Today’s writing

I’m so excited to have my website up and running. And this is my very first blog post. Yay!

So, at this point in my writing, The Handyman’s Tale, the first book in The Mike McCall Chronicles, is ready to go to my editor. This will be a final pass for grammatical errors and the like. The editor has scheduled it for her April calendar.

In the meantime, I’m working on the second book, The Handyman’s Curse. ’Seems like about the tenth draft by now! Recently, I got feedback that my interview scenes were too long. I cut them back significantly. However, in so doing, I lost track of whether I had asked and answered all the necessary questions of my suspects. It turns out I had asked all the necessary questions. But I hadn’t answered all of them. Yikes! And in some cases, the reader was waiting way too long for my detective to investigate and answer the question (e.g., researching alibis, checking beneficiaries in wills, etc.). Double yikes!

In the end, I used a spreadsheet to assess and tighten all the loose ends. Such a nerdy, ex-IT-guy solution, right? Do any of you mystery writers out there have this problem (did I ask and answer what I needed to and did I answer my questions soon enough?) Any tips?

I ask this knowing full well I have no one reading this blog yet. Pretty dysfunctional, eh? Well, it’s good blogging practice. :)