Good afternoon ,

When you read this I'll have arrived in Spain. 6:30am Madrid time. 12:30am DC time. Let the jet-lag commence!

But I won't complain. It's a blessing to see my husband's family in the summer and let my children experience his country first hand. It's a privilege to walk the ancient streets and eat the wonderful food and take a break from the politically burdened day-to-day of DC. It isn't a traveling around trip like my trip to London, but if you want to see Spain how a citizen of Spain sees the country, you can follow my Instagram. I'll be putting a lot into the stories there.

Speaking of stories...

Ideas for books and stories come all the time and from everywhere. There's one that's been sitting patiently in my head about a teenage girl living in something like an apocalyptic version of my husband's hometown, Valladolid, Spain. Where magic and illusion is used in order to survive.

I can see her, I have scenes of her with her father and walking through the streets hiding from vigilantes.

So why haven't I written the book yet? There's no STORY yet. Just a character and a setting. And lots of fun magic. But I need a story. I need her to want something, to need something, to be thrown into a situation, etc. And I'm not sure what that is. Of course, all the obvious things have already popped into my head and been discarded. Perhaps this summer in Spain I can take some time to dig out the story behind this girl. ...and give her a name!

I'm not the fastest writer, although I do write faster now than I used to. For the past six months, barring the days I work on short stories or I've been traveling, I have worked on my latest contemporary novel (for now called Outside the Ring. I'm actually really bad with titles. They take me forever to figure out...). And so my ideas get a bit backed up in my head. I keep a journal where I write ideas out, but in the end each story needs it's time to percolate and ferment and find it's voice.

Some stories are easier than others. My next historical fiction is already giving me fewer problems than the contemporary one. Maybe because it's a romance-ish and I know I want a happily ever after ending. Maybe because history restricts a story in a certain way (there were no cell phones or text so incidences that lead to misunderstandings are more believable, for example). Or perhaps stories are like children of the same family: each so different that they need completely different parenting. A fact that blows my mind as a mother of three.

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Are your children challenging your parenting mind? Take a break with a book!

Lol. That was a lame transition....

There's a ALL GENRE book sale! Check out the books here.

Happy reading!

Kat