The Fun of It

Made excellent progress on "Mongan Manor" yesterday with Stefanie and Paul in the heat of the treasure hunt. Their search took them back to the tower of the title manor where there is supposed to be one or more clues to a family secret and/or buried treasure. They put their talents together and uncovered some major clues, but there is still one element missing. 

At the same time, as they get closer to solving the mystery, various members of the Manor's family are weighing in with information and subtly revealing which side they are on. As with any secret, there are those who want it revealed and those who want it to remain secret. It's a lot of motivations to juggle. 

Very soon, it will be time for a Big Scene, one which has been percolating in my imagination for weeks now and was at the heart of the inspiration for the book. I try to stop myself from looking at the word count on my computer screen as a guide to how far along I am in the story. By that measure, I am at about the half-way point. I know I shouldn't pay any attention to it. (Maybe MS Word will let me turn it off?) I always go back and do major edits after the first draft is done anyway. Still, since my work on the ms. comes is spurts, it's hard to know if I've got the pacing right or not. 

Hope to have word pretty soon on "Where Power Lies." I was talking with my husband the other night, and he was telling me some of what he read in the newspaper. I only look at the weather page usually. Anyway, some of the things he read about were ideas I incorporated into "Power" and its future setting. I don't put myself in the same visionary class as Arthur C. Clarke, but then, his predictions for 2001 and 2010 didn't totally hit the mark either.

Updates, and Some Observations

After a break over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I've gotten back to writing "Mongan Manor." Some history got laid down this morning, and I'll keep pressing on today.

I've commented before on the whole zombie craze that seems to dominate Hollywood's output these days, and it was a trailer for the movie "World War Z" that triggered a further observation about it, or at least a question. Beyond the fact that any sort of monster is, in my opinion, an easy villain in fiction. No background to develop, no motivation to explain, the concept itself is enough to tell a reader what side the character is on. Some traditional monsters--vampires, werewolves--have recently begun to straddle the line, sometimes becoming the actual heroes of a story with background and motives that people can embrace enough to make them good guys. But zombies--they're dead people reanimated that need to feed on human flesh. Mindless, soulless, a danger that must be destroyed.

But they were once people, weren't they? I don't watch zombie movies myself, but I'm sure they frequently use the device where a one-time good guy turns into a bad guy which must be obliterated in a desperate decision to be made by the remaining good guys. (Case in point, the movie "From Dusk Till Dawn," although it was vampires in that one. While violent and gory, it was raised to a higher level, I think, by comparing the bad guys in the first half--killers on the lam--with the vampires. There's evil, and then there's EVIL.) But the point I was getting at was that with zombies, a story is saying that we're our own enemies. Anyone you see can suddenly become evil and dangerous. Ordinary folks become the enemy in an instant and can therefore be killed. Anyone who can kill the zombies, those formerly ordinary folks, is a hero. So what does this say about the state of humanity? Has our hunger for control over our destinies reached a point that we feel righteous at seeing multitudes of enemies slaughtered? Violent computer games have come under fire as possibly influencing the isolated and disturbed individuals to act out the same actions in the real world. With a movie, you don't get to control the action as in a game, but you do get to root for the hero(es) out there slaughtering what amounts to other people who are different. While it may be simplistic to say that violent entertainments beget violence in real life, I still find it deeply disturbing that the masses actually enjoy watching it.  

The Holidays Are Upon Us

Been so-o-o busy lately, something had to give, and I guess it's daily blog posts that gave. I figured that as long as I was producing new pages of "Mongan Manor," I should concentrate on that within the time I have to work on writing each day.

Got past the stuck places and events are now unfolding at a furious pace. Almost at the turning-point scene that's been in my head for a while, but with a few revisions to the original form. Still waiting to see how the whole thing comes out.

I've also found my thoughts drifting to future projects. There are many of them:

• Finish third book in Jack Watson series. I stopped before because (1) the timing of it was off, (2) I wasn't sure where to go with it next, and (3) the inspiration for "Mongan Manor" was tempting me.
• Revisit manuscript of my first and second completed-but-not-published novels, both science fiction. Oh, do they ever need work . . .
• Another paranormal idea that's been shuffling around in my brain. This one would be really different--a male victim who gets involved in an investigation with a female cop and a paranormal investigator (also female) in an uneasy alliance against a new sort of creature. Still very much in the formative stages.
• Return to an unfinished manuscript from a few years ago, a medical thriller.  

But I'm trying to stay focused here and do one thing at a time. Maybe if I could clone myself...

