To keep from checking Query Tracker every five seconds: I’ve been bouncing back and forth between editing book two of Navigator trilogy, The Star Before It Falls, and trying to put words on the page for The One With The List. 

TOWTL is a new rom-com I’m attempting, where an empty-nester finally gets to live a life separate from raising her children, moves to a new city, gets a new job. But to protect herself from intimacy -that she’s terrified of- she declares that she will only date if its one of the five celebrities from her ‘hall-pass list.’ Thinking obviously that this will protect her from ever having to get close to someone new. Then, in true rom-com fashion, she meets every single one of them. 

I’m struggling with BOTH. 

So, out of pure escapism and procrastination, I started playing in old files I have saved in my WRITING folder on Dropbox. 

Which brings me to my point: Back in 2021, I wrote perhaps 100,000 random words for a book that I dubbed The Unawakened. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason, no outline or beat sheet whatsoever. Just and idea. Reading through them today, it wasn’t bad. The idea or what I had written. Without that experience I don’t think I would have been able to sit down and mold The Sun Before it Rises – AND the Star Before it Falls – into anything remotely book shaped.

Below is one of the first things I remember writing. Before reading you should know that my heart has always lived in the paranormal/horror genre. (Where I got the gumption to write not one, but TWO, science-fiction dystopias… I have no idea.) The book is about five women from different corners of the world who find their power, but only once they’re all together. Also, there’s a man. (Lol)

I don’t want to be his princess, pretty and pristine.

I want to his queen, ripped and bleeding spread before him on an altar.

I want to taste the dirt and sweat upon his skin, grit on my tongue.

I want to run my fingers through his pelt and feel the rage of his skin under my palms.

I want to stand beside him on his throne, with a crown of thorns upon my brow. 

I don’t want a pretty life with pretty things.

I want something real that hurts. 

-Hazel

Etched upon a cold stone cell somewhere deep within the earth

Anyways. Thanks for walking down memory lane with me. Maybe we can start doing this weekly? 

-Back to work

Xx Terri

P.S. I went back and pulled some images from that Pinterest board. Enjoy.

Ellenburg

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