As I’ve moved ever closer to the January date (which is now January 3, 2017) I’ve been trying to get set for writing success.

We bought a simple white Ikea desk and a lovely pink chair for my room. I think this is going to be my writing spot. It just feels right to me to be cozy in my bedroom while I write. There is something intimidating about a home office to me. I tried to set up our study as an office for me but I felt lonely and intimidated. I tried writing with Steve in our big multi-purpose room but I kept looking up trying to figure out whether he was judging how fast I typed or could see whether or not I was serious. In my own room, though, I am neither lonely nor self-conscious. I am in the right place to write. Added benefit: I can listen to music which turns out to be a boon to my creative process and gives me a pleasant rhythm to type to.

Because my job is sucking a huge amount of time, energy, and mindspace I find it too difficult to keep a story in my head. I trust that will change in January but until it does I’m outlining a few books to give me a place to start. Right now my tentative books are:

Juan Mendoza’s Fedex Ship Site – When it absolutely positively has to be dead overnight – A thriller focusing on an illegal/pirate ship site.

Cork Taint: An Oenophile Murder Mystery

Tea Cup Hunter: Set in a SF Universe, a rare teacup from ancient Earth opens up a frightening world and an impossible mission to a future archeologist.

Night Terrors: A woman  who volunteered for a sleep study finds herself trapped in a sleep lab full of people who have parasomnias that cause them to act out their violent erotic dreams.

Empty-Handed From the Ocean of Jewels: A modern fantasy novel – Hana, a cook at a Zen retreat center who hopes for enlightenment and inner peace, must keep the remnants of her family alive while rescuing members of her Zen monastery from assassins, and solving a twenty-year-old murder mystery. Along the way she finds that she must break each of the precepts.