My characters all met at Chili’s last night, crowding around booths in their respective groups, sometimes mingling with characters from books or series outside of their own, and generally causing mayhem to my REM cycle.
At this point in my career I have 6 books out for sale, 6 books on my desktop in various states of incomplete, and several trunk novels that will never see the light of day. That made for a terribly large Chili’s reunion in my head and, since it amused me and I don’t mind sharing my crazy from time to time, I’ve opted to detail (and elaborate) on the dream.
First off, I don’t know why Chili’s was chosen. I rarely go there. 
Trenna and Nelek (Sedition series) were at the bar, eyeing me with varying degrees of contempt since their third book is still being edited. I avoided them as much as possible since I’m fairly certain Trenna would have kicked my butt if I’d come close enough.
Also at the bar stood Rachel, Jared, Cal and a gruesome witiko (Residual 
Haunting), which was awkward in its own right since the witiko is a nasty beast of a creature that should not have been allowed in the building. They seemed to be avoiding me since I’m pretty sure they’re all a little scared of how that story is going to end.
I sat at a booth with Megan, Sam, and Gunter (Persona) since that’s the book I’m currently focused on at present. I won’t tell you how they were treating me since it might be a dead giveaway as to the ending of that novel, but the booth across from us was full of Jorry, Seach, and Devon (Tapped series) and they were mostly
laughing amongst themselves.
I think that’s because I have them written into my writing schedule to begin work on Dead Weight in January.
Behind Jorry and Seach sat Alex Huntley (The Abolitionist) in all her Civil War Era glory. She had several people surrounding her but I couldn’t make them all out, which I attribute to the fact that I haven’t begun working on her story yet and don’t quite know who they are.
On the peripheries of the restaurant were tables full of characters from my completed novels and stories; Deviation, Witch-Born Series, Medusa and the like. Most of them looked satisfied and amused with all the tension going on in the center of the room.
There was one big table full of dead characters, which was sad and I thought about going over to visit with them but … I mean, if Trenna would have kicked my butt just for not being done with her third book yet, imagine what those guys would have done to me.
And then there were the tables full of vague shapes, almost apparitions, and at first glance I thought they might be more of my casualty count but after a bit I realized that these were the stories my subconscious was still working on, stories I hadn’t even considered yet. Percy Pru and Ashton Bainbridge (Primal) were somewhere in there and I may feel guilty about that because I keep meaning to sit down and write that noire/dragon/mystery.
Weirdly, the confusion of tables and characters actually made sense to me. I can see what’s coming 
next on my writing schedule (or what needs to come next) standing at the bar. I imagine once I’ve set Persona aside and started shopping it around, Trenna and Nelek will come to my booth and someone will take their place at the bar.
So … that’s my subconscious organizing my writing schedule in my sleep.
Using Chili’s.
I know I’m crazy, but hey … it works.
AJMaguire 