A Little High Tension is the follow-on to Vikings at Dino’s and Very Truly Run After that I’ve been working on for some time now: and I’m glad to say, the end is in sight!

The end of the first draft, that is: and it will be a glorious thing. I write by the seat of my pants, which is to say I pick a starting point and then run with it. At first, I know almost nothing, but I figure things out as I go, and I usually have some notion of the climax long before I get there. With A Little High Tension, though, things have been different. It’s shaping up to be a four-act story; I finished up the third act yesterday, and commented to one of my first readers that now all I needed to do was figure out what happened in the fourth act.

And then I got up this morning, and wrote the next Letter from Armorica and posted it; and then I went to take a shower; and while I was in the shower, the entire fourth act popped into my head.

That’s not quite right. What really happened is a specific idea popped into my head, and then it grew, and linked with other ideas I’d had and not known what to do with, and it all made sense, and it all hangs together, and I’ve written the sequence of events and a few choice lines down; and all I need to do now is write it out. It’s gonna be brilliant!

You notice I haven’t said anything about what the ideas are—that would be fatal.

Looks like maybe it’s time to get started on the next cover illustration.