kaiaokekai , this is the dress I based Keelby's vintage party dress on.

I'm a little behind where I'd like to be but since I have the entire week off I hope to stay on my schedule. As of right now I have 7342 words and a couple of pages of handwritten notes I need to transcribe yet. "Shattered Images" is a very different story from what I usually write. As of write (ha! Now that's an appropriate typo), right now it's more of a walk through the memories of the main character, Keelby Ogden, after the death of her grandmother. It's all about interpersonal relationships and how a woman relates to her mother or her daughter or her grandmother. It will be interesting to see how much the story changes once Keelby slips into her grandmother's past. I still haven't decided how the switch will work and how the tone of the story will change once I'm writing it from two different perspectives instead of just one - and then there's the research I should probably do about the 1940's. Eek!

7342 / 50000 words. 15% done!

This year I was going to work on a previous unfinished work but then on Thursday morning I had a dream. In the dream the main character was investigating the disappearance of a woman 20 years prior. She was in the library of the college, doing research, when she was drawn to an old mirror. As she was looking in the mirror she realized that what was reflecting back at her was the library from twenty years prior. She sees the missing woman just as the woman looks into the mirror. She blinks and suddenly she's in the past and the woman is in the future. Then my alarm when off and woke me up.

I've made some changes to that basic idea but I think it'll shape up to be a pretty good novel. I'm using my challenge idea from last year and all my character names will be names of spammers from my e-mail. I already have three names picked out for my female characters. The woman from the present is Keelby Ogden. Her mother is Lorita Winter and her grandmother, and the woman she trades places with, is Evie Arleen.

The main premise of the novel is that after her grandmother's funeral, Keelby learns that her grandmother was listed as a missing person for several months in the 1940's when she was a college student. Keelby decides to investigate her grandmother's past, to the dismay of her mother, Lorita, who spent years resenting Evie for never being there for her. In the course of the investigation, Keelby ends up switching places with her grandmother through an antique mirror. Evie spends several months in the present, trying to fit in and learning about what the world will become, while Keelby goes into the past where she works fervently on trying to return to the present.

I'm going to try to outline the entire story before November 1st so I'll know what I'm writing toward. brightshadowsky and I came up with a lot of ideas and some serious character development today. Yay! Now I need a working title. Any ideas?