It’s not always easy to write. Sometimes I sit down at the keyboard and the words don’t want to come. It’s not so much writer’s block as it is writer’s distraction—it can be hard as hell for me to focus on the story and add words. This usually happens because I’ve lost interest in the story for various reasons and I have to find something that’s going to catch my attention and hook me back in. Because if the writer isn’t interested in the story you can damn well guarantee that the reader isn’t going to be interested, either.

I think I ran into this with Shifter Woods: Claw because the story was pouring out of me at first, up until the point where I realized that if I went with the plot I had outlined I would need to turn it into a novel, not a novella, and Nic doesn’t have time for that. So I cut a fair amount of complexity out of the FMC, which reduced my interest in her to the point where I didn’t want to finish the story.

Not good. I clearly need to put some of that complexity back, even if it means I nudge into the 40K realm. I like Angela—she’s funny, smart, tired, lonely, and just wanted to catch a break for once. When she met a successful realtor in Chicago she thought she’d finally found someone nice … until she realized what his end game was, forcing her to run for her life. Now that she’s in MacComber she’s striking some lovely sparks off of Matt and I fully believe this is going to turn into a fun, hot story.

Maybe I need to come up with a steamier soundtrack for it (yes, I build a soundtrack for all of my stories). Using songs from Twister should act as a nice base…