What's Next?

by Wendy Burke

What's next? Here I am again, wondering 'what's next?' when it comes to writing. 

Despite having a minimum of four dozen in-various-stages-of-completeness in my laptop, I still ask myself, 'What IS next?' 

 When I'm severely stuck, I usually email (read that whine to) my WBFF (that would be 'writing BFF') and beta reader, fellow Decadent Publishing writer, Deanna Wadsworth for a nudge. She's been flogging me for a good two years to finish something she likes to call 'Second Chance Dad,' but I'm thinking that title is already taken by some other author/publishing house and it's a bit too--the word escapes me--to use for this story. It has the title I gave it while watching Lake Michigan return again and again to the sugar-sand beaches of my hometown, Sheboygan, Wisconsin--'Wind Off the Lake.'   

 II've long wanted to use my hometown as more than just a passing setting (as in Wise Men Say), and in 'Wind Off the Lake' it works. Sheboygan is a great place to 'go home to,' and I've done that a lot in the past three years, helping my brother through a terrible illness. It never failed that every time I 'went home,' I came back with another story. 
 

Nice guy in high school!

 Sheboygan is a lovely, pleasant, simple town. Sure it's matured since my growing-up years of the 60s and 70s--it has its own problems with gangs and drugs. It pains me to see photos in the local paper of Kevlar-vested cops (good lookin' ones at that!) raiding a home near my old neighborhood. It saddens me my hometown needs a SWAT team. And, then there was the on-going 'scandal' with a former Mayor--yep, turned out he was a year behind me in high school. (Trust me, there's another work of fiction based, partially, on him as well!)

So, maybe 'Wind Off the Lake' is my next project--after all, it is 60-some-percent complete. I'd be happy and proud to show off my hometown through a little fictitious work, and maybe put that little burg on the map for something more than Mayor Bob discussing his sister-in-law's possible proclivities on a cell phone cam!

                When not playing with the people in her head, Wendy has a full time job behind the scenes in television, a part time job in radio and an even 'parter' time job trying to keep her house clean. She lives with her  cute chef husband and two fuzzy felines in the Great Lakes region of the Mid-West. For Me, Wendy's latest 1NightStand, and last in the series of six written with Deanna Wadsworth with overlapping characters, will be released in fall.