Old Notes & Plots, New Year

So while I was cleaning the house — I do that every epoch or two, believe it or not — I found some index cards with plot notes. I’m not actually an index card plotter, but I did some detective work and determined, based on the debris strata and corresponding artifacts, that these were from a writers’ conference workshop from 2013, I think. We were supposed to invent a novel plot from scratch within the workshop.

Here’s the short summary I found:

This urban fantasy will take place in Puma Punku and ??? My protagonist Emi is an archaeologist and also a paranormal investigator. Her best friend Anne is a neuroscientist. Emi is drawn to Rory, a rock star. My antagonist is a ghost who is also a chef, who wants Emi to find the missing bodies from the unrecognized robbed graves of Puma Punku.

While there’s a certain Mad Libs quality to this (Emi is a friend of mine, Rory is probably Arthur Darvill, so those stand-in names are easily sourced, and where the heck did “chef” come from?!), there’s also a germ of neat idea in there. A ghost who wants an archaeologist to solve a grave-robbing? An unknown grave-robbing, so there’s no academic support? Sounds fun!

I have a lot of stories backed up and projects I really want to get to, both fiction and non-fiction. Some of my favorite or more urgent ones:

• the mythology mash-up I started for NaNoWriMo
• getting Shard & Shield out, either traditionally (I have a very cool offer that may not pan out) or independently
• a serial about a good-hearted but naive farm boy and a calculating sorceress-thief who team up to save the world, or at least their bit of it
• a non-fiction book again about dog training and behavior (which will apply to more than just dogs)
• a mystery series set along Route 66 (first working title, Get Your Corpse on Route 66)
• Kitsune-Bi, the next after Kitsune-Mochi

I’m hoping I can make significant progress in 2016. (And did you note that now you can nag nudge me with encouraging notes about projects in progress? Check out the progress bars at the bottom of the page.)

Happy New Year, everyone!