A Funny Thing Happened While Writing My New Book

(NOTE: I’m out of town, so hopefully I schedule this post correctly. Happy Memorial Day!)

Have you ever heard the term “overtaken by events”?

I first saw it in a P. J. O’Rourke book where he wrote about the operation to extract Manuel Noriega from Panama–he included a note at the top of the chapter, saying that when the book was going to print, the Iraq War (Operation Desert Storm) began and made some of the information in the following chapter “overtaken by events”–obsolete, moot, otherwise no longer applicable.

I think I know how he felt writing that.

The Hilton Hotel on the Jackson, Mississippi side of County Line Road has been a favored site for business meetings, professional conventions, etc. ever since it opened forty years ago. For one of the characters in the book I’m writing, it’s been her favorite hotel in the Jackson metro area her entire life. It’s the setting for four of the most consequential chapters in the story.

I heard on the news the other night that the group that owns it defaulted on a loan against it, and it’s going on the auction block this summer to satisfy the loan obligation.

I am HOPING that whoever buys it doesn’t demolish it. Otherwise, I’ll have to write at least a fourth of the manuscript all over again.

Drat.

How is YOUR writing going? Drop a note in the comments and let me know!