Every so often I get one of those panic moments that is kind of hard to describe, mainly because the fear is completely groundless. But I get that flash of panic even so, and I got it the other day. But let me put this opening thought aside and talk about what occasionally transpires in my mind, and you’ll think I’m positively insane — – okay, a few of you already suspect that, so this won’t be much of a surprise.

Much like some people get an “ear worm” - a song with a melody they can’t seem to shake out of their mind for a time - I have a few “story worms” that I occasionally will contemplate. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a writer. I’ve tried writing, and I hate what I write. Why? It’s like listening to your own voice on a tape recorder and flinching. I’m just not patient enough to write enough to start getting good at it, and I haven’t tried for over a dozen years now. I suppose if I explained this all to a psychiatrist, she’d find it interesting that I ended up happily married to an author.

One of my “story worms” is a story that has rattled around in my brain for much longer than a dozen years, and even if I started writing, I know I’d never take a whack at writing this tale. I’ll occasionally contemplate it when I’m alone driving or some other solitary activity. I realized some time back that this “story” I think about actually doesn’t have that much real story in it. It’s just a story setting, a scenario. I’ve known from the very first time I starting setting this scenario, building this fictional world, that it’s derivative. I have no idea exactly which Sci-Fi novel I read that triggered me to start thinking it up.

And every so often, I’ll see a book premise that contains some elements in common with my fictional world, and I’ll get that flash of panic that someone is going to make a fortune from MY IDEA!! Yeah, like they read my mind when I took off my tinfoil hat. Yeah. Silly, I know. I hang my head in shame. But that flash of panic happens every time I read about a story with a similar theme.

And it happened just the other day. Let me tell you about it.

Alison and I had stopped to get some groceries from our local Kroger. We’re both in the store and as I pass by a spinner rack for hard cover bestseller ranked novels, I notice a face with a unique looking eye staring at me. Okay, interesting cover. I pick it up. Big thick book. Alison notices which book it is, and tells me that it’s #6 on the bestseller list, and I’ll be seeing more of that book real soon. As a matter of fact, the line for grocery checkout is long, and if she waited alone in the checkout line, would I go to the post office box to check the mailbox, that we were expecting a package, and I could be back before she finished checking out. Okay, so away I dashed. Sure enough, a eight pound box was indeed waiting for pickup, I grab it, and come back and wait in front of the Kroger in the car. I open the box. There, in the box, staring at me, were three eyes. Well, two eyes, and one underneath that. Three copies of that book with the eye staring out from the cover. Aha! The book that I’d be seeing more of, was seeing more of me! Cute, yes, but like I said, I was intrigued, so I turn to the book flap and start reading the book summary.

And there that panic flash was. Body possession. That’s the core part of this story I’ll never write! The idea that I could never make work someone else is making work for a gajillion dollars!

And Romancing The Blog is giving it away this week. I was holding the copies that RTB is giving away.

Our world has been invaded by an unseen enemy. Humans become hosts for these invaders, their minds taken over while their bodies remain intact and continue their lives apparently unchanged. Most of humanity has succumbed.

When Melanie, one of the few remaining “wild” humans, is THE HOST by Stephenie Meyercaptured, she is certain it is her end. Wanderer, the invading “soul” who has been given Melanie’s body, was warned about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the glut of senses, the too-vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn’t expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Link to the RTB giveaway of THE HOST
Link to the website for the book

Okay, so the story that makes up THE HOST isn’t my story. It’s not even close. Neither were any of the last panic flashes I had about body possession by foreign entities with evil intent. That story theme does seem to pop up now and again.

I did spend the next five minutes flipping through the book reading a few pages, and I did like what I read. I can understand the buying interest. It’s a romance first. That’s why it works as a book. Most of the time, body possession stories end up with entities that are fairly dispassionate “pod people” types (”force of nature” conflict) that is completely uninteresting in every story since the movie THE BIRDS came out and nailed the concept. With body possession AND a romance, it’s much more like an updated version of that episode of STAR TREK where we finally figure out the alien gas monster is in love with the human stuck on the planet, and takes possession of the hot chick who’s dying, and by possessing the dying hot chick, the alien in love saves the life of the hot girl AND gets her man. It’s corny, but as I always say, “Corny Works”.

Okay, so now you know general theme of the story I won’t write. What about the story that I will eventually write? Do I have one? Oh, you bet. And if you think I danced around the story details of my story I won’t write, you’re absolutely correct that I’ll not be divulging any scoop on the one I will write.

I just call it my “Galveston” book. I’ll write it one day. It’s actually got a story attached to it. Now I’m stuck on building out the characters. If only I knew someone that wrote books for a living, I could ask for help…

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a scene from Galveston that didn’t make it into my book, but makes for a cool get away image. What happens at the base of the Galveston seawall when nobody’s looking:

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