Story Ideas

Does anyone else have trouble turning off their brain?

So, I see it as part blessing and part curse, but over the years I've discovered that I lack the ability to stop working on new story ideas. My brain is constantly turning over new story ideas. I walk down the street and I see the people working in their lawns, and then my brain begins the "what if" game. And considering that 90% of my stories tend to fall somewhere along the fantasy genre, you know my "what ifs" have got to be a little strange.

A man in his mid-30s is mowing his lawn, wearing a pair of typical khaki shorts and t-shirt. So, what if he looked up and saw a 3 foot tall, 6 foot long flame red "lizard" scurry across his lawn and start chopping down on his exquisite purple Asian lilies followed by a red-faced 9-year-old girl with tight blond curls in a frilly, lacy dress carrying a broken leash? And then my thoughts spiral out of control....

And then you're thinking, that's got to be great. You never have to worry about coming up with a new book idea. You've probably got plot idea coming out your ears.

Well, yeah, that's the blessing part. But the curse is the fact that time is limited. I have a day job that demands a very big chunk of my time so getting all of these strange book ideas down on "paper" can get very difficult. My greatest fear is not having enough time to get to all these wonderful ideas that I have. Time is always slipping away, sand tumbling in the hourglass.

To me, there is nothing worse than letting a good story idea waste away on the shelf as just a quickly scribbled note attached to a hope that I might someday have a chance to return to it.

As a bit of a side note, I feel like I should have a picture for my blog, but I don't currently have any pictures of myself that I particularly care for. And I don't yet have a picture of the cover of my new book, so I have borrowed an image that my younger brother created for a graphic design class he had in college. It's dark and creepy, and well, it just fits me.