It’s a little too quiet…

It would appear that I fell into some sort of space/time rupture there and now I’m just emerging.

Well, that’s not the case. I apparently wound up taking a little bit of a hiatus from the blogging world again. Sorry. It happens sometimes.

So why did I go dark this time? Well, a couple of reasons.

First of all, I wound up wrapping my The Lutheran Difference series. Remember those? Yeah, that kept me going for a while but, once I got done with the whole thing, I wasn’t sure what I should do on Mondays anymore. I used to post little devotional thoughts based on assigned Scripture readings, but I wasn’t sure if those were as helpful as I wanted them to be. So I’m open to suggestions as to what you might want to see on Mondays. Something spiritual, that’s about the only rule of thumb for me.

And then there’s the writing business. Things have been quiet there too. My latest WIP, Unmasked, is in the hands of my very capable agent. I’m waiting to hear from her and see what suggestions she might have for it. And then we’ll see who might be interested in a YA fantasy for the general market.

So what am I doing now? Well, that’s changed a bit from last time I updated all y’all. The last time I posted a writing update, I said that I was going to finally start working on a book series that had been simmering in the back of my mind for the last two or three years. In many ways, this was a frustrating project for me. Usually I come up with the plot first, then the characters, and the storyworld kind of fills in around them as I work. This time, though, I was going about things backwards. I’ve been crafting the storyworld first, and I have some thoughts on the characters. I just can’t figure out what these guys are going to do.

But I had figured enough was enough. I was going to squeeze a plot out of the twenty pages of notes that I had been compiling. And that was my intention up until a month ago.

And then I went to OYAN again.

I’ve written about OYAN in the past. The good folks who organize this homeschool writing conference asked me to return and corrupt teach the students again, this time talking about antagonists and villains. As part of my talk, I created a throwaway story idea, something that I could use to illustrate a point I was going to make. I even tried to punch it up by creating four silly hashtags:

But here’s the thing: the more I thought about this little story idea, the more I was intrigued by it. As I kept turning this idea over and over in my mind, the more details started to spill out. Maybe it was a result of being with these kids for a week, talking about writing and stories and all that. Maybe their enthusiasm for the craft was contagious. Whatever the case, I decided to jettison the troublesome storyworld and focus on my #gottabebae story (that’s not the title, just a working label for this story until I can come up with something better).

So what’s it about? Well, I won’t go into all the twists and turns of the plot. Instead, I’ll say this: it’s a retelling of the story of Esther set in a science fantasy world. And I’m excited about this idea. In the last month, I’ve been burning through my prewriting process and I’m hoping that, within a week or two, I can start putting actual words to paper.

So that’s where I’ve been. You can expect more Wordcount Wednesday posts as #gottabebae takes off. And I may ruminate about other stuff from time to time.

Oh, and I’m also heading out to Realm Makers for the first time ever. You might expect a post about that too at some point.