One of my struggles this summer – admittedly a happy one – is that I’m trying to decide what project to work on next.
I would very much like to get my first contemporary romance out there. Don’t get me wrong, I love paranormal romance, but I enjoy both. I also have several great ideas in the contemporary space, and have just been waiting until the Svatura series was finished and I was a few books in to the Shadowcat Nation series to get going.
However, I also have a great line of ghost-related paranormal romance stories in my head. It was a bit of a trend last year, though maybe not as much right now. But the ideas are still really fun, and I want to get them on paper soon!
I picked one of each to start prepping for, but here’s where I’m getting hung up… They keep trying to combine on me. My small-town romance wants to turn into my ghost story, and my ghost story wants to add many of the elements from my small-town romance. They’ve fallen in love with each other, and I just can’t separate true love!
What to do!?!?!
After several outline rewrites I’ve decided two things.
First, I WILL combine those two stories. The high concepts blend well together, and apparently my characters were trying to tell me that. So now my first ghost story will be set in a small Texas town where the new girl in town, who’s very mysterious and reclusive, just might be able to see the town sheriff’s departed wife. I have a few other ghost stories – still deciding if they’ll tie together or be stand-alones.
Second, I picked a different contemporary idea to work on – one that doesn’t lend itself so much to the paranormal side of things. And one I’m very excited about. A bit of a twist on the “she’s his maid” story line. Because she owns the maid-service company and is quite successful in her own right.
As I mentioned in my previous blog on my summer writing bucket list, I’m taking my summer “off” to spend it with my family. I’ll have to see how much of both of these I can get done. But at least the confusion of ideas trying to blend together is now figured out!
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