Move somewhere with a big lot, they said. Get one with a lot of trees, they said. You won’t spend an entire day trying to blow the leaves into manageable piles so you can burn them later since the township you moved to doesn’t collect yard waste, they said. NOOOOOOooooo, your allergies will be just fine, they said.

For the record, the “they” in this scenario is me and I really love having all of the room. But the leaves did kick my ass yesterday. Part of the problem is that we haven’t had two days in row without at least a little bit of rain. It’s great for all of the growing things, but it does make it a pain to try and get rid of last year’s mulch. Not to mention making it a bit of a chore to pick up the puppy poop.

Too much? Sorry.

The puppies are being introduced to more and more wildlife. They have met some deer a couple of times. We had a nice encounter with a couple of ducks who were chilling in the pool. There were eight turkeys in the front yard this morning, but the puppies didn’t see them.

Obligatory puppy pictures follow. I know what you all came here for.

Listening To: Dogs snoring as they sit next to me on the couch.

Currently Reading: Rebecca Mahoney has included some really interesting vampire concepts in Thrall. I’m still enjoying it and the big ol’ Godzilla book.

Current Obsession: Nothing to obsessive lately. Just spending a lot of time working with the puppies and enjoying snuggles while they sleep.

We have been doing a lot of formatting over the past week. We are working hard to get our next couple of publications ready for print, but we have run into a couple of snags along the way. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do a simple import of the files into Vellum and just clean up any mistakes. Instead we’re importing everything one chapter at a time. Between that and the, um, unique bits of formatting for each of these projects it is taking longer than expected.

If you follow our socials, you know that I woke a few days ago with a new idea. In fact, I had dreamt pretty much the entire final scene of the book (and I say book because this feels like a long one). Not only that, but I had some great ideas for the main characters, how the plot would be structured, even a title.

This last one is quite rare for me as most things live on my hard drive under titles like “Urban Fantasy Idea,” “Haunted Thing,” or simple “WiP” (for Work in Progress).

If you saw the post which I am referencing, you also know that I spent the rest of the morning comparing the idea to other plots in the genre in question (this particular one is not horror related), other author’s characters, etc. This is a standard practice for me. I’ll often come up with an idea, only to realize that it may be very similar to something else.

This is really discouraging. I understand that there are only a certain number of basic plots (6, 7, 36, depending on which expert you listen to), and that every author brings their own experiences and imagination to any particular work. Even if following similar ideas, no two authors will write the same book. Still, you don’t want to write something that the majority of readers will pick up and say “Oh yeah, this is just like…”

Which is funny considering how many elevator pitches use the “It’s like blank meets blank” format.

I spent a chunk of that morning putting down the rough idea of a plot (definitely NOT outlining). The more I wrote, the more the idea became fleshed out in my head. I find that if I start writing about something, it allows the idea to grow in interesting ways. Things I may not have originally thought about pop up. Better ways of telling the story arise. Little bits of business which might work show their heads.

In this case, the writing out the idea process made me rethink one of the main characters. By the time I was done for the day I realized that it would be better if I reimagined him in a way that was not part of my original plan.

Yes, I am keeping this all extremely vague. I am quite superstitious when it comes to ideas. I often think that the more I share something, the less likely I am to work on it in a meaningful way. There are so many partially written stories which live on various hard drives. Most of them still hold the hope that I will come back to them. The problem with that is that if I start something and then put it aside for a long time (years in some instances), I’m not the same person who started it. This often leads to major revisions.

Which can be a good thing. There are plenty of things which have gone on to be published that followed this exact trajectory.

As for the one which popped into my head the other day? It’s sitting quietly in a folder titled “Notes and Ideas.” It’s not ready to be written yet. Or I’m not ready to write it yet. But someday.

Maybe.

We’ll see.