Stuck Again

Well, not really stuck. Now that an important member of the "Mongan Manor" family has been introduced, I've been wrestling with what she will initially reveal that will lead to solving the mystery of the treasure. Previously, I was still working out her character, but I think I've got that down now--nearly 100 years old, but still sly and a bit mischievous. She and Stefanie have just met, and I need to work out what get said in this first passage.

As usual, I want to get past this point and on to the more exciting stuff that's coming up. I suspect there are some authors who could work out of sequence and get to "the good stuff" but I can never quite bring myself to do that, no matter how eager I am to write the big, dramatic scenes. Surprising--to anyone but me--is the fact that I still don't know how the story ends! Really. No clue. But experience has shown me that the inspiration will come at the proper time, and the scenes will practically write themselves.

A Different Sort of Antagonist

I'm at a point in "Mongan Manor" where an antagonist, of sorts, is coming onstage for the first time. I realized that even though I have mentioned her repeatedly in the first part of the book, I had little idea about her personality. Now, before her first active scene, I need to define her better. This person started the trouble at the heart of the story while unaware of what she was starting. Do I make her innocently mischievous or deviously manipulative? Should she be failing in her mental faculties since she's almost a century old or be sharp and cunning? Nice or nasty?

And how important is it to determine her motivations? And should those motives be complicated or simple? At this point, I have to decide how important they are to the plot. Regardless of why this lady stirred up her family with the notion of hidden treasure, the goal is to find it and settle all the disputes. Her motives will have to fit her personality and vice versa. What keeps coming into my mind about her is a character portrayed in a movie that's a favorite of mine, mainly pertaining to her appearance and manner, but that's just the surface.

I have some other activities planned for the day, things which occupy the hands while letting the mind roam.

Catching Up

Haven't had much time to devote to anything writing related over the last few days as I have been trying to catch up on a number of other things. With the possibility of a full-time job on the horizon, I may have less in days to come, and my blog posts may become far less regular. The time I have available for writing activities will probably be devoted to writing first rather than social media.

Work will continue on "Mongan Manor" which is now picking up pace toward a turning point event.

Point of View Can Be Tricky

Got through a tricky passage in "Mongan Manor" where Stefanie gets some good information from a member of the family, putting a different spin on the treasure. Her conversation went through a few fits and starts as I worked out how much to reveal and how many red herrings to toss out.

Arline Chase, my publisher, always has excellent information on her blog for Write Words. Her post yesterday was about author intrusion, something I try to stay on the lookout for. In a nutshell, it has to do with not including information unavailable to the point of view character. Since I do a lot of my work in first person POV, I really have to watch out for this. My character cannot narrate that My cheeks turned red unless she's looking at herself in a mirror at the moment. Instead, her narrative might say, My cheeks burned with embarrassment. It's a bit trickier when writing in third person, harder to catch. I think the key is that the point of character feels things about him/herself and observes things about other characters to draw assumptions and conclusions. As someone who read Arline's post remarked, big-name authors fall into the trap frequently, and maybe the average reader doesn't notice, but critics and editors sure do.

Both POVs have their benefits and limitations, and the choice of which to use is largely a matter of style and preference. I use third person for the Jack Watson series as a device for giving the character information my main protagonists don't have and to take the reader where the action is. If not for this ability, stuff would happen off stage and Jack would be ferreting it out later. I think letting the reader witness important events "first hand" adds to the tension. For my other series, the plot unfolds through the eyes of one character who must unravel what is happening and how to protect herself. First person sort of locks me into a female protagonist because I'm not sure I would know how to write a first person male character for a novel. I did try it once in a short story, but those are usually so bare-bones in character development, it did not matter. Maybe I'll try it in a novel someday.

More on The Name Game

Started in on "Mongan Manor" this morning, backtracking a bit to pick up the rhythm of the scene. I also had a flash of inspiration about providing Stefanie with the clues to the family secret and treasure mysteries, so I went forward with that. Had to stop and do some research on coats of arms and the various symbols used, and while I haven't yet decided on a key symbol for the story, I'm comfortable with the concept at least.

