Is is coincidental? ...or my inner clock??

Well, it was exactly two years since I last posted when I started writing this post.  I've re-read all my old posts and got more than a few chuckles out of them--especially from my 'Chicken Clucks' side.  It wasn't until I read the post written in 2017 that I realized that I had discussed my books.  At the time I wrote that one, I was working on the 13th book of the Stillwater series.

Well, I finished that 13th Stillwater book and have three other Stillwater books in progress.  I think I probably finished up that 13th book shortly after posting.  I've been stuck in various stages with the other three.  There's a funny story related to one of the three...

After doing Branch's book (the 13th), I decided I wanted to do something different.  I had been reading a lot of shifter romances and thought maybe I should give a try to that genre as a change of pace.  I started the book off with a bang and it had a really good hook to get things going.  I decided to make my hero a bear shifter, and in homage to my son, he's an IT and Security specialist running his own business.  Yes, he's also a former Army Ranger.  Give me a break!  You didn't expect one of my books to NOT contain a military type, did you?  Anyway, the heroine is an unsuspecting human escaping a particularly ugly situation.  Great start, right?

You do remember that I've indicated that I never know where my books are going till they get there, right?  Okay, so our hero and heroine take off across country masquerading as a biker dude and goth chick camping out.  They run into a bit a of a snag that gives our hero pause to consider their options.  Long story short?  Yup, they wind up hiding in Stillwater with some of his military buddies--the former SEAL team from the previous books.  Well, they're not actually hiding with his buddies.  They're actually in an ultra secure Cyber wing of a manufacturing plant.  Getting them there and safe was easy.  Getting myself out of the corner I may have painted myself into may not be as easy to navigate.  That one's stuck at 69 pages.

When I'm not trying to unstick myself from that one, I've also got two others floating...

I've got a character named Jim who was a rather minor character in one of the previous books that I decided to give his own book.  I've got the hero and, strangely, also the heroine scoped out already.  It, too, has a great hook to get things started.  It goes great guns for....ten pages...  I lost steam after I decided on a course of action for him.  I couldn't seem to get him off his duff to get moving.  It's been a while...

The last Stillwater book I've got cooking?  Well, I've got a main character in a number of the books whose very presence on the page brings delight.  He's comic relief, irreverence, and lovable all at the same time.  He's one of the members of the retired SEAL team.  I forget exactly how I came up with the plot line for the last book I'm working on.  I vaguely remember thinking about Ash one evening after re-reading one of my manuscripts.  You see, Ash and his wife had triplets...boys.  Ash has always felt badly that his adoptive parents never adopted any siblings for him.  Looking back, I'm sure he feels it was better that those siblings never existed considering how how his childhood was.  At any rate, I got to thinking...  What if...Ash had a brother show up in Stillwater to interview for a job.  What if...Ash was out of town, his brother walks into the diner and Ash's wife thinks he's home early and kisses him.  What if...she discovers quickly that the man she has just kissed isn't her husband, she pulls back and draws her sidearm.  Margo's a bit of a pistol, you understand...no pun intended.  The book is currently sitting at 44 pages.  What I related is just the first two pages of the manuscript.  I haven't painted myself into a corner with this one--I'm just undecided now who the hero is going to be.  You see, I haven't given you any further plot twists from the next 42 pages...  Once I decide on the hero I'll have to come up with a heroine.  I have a feeling she'll be easier than deciding on the hero.

Stillwater aside, I still have the fourth book of the crash survivors in progress.  I go back and pick at it every so often...as the mood strikes.  According to the file date, I haven't worked on it since July 1st.  It's stuck at 67 pages in.  

Sometimes I wonder if I'm storied out.  I mean, the ones I'm working on haven't gotten that far in.  I guess I got spoiled by all the books that flowed like water from my fingertips.  I did have one, long ago, that got stuck at 112 pages.  It sat that way for six months or more.  I was almost to the point of just dumping the file when I opened it up one day and it absolutely took off.  I learned a good lesson that day.  Never give up on your characters.  That stuck book?  It was the first Stillwater book.  I figure my WIP's will all take off one day.  I think my heart and brain have to be aligned for that to happen.  It falls, that way, into the same category as sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc.  You have to be in the mood to do it.

Some will suggest that I plot out my books by using outlines, etc.  Yeah...doesn't work for me.  I do better when I just let it flow.  I like being surprised by where things go.  Some of those surprises have turned out to be absolutely outstanding, too.