Cool advice for the day

Don't eat your dead relatives.
From Tess Gerritsen
(Check out her blog for the full text: http://www.tessgerritsen.com/blog/)

Okay, so I'm looking for an idea that excites both me and my agent, and I've got one that excites me (though I haven't shared it with said agent yet). I've only got a few pages written on it, so far, along with a few pages of notes, and it's already turning out to be one of those stories that surprises me. (Whaddaya mean, the hero's a priest? Who the hell is this woman and why does she need to be awakened?)

I love surprises in books -- more in reading than in writing. Oh, sure, it's great to be writing along and have a character say something unexpected or react in a way you hadn't planned for (especially since I never plot too rigidly). But I was two-thirds through a book once when I realized that the killer was someone totally different than I'd thought. And I couldn't change it at that stage in the book, not without rewriting the whole thing. And my editor already loved the original set-up and killer. So I had to write that book with the wrong killer, and although the readers never noticed, I'll always know that she was really the guilty one.

Talk about surprises . . . Numbers . . . season finale. Colby's been a bad guy all along????? I couldn't believe it. I was shocked! And betrayed! Exactly the things the writers wanted me to be. Wow. Double wow. I knew from the previews that there was a traitor, but I figured they were writing Megan off the show and it would be her (where has she been the past few episodes?). But Colby . . . omg.

That's one of the cool things about writing -- the surprises. When you're given every chance to figure out who the bad guy is or what the secret is, and it comes totally out of left field, and then after you think about it, you go, "Oh, yeah, there was this and this and that. I should've known."

Right now I'm totally in the land of surprises. I know practically nothing about this idea except that the guy who's just had terrific sex is a priest. And that the woman he's just had terrific sex is somewhere thousands of miles away and all she can say is, "Wake me up." And there's somebody or something terribly evil involved.

Oh, yeah, and I can't wait to find out.

I hope my agent feels the same way! Rachel9:05 PM