While doing my research into family names and histories, coats of arms, etc., I'm starting to wonder if I should include a disclaimer in the book when it's done. I want to stay true to the Irish heritage, but not so true that anyone could think I meant to portray real people. I'm making this up out of pure imagination and using facts from research for authenticity. I remember reading about another writer who was getting threats from someone who claimed her book of fiction exactly mirrored a relative's life. Is that how these things get started? Someone reads a book and figures any supporting details which match with him/herself or someone they know in life (notice, I did not say "real life" because life is real and fiction is fiction) and automatically assume that the writer based the book on them. Nonsense like that is nothing but ego and/or greed. I don't know anyone with the last name of Sheehy, the family name in the book. I chose it because of its meaning--eerie or mysterious. I did web searches for Irish-sounding names, both given and surnames, but mainly used those with certain meanings which will be part of the clues to the family secret.

I completely avoid using names or physical descriptions that might lead someone who knows me to think I wrote about them. I don't even like the idea of loosely basing characters on someone I've met. For one thing, when I meet someone, I never think "Gee, he/she would make a great character." It just doesn't happen for me. For another, when I'm developing a story, the characters are contrived to play certain roles in it. I need good guys and bad guys with a large proportion of people who are neither all good nor all bad. The role each plays determines their appearance, age, profession, history, demeanor, attitudes, and all the rest and can change as needed. Even the main POV character is subject to this treatment. Perhaps that's why I don't spend a great deal of time deciding who my character is before I set to writing the story, although that is an exercise many teachers of writing encourage.

Stefanie in the Windsong Lake series is a case in point. When I decided to resuscitate the "Dabblers" manuscript I finished a few years earlier, I decided that the character was too wimpy, too needy. She needed to be stronger. That was when I decided that she had known about her psychic ability and kept it secret for most of her life, even from her husband, Paul. Voila! More conflict was born. And her situation required her to "make peace" with her ability which kept trying to warn her of impending trouble, which meant she would be growing, developing, changing. Once I settled on that, my muse let out a sigh of relief and said, "Ahhh, now we've got it."

Updates and A Bit of News

I did some more fiddling with the cover for "Where Power Lies" and with the blurb as well. I wanted to do some experiments with changing the background colors and to be sure that there is ample room for the title and byline to be added without losing any important elements. I reduced the shadows to only one row so that more of the background is revealed, which also adds a bit more color. Unfortunately, my graphics skills and toolkit are very limited, so all my attempts to change the color pallet resulted in shades of one color only, which looked less attractive than the original.

Also added a small amount of text to "Mongan Manor," getting through a scene where I was not really sure what I wanted to happen. It needed to be an event of some importance, but what was it supposed to say? The resolution brought me new inspiration for how a subplot unravels going forward.

This afternoon, I'm going on a job interview. Yes, out of temporary retirement, perhaps, and back into a day job. Thus far, it could go either way I suppose. While I would certainly love to continue focusing on my writing career, it isn't bringing income in a major way. So it looks like I'll return to squeezing it in around a real job. Ah, well...

Updates and Miscellany

Yesterday afternoon, I received my print copy of "Dabblers," and frankly, the sense of satisfaction never diminishes with each book. One more print book left to receive, and I understand it's on its way.

I checked with the libraries where I donated books and was delighted to find "The Dreamer Gambit" in both their catalogs. One of them was even checked out! Might this lead to people discovering my other books, too? Sure hope so, because that was the whole idea about donating to the libraries.

Everything is prepped for "Where Power Lies" now, as I've pretty much settled on the most recent cover design, the one with the blood on it. That red spot really pops, I think, and more or less settles the fact that the woman beside it is the murder victim mentioned in the blurb. Anyway, I think it will work.

Back to Mongan Manor today. I need to sit back and consider the scene I'm working on next and what change it will bring about.  I think I know what it is, but it's just a matter of how I can reveal it.

The Name Game

Working on a crucial piece of "Mongan Manor" this morning, I realized that one of the names I had selected early on caused a problem with the method of delivering pieces of the puzzle. I went back to my list of Irish names previously collected, but I did not find anything workable. Back to the Internet. A little searching on the Behind-The-Name site gave me a good name to use but it then too closely resembled another name I had selected for a different character, already changed once before for the same reason. So I found a new name for that one too. (Bless Microsoft Word's find and replace.)  Now I'm deciding where the next step goes, especially in light of the pacing issues I mentioned in an earlier post.

After another peek at my cover for "Where Power Lies," I played around a bit with the background colors looking for a way to charge it up a little. Then I had a burst of inspiration, and this morning, I managed to execute it in another sample cover.

I think the pool of blood draws the eye fairly well. The most time consuming thing about this cover design is the shadows. When pasted over the background, tiny flecks of white surrounded each "head" and needed to be touched up.

Just for reference sake, I'll include my working blurb here, too.

