I have started a new project. Hot on the heels of the rejection of my full of CHOSEN, and facing the possibility that CHOSEN might be unsellable in the current market, I thought it best to stop writing the sequel and start something new.
Its a daunting task, starting something new. For one thing, you need an idea. Lots of authors keep notebooks and scraps of papers filled with potential story ideas. I don’t. Maybe its because I can only let my mind loose on one idea at a time, although its safe to say I currently have three WIPs in various states of progress, so maybe that *law* doesn’t apply to me anymore.
ANYWAY, I was about 33K into the sequel to CHOSEN when I got that rejection and honestly, I was floundering a bit, unsure I was taking it in the right direction. So I decided what I really needed was a fresh start. Something new. This was on a Saturday night, June 26.
I. Had. Nothing.
Although on the Thursday before, I had gone to the DMV with my son and mentioned to him that a job working at the DMV would be a cool for main character because of all the strange people you were bound to see. His response was to roll his eyes. (I get that a lot from my six kids.)
That was it. All I had.
So the rusty, creaky wheels started churning and I began the “What If” game based purely on a young woman who worked at the DMV. And ideas began pouring in, first at a trickle, then a steady flow and I thought I had the makings of a good story, although the genre was unclear. (typical for me) This was Sunday afternoon, less than twenty four hours after I decided to write a new book.
When I start a new project, I always tell myself to write the first chapter, that’s all I commit to and see if its a good fit. Do I like it? Do I want to commit many months to it? For me, the first chapter is like a date before becoming engaged. But what I hadn’t foreseen with this project, was how hard it was to let my other characters go. I felt like I was cheating on Emma and Will by writing about Rose. But it had to be done.
So, I on Sunday afternoon I wrote a blurb about what my new WIP would be about, to help keep me on track. I emailed it to my friends, asked them what they thought and got their blessings. It looked fun.
So last Monday, ten days ago, I began. I took off running out of the starting gate and I have’t stopped sprinting. I currently have 28,000 words written, almost one third of the book in nine days. NINE DAYS! My fingers literally cannot keep up with my mind. And I am loving it. Rose is quirky, innocent and southern, written in first person, and she says all kinds of fun, quirky things.
I am having so much fun.
I’m posting the blurb I wrote, which I’ve tweaked a bit as I go and see things changing as I write (yes, I’m a pantser with a general plan, that I usually change) I plan on sharing parts of it as I go.
————————————————–
TWENTY-EIGHT AND A HALF WISHES
Rose Gardner has been weird as long as she can remember. She sees things no one else can, always about other people. Usually insignificant things like someone’s toilet is going to overflow or their baby is going to have an ear infection but more rarely something bigger like their husband is sleeping with their best friend.
One day at her suckfest DMV job she processes the paperwork for new license plates and she sees her dead body bleeding on her mother’s favorite sofa. Since she never sees things for herself, she realizes she is seeing the future of the man whose paperwork she is processing. Before she can blurt out that he is going to kill her, she faints, but his suspicions are raised over her reaction.
Rose still lives at home with her domineering mother and is considered a prime suspect when her momma winds up murdered, especially since a rolling pin with her finger prints all over it was used as the murder weapon.
After living for twenty four years under her mother’s iron clad rule, Rose creates a list, her Wish List, of twenty eight things she wants to accomplish in her life, leaving the last spot, number twenty nine empty. Rose feels a freedom she never imagined as she works her way through the list, bringing even more suspicion upon her. In her new zest for life, she actually talks to the single neighbor next door, as a friend of course, and finds herself amazed that she can actually have a friendship, with a man. But HE has secrets of his own. As Rose gets a taste of the life she’s always wanted, she realizes waiting to get arrested isn’t the biggest thing she has to worry about; it’s the people who want to kill her.
