we finally got some of the wet stuff over the weekend. Not enough to be a drought breaker (we’d actually need months and months of continual rain to break the drought) but at least enough to freshen and save all the dying gardens. (where I’m currently living, we’re on stage 4 restrictions. It basically means no outside water use what so ever–which is why I’m trying to get water tanks connected. I want to keep my garden alive!)

Anyway, the reason I’m mentioning the rain is the fact that the rain actually ended up giving me a story start over the weekend, which just goes to prove we writers can get ideas from the weirdest things. Let me set the scene: I’m driving up Pretty Sally, which is basically part of the Great Dividing Range, a group of mountains that ring Melbourne. The rain is bucketing down, and the clouds are sitting so low over Pretty Sally that it feels like I’m driving through white sheets. Now, most sane people would be giving their full attention to the rather dangerous road conditions, but I think we’ve already established that writers are not sane people 😉  So, of course, that little voice in the back of my mind (often called the muse, sometimes called the bitch), is like, how cool is this? We could write about this. It’d make a great scene….oh, ghosts would love this! No, ghosts are too obvious…maybe something else. Then, said little voice throws up one line…. I’ve always seen the reapers.

And I’m like, how cool is that for a first line? So, that is the official start for Dark Angels, the first of the Riley Jenson offshoot series, which will feature Risa as the heroine. I’ve now written a whole four paragraphs to go with that first line, and can’t wait to get into it. But I need to finish Bound to Shadows before I can do anything more–and I’ve got 155 pages to go. Damn. Not sure the muse can wait that long. She’s an impatient beast at times. lol