I had an idea for a Haunted Series book last summer while I was working on the next Cid Garrett P.I. Series book. I wrote down the bare bones of it and put it in my book ideas file and proceeded to write the third book in the Cid Garret P.I. Series titled Tiny Houses. You would think it would stay and wait there patiently until called upon. Boy was I wrong.

The thing about muses is that they are untrainable, unreliable, and unexplainable. You can be writing a scene that you can taste, smell, see, and hear, and then it’s gone, wiped from your senses, leaving you with a head-sized dent in your desk. Or it can double-time you, and push a story at you while you’re writing another. And if you’re writing in the same or a similar world, it can be very difficult pulling the right information, let alone mood, from that mischievous muse.

Determined to stick to my personal schedule, I pushed it deeper into my mind vault and turned the key. I heard it banging around from time to time, but I was enjoying writing TH, so I ignored it. When I finished the first draft of Tiny Houses, I felt a little pressure build. By the time I was finished with my rewrite and had handed it over to my editor, the door of my mind vault was rattling. So I opened the door…

It rushed at me like a mob of Black Friday shoppers, trampling me to the ground and dragging me to my keyboard. It didn’t matter if it was four in the morning, my head was full of this wonderful story.

Writing fully immersed, riding the wave of inspiration, is a feeling I wish everyone could feel once. The story is before you, inside, and beside you. Behind me is a clever guy with an axe. “Murphy, damn it, I’m typing as fast as I can.” Above me is the ceiling – what did you expect, a Nephilim? This rich story entertained me while I wrote it. I cried when I finished it. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, as I don’t want to spoil it for you. All I will say is that I know more about the Haunted Series than I have ever known. Each PEEPs character is fully engaged, and it’s wonderful.

What is the aftermath of living in the muse for three solid weeks? The In basket on my desk was changed from a cute little tray to a coffin – I wonder if that’s a hint? My family is walking around with name tags on. I’m learning to have conversations that don’t start with Mia, Murphy, or Ted. My bass guitar needs dusting, and I have run out of clean clothes. If it weren’t for my family, I wouldn’t have eaten, changed my clothes, or bathed.

Is there a moral to this story? Not that I can think of, maybe because the muse just left me…