And there are several novels rattling around in my brainpan, but there's one that's been very patient and also very insistent, and it's always been The Next Thing.
So. Now is when I give myself permission to write Places You Haunt.
No, "My Empire for Ashes" isn't quite done, but I think I can finish it concurrently - especially because the next bit of it takes place in Vegas, in the very place Places You Haunt takes place in. Yes, Martin Telenias is a crossover character.
The elevator pitch for Places You Haunt is this: Tam Lin with Vegas street punks.
The extended version:
* It's about what happens when Janet lets go - when she fails, and the fairies take Tam Lin, and she's left with this magic-saturated baby and the knowledge that the tithe comes due in seven more years.
* It's about what happens after those seven years.
* It's about trying to reconstruct really big things that happened to your community years before you arrived.
* It's about how all martyrs become beautiful in retrospect, and about how we create heroes out of whole cloth because we need them.
* It's about the power of chosen families.
* It's about old magic and new magic and good luck and bad luck and love and power and healing.
But mostly the chosen families. And the healing. And what Vegas really is.
Fifteen years ago, I lived there. Fifteen years ago this week is when it all fell apart. So committing to this now is appropriate.
Here we go, y'all.