Another country heard from

I was driving to work this morning and passed a tennis shoe sitting in the middle of the lane on the highway. Immediately, a voice I've never heard before spoke in my brain. (Writing is like controlled schizophrenia - just go with it for a minute, Crickets.) She said, "The mother of the victim was cradling his shoe when I arrived on the scene." The speaker is a beat cop. She's a 30-something married mother of one. That's all I know, and I'm not pursuing it right now.

I rarely if ever write in the first person, and I'm certainly not going to start writing about Officer Whatzis right now. She bears no resemblance to a certain knight from Lyonesse, and he's got to have my attention right now. This may be filed under "projects that will never happen," along with several hundred other little mental jots and jiggles.

I know why my brain is doing this to me. I'm stalled with Knight of Sorrows because I'm relunctant to do the damage to my main characters that the plot requires. My brain, ever helpful, is supplying me with an out, like flashing tin foil in front of a bothersome magpie. "Ooh! Shiny!"

I will not be distracted by this little scrap of tin foil. I will, however, carry it back to my nest.