Deadly Deadlines

Have laptop... need coffee

I'm a little late with the blogging this week. I got this frightening email from my publisher asking me if my manuscript was ready. 

Almost, I said, not quite lying through my teeth.

I was doing so well with it until my laptop crashed. True, I do have a desktop computer I can work at. My work in progress resides on a flash drive just so I can go back and forth at will.

I prefer working on my laptop now. It isn't just that it's faster (excepting when Windows crashed and burned, taking all my other programs with it) - it's the portability. Even if I was willing to load my tower and monitor into the car, they wouldn't fit on a bistro table. If I did managed to get everything set up, there wouldn't be room for my coffee.

No coffee. No work.

Not that I can't make coffee at home. I have a drip coffee maker, a French press and an old fashioned, stovetop espresso maker. Sometimes when the need for caffeine outweighs my need to sleep eventually, I make the French pressed then pour a doppio espresso in it. 

What am I saying? I can drink two four-shot Americanos and still have a nap in the afternoon.

It isn't the coffee that makes me go out... well not only the coffee. It's the chance to get away from household chores, junk calls and ennui. Writing doesn't have to be a solitary profession if you get thee to a coffeeshop.

So, fittingly enough, the last few chapters of "Deadly Legacy"/"Deadly Succession" (the title is still in question), were finished next to Chapters -- at my local Starbucks.

Speaking of titles, which do you think works better: Deadly Legacy or Deadly Succession?

Vote in the poll on the side bar and/or comment below. (Choices, choices.)