WIP it, WIP it Good: Works in Progress

INTRODUCING WIP-IT WEDNESDAYS (Works in Progress)

I’m supposed to be working on the sequel to Snark and Circumstance, and I am, mostly. I’m revising and I have the first six chapters out to the most generous beta reader in Christendom. But since going to Scotland with my family, another story has been nagging at me, one that’s been poking me in the ribs, from the inside, so to speak, for years. I’d start it and it wouldn’t gel but it wouldn’t go away.

And then two weeks ago, I took a hike in the mist on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula of Scotland’s west coast, and saw this:

Walked right up to it, in fact. It’s Tioram (pronounced “Cheerum”) or Dorlin Castle, or the remains of it. Around the time of the ill-fated invasion of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the owner of the castle, realizing imminent defeat, decided to burn the whole thing down rather than have it fall in the hands of his enemies. Which is a cool story, to be sure, but not what my WIP is about. Still, I knew this what my heroine’s childhood home looks like now, and four hundred twenty-five years ago, when she left it to escape a witch hunt, it was still in its glory.

I had to get home and write about it.

On Monday, I wrote about how I develop characters by “listening” to them speak to me, and that’s how most of my stories start, as told by the voices within them. But this one was different. This came from an image in a dream: a girl kissing a boy through a chain link fence. I wasn’t sure who he was at the time, but I knew she was a four-hundred-year-old witch trapped in a seventeen-year-old’s body.

KInd of weird, right? And not at all like Snark, which is probably why I’ve been a little afraid of it, of being able to pull it off. But now I’ve got a title – A Time of Shadows – and a determination to see it through.

I’ll keep you posted, as I work on the WIP, offer writing tips on Mondays, and, come September, provide plot teasers as we count down to the release of Snark #3 Pride and Prep School in October. Thanks for coming along for the ride!