Fiction into Fact

I just started my fourth audio Janet Evanovich book. I'm helplessly addicted! I tried to throw in an Anne McCaffery book, but I've never been a huge fan of her non-Pern books, and in less than five minutes, I was back to Evanovich.

By far, Metro Girl and it's sequel, Motor Mouth were the most entertaining. Evanovich packs in a ridiculous amount of action. I'm in awe. And I'm getting ideas for my next novel. Not specific ideas yet, but whenever I think of something, I think, how can I make it even worse? Which is perfect for an author. There's been an unexpected side effect, though, where the things I've imagined for my character have started coming true for me...and this isn't the first time.

Okay, I just realized this requires further explanation, or else I seem crazy. (Or maybe I still will: you be the judge.) When I wrote Madison, I included a scene where her cat has to go to the vet's office. I picked a location of a vet near me, and really pictured the place to give the story verisimilitude. Later in the story, there's a point where she finds a few starved kittens, and she takes them to the same vet office. Within the year after I finished writing Madison, my own cat (the one I modeled Madison's cat after) had to be rushed to that particular vet...and I found some starved kittens and took them in to be cared for, too.

So my next novel might include a character whose very touch destroys electronic stuff. Only...since I've started imagining this story, my car battery died, I touched Cody's computer once, and it's been on the fritz, I short-circuited my microwave with a touch of my pointer finger, and my Roomba's battery and charger have been misbehaving.

I'm actually toying with the idea of writing two stories at once: one that will never sell about the perfect life of the character where she wins every contest she enters and every good thing possible is constantly happening to her, and the real one where lots of terrible, fun, adventurous stuff happens, just to balance out the fates of the universe.