My writing process is pretty well esstablished – for me I have to start with my research, and the plot fits into the historic or mythic circumstances of the story I’m working with. For THE REVENGE OF AVALON there’s history, but there’s far more Arthurian myth we all recognize. Yesterday the writing of the novel began – and I ran right into the maw of “How am I going to start this book?!?” What came out of it was a major surprise – and was pretty ironic. I won’t deal with the spoiler, except to say that a Renaissance Fair should be full of people focused on history and not data science, and the chivalric code might dictate some fidelity to one’s GF/BF, instead of getting it on with someone else! Finally I get my start it off with sex moment! So much for chivalry!

I am not a morning person. And that makes it especially funny that I write early in the morning – that’s not because I want to write early in the morning, but because its easiest for me to get in a solid hour of writing time before the life of others in the household begins – I’m not focused in these writing sessions on figuring out where my story will go next – I have outlined my story already and I have that answer, I just need to drink my coffee (or tea, or coke) and get as many words on the page as possible. But every so often I have to admit it – a giant lightbulb goes off in my head and I realize that my story was set up to work a certain way from the very beginning, I just have to go back to my outline and add the new details.

I’m firmly convinced I regularly marinate that story outline in caffeine and every so often I pull a Zeus – my brain pops out a fully formed and functional idea! This is why I believe in caffeine in reasonable amounts!

A friend asked that question and found herself in the midst of a brainstorming session around the random title that we had made of the word we’d just been discussing – canolli (don’t ask)! By the end of the conversation I had the makings of a series of cozy mysteries featuring an amateur sleuth, a former Mob hitman running the local Italian eatery, and the potential for romance between the detective’s daughter and the Marshall watching over our mobster. She looked at me at the end and said – “It’s stone soup, isn’t it?”

It is, it so totally is. Keep throwing ideas in the pot and some mesh and some boil out until the full structure of a story is visible. In some ways this is the most fun part of what I do.