In 2075, fifty years after a cataclysm nearly leveled the continent, the United States has been reborn with cities rising from the ruins. Deanna Kirkland struggled out of poverty to land a job in one of them, working for Senator Wolfson. On the bottom rung of the new society, Dee spices her humdrum life with daydreams of glamorous adventure while accepting that working for Wolfson is as close as she'll ever come to realizing her fantasies.

Then she happens to find a coworker dead in the Senator’s office and her life becomes more like one of those fantasies. Although everyone tries to convince her the woman committed suicide, Dee seems to be alone in thinking it was murder until she runs into Reese Ballard. He says it's evidence of the machinations of secret networks he calls Power Blocs that run everything while hiding behind a sham of democracy. Leery at first, she joins his search for the truth and soon finds his conspiracy theories are not merely theories. She plunges headlong into a different and dangerous world as those shadowy networks seek to silence them before they can reveal the truth about where power lies.

Too Much Too Soon?

Had time on my hands today without Internet access for most of it, but I did some work on "Mongan Manor." There is an important piece of the puzzle to the family secret involving names of ancestors, and I had thought I would put that off until much later. As I started down a different path this morning to do a different sort of scene, it struck me that it had the potential for more drama and would fit better at a later point, closer to the Big Scene, as it were. So I switched gears and started dropping some hints about names.

As always, I'm concerned about pacing. Each chapter must reveal something and institute a permanent change, hopefully with increasing tension and surprise, until the final wrap-up. The problem is getting a feel for where on the upward curve I am at a given point. In an earlier post, when I was working on the third Jack Watson book, I realized that things were happening too fast. A series of events occurred in the space of a day and it just didn't seem to be reasonable. Granted, I'm writing fiction, but as Stephen King once wrote in his "Danse Macabre," fiction requires a suspension of disbelief. Disbelief is a heavy load, like lifting a grand piano with a hoist to a third floor apartment. If you do it right, the reader gets swept up in the story and will believe just about anything, but if it flies in the face of reason to flagrantly, it's game over. Using my Jack Watson story as an example, I could imagine the reader thinking: "The killer found a phone number, called someone from out of town, got hooked up with a contract shooter, and then a snitch mentioned to Jack that someone was gunning for him ALL IN ONE DAY?????" Since I write in fits and starts, from day to day, the gaps make it hard to notice this, but when I went back to verify what day of the week I was currently writing (yeah, I do that a lot), I realized how much had happened in the space of a day and it just seemed impossible, even for fiction.

The other challenge with the Windsong Lake characters is that they're intelligent people. Paul's a genius and Stefanie recognizes patterns and never forgets anything. If a clue is too obvious and they both miss it or misread it, that grand piano is a pile of splinters.

OMG I'm Writing a Cozy!

Well, not really. Added another scene to "Mongan Manor" which reveals some of the relationship issues among the extended family who owns it and dropping some important clues, too. While writing it, however, it struck me how much of the cozy mystery feeling keeps cropping up. A bunch of people with different agendas around a dinner table. There are clues and red herrings at the same time, some of it innocent because each character has a different goal and different background knowledge. One of the things that makes it fun is to have a character speak from their point of view in a way that the others will misinterpret or read more meaning into it than is there. I find myself returning to my notes document where I have a synopsis of the family history, its secrets, and where each character present stands on it.

I'm still waffling a little about how the mystery will get solved, vacillating between a down-to-earth versus a paranormal sort of resolution. At present, I'm favoring the paranormal, but the problem I'm having with it is that if Stefanie's psychic experience puts the final piece into place, there is no proof to present to the rest of the players. She's an outsider and there's no reason for anyone to take her word for it. She'll need corroboration of some sort. There's also the issue of a murder or at least an attempt at it. I have some ideas about it, but they are still sort of nebulous. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing because I can make adjustments as I go, as the family conflicts take shape. I need a murderer, a victim, and a motive.

The one thing I don't want to do is repeat myself. This time out, I think Stefanie should take the lion's share of credit for solving the mystery with some help from Paul of course. The experience should also enhance or change her psychic gift in some manner, and I've got an idea about that, too.

Still Two Worlds at Once

I did some more work on "Mongan Manor" this morning, tweaking a few things in earlier pages and double-checking details. I was pleased to note that some early clues are suitably ambiguous yet fair. I then got past the hump to move forward. Four more players have shown up at the house, and next up, Paul will meet Robert Markey, heir to Mongan Manor and another genius. The wordplay between them is where I had to pause, and I'll pick up there again once I decide what information they should exchange. Their interactions are going to be crucial and tricky.

