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.

Moving Forward

After a few days of hiatus from writing, I'm back on it today and moving forward on "The Treasure of Mongan Manor," volume 3 of the Windsong Lake books. I'm about to get into the real meat of the story, and I've had some good ideas about one sequence I'd been mulling over. It has the potential to be rather erotic, but I don't really write erotic stuff, as I've mentioned in blogs past. Still, what I'm envisioning might call for some physical description of that nature, because it's an important scene with pertinent information. I'm not to the point of writing it yet, so I'll give that some additional thought.

Another question I'm wrestling with is whether or not there should be a murder involved. As planned thus far, there's plenty of conflict going on, any of which might end up with someone murdered. The murder of someone who might have held all the answers could have a suspense aspect to it, but I don't know yet. As much thought as I've put into mapping out all those conflicts over a missing treasure among members of an extended family, I haven't yet figured out how it all resolves. The characters at this point are just sketches, a statement of a role each plays, so I can't really plan until they become more fleshed out. Once I start seeing who they all are, I can identify a murder victim, a killer, and the motive.

Early on in the planning stage, I began to wonder if there would be a role for Amy, Stefanie's best friend. Happily, I've found one for her. Since Stefanie is a poor reader and even worse at doing background research, Amy will provide information important to solving the puzzle at hand, i.e., the secret to the treasure.

As a side note in the Gotchas category, I was talking to an author at Bookfest last Saturday, and he told me how he had someone proofread one of his manuscripts when it was converted into a Kindle format. My publisher has often told me that sometimes these formatting programs don't "play nice" all the time, but this author's experience proved that in spades. Careful reading of that manuscript found the exact same sentence repeated EIGHT TIMES in various places throughout the book. Now there's an error that would be tough to find without reading the whole book straight through in one sitting.

Turning Point

A pivotal scene in "Resistance" is underway, and at 38,000 plus words, the book is about half finished. I also went back to earlier sections to embellish with details that help set the scene of the story, a few decades from now in a city on its way back from desolation. While I know this sort of thing has been done before, a return to the crumbling ruins of human civilization, it's just my setting. How it got that way isn't really the issue at hand, but the fact that some of the untamed areas still exist is important, both in the plot and as a symbol. To get into that now might reveal too much, though.

In an earlier post, I pointed out a "Gotcha" in which the transposition of two letters from one sentence to the next made a huge difference of meaning but would be undetected by computer editing software. This morning, I found similar example.

The fair would cost too much.
The fare would cost too much.

The first one indicates an event would be too expensive; the second references the fee charged for transportation. Both spellings are correct, and both are grammatically correct. In the middle of a story, one or the other would be wrong. Only careful proofreading by human eyes would catch this, the right choice of fair/fare depending on the context.

This "Gotcha" almost got me today!

The Dreaded Gerunds

I had an early doctor's appointment today, but then I got right back to work on "Resistance" when I got home. Then I totally lost track of the clock. Yesterday, I started adding to the manuscript at page 102. It's now past 134. To be fair, I'm lifting sections out of the manuscript's previous incarnation, but since so much about the setting has changed, inserted sections must be reviewed and edited to fit.

This morning in particular, I inserted a scene and the review process made me realize how much my style has changed (improved?). I put sentences together differently now, even beyond the changes inherent in the first-person style of a different character. I noticed a lot of occurrences of "was" that could be spiffed up with better verbs that also serve to make the action more immediate and less like the telling of a story in the past. It's a subtle difference. Here's a sample:

Part of my brain was screaming warnings that this was crazy, that I was taking a terrible chance, but the other part was sort of euphoric at doing something so daring.

One sentence and the word "was" appears four times! It also comes off as a step away from the scene, like an aside to the reader, breaking up the flow. Here's the same thing as rewritten. 

Part of my brain screamed warnings about danger and taking such a crazy risk, but the other part won out with a wild euphoria over the chance to join him in his mission.

I'm not sure if that fully illustrates the point, but at least the word "was" has been banished completely and the "-ings" reduced from six to two. Too many gerunds always catch the negative attention of editors. It might seem natural in the way people normally speak, but it can become repetitious and annoying to the reader. I think the revised sentence says the same thing but in a more lyrical way and seeming less like narration. 

