Chatterbox: Inkwell

Help!

I have a problem with starting projects before I finish my current one, so, less than halfway through TAoSS, I got a "brilliant" idea for a novel at approximately 10:00 pm last night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep.

First, don't worry, TAoSS readers. I'm NOT abandoning the story. This is more of a half-baked concept anyway, and it's going to need a LOT of planning before I can even consider starting.

The working title is "In Love With a Ghost," or ILWAG, but I'm probably going to change it before the end of the process becasue that's how I roll, man.

As follows is the rough summary via my notebook. I'd like a little feedback on the overall concept, if that's okay, and there's a couple things that I need help with.

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On an unassuming day in February, an 18-year-old girl by the name of Eloise Valencia disappears from her small New Jersey town. She takes with her a single leather suitcase, presumably empty, and leaves behind a bouquet of lilacs wrapped in gold paper.

Two years later, she remains missing. Her case, having garnered no further leads, fades out of public interest in favor of more recent, dramatic, news.

Her former best friend, Sarah Goldberg, is a struggling college student slogging her way through medical school, knee-deep in debt and scattered broken dreams. She's trying to carve out her place in the world, but no prospective employer takes a second look at a gum-chewing guttermouth.

Within her own tribulations, Sarah doesn't have that much thought to spare for the honey-eyed girl who leaped into her life freshman year of high school, then hopped back out again without so much as a goodbye. 

Meanwhile, Eloise's ex-boyfriend, Maxwell Wyatt, has somehow stumbled into a modeling career and become America's favorite hearthrob. He's beginning to learn that having his face everywhere is more a curse than a blessing, though, and that Hollywood tastes sour behind the stage lights.

He knows that the whitewashed, photoshopped, Max that appears on magazine covers isn't really him, but can't exactly figure out what is.

Sarah, going through her apartment to find things to sell for extra cash, stumbles on the suitcase that supposedly disappeared alongside Eloise. Its possession puts her into the position of prime suspect in a case long considered a dead end, and, upon discovering dozens of letters sewn into the lining of the travel bag, she finds herself rethinking everything she's ever been told about Eloise's disappearance.

It's her and a papparazzi-trailed Max in a race against time to figure out what really happened that dreary winter afternoon, where Eloise is, and if she's still alive. 

Even with the help with a tattoo-covered street artist, an optimistic journalist, a scatterbrained flower vendor and a one-armed forsenics expert, the task seems near impossible. But then again, if you've got enough chewing gum and grit, anything's doable.

... Right?

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So, what do you think? Interesting? Over-dramacized? Too cliche? Would you want to read this book? Put it down? Chuck it into a trash burner?

See, my main problem is that I have everything planned out... Except what actually happened to Eloise. This is the kind of thing that I need a solution for before the book begins, considering I'm going to need to drop clues about it as things progress. It's really a problem.

Also, does anyone have any information about the following? (Mind you, I probably won't use all of this information. I'm still in the character development phase.) 

a) How much/often one would wear a hijab. Does it vary? Are there situations where you really wouldn't wear one? Would you keep it on inside your house?

b) What it's like to lose a limb. What things does it make difficult that you wouldn't expect it to? Are prosthetics helpful or annoying? Is the amputation painful? For how long after would one experience phantom pains?

c) Deafness. Is it easier/harder to lip-read versus sign language? How often do you meet people who understand sign language if you use it? If you're not born deaf, do you "remember" what hearing is like? Can you hear them in your head? What's the most frustrating thing about deafness?

d) Synesthesia. Does anybody have smell-color? (If so, I have some questions for you!)

Google is being REALLY unhelpful with all this, giving me photos of sportscars instead of the information I need, as if it's any consolation. Sigh.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my long-windedness. Love ya. :P