One-Page Wonders

I know I’m in loads of good company when I admit that I hope someday to write full time.  I have so many ideas for stories that it’s hard to pick just one to focus on. Just now I’m about to get back to editing with another round of notes on a finished WIP (editing round two). But I’ve still got my NaNo book from this year just begging to be finished.

I don’t usually write part of a book and walk away, but work and multiple projects has led me to do this a couple of times in the last few years. At one point in my fledgling career, about a year and a half ago, I walked into bookstores and heard what my kids were reading and decided that post-apocalyptic books were the way to go. Silly me. One thing you learn with your ear to the ground in book world as that when a trend seems to be at its height it’s actually already over. Book trends are like stars—by the time you can see the light from your little world, they’ve already gone supernova somewhere closer to the center of the universe.

So my post-apocalyptic tale is stuck somewhere around seven thousand words.

I’ve had a lot of other ideas over the years that I know I’ll probably never write. I’ve started a few of them and literally only wrote one page. I enjoyed making the title page for each, though, and finding the perfect epigraph. I love giving things titles. I wish I could title things as a full-time job.

Here is a list, in no particular order, of my one-page wonders: books or ideas for books that will never get past the clever epigraph character-naming stage. But they sure were fun to ponder for a bit.

1). Ruined: A Regency Romance

I wrote one page of this, and I’m not even sure I have it anymore. I’d read about two thousand Regencies and loved most of them. A part time teacher at my old school saw me with one and told me she’d written a few years before. They were out of print, but she brought me a copy. All of a sudden I was like, hey, regular people just like me write these!  I’ll write one!

The perfectly odd part about this scheme is that I possess an uncanny ability to sound, at any given moment, as though I in did fact dwell in the environs of Jane Austen’s era. I feel quite confident that my manner of expression would elicit approbation from all and sundry. It’s a strange skill, indeed, and at some point I shall endeavor to find a way to capitalize upon it.

Long story short, I found out they don’t even publish Regency books anymore. Alas!

2) Last Year’s Dead: Paranormal Romance (?)

The phrase paranormal romance didn’t exist as a thing when I wrote the first page of this maybe six or seven years ago. I realized around about paragraph three that I had no idea where to go with the idea. The inspiration for the not-quite-an-idea was the Celtic superstition about Samhain or Halloween: that the veil which separated the world of the living from the world of the dead was thinnest on that night. The MC would have lost her boyfriend in the past year, some dreadful accident, and she then she’d get mixed up with a group of would-be Wiccans while trying to contact him.

Bottom line: sort-of magic+ time travel/paranormal is also played out (thanks Twilight)=moving on

3) Secret Title: Roman a clef

Secret subject. This is for if I ever really do retire.

Hint: it’s a lot less glamorous than it may sound.

4) Linked—Paranormal Romance again? (what’s wrong with me? I promise this was way before Twilight!)

This one never got past the idea phase. The MC meets someone she has a telepathic connection with. From what I’m seeing on Twitter, a lot of people are tackling the mind-reader thing right now. To them I say, bon chance. A) sounds very confusing to write and B) if I’ve heard of it, the trend is probably over.

5) Speaking of mind-reading, I had this really interesting idea for something really cool with social media giving people a glimpse into the future. Which now already exists as The Future of Us.

It’s really too bad, because my title page kicked ass.

So now I wave a fond goodbye to these poor little book orphans, and continue searching the world for the next big idea. It’s all about the idea. And, of course, the timing (*shakes fist at Jay Asher*)