Updates et al.

Working on "Treasure of Mongan Manor" this morning, still in the easy going stage before I hit the first "stuck place." Maybe I won't hit one this time around. The book has so many elements in it--psychics, geniuses, ghosts, treasure, greed, inheritance, puzzles, genealogy. I noticed a certain Gothic edge to it as well, which doesn't surprise me under the circumstances, mainly due to the setting in an old manor house.

I think my antagonist candidates are pretty solid now, each having a motive to justify their actions. I might even have decided on the murder victim. There are a couple more characters to introduce that will muddy the waters somewhat and provide more information, but Stefanie's husband is about to join in the "fun." (In quotes because fun for me to write generally means not much fun for my characters.)

Yesterday, I did some more thinking about a book trailer, focusing on "Dabblers." I wrote out a script, as suggested by the article I hit on, and then viewed some examples on YouTube. I think many of them were professionally produced, which makes me fear creating something that is instantly recognizable as the work of an amateur. Then again, one of the book trailers I saw at the Glen Ellyn BookFest a few weeks ago looked as though it could have been produced by the techniques I thought I would use. Well, there's one way to find out how well I can do the job. I am considering doing more of Stefanie's "sleep drawings" like the ones I made for the book's cover, and those would work well in the first part of the trailer, although I'll still need some other images as well. I can try putting something together and then try it out on some friends for their opinion.

Also, while writing this morning, Microsoft Word presented a new Gotcha. I typed the following sentence:

I stared after her, unsettled, wary, and wishing I was better equipped to figure it all out.

Word flagged "was" with a green underscore indicating a grammar error. I right clicked on it and took the suggested replacement of "were." After the change had been made, Word put the green underscore on "were" and suggested replacing it with "was." This is one of those grammar rules I struggle with because "I was" seems intuitively more correct than "I were," so I did some research. I found my answer on this web page. Quick and Dirty Tips. The answer is "were," and the reasons given are quite interesting.

My own quick and dirty tip for the day? Be leery of spelling and grammar checking by a computer program.