March 2006

Hello everyone,

February turned out to be a productive month. I analyzed a few "peer" books and determined that I either needed more descriptive prose and exposition or more plot elements in order to get ACM into the right word count. Verbosity is not my natural writing style, so I opted for the latter. I re-analyzed my plot and decided to replace the current one with something that ties up more loose ends and provides more action. I think the story will be much stronger now.

In other news, I formed a critique group with a fellow Bay Area writer, and we've been going through each other's novels a chapter at a time. The crit group is a great way to iron out those little details that Beta Readers don't usually catch (or if they do catch them, they don't mention it). I know the story so well that sometimes I don't explain enough or present enough description. The next version should have all those problems cleared up.

I made a working cover for ACM. You can see it at http://zookterpin.com, though there isn't much at the site yet.

I have a blog and a forum on my site, but I'm not sure which one I want to focus on. I know a lot of writers and agents have blogs, but those remind me of the lecture classes I taught (and hated teaching). I stood at the front and told things to the students. We had some discussion, but not much. I preferred my discussion classes, and the forum style is more like that.

How do you like to interact with your favorite writers? Reading their blog or reading/posting in their forum? I suppose I can have a section of the forum that only I can post to, in order to appeal to the blog readers, but that might not work for people who use RSS feeds.

Anyway, I'll end with a suggestion. I've been reading the rest of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series and read another Doc Ford novel by Randy Wayne White. I also read the non-fiction story Nature Noir by Jordan Fisher Smith, a former park ranger. It describes some of the weird (but typical) incidents he dealt with up in the Sierra's. Very good reading. Also, I'm watching the old episodes of Firefly with some friends. I'm quite impressed so far.

Don't get too wet out there,

--Todd