The Passion of Writing

"The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?"

--JB Priestley

The quote posted above is special to me.  Why?  Because snowy days inspire me.  Where I come from, wintertime is something to be dreaded and endured; I, however, ever the rebel, disagree.  I wait all year long for winter to come, just because you can almost feel the magic in the air.  Winter is a season when the impossible seems not just possible, but probable.  You'll find that a lot of my projects are set in winter, it's sort of a signature for me.

Inspiration can be found anywhere.  Sometimes, it takes nothing--the most minute detail in my environment--to inspire a novel.  For me, it starts with dialogue, usually my protagonist talking with a supporting character, or arguing with the antagonist.  Sometimes, I have a loose idea of what I want to do and where I want my story to take you, the reader.  Sometimes, it's more rigid, more detailed, to the point that I already know what the very last line of the final chapter will be, long before I ever open my notebook or uncap my pen.  And every once in awhile?  The story uses me to bring itself to life.

I find that I get some of my best ideas just as I'm dropping off to sleep; that's how the earliest version of the Flash trilogy came into existence.  I know an idea is something special when I can't sleep, because my mind is spinning the thread that I will weave into a story, just as soon as I can get to a notebook or my laptop.  It doesn't matter what I've spent the previous day doing, or what requires my presence and attention on the following one, when I get the itch--when the idea begins to consume me--it becomes my number one priority.

I have several projects planned out to work on post-Flash, some of them dealing with sensitive, controversial topics inspired by current events, and some that will be my attempt at the Urban Fantasy genre.  Watch this space, the list below will be growing with time.  In order, sorted by highest priority, I will be working on the following:

- The Happiest Day, a standalone novel, will deal with a suicide attempt by fifteen year old Jasmine Hanson, on Valentine's Day 2002, after one of her bullies takes things too far.  Guided by a mysterious woman known only as Chas, Jasmine embarks on a journey of discovery, meeting her peers one by one, ten years later--and finds out how big of a bitch Karma really is--but is it a future Jasmine will live to see?

- Bring Me To Life (Book 1 of the Armageddon Series), sets the stage for the apocalypse to begin, starting with the demon capital of the United States, Chicago, Illinois.  A crack team of operatives--members of a modern day Knights Templar and representing the Vatican--works to keep a sleeper cell of Lucifer's own from reaping souls prematurely.  When Roxie Saunders, a Templar, crosses paths with Zephiir, the newest member of the sleeper cell, neither of them bargains for the true cost of their scuffle, a binding of her life force to his.

-Only In My Dreams, a standalone novel, poses the question "what would happen if the makings of a nightmare weren't just a nightmare anymore when you woke up?".  Assistant district attorney and notorious commitment-phobe Kerrigan Snyder--who prefers to be called Keri--finds this out the hard way, after waking up from a recurring night terror.  Christos, a warlock determined to destroy her, was thwarted by an enigmatic man that Keri has never seen before, save for her dreams.  It happens every single time--Christos attacks, the savior intervenes, and Keri wakes up.  Except this time, when Keri awakes to find that her savior--who has no name at all yet--has crossed from her mind into the real world.  The problem?  He wasn't the only one to do so, and it's up to he and Keri to get Christos back where he belongs, before he achieves in the real world what he failed to do in dreams.