Short Thoughts: Studies in Gray

When I had to pick a color for the background of this post, I chose gray. It’s a wonderful color because it goes with many other colors, black(my personal favorite), red( when I’m feeling excitable) and white(when I am feeling pure…yeah right). But today it’s nothing but gray.

I sit and pound away at my keyboard, creating new ideas, trying to sell my current manuscripts to agents, and plotting my next story line. When I write, it’s a solitary effort even though I’ll have people yelling in the background asking the whereabouts of clean underwear, the DUN-DUN of Law and Order, and of course, the gentle thud as the Amazon driver throws a package marked “fragile” as it crash lands on my front porch. Movement is all around, yet there is this battle raging inside my brain.

What should my main character be doing right now? Is it logical to assume that she can make from her appointed destinations in the time I have allotted to commit the murder? Should she sleep with police officer A or B? Those are questions raised in another novel I have out in the slush piles, MOSTLY NORMAL.

In an urban fantasy novel out in the transom, DEATH WITH A CHASER: The Black Baron Series, I ponder the fate of mythical psychopomps who may be facing the dirt nap themselves. To kill or not to kill a banshee? And just when I think I have resolved the complexities of the universe, solved riddles in my own mind, my ADD kicks in. Suddenly, in between deciding who the main character should have sex with or whether the Black Baron should fight another immortal, a thought races in with a glance out a window: “Oh look! There’s a kitty outside.”

My tee shirt is gray and so are my workout clothes. So now I go mentally gray to neutralizes my exaggerated sublime conundrums. I locate the clean underwear for the kids, stop ogling Elliot Stabler, and get back to work. I keep pounding away, Querytracker, and Publisher’s Market Place, wondering where have I gone wrong…oh wait another stray cat wandered into the yard, just like the first kitty. And guess what? He’s a gray tabby.