I’ll write for awhile, then deconstruct what I’ve written, then reconstruct it. In the photo above, the themes, plot points, etc, are spread randomly across the two tables, and there are some on a trunk and on my futon as well.

This second photo is where the book is tonight.

It’s all the themes, etc, reconstructed and pasted on the French doors that lead to my storage closet. I find it immensely satisfying to stand and look at them and see the ideas pulsing and mixing and morphing and starting to come together. As chaotic as it seems (ok, as chaotic as it is), I can actually start to see the threads connecting all the random thoughts from my head. I really do see them as threads—multicolored, luminescent threads appearing and disappearing as they weave together wolf conflicts and mythology and raven pranks and evolutionary theory and longfangs. Now I’ll a need is a magic wand so I can tap it against all these words and turn them into a book.

So that’s what’s up now. Isn’t it a pretty book?

So the two hundred or so storylines, themes, plot drivers and ideas are now more or less tamed into three major storylines. Very pleased about that because three major threads are ideal for me. Fewer than that, and I feel like the story is too flat. More than that, the story gets muddled. When you have three story threads, it makes it easier to weave everything together. So the book now looks like this:

Which is great because this morning it looked like this:

So definitely an improvement. I had three of my writing buddies over today for an impromptu write-in, and we all got a lot done. I forsook my computer and sat on the living room floor, moving little pieces of index cards around and scribbling on different sized sheets of paper. I have to remind myself that sometimes working with pen and paper is better for me than a keyboard and mouse. Sometimes computers are just too small, and my brain needs the expanse of a living room rug.

The wolves are getting a bit impatient with all this structure and are going to start chewing on my toes if I don’t let them run free soon. So a couple more days of plot-wrangling, and then I get to go back to actually writing.

Ok, I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but in case you didn’t already know it, Sarah Palin, McCain’s VP pick, is a big defender of the aerial hunting of wolves. That’s when people fly around in airplanes picking off as many wolves as they can. In order to encourage more wolf kills, she’s offered a $150 bounty for every left foreleg of a wolf brought in by wolf shooters in certain areas. (I won’t call them hunters—hunters have a code of ethics that seems to be completely lacking in these drive bys).

Palin is not only threat to wolves, but also a threat to the environment as a whole. Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, says that Palin:

“has repeatedly put special interests first when it comes to the environment. In her scant two years as governor, she has lobbied aggressively to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, pushed for more drilling off of Alaska’s coasts, and put special interests above science. Ms. Palin has made it clear through her actions that she is unwilling to do even as much as the Bush administration to address the impacts of global warming. Her most recent effort has been to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, putting Big Oil before sound science. As unbelievable as this may sound, this actually puts her to the right of the Bush administration.”

‘nuff said. You all know what another four years of Cheney-esque environmental policy will do to our world. But pass it along to anyone who might not.