Progress and a Gotcha

Back to writing "Janus Games" this Monday morning, although still clumsy with the cast on. I made some adjustments to the touch pad on my laptop so that the cursor would not keep moving every time my left thumb brushes over it. Very annoying. The cast will stay on until the end of May, according to my doctor, and then there will be a splint instead. Sigh. Maybe typing will be easier with the splint.

At this stage, I'm building up a list of suspects and now starting on the detective case line of plot. An explosive scene is right around the corner, but I need to make sure that it does not become obvious what has happened. That's why I'm throwing out hints and red herrings beforehand. There are two sections inside the killer's head so far, but those are designed to foreshadow the danger ahead. I've tried not to give much in the way of clues as to that person's identity, only their frame of mind and intentions to a degree.

Over the weekend, I thought of another Gotcha and a good example of why proofreading a manuscript is so vital. Here are two sentences, exactly the same except for the position of two letters.

• The trail made for a rough ride.
• The trial made for a rough ride.

The first one could appear in a western or wilderness adventure, describing a physical path over the earth, suggesting someone on horseback. The second could appear in almost any story to reference a courtroom situation or perhaps a difficult time of some sort where the "ride" is kind of slang-ish. Both sentences will pass computer grammar checks, yet depending on the context of the story, could still be wrong!

Many people, myself included, have a talent for what is called "closure." The mind is capable of reading text with mistakes in it but automatically correcting them before they reach a cognitive level. People do this to varying degrees, which can be a blessing in that it speeds up reading in general, but a curse when it comes to proofreading. Doing the latter takes patience and concentration, both of which become more difficult if the  story itself takes control of your attention.

Anachronisms

While working on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend" this morning, I caught a sneaky anachronism, one of those Gotchas. Most people think of the word as referring to a person, place, or thing showing up in a time period where it should not be. For example, a character in American colonial days leaning against a telephone pole, or making reference in a historical romance to California before the state even came to be. There's another type of anachronism that can happen in fiction, where things happen out of sequence. An example might be a character going upstairs when she is already upstairs.

Here's the one I found today: Stefanie has an art show at a gallery and some paintings are sold. Someone also commissions her to repaint a work that sold before they could buy it. Another painting sold is a very personal work that she did not want to include in the showing but did at the urging of the gallery owner. The next morning, she goes to her studio and meets up with her friend, Amy. She begins to tell Amy about the show and mentions the sale of the painting she did not want to include, along with a troubling encounter with someone from her past. Before they can pursue the subject, Amy must attend to customers in her store, and Stefanie goes upstairs to her studio. Later, Amy comes up and they continue their talk while Stefanie mixes paint colors. Amy admires one of them and asks if it is for the commissioned work.

Ha! Stefanie had not yet said anything to Amy about the commissioned painting! An anachronism. This was easy to fix by having Stefanie mention it in her first discussion with Amy before being interrupted by customers. Because of my haphazard approach to writing, there may be more.

Actually, there's an anachronism in "The Dreamer Gambit" that has been there since it was published. Oddly, only one person has ever made note of it, and that was a good friend of ours. Other reviewers have never seemed to notice it (or were too polite to say they did). Because "Dreamer" had been rewritten and revised so many times, I'm not a bit surprised.

Don't think for a minute I'm going to give it away! I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has noticed it or finds it.

Flying Over Hurdles

"Seer, Tyro, Fiend" is closing in on the Big Scene. Along the way, I've been dealing with the build up to that, hitting obstacles and clearing them just as fast. Yet I'm abundantly aware that I don't know where all the build up will lead. Where will the showdown take place? Who will be there? Who will be instrumental in achieving the outcome? For the moment, there are at least six characters involved who should probably take the stage, but that seems a bit too complicated to be believable. Yes, I know, this is fiction and I can tell my tale any way I choose. Or can I? If someone who eventually reads it finds it hard to accept, they might review it as being silly or preposterous or contrived. A review like that might make others steer clear.

So I now must ask myself the philosophical question, why do I care? Is it about sales? As an author, of course sales are meaningful, but the fact is, I would probably write stories even if I wasn't getting published. (I sure did a lot of writing before I got published.) Is it about fame or acclaim or respect? Those would be nice. Restating the question, why do I write? I weave these intricate stories in my head and feel compelled to put them on paper and attempt to get others to read them. Being published means the chance to find more readers. That leads to the question of why people read fiction at all. Escape, enjoyment, inspiration, education--any and all might apply.

