Infernal Interfering Ideas

Two weeks in a row with the blog posts. Can you stand it? LOL

So ... a funny thing happened on the way to making progress with An Elemental Spirit, and I'm not talking about the increase of day job work either. Quite frankly, that doesn't really interfere with the writing time at all. It just killed my mindless gaming time. Which is a good thing, trust me. :-)

No, what's interfering with An Elemental Spirit is ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. *sigh*

It's my own fault really. I have the base of operations for my heroes of the Ardraci series set aboard the firefighter class starship Valkyrie, which is a ship that's going to have its own trilogy eventually (one of which is written) and a couple of stand alone books (another one of which is written). Anyway, I started Spirit aboard the Valkyrie and before I knew what was happening I started writing a bunch of back story about the whole freaking history of the universe.

Now that in itself isn't a bad thing, but I checked a couple of facts in the trilogy, which takes place before the Ardraci series, and things don't quite line up. And the real problem is, the facts I came up for Spirit are better than the facts I had in the first Valkyrie book. So now I'm having to re-think the beginning of Spirit, and figuring out how to re-write the Valkyrie book to include these new ideas.

So while I'm pondering all these new ideas and what to do with them, I've gone back to work on Wishing Star 1. See, I'd left it temporarily 'cause I couldn't figure out how to keep my heroine, Eva, from finding out that that lion she's traveling with is a shapeshifter and yet still have them develop a relationship.

And then I got an idea.

They could meet in dreams. A dream like this one:

Eva was walking slowly along a beach. It was night and the moon was full, its light sparkling on the water lapping at the shore. The sand was cool, tickling her toes, which made her smile. A warm breeze played with her hair and there was a scent of flowers in the air.

The moonlight picked out another figure on the beach, some distance ahead. Though too far away to be more than just a vague shape, she knew instinctively that it was a man, just as she knew she had nothing to fear from him. He was waiting for her.

As she drew nearer she could see he was tall and lean, but gave the impression of great strength. His skin was sun bronzed and his hair was long and dark. There was some kind of tribal tattoo on his left pectoral, disappearing over his shoulder but the moonlight was behind him and it was indistinct. He wore nothing but a loin cloth and it was at that moment she realized she was dressed in a sarong that fell to mid-thigh.

She stopped walking when she reached him. He was unfamiliar, and yet she knew him. "Who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Aiden."

His voice was deep and smooth, and sent a shiver right through her.

"Is this a dream?"

"Of course it is."

"I know you ... somehow I know you. How is this possible?"

"Perhaps we knew each other in another lifetime, or another dream."

Eva reached up and touched his face. "You're my jungle lord."

"Yes," he said.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, a kiss that coursed through her like fire, leaving no part of her unscorched. She pressed closer, needing ... needing something but she couldn't say what.

Not bad for a first encounter, eh?

"To sleep, perchance to dream ..."

Through dreams Aiden can give her important information, like what plants are safe to eat, he can show her how to use the flint and steel she was given 'cause she has no clue what they're for, and, of course, they can grow closer. Which will make it all the more shocking when they meet in person.

Ideas.

You gotta love them. Even if they do interfere once in awhile. ;-)