I haven’t written a post in some time, because I was working furiously to finish the first draft of Uneasy Spirits, the sequel to Maids of Misfortune, my historical mystery set in 1879 San Francisco. The manuscript is now out to my first set of beta readers, I have just finished a week of family visits and entertaining my grandchildren, and, to keep from obsessing over whether my beta readers will like the new novel, I thought I would try to take stock of my writing process. I was particularly interested in looking at my own speed after the lively discussion on blogs this past month over this topic prompted by Dean Wesley Smith’s post on writing four novels a year. Last fall I made the decision to retire completely from teaching (see this post) and start to work on my Read more…