in the wee small hours

This morning I woke up at 4:25 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. My mind was spinning in all different directions. Balancing my checkbook: did I remember to record the electric bill I paid last week? My upcoming weekend: meeting my boyfriend’s mother, eek! The dog's heartworm medication: did I already give that to him this month? And so on.

4:25 is way too early to be awake. It’s what’s referred to in our house as “the crack of stupid”, as dawn was still a ways off (though the sky was starting to lighten - dawn comes pretty early here in the Pacific Northwest). And all the unproductive wandering my mind was doing was making it impossible to get back to sleep.

So in an effort to at least be semi-productive while lying there staring at the ceiling, I started thinking about the story I’ve been working on since October 2005.

In October 2005 I was sitting in a bar in San Francisco with Christine and our darling friend Shannon. It was our joint vacation, the only time the three of us would be able to get together for the year, as I was still living in Texas and they were both in New Jersey. We’d planned to go to New Orleans, but Hurricane Rita had just recently made visiting (and living in) New Orleans impossible, so at the last minute we changed course and headed to SF.

While Christine had visited the city before, I’d never been and neither had Shannon, so we were doing all sorts of touristy things (and other things, seeing as how we were there for Fleet Week, but that’s another story). So we’d traipsed up to Haight-Ashbury – just to say we had – and found this little bar. Traipsing is hard work, especially with all those hills down there, so we settled in with a round of cocktails. And I got to talking about this idea I had for a new book.

Paranormals aren’t my strong suit , but I had an idea to combine the basic elements of a paranormal with a contemporary romantic comedy, which is what I do best, into a story about a witch. A witch who has “issues” with her unique gifts, some rather unconventional ideas about how to best make use of them, and the trouble that ensues.

I remember scrounging for a pad of paper and a pen, bouncing ideas off both Christine and Shannon and incorporating their feedback into the notes I was making. I came out of that bar jazzed and raring to go.

And almost four years later I’m still not finished. Lest you think I’m a complete sloth I have started it. A few times, actually. But I always end up hating what I’ve done and tossing it to start over, and the result is that after four years I’ve got a handful of notes and nothing else.

But you know, that nearly two hours between 4:25 and my alarm going off at 6:10 might have jump started things. I’ll keep you posted.