This is one of the ideas I came up with when I was brainstorming for the non-Cavemen anthologies for 2006. I didn’t write a proposal for it because I wasn’t sure it could work, or if it could work, how. These are things you like to be sure of when you try to sell a story in advance. Not that I’ve ever sold a story in advance, but if I promise something I want to be sure I can deliver. So I didn’t send in a proposal, I just filed it away under “what a great idea, I must write this”. I did mention it to my editor, who made enthusiastic noises, so that’s encouraging.
I’ve got the setting, the general concept and the backstory. Today I sat down and wrote two pages. I think this whole story is going to surprise me. Already I have two characters in a behind-the-scenes power struggle that I never intended to be present in the story. I thought they were backstory. They disagree. Who knows what trouble they’ll cause? And the romance, I have no idea how it’s going to get to happily ever after.
I do know this is a story that grips me, I’m having fun, and I want to see where it goes. I’ve learned to trust that a story always knows where it wants to go whether I can see it ahead of time or not. I just start with what I know and see what happens next.
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