After almost a month, people may wonder what happened. The short, unranting, calm response is that my laptop broke and I didn’t have the plot printed out. This experience has taught me to do two things. One is to buy a secondary laptop. The other is to learn to write using Sydney Sheldon’s method—dictate.
First, I actually bought a netbook and it is turning into my primary “laptop” writing tool. The digital recorder has become my primary writing tool. I wasn’t certain that I could “write” using it. Mostly, I hate my own voice. I have learned that the method does work for me and I can get Dark Medicine finished by the end of the year. Maybe I will have the rough draft finished by the end of October. Of course, I have to transcribe it after that and that could take the rest of the year.
Now that I have access to my scene woven plotline, things are moving much quicker and I am back into the flow of events. One of the things that excites me with this novel is not so much the number of plots and subplots, but how this gothic horror is not just a gothic horror. It has elements of the crime drama, science fiction, and fantasy genres interwoven in a realistic setting. I am glad I am writing in a time when the genre lines are being crossed.
In my last entry in this blog, I discussed possession by ghosts. In this one I will discuss psionics. Psionics, for those who do not know, is the scientific (and some say pseudo-scientific) of extra-sensory abilities. For example: empathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. Do these powers exist? Whither they do or not, as a writer I can play with them in the fictional universe. One of the things that I found fascinating in my early research is that people who do follow this believe a person is gifted (or cursed) with just one ability. Why is that? Why not be able to develop more than one ability? A person may not be able to develop all of them, but imagine if you could what it might be like to have more than one. In the universe of Dark Medicine, they exist and are wielded in almost as a wizard may wield his spells. They add a dimension to the characters, a dimension to the character conflicts, and places a sense of witch hunting in modern day.

Thank you for reading. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates on the novels, short stories, poems, and articles that I write. (Note the website will be updated next week, when I have my website backup and the software I use back with my laptop. *signs of frustration* )