My Muse Has Returned

My muse came to visit me tonight while I was in Harrah’s Casino, which I thought was a stupid ass place for her to do so. I was suddenly hit with a revelation after sitting for hours watching my friend gamble her hard earned money away.
“Re-write the story”, my muse whispered into my ear.
Where the hell has she been and why did she come while I was in that god-forsaken place without a pen and pad? It’s Southern Decadence weekend in New Orleans. If you’re gay, a lesbian or bi this is the place to be this weekend. So there is no reason why my hot-blooded heterosexual ass needed to be involved in their fun. The only thing I could hope to achieve was to spot a couple that I could possibly use in my next M/M romance, but no such luck. The casino was overrun by geriatrics wasting their Social Security checks, drunks looking for the free drinks, and old men who for some reason seem to gravitate toward me when I’m there. Luckily they all kept their safe distance and left me alone.
I don’t like casinos but every once and a while I get suckered into stopping in there on the way home. The story is so long and complicated that I would not bore my fans with how I get trapped there. There is nothing for me to do but sit and watch a wheel go round and round while my friend ignores my pleas to take me home. I don’t think she’d respond if I keeled over and died. When you’re addicted, you’re addicted.
Anyway. I’ve been working on my latest WIP for nearly a month now and believe it or not I have written 309 handwritten pages. I think my muse was around when I created the premise but I think she snuck off on a vacation and put a fake muse in her place, thinking I wouldn’t know the difference. I’ve been suspecting that something was wrong with the story for a while. In fact, I spent about an hour talking to my son about it yesterday, boring the young man to death as writers often do non-writers or people who refuse to pick up a book. He’s a rapper and it surprised the heck out of me that I kept his attention that long. “My characters aren’t talking to me,” I told him. “They’re there moving around the pages but they aren’t saying anything.” I really began to notice that something was up when no one ended up in bed. Hmm, sixteen chapters and still no sex. This type of thing does not happen in erotic romance. Well, at least not in anything I have written.
“Okay tell me how to fix it”, I whispered back. I don’t think anyone was paying attention to me in the casino since most of them were half drunk.
“Take out some of those characters.”
I have to admit; I do have a lot of characters and had just introduced another in the last chapter. The story is set in Tokyo, Japan where there are millions of people. The problem is I think I included all of them in the first fifteen chapters. In the beginning I thought all of them were necessary but now I don’t think they are since some of them haven’t been heard from in ages while one of two the main characters have issues I’ve yet to address.
“The heroine is boring.”
I didn’t like that too much since I think she’s supposed to be me. The premise is to take a middle-aged woman and make her attracted to a man half her age. I had the obstacles written down but I think only one has appeared so far. The heroine starts off a goody-goody in the beginning but now she’s doing things way out the box. Okay, if she’s supposed to be me then she’s far from goody-goody. She would be more a border-line bad girl who has no problem expressing herself to the opposite sex. If two exceedingly handsome young men were vying for my attention the real me would not be hesitating the way this character has been doing.
“The other man in the story is better than the hero.”
I know this is true. I started falling for the other man the moment he opened his mouth, while the hero has trouble expressing his feelings and is afraid to make waves. Hmm, what to do? I know I could not have her going to bed with both of them. Or could I? Hell it’s my story. I can tell it any way I want to. No, it’s not a ménage, or is it? I think I should have worked out these questions long before chapter sixteen.
I’m pretty angry with my muse right about now because she left me hanging. I wonder if she went on a cruise or something, knowing that I’m afraid of the water and she wouldn’t be able to go if she’d told me about it.
“So what else is wrong with the story?”
“You have it set in Japan. Where the heck is the descriptive scenery? Your characters are inside of buildings. Get them outside.”
This is also true. Most of the scenes are written in a hotel or at a restaurant. Tokyo has wonderful historic places to see and visit. I guess I’ll be doing more research tomorrow.
“Your Japanese characters’ language sounds too American.”
“Yeah, I know. They’re so cool but the language is so wrong.” I don’t really think one of them would say, “I’ll kick your ass” or “Her body is banging.”
“So the only thing I had right is the title?”
“It will do,” my muse said sarcastically.
As you can tell that my muse has even bigger mental issues that I have.
“So the plan for tomorrow is to re-think this story and re-write it.”
“Exactly,” my muse said as she peeped over at the television to watch Family Guy.
“I need a perm and a haircut. You think I can get that done tomorrow.”
“Only after you began re-writing.”
I think my muse should have stayed missing for a while. The next thing I know she’ll have me multi-tasking novels again.