Cannot. Wait.

I have been waiting for this book for years. YEARS, people. 😛

I heard about it two years ago (or was it more?) and then the release date was pushed back an entire year. But the date is finally coming and I’m pre-ordering this on Amazon with my gift card (when it comes in from the bank–love those points reward programs :)) It’s based off the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi.

A brief preview:

I love her books; her last series set in Scotland was based off the biblical story of Leah, Rachel and Jacob, and eventually, Dinah (Thorn in My Heart, Fair is the Rose, Whence Came a Prince, Grace in Thine Eyes).

Just look at the gorgeous covers:

How in the world did she pull off a story full of polygamous marriages and other such scandal in strict 18th century Scotland? A lot of research.  And I mean A LOT. The kind that would take many long hours.

I sure hope I’m able to make my stories’ worlds as vibrant in my own historicals 🙂

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Overactive Imagination

You know, I once said that I never get story ideas from dreams. I hardly ever remember my dreams and if I do, they generally make no sense at all.

Last night was an exception. 😛

I had a very clear dream–one that even continued after I woke up and fell back asleep again (which NEVER happens). It was another historical based story, but this one was actually based in the States–I’m assuming so anyway since everyone was speaking English and acting “American.” I know it was set in the frontier times, probably very early though based off the clothing in the dream. I can distinctly see the main character–a woman in her late 20s/early 30s or so–and her younger, prettier and a little more shallow younger sister, who was probably 18 or so. There was also the main character’s love interest–a military captain of some sort (that’s all I can remember!). I sense a budding romance story…

Of course this one has to wait until Lady of the Snow is done. That’s my focus now 🙂

Still, I recorded what I could remember about the dream and added a little more ,like the setting–gonna make it where I live for once–the Ohio Valley region, sometime in the post Revolutionary War era and right around the time Ohio became a state, (1790s-1810ish) .  This one will be pure historical romance.

I’m betting that dream came from the fact hubby and I are going to the Fair at New Boston this weekend, which is an event where everyone dresses up in frontier clothing from the late 1700s and there’s all sorts of period-based booths, from weaving, to gunsmithing, to woodworking, to authentic food. I’ve never been but once I saw the ad on TV I knew I had to go! And I’m taking the camera!

So that probably had a lot to do with it. It’d be something if this dream actually turned to a full fledged novel idea in the future.

A Writer’s Mind Never Stops

I should be working diligently to finish Promise of the Plum Blossom, but yesterday I was assaulted by another idea for a completely different historical fiction piece.

And I quite literally mean assaulted.

The story and the characters would just not quiet down until I wrote out the 3 page summary. I couldn’t focus on anything else until it was written–I completely became absorbed into that world. The voices silenced themselves to more of a hum or whisper, content that their story wouldn’t be forgotten or put away in the cluttered closets of my mind.

This unnamed work is another historical piece, but it’s more along the lines of historical romance as compared to what I’m writing now, where the romance is only a minor sidestory. It currently takes place right before, during, and after the American Revolution, though the war won’t be a huge part of it (at least not that I have planned).The idea wasn’t completely new; it was one that I had come up with a few years ago during college, but put aside as I started working Promise. The main story is fairly different from those old Word doc summaries, but the romance factor is still the main element and the characters are the same.

Obviously there’s a great deal that will probably change, as is always the case, but I have the basics/backbone there when I do get to go to it. And of course now I can focus back on my other novel without the other characters trying to butt in (at least for now). And now there’s something there to work on while I’m submitting Promise and/or waiting for that one to be published.

So, I’m curious–does this happen to many other writers out there? Does another story idea develop while in the midst of writing another?