The Crack of Writing

And I don't mean butt crack.

I woke up yesterday... sort of... I actually lay in bed about 90 minute half asleep half awake with various ideas infusing my consciousness... I finished the season's True Detective the night before, so there was that... and I've been watching the Walking Dead, so there was a bit of that... a lot of escaping bizarre things, but I had enough awakeness to stop the action and go back and revise if something looked to dire. Lucid dreams... though I can't do that in a full sleep—only in a half-one. But I woke up with a truly great series idea... I'm very excited.

Now if you've been around, you know me and ideas... I have to let them stew a good long time before they are ready to expose to the light, but I tried to write down enough that I won't lose it all... enough to add to as things wind together. I am calling it the Armageddon Games. That is all I will say on the matter.

What I can say though, is that THIS is my favorite thing about writing. These shiny new ideas and the work of planning out a book from them. The actual writing I love, but I have lost some confidence on that part, so it feels harder than it used to. Editing too. But man the ideas are sure fun. I have a fairly large Excel file of ideas. I will never manage to write them all, but if I've lost steam, this is like a jump start. Actually got back to the editing I've been meaning to be working on all month last night.


Now if I could just have someone volunteer to shop and cook, and someone else to clean... then I'd be back on track.


In Other News:

Driver's license day

Samories, Volume 1

(Sam Memories, that is) My son begins his LAST week of summer vacation as a high school student this week. Last week he registered and yesterday I made him fill out a lot of silly long-shot scholarship forms (they are mostly lottery things, but somebody has to win, right?). I have tried to reinforce that college applications THIS week will be easier than they will after school starts.

He is applying to five schools—three in Michigan, my alma mater (Oregon) and our long shot (Stanford). The latter two would require incredible scholarships, but you never know unless you try, eh? His ACT scores were really strong.

I start to worry here, too. He is sometimes wise, sometimes impulsive, but a year from now, leaving for college, he will not be an adult as most of his peers are. He is sixteen right now. I'm not sure what that means except I think every year at that age is HUGE for maturing a bit more, so he will be 6-12 months behind most of his peers. He's only had his driver's license a few weeks.

At the same time, college was my very favorite time, so I am excited for him to have it on the horizon.

So You Think You're JK Rowling

Seven book series came to me fully formed on the train this morning.

Okay. It might have been in bed.
And the original seeds of the series might have been hovering on the horizon for about two years.

But the Pirate ship is a good addition.
As is overlaying a GRAND seven-book mystery on top of the self-contained books dealing with real teen issues.
And making the teen issues each a mystery of their own.

So all in all it was a good wake-sleep state progression of ideas.


And I officially have my NaNoWriMo project now. So that's a bonus.

And a potential publisher! On Facebook Jenny Milchman alerted me to a publisher seeking YA Mysteries: The Poisoned Pencil—stand-alone or series. I need to check them out more completely, as with small publishers there is a bit of 'buyer beware' but they look pretty good. I have a couple other works I can consider them for with stand-alones, though none quite clean, but I love the idea of a YA Mystery Series. Not Nancy Drew... More Veronica Mars... Only geekier. My kids aren't the shunned 'used-to-be-cools' but the 'so not cool they are resorting to fantasy to cope with high school'. (that would be the pirate ship part—well Space Pirate... called The Pleides—home of the seven sisters, all that.)

And that is why you get a rare Saturday blog... I was inspired.

You Thought YOU Loved Books...

Is this to die for, or what? I mean we ALL have had fantasies of a library like Belle finds when she visits Beast—high ceilings and books all the way up, but what an elegant twist!

This is a little more intimate, I suppose... probably a lot more realistic...

Or if you want to sleep on them...

Or bathe in them...

Or perhaps you'd like to live in a city that loves them. I understand this is St. Louis? (anybody know for sure?)

I don't have any idea where this one is...  Anybody?  Bueller?

Or as a home for your OTHER favorite thing.... I confess to falling full on in LOVE with this.











But if you are really and TRULY committed to books...

I happen to ADORE this...

I love the whimsy and how impressively TALL that stack is... you know I've thought about getting a tattoo per book that I publish, and I have to confess how appealing this idea is as my 'tattoo of what?' answer. Though the trouble is it is more a Gestault pic, than a book at a time pic... To get the tattoo done piecemeal, I don't think it would look quite this great.

Something like this would work better:

There is even room on the spines for titles--see how they are SORTA 3-D, but not so much that you can't put the next one in there... but then there is only room on a person's back for a limited number... Perhaps if they were lined up sideways... Like on a real shelf... I would LOVE the problem of facing... 'oh, have to go around to my belly' if I published enough books... I ALSO love the idea of maybe a nuance to it... color in the bestsellers or something...

