I’m a great sleeper. Really really good. Good like, if I made a resume of my great life achievements, the ability to sleep would be right up there at the top. I’m also really good at parallel parking, like freakishly good. But better at sleep. (Good to know your strengths, right?)
When Inspiration Strikes…
Recently, though I woke up in the middle of the night and was surprised not to find a child standing over me. That’s almost always the reason I wake up. I sat up. No strange noises, no barking or shouting or laughing or sneezing. No vomit. (Always a plus.. you parents know what I mean.)
I’d woken up with an idea. And it felt so alive that some half-asleep part of my brain thought I could get up and right the whole thing that night. Probably not exactly true, but the idea got me out of bed. And for an hour, I huddled on the closet floor in my bathrobe and took notes. I wrote down the snippets of what the characters said, what I saw when Liv Asher drove her old Ram truck with its Wyoming plates and its layers of dust into downtown Denver. I wrote how her dog, Ranger, paced uncomfortably along the truck’s bench seat, whining—perhaps at the unfamiliar sight of bright city lights against the dark sky. Then, I wrote down my ideas for the opening scene, a pregnant woman emerging from some sort of drugged sleep only to discover that she’s no longer pregnant. The baby is gone.
Oh God, she thought. I’ve lost the baby and it wasn’t even mine.
And with that, a new book is born….