Awesome or Lame (with Sauce)

When I was at Dave Farland's Death Camp last November, Mr. Farland gave me a few bits of advice. One of them was to make my book into a trilogy.

My first reaction was to laugh—out loud. Pointing at the same time would not have been amiss. Three books? THREE? Hah, I was having enough trouble coming up with an outline and ideas for one. Naturally I smiled, nodded and said I could probably come up with something. The duality going on in my head went something like this. “Is this guy crazy? There is no way in h#@* that I can do three books with this idea. Two maybe. Maybe. But not three. What do I look like, an idea machine?”

Well, because one should listen to New York Times Best Selling authors when they give you advice, I put it in the back of my mind and did not hit the eject button. Even though I was still laughing at the mere thought of a second book, and ROFL at the hint of a third.

Lucky for me, when I was doing some research on locations for my novel, I actually had a few good ideas. Saturday afternoon I got out a notebook (I still have to do brain storming on paper and with a pen. Not sure I'll ever break that habit.) and started to brainstorm. The top of the page says “What I have to work with”. The list is rather long. Not only that, some of it has potential to be very interesting.

Wow, how did that happen? It doesn't mean I can spit out an outline in a week. That may never happen for me, but I'm glad to say that the ideas are brewing and stewing and may just cook up into something good. Maybe even something awesome. Or lame sauce. That's always a possibility.