Lectures from My Reading: I hear over and over how people hate prologues. Then, Jane Haddam has a 48-page one in Cheating at Solitaire -- describing possible suspects wandering through an afternoon until she ends with the discovery of the murder victim.
Next, she "starts" chapter one back on Cavanaugh Street (in a former Armenian ghetto in Philadelpha) with Gregor Demarkian, her detective, wondering how he can avoid the preparations for his wedding to Bennis Hannaford, with whom he's been living and solving murders with for years. The fussiest of his wedding preppers is tired of his fidgeting and suggests he go find a police department that has a murder they can't solve. The book is off and running.
(I'm looking forward to a lovely read. But, Haddam's writing is dense so it'll take me longer than most books. We're talking page long paragraphs here.)
Still, Haddam has given me a possible idea for starting Maren with multiple viewpoints as a way to fill in a lot of backstory since her being shoved through a portal to earth starts the story. I don't think I'm going to set up a series with Maren as the mystery solver, but it may help me launch the chapters in my first draft. Wonder how many people I can turn off by that. -- Oh. It's all in the execution, AWer's say. Now I have to wonder about writing it right or executing my chances of getting the finished project published.
Progress: Emma. Revised chapter 6. Wishing I wrote faster.
Maren. Thinking more than anything else, but taking some notes. Have to go back and try to clean my second card table so I have more room to spread out my notes...
Critiquing. Am behind for the local group which meets Wednesday night ... in a predicted snow storm. Waiting for a new chapter from my on line critiquer. Decided I'm too busy and not ready for a beta reader.
Trivia: Enjoying the same old rut. Chiropractor on Tuesdays so I can sit at my computer and still unbend when I get up. More important. I'm meeting with a website person to polish my blog.
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