Whining again. Please feel free to ignore.

Whenever things get a little stressful, as they happen to be at the moment, I start yearning to be some place fictional. Not all that surprising, I guess, considering I've spent the majority of my life with my nose buried in a book, either mine or someone else's. Just lately, though, as I've been working through the last of the Silver Spoon sequel, I find myself yearning to write a new Rennie story. I love that little town, Morrisville, which is based on this real little town. The real town, though, I think probably lacks the hot, former-rebel-turned-morally-upright sheriff, and probably also the very high body count that exists in Morrisville. Kind of a bummer about reality, I guess : )

But what I love about Rennie's world is that it's predictable in some way. It's a mystery series. Someone's dead, and you just know poor Rennie is going to stumble over the corpse. There will be quirky townspeople and the sheriff's utterly hateable and yet somehow strikingly pitiful (in that you can't help but feel sorry for her a little bit...or so I hope) wife will do something awful. But nothing quite awful enough to convince Sheriff Bristol that he'd be better off without her...at least not yet.

But the first book in that series isn't even published yet. Wait, scratch that, I haven't even finished revisions in it to try sending it out. I've been told it doesn't have enough of a "hook" to stand out in the crowded mystery market. That may be true, but that doesn't make me love it any less. I've got a draft of the second book written and ideas for at least book three and four. *sigh*

I was told (not by anyone here) that I should make it a paranormal story. It does have leanings that way anyway. Rennie is always finding dead bodies in Morrisville--not all of them, mind you, but more than the average citizen. She doesn't have any particular gift, other than bad luck and the inability to mind her own business. But it's not like an actual power or anything. It's just Rennie. That's how she is. Some people win the lotto. She finds dead bodies. Some people just have a knack for reading people's expressions. Rennie has the knack of knowing when an unanswered knock at the door means trouble instead of someone's just not home.

True, there may be some paranormal element involved, but I don't want to get into her having a "power." Because then you have to worry about what the power feels like, and how does it feel different when someone dies naturally versus being murdered, and how close in proximity does she have to be to be able to "sense" a death. Ugh. The whole first book came about because I needed a break from all that stuff in writing The Silver Spoon. I wanted to write a book set in this world, with this world's rules. Rennie is just a normal person with keen observation skills and a knack for finding trouble. Sort of like a grown-up Nancy Drew. Only not as annoying (Nancy was a little overconfident at times for someone who kept getting chloroformed and her head stuffed in a bag) and with a much hotter and forbidden love interest. Surely, I can't be the only person who wants to read something like that, right?!?

I want these stories to get out there. I do. I know that changing them might make them more marketable, but I think it would also change what I love about them. I don't even know why I'm worrying about it now. I've got to finish edits to about twenty more chapters in the sequel and then the mystery project is also needing some serious attention. I guess I'm thinking about it because I'm remembering how much I loved writing those books (not that I didn't love writing the others but this was pure, write-in-bed-with-the-alphasmart-late-into-the-night-trying-to- type-quietly-so-as-not-to-wake-my-husband-while-giggling-with-delight joy!) I write for myself first, of course, but it's hard to feel torn between the Rennie books and ideas I have that I think might sell well. Of course, it's times like these that I remember Ron Moore's advice, which was advice from some other guy that I can't remember, "Don't whore yourself." Which I take to mean, do what you love and don't sell out. But "don't whore yourself" sounds much snappier, right? : )

Done whining now. Thanks. : )