Oh no, it's plot bunny time

Ah summer. How I adore you. Warm days, swimming at the lake, the sunshine, the plot bunnies....
Wait a second. No! Summer just got here...how can I be longing for November and Nano?!!

Yup. It's the inevitable time of year when my mind starts to wander and seize hold of some obscure piece of information and holds onto it with a vengeance. I start to weave and whittle a elaborate plot around it, pulling and distorting the characters to better suit the essence of the plot, discovering how to bend the laws of physics to make it possible and to create, and rewarding and torturing my characters.

The first year of Nano was built around a story (which could be true or not since my family is known for tall tales) that my uncle told me. It was about a time that he got mugged in a New York subway and they looked at his ID before backeding away apologizing profusely thinking he was related to a different person with the same last name who was a prominent gangster. Around this story, I built a new one, of a young woman taking control of a scattering mafia and crumbling political system in future New York City. Through her father's training, her uncle's support and guidence, and even love, she exposes corruption at the highest level, and gets her beloved city back on its feet.

Last year, for Nano I read an article about the likely hood of aliens by the esteemed Steven Hawking. What spawned from that article was 50,219 words of a crazy idea about enormous birdlike aliens, learning how to interact and understand another culture, and the problems caused by intolerance. Not hard to see the moral of that story.

This year, my inspiration is a notorious local criminal. Colton Harris-Moore, aka "The Barefoot Bandit". To be clear. I do not condone lawless actions, defiance of police officers, or endangerment of innocent bystanders. He is my inspiration this year for his ghost like ability to disappear when the heat is on and the (in my opinion) unfathomable following of supporters he gained on a two year, multi-county/state/country crime spree.

But November is still a long way off. So I found myself building an entire justice system that would fail to hold this uncatchable thief. And when I looked at it complete, then I began to think about how such a system would come into power. What would cause humans to allow themselves to be controlled with an iron fist. And with those thoughts in mind, yet another story emerged.

It looks like I have a solid foundation for a trilogy. The set up of a system, exposing the flaws of that system, and the fall of that system.

Currently in the first book, titled for now as "The Larkspur", I'm about 14,250 words in. And I have until October to reach 50k.

Now if only i could see my laptop screen while sitting in glorious direct sunlight.