Delusions of Grandeur

As anyone who's read my work can tell you, I keep my characters and plots grounded in contemporary reality. Sharp prose-check. Engaging characterization-check. Sexy love scenes-BIG check. Flights of fancy....not so much. That is until I hit my latest bout of insomnia.

Getting only four hours of sleep every night leave one with much time to write. I've finished a few current projects, started edits on others so I figured it was time to dip into the NWIPF-- Neglected Work In Progress File. There I found a story that has been swimming around the goldfish bowl of my brain for nearly a year titled 'Hour of the Wolf.' Okay, it's more CJ's story than mine, but since we both occupy the same head and I don't have the strength to create a blog of her own, I figure it's okay to refer to the work as mine. (This multiple author personality disorder moment has been brought to you by Prozac). Sorry for the digression.

Anyhoo, I had only the broadest of strokes laid out for this tale of shape-shifting love:
Sophia came to Albemarle Sound for a little peace and quiet. Spending most of her alone, she's fascinated by a red wolf who's taken to visiting her nightly. When she meets Gabriel, a singularly handsome man in town during a shopping trip, he seems all too familiar. Is it Sophie's imagination or does this stranger possess a wolfish quality? Suddenly the wolf's visits cease and Gabriel disappears as well. Determined to find out what's going on, Sophia discovers a dark secret revealed in local folklore. Can she free the wolf and Gabriel from a curse that dates back to colonial days?

Could've been the 'singularly handsome man' part or the 'dark secret,' but something about the project intrigued me. I started to play around with an outline. A few hours later, the outline was finished and the project had gone from an idea for a short story to an epic novel complete with an underground society of American werewolves. I took the next step and broke the outline into scenes and chapters, then toiled away at character worksheets, backstories, geneology charts, and mapped out territories for the Lupine Alphas. See, I've even given my wolven folk a working nickname.

I should be all set to write....except for one thing....Am I out of my cotton-picking mind??? I've never created a fantasy world, I know nothing about writing a paranormal plotline, and the scale of the undertaking is freaking me out ever so slightly. An epic saga...did ya really have to start with an epic saga? I've got a bang up opening scene for the first chapter, but other than that, my fingers are frozen with anxiety. Have I finally gone off the deep end into delusions of grandeur? Stay tuned. The mental breakdown will be blog-a-cized.