How are all my writer friends today? Here in the northeast, it’s winter and for me that means lots of time to sit quietly and write as fluffy snowflakes drift past my window. I’m blessed with time and a billion ideas, so when it snows, my mind blasts with the power of a blizzard. The dead of winter is when the heavy lifting really happens at my keyboard. I write in the summer too, but honestly, I tend to believe nice weather is for percolating ideas, research, and speculation.

Speculation. Oh, how I adore that word! Speculation is risky, dangerous, unproven, unstable. Not so good for investing your life savings, but what a great concept for blooming story ideas. Of course, I’m talking about wonderful, imaginative, powerful speculative fiction! According to Wikipedia, speculative fiction is a broad umbrella category of fiction that encompasses all genres that deliberately depart from realism or strictly imitating ordinary reality, instead presenting supernatural, futuristic, and other highly imaginative realms. Oh delicious! So exciting I can hardly sit still but then again, I am a lover of all things fantasy. I’m a fantasy writer, whether urban fantasy, dark fantasy, spiritual fantasy, or paranormal stories.

It took a while for me to realize exactly what I was writing. Years in fact. But with my newest work in progress, the definition of speculative fiction suddenly made more sense than ever. We see it all the time in stories, and even in family gossip. The typical grandmother who believes she sits with her dead husband every morning for tea. The night watchman who swears there’s a ghost in the building. The secretary who knows, really knows, there are aliens among us. The spectacular mix of boring realism with something inexplicable. I adore the unexpected, but I love it most in the vanilla reality of an everyday person.  

Take a soldier. A simple guy who understands his life, takes orders, follows them then sleeps and does it all again. Great guy, right? But what happens when he encounters the impossible. Cole Masters, a character in my book THE ORPHANS, book one of the Lost Race Series, shows all the signs of confusion and distress as a military mind deals with the weird. Of course, poor Cole was already aware of the strangeness of his personal reality, but his rude awakening to it shot electricity through this writer. It was as though he’d sat beside me and told me what happened.

I love speculative fiction in all its forms—the kid who didn’t know he was a wizard, the good southern girl who should have never befriended that vampire, and of course, the mystical circle of stones that swallowed a woman whole and sent her to a life 200 years in the past. A good story is a good story but in this writer’s opinion, it’s even better paired up with the strange and weird!

What do you write? Have you played with speculative fiction? How do you keep it in control and manage the story? Let’s have some fun and share ideas!

Deb’s Creative Brilliance Challenge: CHANGE – LOCATION. This challenge can really spark things. If a scene in your writing takes place in a kitchen, how does it change if that scene happens in the basement? Garage? A grocery store? Busy coffee shop? How does the shift in location change the dynamics of the scene and dialog?