I’m excited to say I figured out some backstory and a plan for the United Shifter Force Christmas for the Christmas anthology I’m doing with a group of shifter authors. I’m not sure of the list. It keeps changing. But when I have it, I’ll share it. I think it’s coming out in December. More on that later.
I had to look up writing prompts for Christmas stories and I had it! So much fun. The thing about writing prompts is they’re so generic that anyone can used them and come up with a totally different story. I already have some backstory on the human homicide detective and I’ve started the story in different ways twice already, but now I have it. The first story didn’t have him. The second, he was working on a homicide. I write romantic suspense so writing them during a Christmas story is par for the course. But this time, I wanted to write something lighter. No murders this time. At least that’s what I say. What do I know? As I get into the story, a dead body might show up.
But for now, it’s more lighthearted and different fun. As I was brainstorming the hero and heroine I came up with a connection they’d had years earlier. I can’t plot out a book but at least I can set up the motivation and goals and occupations of the persons involved. The heroine also works at the United Shifter Force, but she’s a gray wolf.
Writing prompts are great because it gets me out of my own mindset and gives me ideas that I can twist around and use. Here were a couple. You can do all kinds of different things with a couple of prompts like this.
- A Christmas card arrives in the mail fifty years after it was delivered.
- The Christmas ornament is supposedly enchanted.
If I were writing a fantasy, the Christmas ornament one would be fun. But it could be anything: it shouldn’t have been there. It was tossed years ago. She saw it in a store, but nobody admits they bought it for her or how it got there. She swore something moved inside it when she was looking at it. Like a glimpse of a Christmas past–of snow and ice skating on a lake and then in a blink of an eye, all she can see is her own reflection. Just anything that gives the imagination a run for the money.
Maybe I can find one of these to use for the Christmas story I need to write for Red Wolf after Billionaire!
So I went to the grocery store yesterday morning first thing and they were still out of some things, and a lot of items had limit signs on them. This is all due to the ice storm, I think.
I turned in my marketing materials yesterday morning for White Wolf and I’m working on proofing Dreaming of the Wolf 10th anniversary book. It’s 410 pages with the new novella included, and I’m up to 86 pages so far. I did work on the print version of Saving the White Cougar’s cover also today. I wish I had gotten more done! I had dinner with the kids and then today is the baby shower for a couple of hours, but before that, I hope to get a lot more of Dreaming done.
I was working with my granddaughter on writing her numbers. It’s interesting how she always starts from top to bottom. I’m trying to teach her the “right” way because what if the teachers don’t like her writing the “wrong” way and mark her down? But the thing is, if she can draw her letters, and her alphabet, and they look great, what difference does it make?
I remember my son having trouble with math in school, and I was teaching him how to do some of it the way I learned to do and he was doing a great job and coming up with the right answers finally. But the teacher told him, no, you have to do it her way! What way matters if you can get the right answer? Right?
So I try to teach my granddaughter how to do her numbers and letters the way they want them done, but if I were queen? I would let her do it the way it works for her, if in doing so, she did a great job. When my son was young, the teacher told them to draw something for class and it was Thanksgiving, so the other kids all drew sailing ships. My son drew a Star Wars fighter plane.
Let the creativity flow and you never know what brilliance you might discover. He’s the one who has just created a game that he plans to release this summer. Though he tells me there’s a lot of math involved in game development, and guess what? He does just fine.
I have too much to do, too little time!
Have a great day!
Terry
“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”
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