Kind of interesting, though. Some can't get enough to read and some can't stop creating stuff for them to read. Expand that to music or performing arts. It's about creativity, both the act of it and appreciating it. Only humans (so far as we know) do this. Therefore, I create because I am human.

Okay. Good enough reason. Done with philosophy for today.

Once again, as I wrote this, I hit upon a Gotcha. This one is a true homonym: steer, one word with two meanings. It means a head of livestock or to guide or pilot, as a ship. For some reason, I always thought there was another spelling, i.e., stear, but a check of my dictionary says no such word. Well then, I guess I no longer have to question that one.

Zowie!

So far today, 21 hits on this blog, up there in the record books. My inclination is to believe that it had a lot to do with the wonderful comment I received on yesterday's post. Any author who doesn't publish with the big houses knows how much effort must go into self promotion, and word of mouth is a huge component of that.

Now I must confess something. In a way, I broke one of the rules in my sixth novel, "Stranger Faces." Usually, I'm the first one to cite the rule about getting the story's conflict out there as close to page one as possible. In "Stranger Faces," I tried something a little different which stretches that rule, and I'm going to explain why I did it. My POV character, Tracy Wiley, is your basic amateur sleuth even though she's not investigating a murder in this one. She's a shoot-from-the-hip, seat-of-the-pants type of problem solver, figuring out moves to get herself out of jams on the spur of the moment. (How's that for overloading on cliches?)

In her latest adventure, she's hired by her old friend, C.I.A. agent Kevin Fox, to accompany him on a road trip to Chicago to help him figure out who betrayed him on his latest assignment. He wants Tracy along to throw anyone watching him off guard since they won't know who she is or why she's with him. He's out in the cold (oh, do the cliches never end?) and doesn't know who in the intelligence community he can trust. He gives her very little information to work with, so she's flying blind. Later, she gets dragged back into his troubles, in serious danger, and must figure it all out for herself.

Now, back to the broken rule. The book opens with Tracy doing her normal job, which is solving people's non-legal issues for an hourly fee. Later, after her trip with Fox, she does another routine job for a regular client, and then further on, a third one, not so routine. These mundane jobs are the set up for her problem solving skills, giving her someone to turn to for help when she needs it. While the situation with Fox is presented in Chapter 1, the heart of the conflict and the dangerous situation she faces are unveiled more gradually. Since it's all told in first person from Tracy's viewpoint, I wanted the trouble to be unclear to her (and the reader), unfolding as she investigated it.

Okay, confession over. In a way, I did follow the rule about getting the story started as close to page one as possible, but I did it sort of sneaky. Maybe even a little bit of a refreshing change?

Something I wrote here triggered a Gotcha for today. cite/site/sight You cite a rule or regulation. A building is erected on a site. What you do with your eyes is sight.

A Battle of Words

Some people write action scenes, and I've tried to do justice to a few of my own. Some people write love scenes, and I've posted at other times on my own feelings toward those. Most intriguing to me, though, is the battle of words. It's where characters in opposition on something exchange words, argue, try to finesse each other. These are hard to write. The action must be balanced, with each side getting its turn to have the upper hand. The dialog must seem as natural as it can, even though characters in books don't really talk like real people in conversation. Books would be much longer if they did because a lot of real conversation is filler.

"Hiya, Sally. How's it going?"

"Hey, Joe. Not too shabby. Did you watch the game last night?'

"Yeah, awesome. Betcha we get to the playoffs after all."

"No way! You say that every year."

"Say, listen, I need to ask you about those status reports that are due tomorrow..."

The first four lines would be cut by an editor from a manuscript, presuming that the question about the reports is the real meat of the conversation. Even though people in real life introduce serious topics with polite greetings and chitchat, that has no place in fiction. Usually. Those lines might be made meaningful if there's action going on with them, perhaps hints about how these two people really feel about each other, or some other tension coming through.

"Hiya, Sally. How's it going?" Joe stole a glance over his shoulder before she could look up just to make sure the boss's snitch had not caught up yet.

"Hey, Joe. Not too shabby." Sally shuffled papers on her desk. "Did you catch the game last night?"

