Dragon of the Fen?

 

I'm beginning to think that the process of getting  new novel writing ideas is a bit like dating.  Ideas are a bit like men.  Some of them get introduced to you by other people and you make polite noises while thinking 'OMG!  I couldn't spend five minutes in his company without trying to kill myself!'

Some are handsome and pleasant to be with and kind and generally really nice.  And you think 'well... yes... maybe', and turn the idea over in your head for a little and find out that yes, there's potential there.  You could live with this idea for a time, and it wouldn't be too unpleasant.  It has depths, you could possibly get a novel out of it.  And yet that vital spark is missing.  You like the idea but you don't have any chemistry with it.

That's the situation I was in with my idea for the novel I was going to write to follow up False Colors.  I thought I could do a novel about an 18th Century Ascendancy family setting in Ireland, and the son falling in love with a young man of an ancient Gaelic family who is in one of the many proto-IRA movements of the time.

And it's a nice idea, but I can't quite see the glamour.

Some ideas are gorgeous young heartbreakers who promise to show you a good time, and then leave you in chapter 5 in a compromised position with a long slog ahead and no support.  Alas, Boys of Summer seems to be turning out that way.  I can't quite remember what I saw in it any more.  Which is not to say that I won't finish it, just that it's going to be more about duty than enjoyment.

And some ideas you refuse to meet for a long time because you know they're not your thing, and then you see them across the room and go 'ooh....!'  Your heartbeat picks up and you think 'ooh yes.  Glamour.  Enchantment.  Potential.  Chemistry.'

Trouble is, it's hard to tell at present whether this is The Real Thing, or just another heartbreaker.  But I have just had an idea for my Perseus option book, and I think it looks fine :)

So far they have 18th Century and 19th Century, so I thought, why don't I do 11th Century?  I could do something set during the Norman Invasion, with my heroes being part of Hereward the Wake's resistance movement in the fens.  An Anglo-Saxon warrior and a poet.  The countryside I currently live in and the time period I've reenacted for 17 years.  It's not as though I'm not already steeped in the research.  And it has a ready made villain in William the Bastard.  And it might not be able to have dragons in it, but it will have characters who believe in dragons - which is almost as good ;)

It's been a while since I've had an idea I liked as much at the start as this one.  I even have a title already! I think this might be one for the long term :)

What I blog about

I'm not sure that I know what half these things are.
( What I've been journaling about )