Meanwhile, there’s no news yet on Neutral Zone and its status at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Delacorte Press Contents for a First Young Adult Novel. I can’t decide if I should be encouraged or not that I’ve heard nothing and it’s  mid-March. The rules say “Writers will be notified between January and April as submissions are evaluated by the editors.” The winner (if there is one) is announced “on or around April 30.” I’m trying to stick with the “no news is good news” mantra for now.

I’m still working on the Untitled Dream Project, writing some scenes and sketching out the main characters to see what I have there. I’ve also hatched an idea recently for a story set within a reality show… too early to tell what might come of that idea.

Since I finished Neutral Zone and the end of last month, I’ve been casting around for the next writing project. I know I want to write something forThe First Line this year (in fact I like a couple of this year’s sentences a lot). There’s also an idea floating around to write the prequel to Neutral Zone, an idea planted by TFL’s David.

Yesterday during the morning commute though I was attacked by an image monkey. The little critter brought with him an idea that I’ve been working over in my head ever since. This is a particularly agressive and generous monkey too. Not only did he show up unannounced flashing bits and pieces of story idea, he kept at it all day yesterday. I’ve got random bits of character personalities, a couple scenes setups, settings and more. I’m going to start getting this down on paper to see what I can actually make out of it. For now, it’s known as Untitled Dream Project (dreams play a central part of the plot… and that’s all I can say on that for now). Now the fun begins… seeing if it can become a living, breathing story.