Still no sign of the informer, but Joe knew he could not raise Sally's suspicions. "Yeah, awesome. Betcha we get to the playoffs after all."

"No way!" Sally looked up with a smug smile. "You say that every year."

He normally would have argued but time was limited. He had to get the reports from her and hand them off to his reporter friend waiting in the lobby before anyone saw him with them. "Say, listen..."

In a way, this is sort of a Gotcha. You want your conversation to be natural but nobody really wants to read natural. Sometimes you can put the clutter in if it's accompanied by real information, but mostly, you throw out what you don't need.

And that might be the rule then: Everything in the manuscript should play a part in moving the story forward.

Boy, do I ever feel pretentious giving writing lessons!

For the Love of It

As I started to write today on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend," the scene was about to move into a new day, and I realized I did not know what day it was! Time to go back through the manuscript and chart the days according to the major events that happened in each. I knew the major scene in Chapter 5 occurred on a Saturday, so I worked backwards and forwards from there. So the story begins on a Tuesday night, and I'm now about to start on the Friday morning nine days later. All this in order to avoid any anachronisms. As any day begins, I need to know whether Stefanie's husband, Paul will be going to work or if it's the weekend. Can't have him going to work day after day without ever getting time off!

Earlier today, I got my act together to do some accounting of my little writing enterprise, filling in my spreadsheet of payments and expenses. Following that exercise, I checked email and came across the daily "digest" from the CWA Yahoo group. It contained an article written by an author about how much money he made from having a "best seller" on Amazon. The $12,000 he made seemed awesome to me. I haven't made anywhere near that much with six books!

I'm sure everyone who gets a book published has lofty dreams of being the next James Patterson or Jodi Picoult, but I've seen in various places that most authors sell fewer than 100 books in their career. So why do we do it? Is it just pie-in-the-sky high hopes that we'll be the exception to the rule? For me, it's the love of doing it, turning my flights of imagination into real stories others can read. It's the thrill of seeing my books for sale on various websites and receiving checks from my publisher of any denomination. It's having people I know tell me they read one of my books and how much they liked it. And it's going to conferences and book events where I meet people, perfect strangers, who want my advice or to hear my experiences. I'll add to that the comments people leave on this blog, or as on most days, seeing the "hit" counter here go up, and knowing someone out there is reading me.

In light of all that, today's Gotcha: Write for the love of it, write for the recognition and accomplishment. Writing to get rich may work sometimes, but with so many people now able to make their works available for very little money, instant fame and wealth might be a long shot.

You Know It Don't Come Easy

As work progresses on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend", I keep asking myself if I am over-developing Stefanie's psychic abilities. The idea I began with was that she should explore her talent as opposed to her reluctant reliance on it in "Dabblers" and that it should change. Now I wonder if it's changing too fast or departing too much from its origins, i.e., the ability to foretell tragic events. Having said that, however, she was able to discern facts about past events in the case of her Uncle Hank, so maybe I'm not going too far out on a limb after all.

Now it's getting close to crunch time, where I have to decide how it all comes together, where "good" and "evil" go head-to-head. I'm thinking about having one of the conspirators turn on the other when put under pressure, but I'm still not sure how that would work. Perhaps the first step is to decide where that confrontation will take place. Then, who will instigate it? Maybe the good guys lay a trap which goes terribly wrong somehow. Or maybe the bad guys take offensive action because they are close to being discovered. Must think on this some more.

For today's Gotcha, I have to thank the morning TV news because of a story they ran today.

dying/dyeing  The first word, familiar, as in "The fire was slowly dying." (And no I don't want to "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow"!) The second word is the trick: "Today they are dyeing the Chicago River green for St. Patrick's Day." In this case, the root word is "dye" but turning it into a gerund defies the usual rules.

The Ever-Present Promotion Quandary

While I continue to make progress on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend," I spent some time this morning (and a little bit yesterday) in the name of promotion. Yesterday, I did some research on The Kindle Book Review and how to inquire about submitting something. Oddly enough, this morning I received an email from CWA about the services of Windy City Reviews. On a whim, I put together a query to submit "Dabblers" for review, since it's in the pipeline for a paper edition. Then I did some reviews on Goodreads of some books I read many years ago because the characters and scenes in them still pop into my head from time to time. So much for promotions for today.