Yesterday, I did some more polishing of the blurb for "Where Power Lies" in order to help define what the cover should look like. I also thought my first pass was too long with too much detail. The whole idea of the blurb is to intrigue and entice the reader, deliver a flavor of the story without going into a lot of definition. The current version is down to around 200 words, which is not a bad size. Interestingly, without really trying to do so, the editing has removed mention of certain elements that would justify one of my cover design concepts. With that, I can focus on the remaining idea I had for it, and I'm going to play with it today while I work out the next scene of "Mongan Manor."

Feel the Power!

Query for submission of "Where Power Lies" came back positive, so the manuscript is on its way to the selection committee! I spent some time fiddling around with the cover art (not so good) and with the blurb. I think the blurb I've got truly represents the story, but it's too long and not really "snappy." While my intent is never to falsely represent anything, I want to come up with a descriptive piece that's quick and intriguing. As for my cover art attempts, I have a couple of designs in mind. One features a futuristic city growing out of the ruins of the old, i.e. the "No Zone." The other concept is to have a silhouette vignette of the woman's dead body with a man (the Senator) standing over it, but the shadow he casts starts at his feet and then becomes the shadows of many people. I guess it depends on the blurb again, so if I rewrite what I have, one or the other covers may seem like the better option. The problem is, I'm not sure I can execute either of them very well with my meager tools and skills. I actually had a third option but it doesn't fit well with a blurb because it uses symbols that the reader will only discover by reading the book. Ah, well. Back to the drawing board.

"Mongan Manor" is still waiting to move to the next scene, but "Power" has been the focus of my attention and I haven't even thought about what should happen next in any detail. I find that sitting and staring at the computer screen, waiting for inspiration to come, doesn't work for me in these cases. I just have to sit and think about it, not doing anything else. On a few occasions, I've been able to just start typing something and my muse suddenly reveals the path ahead, but usually not. And I have never yet been able to skip over a leading section and just write the scene I've been so eager to get to. Just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe it has to do with not working from an outline. The story must unfold for me as it does my characters, so I can't skip over connecting sections to write the "fun stuff" out of sequence.

Gone and Done It

I completed my edit of "Where Power Lies" yesterday, and this morning, I sent off a query letter to Write Words about it. Guess that's that. Of course, until I get a request to see a sample, I can still make minor changes, but I'm going to try to avoid that. It's time to move on. If the manuscript is accepted, I already have the blurb, but the specter of cover art will then loom. Perhaps when I reach the next stuck place on "Mongan Manor," I'll take another whack at a cover image I have in my head.

Back to "Mongan Manor." I had some ideas on how to move forward, which involves Paul determining how the search for answers will move forward. I'm still pulling the passage together, getting ideas into proper sequence. Stefanie and Paul will be trying to get more information from the members of the family at Mongan Manor and to determine who might be behind the trouble the Ken is warning Stefanie about. Of course, their investigation is going to stir up the antagonists and bring some of that trouble their way. I've also considered a few aspects of the big conclusion scene which has already been foreshadowed, but there are a lot of details to work out. A key element is that while events of the past shaped the current situation and many of the players are long dead, there must be enough information among the living to enable Stefanie to solve the mystery.

The Final Edit?

Finished reading hard copy of "Where Power Lies" and I have started the painstaking effort to make electronic changes without introducing any new errors. Once that's done, its query time.

Since I got onto this editing pass, I haven't had time to consider the next phase of "Mongan Manor" as yet, but once again, it's one of those cases where I want to get through the buildup and on to the next action which will be a major turning point. I also have to work out the murder aspect. I have the players and motives arranged, I think, but how it actually happens has yet to be developed. Of course, Stefanie and everyone else at Mongan Manor will first find the body and have to work out how it happened. All that's down the road a bit, nothing more than an outline of events at this stage.

A friend of mine has been posting Halloween music videos (from YouTube) on his Facebook page for some days now, and one of them is a recently-discovered favorite for me. "Voodoo" by Godsmack. He laughs at the notion of what people who don't know me would say to my liking it, but people who really know me know I have a widely (wildly?) eclectic taste in music. Anyway, in response to his post, I mentioned how surreal it was to listen to the song (which I could not resist) at 7 a.m., and he said something about a new story line. I said I'd see what my imagination could come up with. Voila! An idea. Still very formative, but I'm intrigued by the notion of doing a horror story. Well, maybe not horror as the genre is usually taken to be. I'm not a fan of blood and gore because, as Stephen King once wrote, the icky factor is the lowest level of horror fiction. I'd rather try for the top level--pulling the reader into the story so that he/she feels the terror and horror of the characters. An interesting challenge...

