I love it

I’ve been working on a bit of a secret project for a couple of months now. As that winds down, I really wanted to return to a couple of my long-suffering manuscripts.

This morning, I opened Tracks of Infinity and started reading. I just wanted a refresh on the characters, world, and plot.

I spent most of the day and read the whole thing, as far as it exists. I love this story.

Set in modern day Seattle, it involves an aging television news reporter who wants something more. Her adult son, gets involved along with his new girlfriend.

Together, they start down the path of discovering something amazing. I used mystery boxes for the first time, and love how the tale unfolds.

Cody, the son, makes for a great character. His mom nags him to settle on a business degree, or possibly a doctor of audiology. This is because Cody’s true passion is for sound. He dreams of becoming a professional Foley artist.

This has been so much fun to write, because I have to focus on sounds, and using realistic things to suggest something that might be unrealistic. I’ve written some interesting characters in my day, but Cody has been a challenge and a joy to create.

I mentioned a couple of things that might not age well, and probably should have gotten this to market sooner for better impact. They don’t hurt the story at all, and are factual. These are things like Taylor Swift’s concert being readable on the Richter Scale in Seattle, or the Turkish earthquake. If it really bugs me, I could probably find a more recent earthquake to insert. (It doesn’t bug me that much.)

I gave the girlfriend character a lot of personality, and like the cutesy moments with Cody. Rick, the cameraman is a lot of fun, too.

What I’m getting at here is even though I parked this for a few months, I still love the story and can’t wait to share it with everyone. I don’t have a ton of fans left these days, but those who give me a chance seem to love my stories.

Some of this is my fault. We’ve pulled in our horns around here, and I cut out a lot of promo. Sometimes the choice is promo or groceries.

For those of you who are still with me, I think you’re going to love Tracks of Infinity.

With any luck, I’ll make a huge dent in it before I have to return to work.

A good writing day

I goofed off something horrible yesterday. I felt bad about wasting vacation time and not writing, but the combo of a late night and whatnot and my brain kind of deserved that.

I didn’t exactly rush this morning. I took time to pay the bills and deal with a couple of other issues before retreating to my room. I don’t always write in here, but when my wife is home and the dogs are all excited it’s a place to retreat.

Writing went well. It’s been a while since I dropped a mystery box in this story, and it is a doozie. Words were flowing well right up until I decided to knock off.

I didn’t do an exact count, but it’s above 2000 words today. That’s more like what I’m used to. If tomorrow is just as good it will have been a productive vacation.

Here I am blogging as light filters through Old What’s Her Face’s maple tree. The whole room is pinkish from that and it’s kind of unusual. I’m also munching on a Red lobster cheddar biscuit. We didn’t go out, these are the box from the store kind and they’re damned good.

My Story Empire group is going to meet online again in a few hours. That puts a damper on some things, because I’m supposed to do a little homework prior to our meeting. It’s my fault for living in the weirdest time zone.

I’ll log off and do my homework, but it’s been a great writing day. Hope anyone who got the holiday off is having a great time today.

The Slog…

It appears I’ve come to the messy middle of my solo title. As far as the trilogy goes, one could argue the entire second book is the middle, but we aren’t talking about that today.

The last time I worked on this project, I’d opened all the mystery boxes and wondered how I was going to wrap this up and still reach novel length.

The time away did me some good in this regard. I started with Jenny working on her documentary in the studio and things seemed to flow well. It feels like the middle in every way but one. I’m about 45,000 words into this baby. If my target is somewhere between 80-90K, I’m in pretty good shape.

I can keep the studio work interesting for a while. I also have Cody and Bai working at the university to help his mother build her video. Cody’s foley interests will help with sound effects and they intend to make a short video to include inside the larger project.

This isn’t enough to carry a story, and I know that. As long as it’s interesting, I’ve included enough mystery and tension to carry readers along.

Lisa Burton just found an entire case of mystery boxes in the basement of the writing cabin. A few of those ought to help me on the downhill side and I have some good ideas on how to deploy them.

I’m excited about this story, and I hope that bodes well for its eventual reception one day.

In other news, the big release day for Goodbye Old Paint is October 2nd. I will be a guest at Teri Polen’s Bad Moon Rising event to announce it to the world. I also have some freebies set up to support this book. I hope all of you will visit me there and help me spread the word. I intend to reblog that post, too. That way if you aren’t familiar with Teri, you can easily find her.

