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With Outrageous Fortune in the query trenches hoping to catch the right agent’s eye I wanted to turn most of my creative focus to writing my next novel. When Fortune popped up and took over my brain quite unexpectedly I had been working on a large, expansive idea that mashed-up ghost stories with disaster movies and I sought to return to that idea. A prologue and a chapter one were written but the spark wasn’t there, and I couldn’t force it. I stopped work in drafting and thought that my troubles lay with trying to write sans outline but I found myself floundering to produce even that. There is a light, a fire of inspiration, that I need to get a ball rolling on a project but I just couldn’t find it.

This past Friday a stray thought meandered its way into my skull and it set me pondering. The thought was about how you can draw a parallel between unorganized religions that practice the technique of having a sin-eater and with the theology of Christianity where Christ and not a sacrificial goat or person removes sin from a community. The idea prompted research online and began forming into settings, characters and a bit of misdirection.

After a few hours of work over the weekend and yesterday at lunch I have the bones of a new horror novel, with my fires of creation are burning bright. The five-act structure that I love to utilize is coming together with plots running in parallel each with its own set of acts. Theme is not quite there but it’s close and for myself theme usually emerges organically as the story and the characters come together. I do have a working title, Haugland’s Claim and characters that are already beginning to have discussions amongst themselves in my noggin.

It’s good to be excited about a story again.