Cooking the Hook - NEW

The trouble with bad guys is, there's no trouble. You just don't get their perspective on the situation.

It's not my blue heaven, but it will surely do. A good friend lives a short drive away and the complex is keeping the pool opened and maintained as long as the warm weather holds. We seem to be the only ones who know about it! For a while now I've been struggling with Scrivener, trying to make it print out only the synopsis. Even in the windows version, I can see the MAC mind of the designer everywhere. This PC brain finally solved the problem and I was able to bring a list of scenes with me, poolside. Reading and thinking my way through them and it dawned on me. You really can't kill the main protag three-fourths of the way through the book. Nope. Other less significant things were revealed, but this one's a biggie.

    Annabea and Tam had been secretly teaching each other to read and write since the little girl could sit up and hold a crayon. Tam had never learned and was reluctant to subject herself to scorn so she made do as many unlettered adults did. Each morning when chores were done, Tam would take off her apron, smack her broad palms together and say to Bea, “Time for school,” something she had no firsthand experience with.     The two-year-old laboriously stacked three county phone books on the kitchen chair, climbed to her perch and waited with her grubby little fists clutching air while Tam got out the pad of lined newsprint and the cigar box full of pencils and crayons. Tam warned her, “Now don’t be letting other people know about our business here,” as the two of them drew copies of the bold letters from the front page of yesterday's newspaper.     The truth was that Bea had figured out reading and writing on her own while she sat on an apple b...

I'm seriously considering relocating my laptop, or maybe even a basic, used desktop to the kitchen. It seems like all new ideas come while I'm either doing dishes while listening to the radio or while I am driving. The notes I take on legal pads or junk mail envelopes don't carry the spirit with them when I bring them upstairs to transcribe. On the happy note, I've discovered a living artist who I plan to commission for my book cover. Up to now, I haven't spent a moment of thought on it. Now I've found someone who has the style and vision. Odd that it's compelled me away from procrastinating away from finishing the first draft.

I've been spending most of my free time writing, but I'm at that place I'll call “Dithering Heights”. Where writers go to fart around, waste time and not get needful shit done. Where we fool with stuff that's already written rather than address things like, “Was THAT necessary?” or “That scene suffers from pointless suckage!” Also the ever popular “Who the hell wrote that tripe?” and "WTF?" My characters have begun having conversations about getting the oil changed in the car, reciting shopping lists and disagreements about what brand of ravioli is the best.  Time for a break. An excellent weekend included the best..... Friends, family and baseball.  

I'm just starting to look at my first draft with revision in mind; the Frankenstein kind of revision and it's terrifying. Is there life in all this shit?? Comes this.            Salvation .  At least a signpost.