News and Updates

I heard from the publisher over the weekend and hopefully "Game Faces" and "Dabblers" will soon be out in paperback! Can hardly wait to get my author's copies.

I started writing a blurb for "Where Power Lies" in the interest of coming up with a cover concept, either that I could do myself or hire someone to do. Of course, I still have a long way to go on the proofing from hard copy that I began, and then making all the corrections to the manuscript. You'd think as many times as this story has been rewritten, I'd have it down by now, but alas... Sometimes, how I respond to reading my own book relates to my particular mood at the time. I had thought I would hold off doing more editing for a bit, but I may get back to it sooner rather than later.

That's because I'm stalled in "Mongan Manor" for the moment. It's time for Paul to get involved in solving the mysteries, an his interactions with the other characters are crucial. They will reveal things in very subtle ways which makes the coming passages tricky to plan and write. While I'm making every effort to not fall into the same plot pattern as in the first two books, there is one pattern that stubbornly exerts its influence, and that's not necessarily bad. Stefanie absorbs events and details and she reacts to them in her own emotional way. Paul comes in and applies his logical thinking and people-reading skills to pull her observations together to indicate what people are planning and doing. This is their synergy, filling in each other's gaps in ability. In this outing, in the name of changing things up, Paul is not resistant to the uncanny and Stefanie is not hiding anything from him any more. I guess another recurring theme is that Stefanie's psychic abilities continue to develop, but that's intentional. It's part of her character growth, which in turn is what makes me want to keep writing the same characters.

Also on my mind of late is more promotional activities. I need to polish my book brochure for a slicker look, as well as on-site materials for book fairs, etc. Since there may be speaking engagements in my future, I should probably outline a talk to give. I'm also considering a sort of book give-away, but I need to work out the details before I announce it.

Useless Words

Another appointment this morning gave me more time to read "Where Power Lies" off hard copy, and I keep finding tons of stuff to change. All those conversation tags that add nothing--I said, he said, she asked. So remembering some tips from one of my favorite editing books, I devised a set of "rules" to follow regarding tags.

• Replace a tag with some action where feasible. "I think you're wrong on that." He looked down his nose at her. "You need to rethink your reasons."
• If there has been a break in conversation, a narrative passage for example, tag the first two exchanges of dialog to establish who is speaking to whom. 
• Use tags a bit more liberally (or better yet, the action substitution mentioned above) when more than two characters are speaking. 
• If a line of dialog opens a chapter or scene, make sure the reader knows who is speaking.
• If the tag does not clarify anything, cut it.
• Watch out for overuse of adverbs on tags, i.e., seriously, jovially, softly, gently, etc.
• Avoid repeating the same pattern of avoidance. For example, doing the first option above over and over again. Mix it up.

What I also (re)discovered is that by removing those useless words, it leaves room for more creative stuff where it really makes an impact. I'll be reading more in days ahead.

Now I'm eager to write the next scene in "Mongan Manor" which will crank up the action some more.

Decisions, Decisions

While waiting for workmen to keep an appointment this morning, I started reading a printed copy of "Where Power Lies." Aaargh! Found mistakes--real mistakes!--on page 2. It's that old closure thing again. Also, having been away from the manuscript for a while, I spotted a couple of things to change for the sake of clarity, as well as unnecessary stuff I could remove, mainly tags that aren't needed. I've read about half way thorough Chapter 2 and I cringe at the number of corrections to be made. Lots of corrections also means lots of opportunities for me to introduce MORE errors. But maybe it'll all be worth it.

Made some progress on "Mongan Manor," especially in the thinking department which led to the next scene to be written. But now I'm into "Power" again, but maybe I can juggle the two books at once.

Since my morning appointment required a bit of a drive, I found myself thinking about the cover for "Power," and trying to figure out how much ease of execution should weigh into my decision on a design. There are a lot more factors that go into a cover concept. Eye-catching is certainly paramount, but I personally hate it when an attractive book cover misrepresents the story within. I believe that when someone reads the blurb on the back (or screen), the cover art should mesh with that little information and invite further investigation, i.e., reading the book. Some of my concepts for "Power" would be impossible(?) for me to do myself, but before I run off to find a graphic artist, I have to decide if a particular concept will follow my rule above. Perhaps what I should do is write the blurb first! Haven't done that yet, maybe because my early attempts have indicated it will be a tough job.