Okay, so I am channeling Ghost a little with the title (if you haven’t seen the movie, Sam Wheat sings “I am Henry the VII, I am”.) But when I was thinking about the topic to write today, it popped into my head. Probably from watching the Emmy’s two nights ago and the in memoriam… I digress…

So even after only the few years I have been in the “biz” it still amazes me how topical well, topics are. How authors who don’t even know one another can come up with a similar story base at about the same time. I’m not so much talking trends, though once they do start hitting they become a trend (I mean look at how many zombie books are hitting the shelves these days).

I may have mentioned once (I can’t even remember now, because it’s been a while and I tend to forget things…) but there was a movie on that was so terribly similar to a book I wrote (that has not been finished or submitted anywhere–but has been read) that made me look up the details to see if I knew anyone associated with the production. I hadn’t seen it in it’s entirtirety at the time—had I seen it from the beginning I think I’d had have been even more so freaked as it was pretty dead on to mine–I watched it Monday.

Turns out, I must think a lot alike whoever did actually write the dern thing. The germ of the idea came from a similar place–it involves writers, you can only guess why I wrote about writers–write what you know. But like I said, I didn’t finish the book … I couldn’t shape it right.

I know that Ames has had a similiar experience where she was shopping around her book and we’d see a blurb that could have been for her book. Or the time I read two books back to back by two different publishers that was almost the EXACT story base/plot/even first name of the heriones (Raine–not a common name, right Raine)–it was a coincedence I read them like that but was uber-freaky just the same!

At the same time, you may see something that makes you smack your head and wonder why you didn’t think of it. Like the first time I saw Dexter–that show/idea is brilliant–I honestly thought the writer was crazy, you can’t make a serial killer simpathetic… Oh but how wrong I was.

It’s hard to know when you have a great idea if it’s not already going to be floating out there. What ideas (or a generalized version) did you have that somebody snatched up from you? What idea did you wish you got to first?