Which novel is the SECOND?

Today I wrote a chapter of a novel. But it isn't the novel I've dubbed "the second." Oh, well, I'm writing.

Last week, I decided I should either finish my manuscript of The Golden Goddess or move on to something else. The impetus? A letter from my brother saying he had read my first novel Counterfeit World and liked it. He liked it, he really liked it!! (Sorry, Sally Field, for the--hackneyed--paraphrase.) He said he has had it for a while but didn't have the nerve to read it because what if he hated it? What would he do then? He was relieved that didn't happen, surprised that the novel didn't sound like his little sister. (I wonder what his little sister sounds like? Whiny probably. Really whiny.) So, with that external motivation, I got out my half-finished manuscript of "The Golden Goddess" and read the first page of each chapter. Hey, I liked it, I really liked it! So I decided to continue work on it. I mean, I know what happens next, I just have to write it, right? One word after another, one sentence after another, and suddenly you have a novel.

Then today I wrote a chapter--of another book.

I actually have parts of three novels written and/or outlined. Here's the thing. Time. Not time to write. Heck, I'm retired and have plenty of that. It's TIME I'm thinking about. Pushing sixty, I tell myself, not much TIME left. Do I have TIME to write three novels when I've only managed one so far?

Sure, you do, I answer (silently, I'm not totally crackers), you just have to do it. You're not BLOCKED or anything, are you?

Nope. Not blocked. Just lazy.

And that's the truth. So I'll have a race. First novel to the finish line gets to be the SECOND NOVEL.