Teri’s event is my favorite of the entire year. One author per day, all Halloween themed, and plenty of fodder for your TBR piles. Make sure you check that out even if I’m not the author of the day.

Goodbye Old Paint is on pre-order right now, and if you’d like to be one of the cool kids, you can click on the cover in my sidebar. Go ahead, you know you want to.

Write some, research some, write some more

I decided to take today off. It was a cool chance to burn eight hours and get four days in a row. Like most days I hoped to really get ahead on my stories, and like most days recently, it didn’t quite work out that way.

I added a couple of paragraphs to the trilogy about Percy the Space Chimp, but the other one was calling to me more. That’s the beauty of working on two at a time. Percy is getting off to a slow start, but the other one is starting to move.

Jenny and her son, Cody, are now being followed by some shadowy people. They still have no idea what they’ve stumbled into, but they’ll start getting tidbits here and there.

This whole mystery box style seems determined to make me work for every word, but it’s starting to shape up. It’s been a while since I was really worried about word count, but that old demon is back. It feels like I could end it at 50K, but I don’t want that to happen.

Fortunately, the Muse keeps giving me more twists and turns to keep things flowing. This story is just going to make me work a little harder than some others.

I decided to take a little artistic license with a modified Apple AirTag. This will let Cody track the bad guys, but is unreliable enough to still have some tension. When a car parks, the tag will show where it is, but isn’t good enough to track someone in real time. This is beautiful, because of its unknown bits. It also relies upon Apple’s Bluetooth network, meaning it won’t work at all outside of town in all practicality.

This gives me the ability to play a little game of are the bad guys following us, or not. We’re out in the National Forest and we might not have a cell signal either, Bluetooth aside. I want this one to have a lot of tension between the opening of the mystery boxes.

Debated showing Cody stalking the baddie’s automobile, or just springing that it happened on Jenny for shock value. Spent too long on this part, but decided to show it instead, or maybe in part. I’ll know tomorrow when I actually write that section.

I also found a nondescript Chinese college student who does the AirTag hacking. I’m toying with the idea of making her more “descript.” Then if the bad guys find the tag, perhaps she can be in danger. Since she and Cody are the same age, and going to the same school, maybe I can make her a bit of a love interest. If she gets into a scary situation, maybe that would be an interesting issue. I feel a slight rewrite coming here. Might change everything about her in the morning. North Korean spy? Nah.

You might have guessed that I didn’t storyboard this one. I love a good storyboard, but find myself using more partial ones than a few years ago. Jenny’s tale might require me to make one to bring all the threads together before I wrap this story up.

Writing away

I’m up to 6900 words now. Might get a little more time tomorrow. I’m still getting used to these characters and trying to find a balance in the early going.

Basically, Jenny is a TV news woman who does local interest stories. She’s aging and her station wants to diversify and get younger at the same time. They promoted her to Assignments Editor, which is off-camera. Also makes room for a targeted replacement.

She would like to do hard news, but the deck is stacked against her. I know where this is all going, but am trying to find a balance. She’s a single mother of a college student who is also a major character. There are the workplace struggles. Plus a plot I want to get into.

I want the plot to unfold slowly, but am afraid if I don’t call it out in the first two pages I might bore some people. I want to challenge myself with a mystery-box style, but it’s obvious to me there’s going to be a learning curve. I’m trying to use some subtle imagery to call things out, but I don’t think it’s working too well. Things like an image on a kombucha bottle, a restaurant sign, and a few others.

I’m using a lot of workplace tension to try to keep the interest up. Jenny is trying to get her former cameraman used to her replacement. Struggling to find a schedule that keeps all the reporters busy, that kind of thing. She’s also haunting the basement to look through old files from various newspapers her conglomerate absorbed over the years. Maybe one of those will bring the kind of news she wants to dive into.

Finally, I sent Jenny on a day trip with her son. He’s failing Geology and has the opportunity to do some extra credit with a scintillator. This is basically radioactive prospecting. Her news research is starting to come together with his research paper.

I really should start my other story, but I’m dwelling on this for a while. It would probably help to get two going so I can bounce back and forth.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Might return to outer space with Percy the Space Chimp. Might stay where I am for a few more chapters.