Muses and Cosmic Forces

This has been one of those weeks.

Every author questions what they write. We all wonder if what we've written is so much manure, and sometimes we actually know it would be better as fertilizer. I have at least two stories that I've written that I shelved never to see the light of day. Even I don't like them! But there's this one ...

Whenever I'm between books, I always pull Epitaph back off the shelf. It stays with me, and yet I still seem to push it out of the way when new ideas jump in. So here I am, waiting for my editor to finish looking over Gathering Mist, and looking ahead to my new project. And there's Epitaph, tapping me on the shoulder again. So I opened up the files. And cringed. I wrote this several years ago, and the writing is very sloppy. That means I have to reconstruct it, which makes me stop to wonder if its really worth the effort. But then something happened.

I was reading a book and the author used one of the phrases I looked up as a simile for Epitaph! Really?? A NYT Bestselling author used the same phrase. What are the odds? Well obviously her book was published and mine wasn't, so she gets dibs. The phrase? "Life by Normal Rockwell, screenplay by Stephen King." I have a young epitaph writer who people think is odd. She looks normal, even backward, and yet she has this skill that frightens people. Seemed like a perfect description. Until I read it in someone else's book!  So yeah, I scrambled to come up with another expression to use that probably works better. (Funny how that works!)

THEN, as I continued to wonder at the wisdom of trying to resurrect (no pun intended) this project, someone random posted something to my facebook page. A random quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley. So? you might ask? Well here's the thing. Epitaph has, well, epitaphs in it. One of them is a quote by Shelley.

So what's the big deal? Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But for an author sitting on the precipice between tearing up a story and losing it forever and trying to breathe life into her baby, it's a sign from the cosmos. A muse, tapping her on the shoulder.

So what am I working on? Epitaph. 

I have a cover for Gathering Mist, thanks to a stunning cover artist who has done great work for me! Chewing on my fingernails as I wait to hear from the editor on whether or not that one works. Still looking for an April release date (reminder: sign up for my newsletter to keep up to date on my new releases!).