Over the course of the last week, lightning has been striking daily. It started a week ago today. I went to the grocery store early Friday morning, and saw someone walking into the store who I thought I recognized. That was it. One quick strike, and the story developed aisle by aisle. Finally, Sunday afternoon, I decided that if nothing else, I needed to get the first few paragraphs out of my head.
Initially the story was set here, in Monument. By the time I reached two or three hundred words, the lightbulb turned on and I realized that I had the opening book of a series I've been planning to write for a couple years.
The series is set on the central coast of California, in Cambria and Paso Robles, and the area in-between the two. It's an area I know well enough that I can close my eyes and see it as clearly as if I was there. I've been going to Cambria for long weekends since I was seven years old. I used to go with my mom, and then friends, and then Doug.
A couple months before Doug and I started dating, I spent a weekend there with a friend. I distinctly remember sitting on a rock on Moonstone Beach, and deciding that marriage and kids just weren't the cards for me. I decided that weekend that I was okay with it. I liked who I was, I liked where I was in my journey, and I liked what I saw in my future.
Isn't it always that way? As soon as we decide we're okay with who we are, where we are, and where we're going, the universe decides it's time for an earthquake. Or it sends thunder and lightning in your direction. Within weeks lightning struck, and Doug and I had our first date. A few days later I was on my way back to Cambria and the Paso Robles area with a group of friends. We spent the weekend at the Paso Robles Wine Festival, and I spent most of my time wondering what would happen with Doug when I got home. The rest is history as they say. Three years later, when he and I were with the same group of friends at the same wine festival, we made the decision that Cambria should be the setting for our wedding. We got married a year later, wine festival weekend.
When we visited again two years ago, I had a lightning strike moment. A bunch of them. As we drove over Highway 46, crested the summit, and the view I've seen a thousand times but still takes my breath away opened before me, I knew I'd set a book series there. It used to be that every time I made that drive, I saw myself living there. I'd imagine a house on those hills, and know that one day, it would be mine. I was wrong, it isn't mine, the imaginary house belongs to the characters in my newest series.
There are three families, so far, in the series, with lots of unmarried adult kids, and countless scenarios floating around in my head about future books. When I named the first book, and the series, I kept that in mind. This is the Butler Ranch series, but there will definitely be a spinoff series, and that will be the one I planned to write (and named) two years ago.
The excitement is back, the enthusiasm is profound. I wake up ready to write, and I end my day writing more. I've written 9,000 words in five days. If I were able to keep that pace, I'd be finished with this book in under a month.
In a little over two weeks, I'll be back in California, but we don't have time to drive as far north as Cambria. Next year will be our twentieth anniversary, which I just mentioned to Doug, who is sitting here next to me.
"What should we do?" he asked. "Think we should go to Cambria?" Uh, yeah. Definitely. Wine festival weekend.
I wonder how many books in this series I'll write between now and then, because with a view like this . . . how could I possibly ever stop writing?
