It was a dark and stormy night.

Cliche-yes, but it leads me to the task at hand. While having dinner Friday night at my favorite restaurant- Macaroni Grill (the chicken and spinach and penne pasta were baked to perfection), I was having a conversation with my close friend. She shares my love of writing and reading. This led to a discussion of nanowrimo (national novel writing month). Check our their website at www.nanowrimo.org. Anyway, she's doing it this year and we were brainstorming ideas she could write about. Something clicked in me, maybe it was the proximity of the date to Halloween, buy I gasped and looked at her and said "Thanks, you just gave me another story idea."
Then I groaned for two reasons: 1. When do I write this (where on my list of books I'm writing should it fall? And 2. I know nothing about serial killers, or mapping out a murder mystery.

The answer to number one is easy-I have a list of writing projects (novels, short stories, screenplays) that have a timeline including a due date for each. I jot down the title, the estimated word count and then I divide the word count by the number of days (750 words per day divided by 65,000 words for example) then I know what date I need to be finished by.
I found out this summer I work better with a goal of X number of words per day, rather than say "write 2 hours today". So problem number 1 is solved.

Problem 2- serial killers. I would have to do the research, and do an extensive profile of my protagonist and antagonist (light and dark). This would include reading about serial killers and reading books already written in that vein.
I guess this is confession time. The research and the writing of this novel are going to scare me. Not as in I'm afraid to leave my home scared, but as in-give me nightmares. Even reading the book of Revelation scares me and I'm a believer!

There have been two authors who have given me nightmares- growing up it was Stephen King, and now Ted Dekker. I can't read them right before bed, and I can't read them at night with just my booklight on. Nope. Now I grew up reading Stephen King- he was one of mainstays in middle school. I read him along with the likes of Bradbury and Alan Dean Foster, when other kids were reading Judy Blume. I was a huge sci-fi and horror buff with a little Anne McAffrey's Dragon riders thrown in the mix. I love to get scared. I even wrote a short story in high school based on a scary dream I had about Frankenstein growing up. It scared my friends-the ones I let read it.
I want to write this but I'm gonna scare myself writing it. I will have to plan the research and the writing for daytime hours only.
Yeah, that should cure that, until I do what I always do-think about my work in progress while falling asleep. Guess I need to head out to walmart and get a couple of nightlights.