In the picture of my writing nook, you can see a small stuffed animal by my computer. It made me realize that I’ve had writing props like that one for the past few books. Each one is unique to the book I’m working on at the moment. The stuffed animal is for Shay and Jeffrey’s story, a story targeted for Cobblestone Press’s Shifters line.

Shay has blonde hair and is a werepanther, so I was drawn to this stuffed animal when I saw it in the grocery store.

I had a similar prop when I wrote Battle. When I proposed the story, I had to write 1,000 words and a summary. The first scene shows my heroine, Mélanie, receiving a black rose from a business rival. You can imagine that I snatched up this fake flower when I saw it in the store.

When I wrote The Greatest Gift, I used an audio prop rather than a visual one. You can read more about that here.

Each prop sits on my desk as I work on the story. It’s a visual reminder of the story and the characters, just one more thing that gets me back into writing mode. I don’t know if I will have props for all of my stories now, but I definitely enjoy the ones I have.