Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“Thank God for the efforts of Black Lives Matter―we’ve seen an awakening in this era in a way we didn’t see in Daddy’s era in terms of people coming to grips with white privilege. [White privilege] has never been uncovered, revealed and discussed by those in the white community in history.”

—Rev. Bernice King, The Huffington Post, January 16, 2017



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I do believe Venus in Transit is the most diffuse and rambling novel I've ever written. There is a real conflict in the story, but through most of the book it's taking place at an elevated level that I've left hidden from the reader. Bad idea—at least from a genre POV. It's one thing to charm the reader with antic or exciting goings-on, but if the conflict remains invisible, they will probably give up in frustration, muttering, "Where's the beef?"

Clearly, the story needs a big restructuring and I need to stop with the coy stuff and let the reader know what is at stake and how those stakes effect my main characters. As structured now, that doesn't become evident until quite a bit later in the novel. I'm not sure the readers will stick around for the reveal.

I've been trying to hold my feet to the fire the last couple of days, forcing myself to write out a detailed outline of what's happened so far, what's going to happen. It's already quite evident that one whole chunk of the novel should be removed in order to get to the revelation of conflict sooner. The seven chapters I've already posted to the workshop could also probably be reduced by half. And I need to reveal the protagonists more directly, maybe give the reader information that my characters don't yet possess. That, at least, would give them a sense of the sly, serpentine bad mojo lurking beneath the bright façade. It would at least give them some sense that there is conflict, that it does impact my characters, but the characters don't have any idea yet.

Yeah, that's what I should have done. These things are always so clear in retrospect. I can't decide whether I should pull VIT from the shop, do the restructure, then repost or if I should just proceed from this point on, fixing as I go, with the idea of fixing the front end in the next draft.

Decisions, decisions.

The novel that's working most powerfully on my psyche right now is actually the sequel to A Rain of Angels (maybe because I'm just about to start marketing AROA). I've done a lot of prep work on the sequel, and the main characters not only have a good, serious conflict but they now have names: Evanne and Scorch. For those of you who read AROA, Carsten and Rye are still around, but they'll be sharing the focus with these other characters. I haven't yet decided on POV, whether it will be with one character or multiples, but once I have that locked down I might actually be able to start writing this little baby.

But I dohave a tentative title. I've been jokingly calling it Intermittent Showers of Angels, but I think the new official working title will actually be The Great Awakening. I'm not sure if that title will make it across the finish line, but at least it's something to call the thing.