Deelylah Mullin

I'm glad the question is 'get out of bed' instead of 'leave my room', because my desk is pretty much next to my bed.

Every morning I get up and properly caffeinate. Yes. It's essential. No, it's not a myth that books are processed caffeine. I usually read while I have breakfast and hit the joe. Get Mr. VampBard off to work. Then, I review my schedule for the day. Every morning, I try to write for two hours. Some days, this is easier than others--but the drive to move a plot forward nags at me until I manage to get it done. It makes the voices in my head quiet down for a while.

My writing process can be a little different for every story I write. Most of the time, however, I start with Gwen Hayes' Beat Sheet. I fill that sucker out (long-hand...it slows me down and makes me think about what I'm going to put in the boxes) and then I sit down and start writing. I'm a linear writer.

Once I'm working on a story, they don't always adhere to the Beat Sheet--and I'm okay with that. For example, GLORIA started out as a stand-alone. Once I started writing, I found out that Jemma didn't end up with Talia AND Devlin. Devlin had his own story to tell.

The UP NORTH series started out as a trilogy. I have seven titles plotted for it now. I didn't start with the unifying thread, either--that was supposed to be the fact that they all took place in Michigan. I'd planned for each title to stand alone, and they still will--but reading them in order will give readers a deeper understanding of the characters and how they all interconnect.