Story

So, now that I'm out there a bit, one question keeps coming back to me already--where do I come up with this stuff?

For me, it doesn't take much. My mind is set on overdrive. I got the idea for Electrify Me when I was bored at work one day and a storm was rolling in. Lightning flashed across the sky as I considered an exercise from the writing book currently on my slate. I thought, "I wish someone would tell me to go to Hell, so I could laugh and say it's too late, because I'm already there." The lightning was amber in color, and it started pouring rain. So I thought, "Yeah, I'll call her Amber Rayne. And she'll throw lightning bolts. That'd be pretty cool." She started out as a sullen super villain.

But villains are...well, villains, and I already had the ultimate villain for Betrayal. So I decided to make it a hero's journey. How do I take a down-on-her-luck college student and make her into a hero? How do I take someone who's known only emotional pain and give them a moral code and strong values deep inside?

It just took off from there, and 225 pages later, I had a story. along the way I wrote an outline and detailed the points I wanted to make in each chapter. It'd be cool to do x here, I'd think, or y here. I'm hesitant to say too much about it because this is the book I'm going to push and I think I will be able to pick up an agent with it. I've made some serious changes in my style and took a big leap in my ability to tell a story, thanks to WWG and the criticism I got from Margie and the rejection letter from Lucienne back in 2011. They were all right about what was wrong with my work.

Of course, I'm sure I'll get a bunch of rejections again. But all I need is one agent to love it and I'm good. It features a lot of things that are going to be hot for a while. So I have time, but not much. Back to work for me.

Happy writing, y'all.