This morning began like most mornings do. I got up, fed kids, dressed kids, took kids to school while dancing in our seats to Miley Cyrus Party in the U.S.A, sang loudly and off key, drank my eggnog latte, listened to my kids fight over who gets to sit in the middle seats while we sit in car line (a form of hell designed to torture parents), you know basically an ordinary morning.
Then something happened that isn’t typical. Once the car was quiet (this means the kids were now safely in school) I had an epiphany of sorts. The novel I had just finished (my first fantasy YA novel that I happen to adore) ends with a set up for a sequel. I had been racking my brains trying to figure out how to take the antagonist into the sequel. Exactly how was I going to transform this black dark soul, that you can’t help but be enthralled by in the first novel, into the protagonist of my second novel?
That’s when the epiphany hit me. The novel I had finished last winter would require plastic surgery. It was a perfect story line for my dark soul who demanded a story of his own. Sure it is going to need to be reworked and remolded but the story line is there and it is perfect. I am so excited. I am fighting the urge to ditch all my other plans and sit in front of my Mac all day and write.
To the agents and publishers who told me that my non-fantasy YA novel needed a fantasy element to sell, well I have one better than the suggestion that I turn my guy into a vampire (nope, not kidding an editor suggested this). I’m turning him into something else just as dark and cold.
However, this means I will get little sleep the next few weeks, and my dishes and laundry will get neglected but then is that really important in the big scheme of things…I think not!