With New Improved Meatier Fluff

I think I've figured out how to balance updating the KJV with my regular writing. I'll need to cut the update down to maybe two chapters a night and put the leftover time into book stuff. I'll have to try it and see how it works. That will stretch what is already a long project into an even longer one as far as time goes, but I have to get back to work fixing book 2 or redoing it or whatever the ultimate decision for its future turns out to be. It's not right to delay it.

However, I need to do the final run through of AoE, which is the next book in the pipeline and mentioned previously in various posts but not recently. As a reminder, it's a about a 16-yr-old girl who gets trapped in virtual reality and has to find a way to break out. I submitted it to an editing "event" last fall that turned out to be a publicity campaign rather than what it claimed. Despite that, I got some good feedback from an editor with character and integrity that I'll be incorporating into the final pass for AoE and future work.

In so many words the editor thought I needed more description to anchor the story better. I already suspected my prose was too skimpy. Now, I need to turn it into something fluffier and meatier. Instead of saying a character looked down at the sidewalk, I need to say something like the character peered down at jagged cracks that careened like EKG lines through the grizzled sidewalk. It's not sunny any more. The sun glints off windows as it cascades through verdant, green foliage like ruby smiles from half-forgotten dreams. Who cares if sunlight is yellow, leaves are green and rubies are red? It's fluffier. Well, maybe not, but I do need some padding. Now with new improved meatier fluff!

I've gotten a small start on AoE. Since it's basically done already, I'm hoping it won't take more than a week or two to inject the fluff, fix the jargon problem and send it off to test readers. Welcome aboard to the newest tester. You know who are! Assuming you read the blog, of course.

The reason I use skimpy prose is because I don't want to be what I call a doorknob author. You've read them before. They describe the glint of the sunlight off the doorknob in excruciating detail and how that reminds the character of something in the past, and the next thing you know you're trapped in a two-chapter flashback the editors should have cut to three pages. I've blogged about doorknob authors before. Enough said.

Remember the mystery/romance from a while back? It's time to cut what needs cutting out of that and get it out the door. It would be under a female pen name, probably named after my cat, Cici. That's a real name. I could get away with that. I used Sandy at first then switched it to Janie after an ancestor of mine from the 1800s. But I'm also partial to the name Amy. Or Émy for French flair. I've got options. Assuming the book works. I'm having doubts about it, which is why it's been on the back burner since 2014.

Next week should be some talk about Book 2 and what the options are for that. Maybe the solution will have presented itself before then.

Have a great weekend.