Official start?

I've always billed my "Fashion and Fiends" books as a trilogy. Book one about the twenty-something American supermodel whose low self-esteem allows her to fall victim to supernatural domestic violence. In book two, her fashion designer boss must deal with grief, a failing marriage and responsibility for the supernatural mess that has engulfed their lives.

Those two manuscripts-- Manipulations and Courting Apparitions-- have been worked and revised and the first one shopped and rejected but only 10 times before I got distracted by my offspring and the pursuit of a second bachelor's degree.

The third-- a work in progress I call Absolution-- focuses on the fashion designer's wife who must end the supernatural goings-ons before the universe introduces something greater to do it. 

But there's a good six or seven months between Courting Apparitions and Absolution. Recent revisions have made it so that the baby we learn about in book one isn't born in book two but is somehow six months old in book three.

My psyche is distraught over this so I can imagine a reader might have the same discomfort.

In the meantime, for fun, I started a new story. Not sure where it was going. I mentioned it/the main character in this blog: Jacqueline, the French military medic. I have a mild fascination with French colonial history and French-Algerian relations so her service as a doctor in the military allows me to explore that. I thought of her story as a companion, not a true part of the trilogy, until somehow the time and the place begins to fall into that big gap I had.

My husband protested that Jacqueline had nothing supernatural in her story, but she does, as she is related to the characters in the other books and her assignment in the army involves the supernatural stuff her brother-in-law kinda started.

So, Jacqueline's story, currently called Recovery, has officially joined "Fashion and Fiends" as the new book three (or book 2.5 in my nomenclature). But starting a new book is often near impossible. It commences with huge blows of inspiration and motivation until you realize you started at the wrong moment, that you can't find the beginning, and you haven't done the research.

After about five previous attempts, and writing Jacqueline into book two formally, I offer this:

Chapter One

Hoisting her eight-and-a-half month pregnant older sister, a stroke victim who had lost the use of the right side of her body, up swing-down stairs to the cabin of a Dassault Falcon jet had proven one of the most grueling challenges of Jacqueline’s near decade as a doctor in the military health services.