The Sea Wife is really a story I've been trying to write since I was at university. I wrote a story then for a critique group about a doctor who finds a woman on the beach claiming to be a selkie. I left it pretty open-ended as to whether she really was, and the story was okay-ish received by the group. I liked it, but it was not a story to "do" anything with except make up part of my coursework.
Still, the selkie thing stuck with me and last year I attempted to re-write it, figuring that ten years on, I could put a different spin on it, that my writing skills would hopefully have improved since 2004, and that I could make this a story to "do" something with.
And then I got bored of it and shoved it away and started working on BLOOD WITCH and that ended very well.
But still, this story was knocking at my brain. I re-read it and realised I got bored of it because the plot I was developing was very similar to that of THE BEAST OF BIRCH HILL, and I think one should only write so many stories where "regular human meets shapeshifter, romance ensues." I decided if I was going to write The Sea Wife, I still needed to find that different spin. And now I think I have.
I'm about halfway through the first draft, and I have four days off work starting tomorrow. My goal is to have this story done, dusted, and submitted by next Wednesday so I can go back to Oath Breaker (I've left Lola in a rather sticky situation and it would be rude not to get her out of it). So no snippet, because it's a short piece and everything would be spoilery. Instead, I'm sharing a couple of tracks that have been helping me get The Sea Wife finally out of my head and into the world.
*Because of the sea theme, not because this story also has giant sharks in it. So far...
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