Let’s talk about writing. My writing seeing as it’s my blog.

This week I am working on developing story synopsis (or treatments or outlines whatever you wish to call them for three stories that I hope will become a three book series. It sounds simple enough. Right? But in reality, not so much.

I start with an idea. 

People often ask where I get my ideas. My answer: everywhere. I can be driving along minding my own business and be attached by one.

Like wouldn’t it be fun to have a woman (or a man) who got dropped into the middle of nowhere and had to survive? 

Or I’m reading a book and my imagination starts to ‘live’ in the fictional world and I can see people apart from the characters in the book.

Or I’m doing research and I start to imagine how people lived and loved in those circumstances.

I see a beautiful setting and I want to put two people in love there to enjoy it.

However, ideas do not make a story. They are just that and only that. Ideas. They are not characters. They are not structure. So I have spent countless hours trying to turn my ideas into characters and structure. I wish I could report resounding success. However, all I can say is I think I have the first two stories figured out. The third is coming.

I am encouraged to know that most of my stories have started with ideas that took a lot of work to turn into story structure. And yet somehow I did it. Just to prove the point here is the cover of the Christmas anthology I have a story in along with Anna Schmidt. The cover is on the Home page but to save you having to go look, here it is.

Watch for it in November or December. I’m not exactly sure of the release date. And watch for Dakota Cowboy to hit the stands in about 3 weeks.