New ideas are too tempting

It's that moment when you look at the map you created and you think: I wonder who lives there.

It's that moment when you make a change in a manuscript and think: where will he go after this?

Then it becomes an avalanche:

• Why does he go there?
  
• Who lives there that needs him?
  
• What does he hope to achieve?
  
• What about the land he left behind, on the brink of war?
  
• Why would he leave when he's needed most?
  
• What if he doesn't?
  
• What if the other one in the different place comes to him?
  

I'm late with this week's post because I was on a deadline for edits on Warrior Pledge and trying to do them in the middle of a massive four-day headache. As I was editing and referring to the map I'd painted, my brain kept throwing all those questions up.

I have three books in various stages of completion, with plans to finish and submit them all by the end of the year.

So what do I do?

I start plotting a new story.

Of course.

What else do you do when you're time poor and under pressure, but start a new project.

So, to make up for being tardy this week, I thought I'd leave you with a teaser from the new book that has no name and no focus, just two characters who have to find their way to each other. The character's name will also change: it's just a place-card at the moment.

Temis draped himself over the crest of the volcano. His forelegs hung comfortably over the uppermost rock while his hindlegs rested sturdily on rocks, propping him in exactly the right position. His tail swished slowly side to side in the warm air rising from below and his wings twitched where they sat folded against the spines that ran down the center of his back. He rested his chin on the rock and stared at the sky.

The two moons, Makai and Nayeli, would come together this night and fight for supremacy. He knew Nayeli would win. She was larger and brighter and closer to the Isles than Makai could ever hope to be. But Makai never gave up. Every thousand years he’d try once more to be the most powerful and for a few seconds, it would seem like he could win. Then Nayeli would move in front of him, swallow him whole and spit him out the other side. Temis knew Makai would regain his strength but in those first seconds when Nayeli rejected him, he seemed ragged and dull, ready to concede defeat. He wouldn’t, though. By the next night he’d have moved farther from Nayeli and would be as bright and beautiful as he always was, his face a calming motley of cream and brown.

Shortly before the first time, his mother told him Makai would bring love to him. Then she’d flown north as was her destiny. He had waited but his mother never returned, and no one came for him. Decades later, he decided it must have been because he’d been too young. The next battle would be the one.

The second time Makai and Nayeli battled, Temis had sat eager and watchful, sure it would happen then. He was an adult, with wards of his own to watch over and protect. But again, Makai limped away and left no one to watch over Temis as he watched over his wards.

This would be the third battle Temis witnessed and he held no hope he would be granted love. He had traveled far in the intervening years, returning a mere fifty years before. There were no others of his kind left in the land. Even his mother had been reduced to blue ice in the wastelands far to the north. His destiny was to live, adored and worshiped by his wards as much as he was feared by them, but alone.

Always alone.