Author Problems

Today I was scrolling Facebook. It was a bad idea. Not because it's a) too distracting (it is. It fully is. Thanks Josh & Jase for traveling Michigan in the winter. I love all of the updates.), b) full of political stuff (it's not; my algorithm is carefully trained on bookish things), or c) people ... just people. No, no, the problem with my Facebook scrolling is that people post things about their own books. Or pages provide writing prompts.

Read that again... Writing PROMPTS.

I have a Work List. It is currently sitting at a very unhealthy 76 projects. I TRIMMED IT. (RIP to the 11 I took off, and thankfully do not remember.)

Now then, do you see where I'm going with this? Yes, I got 2 new story ideas from just scrolling FB.

Anyway, here they are...

Idea #1 that I got from reading an ad/excerpt of someone else's book (The Stars and Green Magics series by Novae Caelum involving feuding families and married princesses):

A sapphic/poly-ish fantasy romance where 3 kingdoms are trying to make peace and they decide that they'll marry the 2 female heirs to one another, but require each one to have a kid with the male heir of the third kingdom.

That's it. That's the idea. If anyone wants to write it, it's up for grabs. Send me the buy link when it's finished. Or, hell, send me the first draft and I'll development edit it for free. It sounds fun and dramatic at the same time, and I would like to see this in print. I'm just not going to be the one to write it, so I'm not even adding it to the Work List.

Idea #2 came from a writing prompt I saw on FB.

The prompt: second chance romance, but make one of them actively sabotage it, so that the romance is actually built in the moment and not nostalgia's castoffs (paraphrased, obviously)

The idea: two ppl used to date, then broke up for reasons (someone moved away or something). years later, the parents decide to arrange a marriage between them because they keep sabotaging any other relationship they're in. They reunite, but the one is still in sabotage mode, while the other actually falls back in love with them despite their bullshit.

Not gonna lie, I can totally see this as a movie starring the cast of Wedding Season. The whole cast. Change nothing except the finer points of the plot and this would make an awesome romantic comedy. (I'm talking about the movie on Netflix, not the show on Hulu. I didn't even know there was a show on Hulu til I had to remember the name for this movie.)

Therefore, someone versed in writing screenplays, please take this idea and run with it. I beg you. Also, invite me to the premier. I've always wanted to go to one; they look like great fun.

As if those aren't enough author problems for me, I made a little self-discovery: I write for a different era, not today's commercial fiction/fantasy.

What I mean by this is that I write what I know. What I know are thick, chonky books with lots of build-up, extranneous details, and characters that overthink. I grew up on these kinds of books. FFS, one of my favorite series of all time is Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, and it's not even because of the story but because of the tiny details of world building that saturate the entire landscape. I love, love, love those details and I try very hard to subtly work things into my books, because I want everyone to be as obsessed with the world I'm building as I am. That said, I often forget that today's market is geared more toward character interaction rather than plot or setting.

It's not that I can't/don't/won't write character-based stories. In fact, I'm actually rather good at it. But I'm the kind of reader that wants their story to have all the world-building ever. I want to be taken to an extraordinary place with a whole different lifestyle than I'm used to. I want to be absolutely transported, and I want to regret having to return to real life after having read a book. So, that's the goal I work toward as an author. I'm trying to transport you to something vastly different to the here and now.

That said, a lot of people are more interested in the who rather than the what and where or even why. Again, there's nothing wrong with this. It's just more difficult for me to write.

Now that I've discovered that about myself, however, I might be able to work on it enough to make my job/life easier. And maybe it will help with my pacing issues. (Or at least with the chonkiness of my books. Seriously, DK:TL is at 64k and we're not even close to the climax yet.) And now, I'm off to write. So far my goal of writing every day in 2026 is surviving January! (March will be the real test. More on that later...)