Kinda like Alien just without the chest-burstyness

So, I’m incubating a novel. This wasn’t an unplanned novel incubation, so the symptoms aren’t all that surprising. I knew the story I wanted to write next. I have worldbuilding ideas scribbled in a notebook and I met the main character and her dog a few months ago. But only recently, like in the past week or so, have I really noticed it start to grow

Tidying up, listening to music, and I start writing scenes in my head. I’m worldbuilding on post-it notes at work, so they end up “Call *author’s name* about … wait how do the ghosts kill people??” Only half listening to most conversations, the other part of my brain is working out how plot point A gets to plot point B.

Most telling, this time, has been the effect it’s having on my short stories. I only realised this yesterday. Suddenly I’m writing a lot about people who ‘create’ things. Artists, mostly, though in many different colours — from a craftsman making windchimes to a very strange woman with an obsession with dead things. And I realised this is all building to Mattie, my main character, who is an artist, in a way, and an engineer, in another. But very good at what she does, skilled and intelligent, even if she does things other people might find twisted and terrible and wrong. But whose to say they’re right, they don’t know what’s really going on…

See! It’s even taking over this blog post!

I might even have a title *whispers*