Lots of progress on the writing front with more pieces of the puzzle coming together. I know I'm getting closer to the Big Scene, yet I"m still not certain about how it will go down, or where, or what the outcome will be. I have ideas, yes, but no solid design.

Speaking of designs, as "Seer" draws nearer to completion, I need to put my graphic designer hat on to do a cover. I have seen so many extraordinary works of art via Facebook that would make great covers for "Seer" but I'll have to do some research to find out who the artist is and would it be possible to either use one that I've seen or ask for a new one just for this book. I have other concepts rolling around in my brain as well, and as usual, they prove hard to execute with my meager artistic tools and abilities. If only I could "write" them...

Been falling short on my "Gotchas" feature, so I decided to look up some words that are spelled differently but are pronounced the same. I learned, to my surprise, that these are called "homophones" and not "homonyms" as I thought. Learn something new every day. I found a website list, reading it as a memory nudger, and came across one that has given me pause (paws?) more than once:

ade/aid/aide The first one is really a suffix when not masquerading as a surname; it goes with lemonade or blockade. The second one is to give help or a noun applied to that help itself. The third one is where I usually have a problem; it means a person who is a helper. Somehow, even when I type it correctly, I catch myself wondering if it's right and have to look it up anyway.

On the Right Track

Imagine my surprise yesterday evening when I found 24 hits on this blog for the day. I'm still not entirely sure how these counts are done, whether the 24 represents multiple page views by one person, single views by many, or somewhere in between. Maybe I don't want to know for sure, because the number itself provides a sense of success and satisfaction.

"Seer, Tyro, Fiend" is now well over 53,000 words, and things are moving faster now. I'm still working out the Big Scene, however, but not too actively at this point as I have to get the set-up right. I've set a goal to have a first draft done before the end of March, and who knows? Maybe it'll be closer to being ready than that. Then I'll have to start agonizing over cover art. As usual, I have a lot of ideas, pictures in my head, but no clear idea of how to bring them about.

In the realm of promotion, I find it increasingly difficult to come up with advertising messages in the face of my newest book being part of a series. "Stranger Faces" recently received a 5-star rating on Goodreads, and I don't think the reader has read the first two "Faces" books, and that says the book stands up well on its own. Still, I don't know that I want to market it that way. To me, the three books form their own sort of unit, and if I were reading them out of order, I would feel compelled to go back to the earlier volumes to find out what all those hints are about. That's just me though.

Today's Gotcha. This one relates to "Seer" in a way, and I happened upon it in one of my editing books.

sleight/slight  The first word means deft or skillful and is most often used in the phrase sleight of hand. the second word refers to size or amount. I've heard the phrase sleight of hand so many times, yet I think I might have written it wrong on occasion. Who knew?

Nine to Five

With the weekend over, work resumes on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend." Since my day job ended just over a week ago, I have all the time I want to write during the weekdays, so I take a break on the weekend. Kind of makes it my 9-to-5 job! Even so, the ideas keep coming, and a number of them hit me just after going to bed last night. There were so many, I finally had to get up and make some notes for fear of forgetting them by morning.

One thing I included in a scene which suggested Stefanie had even more psychic ability I took back out. Between her visions of future events and her eidetic memory, she's got enough power already. I put it in originally because I needed her to get more of a sense of the "fiend" in the title, the ultimate bad guy. Instead, I modified an earlier scene to supply more information about him and give him more on-stage time. Those changes got made this morning. I also needed to check on some foreshadowing details, to make sure events happened in the right place and the right people have knowledge of them.

My ideas about the background of the sinister doings of the story continue to evolve. It's all about the motive, and I keep playing with that. The concern is that I get stuck in a rut of motivation, of the same reasons for bad guys doing bad things. I caught myself in the act this time but a little tweaking is all that's required. But then I have to go back and foreshadow it properly and . . .

Writing is an iterative process.

Today's "Gotcha" came from looking up stuff for "Seer, Tyro, Fiend":
pallet/palette - The first one is used in shipping; the second one is the board an artist uses for paint.

Who Are These People?

A bit of a departure this morning, since I've not really accomplished much on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend" today. Still trying to decide how to do something. The "fiend" is going to contact Stefanie, but I'm not sure how just yet.

Anyway, the departure: how I name and develop characters.

