"The road to Hell is paved with works in progress."

 Philip Roth

Last year, before we moved house, I junked my old laptop. This was not something I did lightly as, despite the fact that it barely worked anymore, it had a lot of sentimental value for me. For one thing, it was the first big, expensive thing I ever bought for myself. For another, it represented a fair few years of writing. Some of it published, a lot of it not published, and a lot of that not even finished. Deciding which unfinished projects were worth transferring to the shiny new laptop was hard work. After all, some of those projects were unfinished for a good reason - they sucked. Did I really need to take up space on a new laptop with sub-par stories?

On the other hand, I love cannibalising stories. I often snatch descriptions, characters, or plot threads from abandoned projects to re-use in new ones. What didn't work in one project may be the missing puzzle piece in another, and that means I really dislike scrapping anything completely. So in the end I kept quite a few of them.

And this year I've finished two of them after all - BLOOD WITCH and THE SEA WIFE. Yay! That still leaves me with a few abandoned projects that I open up every now and then and tinker with. There's the story about the banshee halfling asked to investigate a rash of werewolf murders. And the one about the woman who discovers she's a reincarnated naga priestess. There's something about a retiring superheroine, a little thing about a barghest that's already inspired a plot thread in Oath Breaker, and a few other odds and ends. 

Sometimes I really want to write but I don't know what I want to write. I just start having vague, flitting thoughts like hey, I should write about gargoyles. That's generally when I'll open up an Abandoned Project - sometimes it's a good way to just shake something loose and refocus. Last night I was tinkering with the banshee story. I have a good feeling about that one...

...But that's for later.

Pssst...Amber Morgan has a new book out! It's got bikers, romance, and a snake-handling cult that may or may not have been inspired by both my obsession with Southern Gothic tropes and my beloved dopey king snake, Remic.