I’m totally going to Riff off of Raine’s Friday post!!! (because that is SOOOO much more fun than telling you about the three hours I spent at the fracking mall on Saturday or the hour I spent at Lowes picking out new fans for the house).

Anyway…..ideas are funny things. Funny FUNNY things. When Tanya handed me the idea for Forbidden she said, “What if you had a male prostitute who could….” (sorry)*. And I thought wow that’s great, I’m going to file it away — except the idea took hold and before I knew it, I had like 100 pages and a synopsis for a story that was unlike anything I’d ever written.

*Me being me, I’m just not one to shy away from ideas/characters and occupations that others might question. Case in point, (and I think I’ve actually mentioned this idea) I stayed up late one night and watched the Porn Video Awards show and woke up the next morning and wrote like 35 pages on a new idea (that included some old characters). My heroine is….yes….a porn star. But it’s not erotica :sup: Then there’s the girl who likes to have sex in men’s bathrooms. Yeah, that one’s definitely erotica but it’s *more* than just erotica.

Funny enough, I vomited up those pages and a synopsis for both of those stories in no time–Same for Hellbent (pages, synospis, blurbs for books 2-4, ideas for a spinoff series). But the main male character (of the porn star story), was a secondary in another story that I never could QUITE nail the synopsis for. And then there were the two YA’s….decent pages on one, but no solid synopsis, just a few pages on another but a solid synopsis.

I guess my point is, even after, I dunno, a couple three dozen manuscripts or so, I still don’t have a solid system for developing stories but whatever I’m doing it seems to work for me. Sometimes, its just there, solid as a rock and fully developed in a matter of days. Sometimes, I find myself actively thinking, “This is what I want to do.” (IE the second YA I mentioned –which I finally named Redemption Road–which, like Forbidden, is unlike anything I’ve ever written).

Our mothers might be day and night but Sissy Lee and I could have passed for twins–or since I was three years older, at least siblings. Thank goodness we were past the stage where our mama’s could dress us alike. A tradition I’d put an end to one Easter–I’d been ten and taken scissors to my mother had slaved over for days. I’d hacked away every last bit of lace and ribbon, and decimated the puffy sleeves.

Come Easter morning, Ailee had heard Mama screaming all the way to the other side of the lake that separated our houses, and she’d called the Sheriff thinking that maybe my daddy had died in the night or that I’d sleep-walked out a window or somesuch. He hadn’t, but he nearly died laughing over what I’d done. He was still laughing when the police showed up asking who’d been murdered.

Which was impossible, of course. In Paradise, Arkansas, folks either died of old age or boredom. Sissy would probably die of old age while I felt certain I’d be the one dying of boredom. Sometimes…sometimes I wished Daddy had taken me with him when he’d left.

So…ideas…do you cultivate or do they just grow like weeds???