Ok, so I’ve been nursing a head cold for the past week or so, and I haven’t been able to blog or to do much else.  Sorry about that!  One thing that I have been doing is surfing the ‘net blindly in a cold-medicine-induced stupor and thinking (technically, that’s two things).  Anyway, I came up with a new idea for a novella, and I thought that it would be interesting to spell out the roundabout way I came up with the loose outline.

Someone in my Twitter stream said that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a great celebrity to follow because he tweets back at his fans.  So I started following him.  Not being a fan of WWE or a big fan of his movies, I didn’t know much about him, so of course, I Googled him and read all about his career and his divorce from his wife, which was most likely the result of infidelity on his part.  He and his wife had been together since college, and I started thinking about the kinds of things she probably had to put up with during the course of their 20+ year relationship.  Now, of course guys with regular jobs (and no jobs!) cheat on their women all the time, but the sheer visibility of men in the entertainment industry and their access to beautiful women–some of whom make it their mission to sleep with them–adds a different dynamic.  But what happens when an entertainer decides that he’s done with the groupies and actually wants to settle down and be faithful?  And what if he wants to do so with a “regular” woman?  Could she even trust a man with that kind of history?  I don’t think I could.

So I put together an outline for a novella that explores that dynamic.  A famous, notorious, ridiculously good-looking entertainer.  An intelligent, self-confident, independent woman who doesn’t buy the same, tired Hollywood lines that are thrown at her.  What would he have to say to convince her to trust him?  To convince her that he’s changed and is no longer interested in that girl-in-every-city lifestyle?  What would he have to do?  What kinds of prejudices would a woman have to overcome to date a man who, on the surface, is the complete opposite of the kind of man she sees herself with?

I don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but I’m going to have a fun time trying to find out.