You are tired, still cranky for the long tail of a bad case of the flu. It’s cold and the forecast says snow. You have been having strange dreams when you manage to sleep,and have been listening to Japanese music these last three months. You are short on money and have a ton of stuff to write in the hope that someone will pay you and you will have enough to pay the next mortgage installment.

So you spend the whole night up, drinking green mint tea and writing the first four thousand words of a new story. One that you might, it’s true, pitch to a publisher, but that’s the mother of all the long shots.

And you do not just go and start a new story. No, you start writing a new frigging novel. But wait, it gets better than that. You start writing the first novel in a series.

That’s crazy.

But, on the other hand, it is good to write just because the ideas are flowing, and not to answer a specific call,m make a specific sale. Just write a story and throw in all the cool stuff you’d like to see on the page.Maybe that’s the reason why you end up dog tired, but with the first 7000 words in the can.
Oh, sure, one third will have to go after you read the chapters later when you pick it up again, but if this will be a short novel, it could also be a very fast one.

And then?
And then I could either pitch it to a publisher that I know and that’s looking for pitches, or I could pool my resources, pay a cover, and go the indie way. Or I could serialize it. Or come to my senses, realize it’s a lost cause, and bury it deep, filing it as time wasted.
And yet, it seems to be shaping up nicely.

I’ll keep you posted.

Right now, I’m quite happy because I don’t only have the first two chapters, but I also have a title, and an opening quote.

The title will be

Parabellum Serenade

And the opening quote is

“There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all!”

Harlan Ellison

Enough of this. I’m going to catch some shut-eye.