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Not Quite Summer

It may be Hump Day again, but the temps are the opposite of a hump. It was hot last weekend and will be hot again this weekend. Today is quite lovely by comparison.

Tom Wolf’s Theme Song

My Corona – Papa Bakes

Pennsylvania is still red and yellow instead of yellow and green. There’s no indication of when he’s going to stop moving the goalposts.

Screw him.

With Memorial Day Weekend fast approaching, a lot of the coastal states are opening beachfront areas because…

🤑 Tax Base 🤑

They may love having the power to lord it over us “for our own protection” but even the most overprotective of governors realize how their bread is buttered.

Somehow, magically, it’s going to be “safe” to be at the beach and boardwalk despite the fact that doing the exact same things at the exact same distances and types of businesses will somehow be prohibited in areas that are not deemed to be likely to draw tourist impulse spending (particularly from tourists who are suffering from COVID19 cabin fever).

That’s the great thing about being a Democrat.

Logic has no bearing.

Being a stifling nanny-stater for our own protection in no way runs counter to the need to take other people’s money by any means necessary. So, tourist spots get their much-needed sales tax revenue and humdrum hometowns get fined for opening the exact same kinds of businesses that will be open at the beach. Rational thought need not apply as long as they can threaten you with fines and jail time…

Helps If You Listen

How Important is Chapter Length?

I remembered Chris talking about “potato chip chapters” but I didn’t remember the word count he was citing.

As it turns out, I must have listened to him originally because I’ve been targeting 1,200 word chapters all along. My chapter count is quite high, but this apparently is not a problem as long as you’re telling a story worth telling. I’m pretty sure I am.

Eating An 🐘 Elephant

Nothing can be done except little by little. ~Charles Baudelaire

I came to a bit of a trip-up point with The Sentinels: New Blood.

I’m cruising happily along, slightly dissatisfied with how much time I’m spending in any given day of their experience and even more slightly dissatisfied with how little access I have to reasonably important events that the bad guys are perpetrating outside of the scope of the POV characters’ awareness.

I’ve only got one guy who is on the inside track with the bad guys and he’s still fairly out of the loop on what 7 of the 8 are up to at any given time. My Third-Person Omniscient version gave me more access without the burden of getting in the bad guys’ heads.

So, that’s still kind of dragging me down. I want to retool it a bit to include more of the bad guys’ activities but I’m fairly certain I don’t want to get in their heads to do it. Switching between First-Person Limited POV characters and Third-Person Omniscient bad guys would be both jarring and weird. I still want this book to be readable.

So, that’s why you haven’t seen as many end of day word counts on Facebook recently.

The book is pretty close to finished but there are some key factors missing in order to really get me to the final surprise in a way that has context and sets up future novels in the series.

Nothing much to say today but I said it anyway. Have a great rest of your week and I’ll see you here on Saturday. 👍🏼