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Snow At Last!

We didn’t exactly get a White Christmas but Winter did actually start and we’re finally seeing some of that white stuff around here today.

Staying Warm

Now that Winter’s here and temperatures are down into my comfort zone, we’re getting a lovely little coating of snow. I don’t need five feet or anything like that. This isn’t Upstate New York or North Dakota. I like a lovely winter decoration without all the drama.

There have been links going around on Facebook about the blizzard of 1996. I remember that. I got stuck in it and it sucked. Sitting on the highway for hours because of administrative incompetence is no way to spend 12 hours. I left work around 3pm and got about ten miles from home when everything came to a stop on the highway.

There was nothing on the radio. There was a lot of talk about the snow closures around the region but Route 78 being at a complete stand-still for over 12 hours didn’t seem to get mentioned. Fortunately, the National Guard got called out and the guys actually dug free. Talk about crazy!

Fortunately, this is the beginning of the season and we’re only getting a little bit of decorative snow here and again. Given the wooliness of the wooly bears last Summer, we’ll probably be seeing a fair bit more as Winter rolls along. We’ll see. Hopefully, we’ll get a little frequently instead of a lot intermittently. Moderation in all things, my friends. Even the weather is working on a New Years’ Resolution.

Snow!

SNOW !!! from White Christmas

I noticed something funny about White Christmas. When they’re trying to come up with ideas about how to draw customers to the General’s inn in Vermont, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye have the following exchange:

Maybe we could dig up a Democrat?

Vermont has certainly changed since the 50s…

Art

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. ~John Ruskin

Now that A Misfit Christmas is complete and the paperback is published, I’m returning to work on my Sentinels series. The heroes are in disarray and they’re clamoring for attention. My original plan was to have five novels staged five years apart from each other. I don’t think that’s going to work. The five novels are each probably going to become five trilogies instead. Five-year gaps would be too jarring, I think.

I was researching information about chapter lengths. I have been working with approximately 3000-word chapters each consisting of 3 1000-word scenes and it has been fine to start with, but I’m going to go back through for editing. It’s already heavy on dialogue. I need the dialogue but it can get a bit dry without the accompaniment of action and scenery. I’ve yet to describe even half of the characters in a cursory way.

As it turns out, the books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (better known as Game of Thrones from the HBO series based on the books) by George R. R. Martin seem to average around 5000 words per chapter overall. I don’t claim to be writing on GRRM’s level at this point but I do want to be as immersive and enjoyable as GRRM made the lands of Westeros and his “Known World”.

So, I’m okay with approximately 3000 words per chapter as a basic target but I anticipate exceeding that in the final version. Recently, I’ve been going back and standardizing Mary Christmas’ accent. I’ll need to do the same thing for Detective Stan Dargis. Consistency is important to fans (who I hope to have lots of eventually), so I want to get some of these details hammered down before I get too far along and have to go back and rectify them through entire novels’ worth of text.

❄️ That’s all for today. I’m hanging loose and enjoying the fluffy white precipitation that reminds me that it’s not Summer yet. ❄️