What do you think?  How much do YOU love books?

Visiting Roland Yeomans & Sharing Ideas

Halo, fine friends!!!

I am over at Roland Yeoman's blog today talking about my ancestral muses--the women in my family tree who made me feel I could conquer the world. Wouldn't THEY be shocked to realize they were responsible for Naked World Domination!?  On second thought... maybe not so much... So come see me over there and learn a little about my grandmamas!


And then just a quick thought about SHARING ideas.

It's funny how we can sometimes be very protective of our book ideas... and understandable. And I have ideas I definitely pause before letting out. But the reality is the SAME idea in different hands can lead to VERY different results.  Take my buddy Liz Crowe and I... and the idea of microbrew mysteries... and look at HER microbrew erotica and MY cozy mystery and just TRY to convince me there isn't room for both of us.  If her erotica has a mystery, that's fine--it will NOT taste the same as mine. If my mystery has some romance that's FINE, it will not taste the same as hers.

Yesterday a new reader, Candilynn Fite, who had seen me on Alex's blog on Monday sent me an idea of HERS that fit my Gardening Cozy theme. And it's BRILLIANT!  I've written the first three in my series, but if they contract me for more, I totally want to figure out how to use her thoughts!  And it was wonderful and generous of her to send it. But she was thinking--hey, it's a great idea, and I'm not going to use it.

A while back, I did the SAME THING. I had a dream about a restaurant critic (who was sorely asking to be murdered) and sent the idea to Elizabeth Spann Craig (who used it in Finger Lickin Dead).

I feel like the love just flows if we spread it around, eh?  So THANK YOU, Candilynn!

Any of the rest of you share a plot you weren't using?  How did it work out?

Six Plots-a-Brewing

On the Sixth Day of Christmas the Book World Gave to Me...

Six Plots-a-Brewing
Five RE-JEC-TIONS
Four Steampunk Stories
Three Co-zies
Two Fabul-Agents
And the notice of a best selling book!

So I used to get book ideas, like... well the first one was the only idea for about seven years... and then there wasn't really another one... there was, but it wasn't flowing... then there was another, and it didn't flow either, and FINALLY there was one related to the first non-flowy one that set off this... it's not a landslide, but I get ideas with some regularity now... maybe half dozen ideas a year that might merit a whole book if I ever got to them. It's not enough to pull a James Patterson with them, but it's pretty good.

I notice, strangely... that four of these six are Armageddon-related... I think I am fairly worried about this. Now... I'm not worried a God-imposed Armageddon is upon us... I don't frankly believe in that, in a literal sense. My belief about the Bible is it has always been allegory—to be taken seriously, not literally. I hope that doesn't offend anyone, but I suspect anyone offended by that was already scared off by my other antics. I can agree to disagree, and be respectful, but I'm not really one to not say what I think. All things are written in culturally bound ways, and the Bible has been translated and edited by people with agendas, even if at one point it WAS meant literally (though I see it more like the tall tales from the oral tradition—there are exaggerations to prove points, etc.) But that aside, I DO believe in self-important bastards who interpret stuff in dangerous ways and will work to bring it about... and THAT is behind much of these four:


The Adult Armageddon: I've told yibus a little about this before... it involves an evil Televangelist, a reporter and a bad batch of flu virus...


The YA Armageddon: This is more a survival story.

Undoing: This is one of those fuzzy, is it YA is it adult, but about a young man from a powerful family whose disillusioned grandfather teaches him what he needs to know to undo the power structure from within... inspired by, of all things, an episode of Veronica Mars.

??? The final Armageddon one is from the perspective of a friend of a political figure who knows by revealing some secrets that he is going to be assassinated, but he manages to get information to a collection of people who must find each other and work together to stop what is happening.


In all four of those, there is a great deal of evil in the powers that be. It is also of note that none of these is Sci-Fi or fantasy... and they aren't dystopian, though they are the events that would lead to the dystopia... The funny thing is two of these ideas have been on my plate for a couple years, well before things were so clearly as bad as they are.


The other two ideas are not so related... (and I know myself well enough to know the Armageddon ones may collapse and combine)... but the final two are:

The Pleiades: I've mentioned this one before, too... a group of geeky middle school kids 'pretending' superhero qualities in order to survive their real life troubles.

And finally a twisted fairy tale about a genie who has been imprisoned for four centuries who is finally released by an arrogant, silver-spooned ninny who doesn't know how to word a wish.

So there...

Now if I can just get some of these books written before any of them come true...

Any of you have thoughts on Armageddon? Any ideas that keep manifesting themselves in new forms?