The Hardest Thing About Writing a Book

For me, the hardest thing about writing a book is that, sooner or later, you’re finished and you don’t have it to write anymore. You want to keep on, but the story’s over. (Hint: if you can’t wait to be done with the freakin’ thing, and are overjoyed not to be writing it anymore, you have probably done something wrong and the reader will probably feel the same way about it.)

OK, I do have my share of the editing to do on The Glass Bridge, plus many other things to keep me busy. But I’m done writing The Temple and already I miss it. And I know it’ll be months and months before the beginning of a next book takes shape in my mind.

A reader from Australia has been helping me with casting suggestions for when my books are made into colossal hit movies. He came up with Richard Attenborough for Ashrof–not bad!–and F. Murray Abraham for Lord Reesh. I have added Robert Shaw for Roshay Bault and Wes Studi for Ysbott the Snake. There’s got to be a part for Martin Shaw, but I haven’t found it yet.

No, I do not want to make Bell Mountain into a Lego movie, or even a movie starring marshmallow peeps. As long as I’m gonna daydream, I may as well dream big–and totally ignore reality.

If they ever did to Bell Mountain what they did a couple years ago to C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I’d be after them with a baseball bat.