Off the back burner and into the story oven

I'm super nosy, so I'm always asking folks what they're working on. I'm sure it's super annoying. How fortuitous, though, that this week our SFF Seven topic is "three stories I might have abandoned but would like to work on someday," which is pretty much permission to be as annoyingly nosy as possible, right!? Bliss for Miss Nosypants! So naturally I thought of Chandra Ryan, a writer who used to pen some of the awesomest sci-fi romance around, dropped out of the biz for a while because life, and has just started re-releasing old stuff and starting a brand new series about space dragon shifters (Golden: see pretty cover). She was kind enough to answer my questions, as follows:

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As an author, I’ve found that one of the most frequently asked questions I get is, “How do you come up with your ideas?” Which is a great question with, unfortunately, a decidedly boring answer, “They just come to me.” Granted, sometimes I hear a song that makes me experience an emotion and I decide I have to write something to capture that emotion (Bond Betrayed), sometimes I’m working through issues I have within my own life and I use the writing process in lieu of therapy (Ink in the Blood), or sometimes we’ve just had a horrible, horrible election that makes me so mad I want to throw a temper tantrum and break things (Golden) but most of the time an idea or character just pops into my head and I run with it.

A question I’ve never been asked, however, is, “What ideas have you had that you haven’t written yet?” At least, that was true until last week when a great friend and amazing author, Vivien Jackson, reached out to me about writing this blog. One simple question had me going through my mental notes. It really got the creative juices going and got me excited about some projects I’d put on the very, very back burner. So thank you!!

So which projects have I been dragging my feet on?

The easiest answer for me to come up with, the one that immediately popped into my head, was the third book in my Community series. I don’t even have a title for it. And that series has been out for, well, forever. Ink in the Blood, the first book in the series, was the first book I ever had published. It was the book that started it all. And I’ve known what the next book in the series should be for years. Isaac’s sister needs to have her story told. She was betrayed, kidnapped, and held hostage in Bond Betrayed, for Pete’s sake. If anybody deserves a happy ending, it’s her. I just haven’t been able to sit down and tell it, however.

The second project I thought of was a retelling of Rapunzel I’d dreamed up about two or three years ago. Only, instead of it being a fantasy setting, it would take place in space. Because everything is better in space. Stay with me here. So Rapunzel is the crown princess of a planet. This planet sees hair length as a social status. The longer your hair is, the more prestige a person has. Being crown princess, Rapunzel has the longest hair. Her tower is a metaphorical one. The walls she’s had to build around herself because she is royalty.

The third project was a horror romance where the heroine buys a book at a second hand store that is cursed. I don’t remember much about the plot, though. It was shortly after my mom gave me our family Bible. Which was weird because I’m not terribly religious, but my sister is. So I asked her why she gave the Bible to me and not my sister. As you’ve probably guessed by now, she said, “Your sister thinks it’s cursed because your father bought it.” So she gave it to me instead. Ummm… Thanks?

So there they are. Three of my projects that I hope to get written someday but haven’t as of yet!! Huge thank yous to The SFF Seven for having me on their blog today and thank you to everybody who stopped by.

If you wanted to check out all the things I’ve actually completed, feel free to stop by my website:  www.ChandraRyan.com 

And to find out about all the things I’m in the process of completing, come hang out with me in my reader’s group: Chandra's Clubhouse