Jack Watson: Oddly enough, when I began writing "The Dreamer Gambit," the private detective was meant to be a secondary character. I decided my main POV, Tabitha, should find him attractive, but he would want to stay purely professional. The next question was why, what motivated him. Thus began background development of the detective--stuffy upbringing, strong on ethics, recently divorced, disastrous marriage. He started to interest me more, and about the same time, I found that making him a POV would help to take the reader where the action is and could set up some tension in certain scenes. Why Jack? I don't know. The name popped into my head. Why Watson? His full name came out to be John Holmes Watson, Junior, but I wasn't even thinking of a Sherlock Holmes connection when I found the name Watson on a website of surnames. Then it fit. Make him an ex-cop and let his old connections tease him about Watson the Private Eye. With "The Changeling Kill," Jack sort of took over the series.

Tabitha Solo: Since the story of "The Dreamer Gambit" revolved around her, hers was the first name I had to come up with. The inspiration for "Dreamer" came from the dream sequence, and for no reason I can really explain, it started with Scott's voice calling Taaaa-bith-aaa. Her surname was Solokowski, which seemed like a good name for a Chicago girl, and HONEST, I SWEAR, I didn't think about naming a singer "Solo."

Tracy Wiley: Okay, I confess on a little word-play on this one. Once again, the name Tracy just popped into my head, but I chose the last name as applicable to her tendency to crack jokes.

Elena Griegos: Tracy's Doppelganger in "Two Faces, Two Faced." I wanted a name that sounded exotic, foreign, but perhaps not definitely indicating one country or another. Didn't want to target another culture or fall into any cliches about countries. The other consideration was that it be easy to pronounce. I don't want readers to struggle with the name every time they encounter it. The resulting name could come from a number of countries, but in the end, the character came from none of them!

Christian Roosa: Believe it or not, the sexy police detective of "Game Faces" and "Stranger Faces" was about to be called Jefferson, short form, Jeff. A friend of mine who could hardly wait for a followup to "Two Faces, Two Faced", didn't like it, and I wasn't all that excited about it either. Then I thought of Christian, which is kind of an antonym because the character is a womanizer. His last name? I once worked with someone with the last name Roos and was told it was Dutch. I remembered this as I passed a street on my regular route to the grocery story--Roosa Lane. Bingo! The detective has a last name!

Stefanie Durant: When I first wrote "Dabblers," some of the names were different. Stefanie's last name had to say "French" because of Paul and I chose Devereaux. Her friend Amy's maiden name was Parker, and her husband was Nathan. Then some good friends turned me onto the TV show "Leverage." It had characters named Nathan Ford, Sophie Devereaux, and Parker. Oops. Purely coincidence. I looked up French surnames on a website and found Durant, which means enduring, and I liked the underlying meaning for Paul. Amy's husband became Adam, and I changed her maiden name too, but it only gets mentioned a time or two and isn't really important in any way. By the by, I spelled Stefanie with an "f" instead of a "ph" because people call her Steffie, and it's easier to make the mental connection by sticking with the "f" all the way.

Today's Gotcha: Envelop/envelope The first one's a verb meaning "to surround." The second is a noun, meaning something that surrounds. The trick? Past tense of the verb is enveloped.

Time On My Hands

Ack! Having all my time to do what I will with it, I often find myself scattered. There are things I need to do and things I want to do, and they always seem to be at war for my time. My original goal in governing this is to do some of each every day. Unfortunately, the "wants" seem to be winning more often than not. Worse, when I reach a point in writing "Seer, Tyro, Fiend" where I need to think on it some more, I wind up doing a "want" instead of a "need" and then berating myself for having so little discipline. Gotta work on this.

"Seer" moving along well. I'm going for an unconventional sort of resolution which I hope will both surprise and satisfy. The scenes I worked on this morning do some of the setup for that. I'm still working out how the big showdown will play out, where it will occur, who will be there, as well as what everyone does. Of course, there must be some danger involved although I'm not sure what that will be exactly. The ideas are swirling around in the darkness of my imagination, however, and eventually they'll come together.

Today's Gotchas:

To/too/two I honestly think people on social websites have just given up on these three words and replace all forms of it with the numeral "2", which is only equivalent to the last of the three and means nothing else, ever. Too is comparative, i.e., it's just too much, or means the same as "also": I want to go too. To is used in a lot of ways, but given the definitions of the other forms, suffice it to say, it gets used wherever the others don't work.

