What if & Giveaway

What if and What next?

These are the questions that drive writers through their days and nights.

What if?

Any time I’m reading a magazine or newspaper, in the back of my mind I’m wondering what could happen or how I could mix it up. Then when I’m ready to hunt for new ideas, I’ll review links and ideas I’ve collected over time. Maybe the article doesn’t spark an idea right away, but I just proposed a story idea based on an article I saw in 2017. That thought with a few twists has been germinating for more than two years. Maybe now it will have its chance to become a book.

What if is a question authors should always be asking. And then we need to ask it over and over as we drill deeper into the plot and characters. What if she found a body? What if it was still warm? What if it was someone who looked just like her? What if she learns she had a twin she didn’t know about? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Then there’s what next?

I turned in Lethal Intent on February 1. Took a couple weeks to catch up on all of life that fell apart while I was in the deadline dash. While doing that, I ruminated on a few ideas I’d talked about with my editor. These were “I wonder if you’d be interested in a story like…?” conversations. Now I needed to expand them into a page each of three paragraphs that read like backcover copy. The heroines will still be lawyers in various stages of career. But the heroes are a bit of a blank slate. One may be a private investigator if Harper Collins even likes the idea, and I’ve tried to steer clear of law enforcement heroes. Another may be a US marshall assigned overseas because that’s what the story requires.

So today I have a question for you as I ruminate on what’s next as I wait to hear back on these ideas…

What types of heroes would you like to see? Do you have someone you’d nominate for a hero? Leave a comment via the rafflecopter entries. I’ve got a copy of Flight Risk I want to give away. It’s an ARC, but you’ll be able to read it before anyone else.

a Rafflecopter giveaway