In October, we participated in the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild 2026 Conference. David and I were scheduled right after lunch, which was great. We had a captive audience. Our topic—what it’s like working together. The talk lasted an hour, and we had some great questions during the Q and A at the end. Our presentation was a good depiction of how we actually work—talking back and forth, negotiating and weighing ideas to keep and toss. We talked about how we handle it when our words are cut or changed.
Getting close to the end
We are past the stage of negotiating story points in Wolfe’s Blood. We are at the stage where we can exhale and happily say the book is done. But we are not past clarifying words and ideas that we may have thought were permanent when we first put them down. But—the truth is that every morning, while I make and eat breakfast and pack up for school, David and I go over my questions and notes—about two chapters at a time—more or less. An additional truth is that we are working through our comments and questions about words, plot points and character actions that we made years ago. How does it feel? It feels good. Any movement forward feels great. But, sometimes it is a jog to the memory.
Working hard at…
David is a savage editor. I mean this in the best way. He always has been. So, I’m good with whatever he suggests. I am also very aware that he tries so very hard to keep my words, my character phrases and of course he tries equally hard to keep me happy.
Done and not done
The exhale of being done is just a breath in the process of completing a book. Inhale. Exhale. Because we both know that there are several passes of Wolfe’s Blood that still need to happen before we pass it on to our editor to polish it and pass it back to us for us to approve suggested changes.
See it’s really a lot of breathing and sometimes it feels like yoga breath and other times it’s a little like hyperventilating. I can speak for myself when I say that all the work is worth it to have our final book be a novel that I am proud of—the last of the Shepherd and Wolfe adventures.
It means a lot.
As always, thank you for reading, Lovelies.
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