Well, today I had to give up the battle and finally admit that I'm not going to get this book to my editor any time soon.  I've been beating my head against a brick wall with this book for months, and I just keep moving backwards.  Over chili cheese dogs on Sunday (yes, we eat well at my house!) I finally realized that at least one problem with it is that the conflict is . . . well, it isn't.  I guess that's the problem.  It sounded like good conflict when I made it up, but as it landed on the page it just lay there in an uninteresting puddle.  I didn't even care what was going on with those two people.  I couldn't expect readers to care.

So it's back to square one -- sort of.  I need to revise every scene I've written, and the rewrites on some of them will be pretty major, but I can salvage some of what's there.  Maybe.  The dialogue, conflict, motivation, character goals, and emotions all have to go, but I might save a description or two.

Ah, well, this won't be the first book I've had to do this with, and it won't be the last I'm sure.  Thankfully, I like rewrites!  It's a good thing, too.  I do enough of them. 

Being late with a manuscript isn't the best way in the world to introduce yourself to a new editor, either.  It's hard to change a bad first impression.  Luckily, I think the year from hell is just about behind me, so I'm counting that things are going to get better from here. 

I spent the day revising and going over my daily, weekly, and monthly goals from here until March 1st to make sure I can get this book turned in on time (September 30 -- nose to grindstone!!!), followed by a proposal for my next Superromance (tentatively called WHAT WOMEN WANT) due on October 30, followed by another book due on November 15th to my other publisher, followed by the complete manuscript of WHAT WOMEN WANT on March 1.  You can see that even with my new rescheduled schedule, I'm going to have to remain BICHOK most of the time. 

I may not ever have anything interesting to say again!