Peal/Peel Did the car "peal" out of the parking lot, or did it "peel"? It's the first one! Peal means a loud sound. Ah, but one would "peel rubber" on a tire in the act of "pealing" out of the parking lot. Whew!

Let It Flow

Really liking this free-agent gig. Progress on "Seer, Tyro, Fiend" has really taken off this week. I'm sure the pages I wrote this morning will be rewritten, torn apart, resequenced before I call it done, but it's a good start. For this morning, I wrote a scene in which a new suspect emerges, based largely on Stefanie recalling him telling her a big lie. In the next scene, Amy's character is going to add another layer on the story in an emerging theme about vengeance and when it is justified even though someone might get hurt.

I don't actively try to find a message for my stories. Usually, the inspiration comes from an interesting scene or situation or passage of dialog around which I wrap a mystery. I guess that's not very clear, but the whole inspiration/imagination thing isn't all that clear even to me. Still, I think it's kind of nice that a book has something to say beyond "Once upon a time..." I'm not saying authors should try to save the world with their writing, but a little education and/or thought provocation aren't a bad thing.

And now, continuing my new "feature," here are today's Gotchas:

affect/effect This one almost always trips me up. Effect can be a noun or a verb; affect is always a verb. Effect as a verb means to bring about or execute; affect means to influence. So the noun form of effect is easy, as in Tides on earth are an effect of the moon. After that, things get a little dicey as the meanings of the verbs are not that widely separated. One would say, Salt affects (influences) the flavor of food. One would also say, The company effected (brought about) budget cuts. 

lay/lie Another tricky one. Lay means to place. Lay the gun on the table. In past tense, He laid the gun on the table. Lie means to tell a fib, but the most confusion comes from its other sense, to recline or rest in a horizontal position. The past tense of the latter is lay. Note: there is no such word as layed. (Oh, what a language we have!)

farther/further This one is really sort of easy but people misuse these words so often that when you try to think of an example sentence, there's a good chance you've heard someone do so. Farther is used in regards to real distance: it's a block farther to work for me now. Further is abstract, meaning "more": I was further confused by his explanation.

Getting Into It

It is snowing like crazy here in Illinois, and here I am,cozy at home, writing up a storm. "Seer, Tyro, Fiend" is   in the hell-bent-for-election stage, pace increasing, tension increasing (I hope), and all the story threads coming together. Even that final confrontation scene I've been agonizing over . . . well, not really agonizing. Fact is, I haven't given it all that much thought as I develop all that leads up to it. But I did have an idea of how it should be resolved, and it ties in nicely with my dilemma over one of my characters being too perfect while not having enough of a role for another one. Yes (she chortles), it's all coming together.

Then there's the other segment of my writer's career--promotion. Kind of difficult to think about getting out there to sell, sell, sell in the midst of the biggest snow event the Midwest has seen all winter. I did rewrite and fund my Google ads this morning, and maybe I'll take another look at my Goodreads ads. I still wish I knew exactly how many sales are generated by my advertising dollars, but I doubt there's any way to know for certain. Now that I have more free time, I can do some web surfing for more venues.

Just on the spur of the moment, I had an idea for something to do on this blog. It draws inspiration from today's post by Arline Chase from Write Words with some observations about editing. The English language is riddled with words that sound alike but are spelled differently and mean entirely different things. I know I've been caught by them more times than I'd like to admit, and I've read works by other authors who have fallen prey to them too. So starting today, I'm going to include "Gotchas" in my posts. (Thanks for the inspiration, Arline!)

compliment/complement You pay someone a nice compliment. The icing is the complement of the cake. (Caught this one a couple of times in recent proofing tasks.)

peak/peek You climb a mountain peak. You peek under the bed before climbing into it. (Microsoft Word often gets this wrong!)

heroin/heroine The first is a drug, the second is a female hero. It's easy to miss the final "e" when it's needed. The following two sentences both make it through spell checker: He's keeping an eye on our heroin. He's keeping an eye on our heroine.

it's/its Contrary to conventional rules of English, "it's" is NOT the possessive form of "it" but a contraction of "it is." For something belonging to "it", the word is "its." (Oh, yeah. Microsoft Word gets this wrong, too.)