Good morning!
I thought it was time I updated everyone on what is going on in my writing. Once again I’m at a place that I didn’t expect. At the beginning of the year I decided that I was going to focus on three things this year:

• Getting “Gift from the Storm” finished and published.  √
• Writing and publishing Triple Creek Ranch – 5. √
• Editing, compiling and publishing a book of my Christmas stories.

After completing the first two on my list, I had high hopes for the last. And I even toyed with the idea of writing another Graham Quartet mystery. I actually started it, but then set it aside because I realized that my Friday Blog was going to run out of posts if I didn’t replenish my stock of short stories. That’s when it all started.

I’m not going to write any more books this year, I told myself. I have enough projects I need to work on. Do you ever give yourself a talking to about taking on too many projects?

 When I got stuck on a short story (I had planned it too much and was having trouble writing it), I decided to just write something else for a little while. Grabbing a calendar off the wall, I flipped through it until this picture caught my eye.

My description grew longer and the characters grew more interesting. My “description” turned into a short story, which in turn, turned into a longer short story and then grew to novella size. After reaching 50,000 words I reached the end. Whew! That wasn’t what I had been expecting. So much for no more novels this year.

But my story wasn’t over.

Three days after I had finished it, I took back my ending and started writing again. It’s been fun, exciting, challenging and rather strange.

Not only am I writing the book, but I’m already designing the cover and dividing the beginning into chapters. I feel so mixed up with this book. Usually I write the book. Then I do the layout and finally I get the cover designed. Have you ever tried doing all three at once? I would love to have this book out by Christmas, but we’ll have to see when it ends. Once I get the front cover finished, I’ll share it with you and let you read the synopsis. And yes, I will post at least two weeks of the beginning of this book on my Friday Blog before many weeks.

So much for my Christmas story collection. Maybe next year.

What about you? Have you ever had your writing plans changed suddenly without even realizing it? Do you usually get your cover created before or after your book is written?

And go ahead, try writing a description of this picture. Is it worth a thousand words? I’d love to read it!