Ideas Abound

One of the daunting things when starting to write a novel is all the potential ideas. They are not quite infinite but it sure seems that way!

Characters are a given. You're certainly going to have a man and a woman. I mean, it IS a romantic suspense novel, right! ;-) A big question, perhaps the fundamental question, is setting. Sure, you are going to have your characters do things, overcome obstacles, and find love (hopefully) at the end. But the setting goes a long way to determining what the characters do and what kinds of obstacles they will have to overcome. If the story is set in space, then you have all the SFanl elements with which to contend. If it is an Elizabethan drama, a whole different set of mores comes into play.

And that is what I'm grappling with today. If I set my story in the present day, I have one huge advantage: I live in the present day. I don't need to research. I can make my characters talk the way I talk, do things I do, and so on. But is that interesting? I don't know. I love history so there's a certain part of me that wants to do a historical romance. But I don't want to do another English countryside bodice ripper. If I do historical, I'll almost certainly set the story in America. The 1790s holds a certain amount of fascination for me. The late 1890s leading into the twentieth century is another period of interest.

But one thing is all but certain: my novel will contain an element of mystery. I love mysteries and find them quite interesting to read.

Stay tuned...

My First Blog!

Wow! I can't believe it. I'm actually a blogger. And I'm on cyberspace. Does anybody still use that term? I don't know. I still do. But then I'm behind on the blogging thing, too.

I want this blog to be a record of my efforts to write my first romantic suspense novel. I am an avid reader, enjoying mysteries, SF, mainstream, culinary writing, history, and almost anything else. I recently read J. D. Robb's first novel, Naked in Death, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have always wondered if I could write a book like that and now I'm going to try. We'll see how it goes.

Ciao!
LL