Time for an update since I haven't blogged here in exactly a month. May was not a good month for me, creative-wise. I had a lot of personal and family related things going on that made my creativity fly out the window. I'm hoping June will be better and get me to the end of my first draft of "Unexpected Inspiration". Goodness knows I didn't get any actual story written this month.

That said, I have been working on world-building a little, so writing is going on in my head and notes-notebook even if it's not on the actual novel pages this month. I'm still working to build my main country (it still needs a name!) and its classes (six so far!) and subcultures (hi, carnival peoples!), and all the little things that go into designing a country. So what do I do this week instead of that? Try to figure out how to bring this advanced technological society crashing down with the end result being mystical artifacts and leftover plumbing with all the people vanished. Maybe I should just start playing Sims again if I'm feeling this destructive. LOL!

My husband is a bad influence, though. We share this world and he says he doesn't want this technology there later. Fine, but I'm not going to be responsible for what happens to his people when they stumble across abandoned magic items. Or toilets. (Would they even recognize a toilet or would they think that's a mystical artifact, too?) And I'm clearing myself in advance of any responsibility of what might happen should his people wander north and find that my culture became nomadic and secretive and quite possibly have now made it into the age of steam. The penchant for crazy inventions never dilutes out of their bloodline.

So there you go. I have been culture-building, even if I've also been culture-destroying at the same time. This is leading me to wonder, however, what would happen if my husband does more writing with this world. Has it even been done before that two people write the same series but not the same books?

Anyway, my upcoming writing goals will be to finish "Unexpected Inspiration" as soon as I can, spend Camp NaNoWriMo in July working on "In the Cards" to try to get a finished first draft of that novel (gasp! I may be tackling that dreaded beast again!), then November's NaNoWriMo is shaping up to be either the book that directly follows "Unexpected Inspiration" or one that takes place twenty years later. I may end up having to flip a coin: one side is my fire elemental, the other side my mime. Ooo, actually, watching Drake and Grandeau duke this out could be entertaining in itself. Light verses shadow, loudmouth verses mute, dancer verses jester.

I think I'm getting slap happy. Time to open my 170 page story file and try to inch my way closer to "the end".

~Meri