Update(s) – Time got away from me again. This past week I wanted to cover the beginning of April, but paid work happened and blogging didn’t, so I’m going to update the last two weeks today. That should put me back on schedule. I had myself a bit of a mini-block on the writing front, which led to a minor brush with the game addiction, but I’m back on track again for the time being. I’ll be getting a new assignment Monday, so we’ll see how long that lasts.
In more positive news, I’m back on the detective story again. Remember that recent blog about letting your work sit instead of just rushing it off to market? Here’s a case in point. I’m typing the longhand first draft onto the laptop, making changes as I go. In the current scene the PI’s just met an important character. She creeps up on him in a cemetery. This time around, though, she’s carrying a machete. She stole it from the bastard who executed her sister. All this was news to me. First time around I knew about the sister and that she was killed, but not how it was done. Or that this other character would wind up with the murder weapon. But now I’ve got some nifty symmetry: later on in the first draft version, another character decapitates a zombie with a machete. Now I know where it came from. Even better, it’s the zombie version of the murderer, so justice is served.
But that’s not all. As I was hashing out this scene, I realized I had a major plothole looming later on. In a couple of chapters the PI’s going to question the nephew of a writer who worked with the writer the PI’s looking for. The kid knows the writer’s real name and what he looks like. He should be suspicious of the PI from the moment they meet, for reasons I can’t disclose. In the current version, he wasn’t. If I leave the scene as is, by the end of the book people will be going, “Wait a minute. The kid knew A. Why didn’t he question X?” It’s the kind of mistake that makes readers throw a book across the room, editors reject manuscripts, and forces writers to start over with yet another pen name. Fortunately I’ve already figured out a way to overhaul the scene without giving too much away. It’s been two years since I wrote that scene and only this week that I realized its fatal flaw. This is why you should let your stories sit before you start revising, or submitting. We will sell no book before its time.
I was going to do a regular post at this point, but the update has run into overtime, so I’ll let it stand as is. I’ll save the other post for next week. Instead, here’s a good laugh: I’m now over a hundred days into this personal challenge and I still don’t have any followers. However, my daily views have been climbing. I was feeling good about that until I checked the stats and discovered over 90% of those views are coming from Hong Kong, with a recent spurt from mainland China. Great. My biggest audience is Asian bots. Then there’s a handful from the US of A, and occasionally some guy in Switzerland. Hey, I’ve hit the big time. Break out the champagne. Bots don’t even buy books, do they? No, that’s right, they just pirate them. Well, maybe the Swiss guy likes my writing. This one’s for you, Liam. See you all next week.
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