A writer's brain is always in gear.

Current Project: Doctor in Petticoats
Status: page 93

I felt like a postal worker yesterday. Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor high winds kept me from returning home yesterday. As you all know I spent the weekend in Spokane at a writer's conference. (If you want to know more about the conference hop over to my personal blog) On the drive north I had beautiful blue skies, small clusters of traffic, my tunes, and the characters of the projects I'm working on cavorted around in my head giving some good scenes and dialogue that I jotted down on the pad beside me.

On the way back driving through the seasons, the area around me became settings. The first place that grabbed my attention was a small building built to resemble a barn,. It was faded red with white trim. The ground around it was barren but for a couple tumble weeds and the sparse snow flakes melting as they hit the packed dirt. The building sat on the outskirts of town. What caught my attention- the signage. "Holly's Dog Grooming" And my first thought, I bet Genene could make a heart warming story out of this forlorn looking building and what Holly had survived or gone through and how she would be revitalized by a wonderful hero.

Then heading south along Hwy 395 by Sprague Lake there were huge cracks and fissures in the earth that had me wondering what might possibly be hidden in the depths of those cracks and then Lisa and Eli popped into my head and what kind of stories would they would create from the gaping earth.

Along this route is Connell the home of a federal prison. And I thought about families and how having a father either imprisoned because he did break the law or by some fluke and was innocent and I thought , I bet Wavy could write a YA about a youth dealing with a wrongfully imprisoned father.

Then I crossed into Oregon and drove beside miles and miles of pulp paper trees alongside the road. You could look down the rows and some were endless tunnels while others were blocked by broken, toppled trunks. And Alice and Kendra came to mind. Their heroes trying to work their way through the endless tunnels looking for the villain hiding with the injured heroine.

A few miles farther, I crested a rise and before me, some spinning like jet propellers and some still as a new age piece of sculpture were the futuristic looking wind turbines. Something out of a story Karen or Debbie might write.

Heading down highway 97 through the Shaniko area, I looked across the rolling hills and gullies to a hill miles away and spotted a vehicle. What would an Indian have thought when he stood on that spot and looked across to see a string of white objects moving across the horizon?

So even while I battled the elements, my writerly mind did not shut off. And if any of you want to start up these tales- give me a call, I've started all the premises. ;)