Still in the womb… that’s the way I describe all of the novels still waiting to be published. Let’s face it; being a novelist is like being a mother. You create, you give birth… and out comes one of your children. That’s exactly how I equate a novel. You give birth to it!
Let’s talk about all of these novels not yet published. I have different levels of gestation – novels that are in the pipeline and in various states of completion (26), novels that I worked on at some point but kind of lost the muse for so they sit in a limbo file (11), and then the outlines only that I’ve simply outlined from start to finish as an idea but haven’t even started them yet (147). That’s a whole lot of novels, folks. This doesn’t even include all of the novels I wrote long-hand on spiral notebooks in the days before computers. These will never be published. They were practice runs.But there are 16 of them. It’s kind of fun to go back and read them sometimes to see how far I’ve come.
Some of those novels in the pipeline are more precious to me than others – meaning that I really dig the heroes. Case and point: a time-travel novel called Echoes of Ancient Dreams. The hero is an Irishman, a college professor, who finds himself back in the dark ages of Ireland. His name is Conor da Derga. While teaching a class, he meets an American woman, a tourist, and the attraction between them is uncontrollable. We find out that Conor and the woman, named Destry, are actually the king and queen of an ancient Irish kingdom and they were cursed, and separated, but an evil wizard. Their curse is to wander the earth with no knowledge of each other and of the great love they shared. But when they meet by chance, that love is stronger than the curse, struggling to get out. Conor starts to figure this out and at one point when he’s coming on to Destry, he says some pretty amazingly sweet to her. She says, “how can you say these things to me? You don’t even know me.” His response is:
“I know enough,” he whispered, turning her face again and kissing her nose delicately. “What I don’t know, I can learn. What I can’t learn, I can feel.”
… how’s THAT for a romantic speech?
Needless to say, I’m pretty keen on Conor da Derga. His story should be out later this year. Plus, there are a lot more great heroes and heroines ready to be born from the corners of my mind. I promise you’re going to love them, both Medieval AND Contemporary. They’re my ‘kids’, and I’m a proud mother!
Happy reading!!
