I lost sleep

Okay, it’s been a big week. I was tired. All I wanted was to sleep. But at six a.m., which I know is morning to a lot of you but not for me, our cat jumped on our bed and wouldn’t stop licking my arm. HH and I are retired. We don’t have to wake to an alarm clock anymore, so most nights, we don’t start getting ready for bed until midnight or later. Then we fiddle around for half an hour before we finally pull up the blankets to go to sleep. If we’re lucky, we wake up at nine a.m.

But when a cat demands to be fed at six in the morning, and you crawl out of bed to make him happy, it’s really hard to go back to sleep. At least, it’s almost impossible if your brain turns on and you start thinking of new ideas to add to your book’s plot line. I told myself over and over again, “Go to sleep.” But my brain kept saying, “If you make Earl look guilty here, it will add a lot of tension.” And then, my mind didn’t quit. It went on to decide why Detective Carmichael would HAVE to think Earl was a suspect, and what Karnie would have to do to prove he was innocent. IF she was right, and he didn’t commit the murder. I mean, Earl was there when Farley Rawlins was stabbed to death in the alley, and he was there again when Charlotte Oates was shot. Wouldn’t YOU think he might be guilty?

It wasn’t until after eight that I finally drifted off to slumber. I’m THRILLED that my brain solved a difficult plot knot for me. I’m dragging because it solved it when I needed decent sleep. But like I said, I’m retired. And I can sleep in tomorrow. I hope. Unless my brain thinks of another twist that I didn’t put into my plot points. But then again, plot points are only ideas to keep my book on track. And if something new and better tugs at my subconscious, so much the better! There’s another day, another morning, Happy writing!

And the truth is, Farley Rawlins ticked off so many people, it will be a miracle to find the one person who killed him.