We Made It

through April, that is. Between editing the Thief manuscript, MFA work, Easter, and various school projects, the whole month was a blur. I’m sure many things were accomplished, I just couldn’t tell you what they were.

What I’m Working On

Surprise, it’s still editing The Second Greatest Thief in New York! My deleted scenes document now contains 8500 words, and yet the manuscript has almost the exact same word count as before I started because of all the new scenes. My revision notes from my agent included expanding the story world and adding more “fun and games,” so I’ve been busily coming up with new locations for my characters to explore. One of the easiest ways to do this in an alternate historical novel is through research. As I was reading up on 19th-century New York (where this novel is loosely based), I found out about the wild competition on 5th avenue between all the wealthy families (the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, etc). The feuds mostly manifested in competitions over who had the tallest house or most expensive ballgown.

So, of course, I had to set a few new scenes on 5th Avenue. If you want to see some great photos from the time period, click here.

What I’m Reading:

On Audible, I finally finished up The Passage by Justin Cronin. This was a really impressive undertaking on the author’s part. The novel spanned so many decades and wove so many storylines together. I was deeply invested in all the characters we were first introduced to, but struggled to connect with some of the ones later on in the story. Some of that probably had to do with the fact that it took me several months to finish (I don’t have much time for audiobooks), but some of it has to do with the simple fact that we are usually less invested in characters introduced later on in a story (or tv series). Cronin has a clean, sparse writing style that works very effectively for a post-apocalyptic thriller, and I’m glad I read it.

I also finished Red Rising by Pierce Brown (Hunger Games without the glitz and glamour, set on Mars). Perhaps motherhood has changed me (or because my kids are drawing closer to the ages these children are) but I struggled with the violence—physical and sexual—in the story. It wasn’t gratuitous, but a skilled author can make even off-screen trauma pack a punch, and Brown is a skilled author. His world building, visceral descriptions, and surprise twists were all excellent.

I’m now working my way through The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser. Yes, it’s a strange transition, but one ought to feed different parts of the brain.

Writing Tip:

One way that a story can feel boring or like it lacks forward motion is if you don’t vary scene location. The corollary to this is that setting a scene in a new location easily increases tension because it gives a sense of excitement and discovery to the readers. I recently had to write a scene into Thief that involved a fair amount of exposition/dialogue. It had the potential to lose a reader’s interest (a grave sin). So, I set it in a place where the characters had never been before. This also allowed for very natural beats (pauses) within the dialogue where the characters noticed the cool things around them.

If you’re limited in where you can set your scenes, try varying the time of day that the characters visit that location. Or change up the weather. Or have a poisonous snake let loose somewhere in the room.

I’m trying very hard to get my edits done in the next few weeks, but the more I take this story apart, the more I find that needs fixing. It’s possible that when the next Harbinger swoops in through your chimney, I’ll still be trying to sew Thief back together again.

Cheers,

Christine