Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Tomorrow's the big day for numbers...

I'll hit 50,000 words, and still have another ⅓ to ½ of the book to finish writing. So I'll keep going on it till Monday; that's when I fly to Jackson, Wyoming. All while I'm still coming down off jet lag and trying to realign my body clock. I guess maintaining the same schedule in Hong Kong that you have in New York makes things worse for you. I've been starving all day and can't keep my eyes open.

Since I'm not an automaton, the shredding of OT affected me...and what I'm doing with UG. These are two completely different types of stories so to hold them up to each other for evaluation by the same criteria is absurd. UG is a sex-charged murder mystery built on suspense and some character development. OT is a character-driven story that unfolds in its own natural way. UG starts off running at 90; OT starts from ten mph and works its way up to 120...then gears down.

What I'm trying to do with OT is make Jake and his world as real as I can while slowly upping the drama he's faced with -- Palm Springs under attack by homophobes out to take their city back. It's got a lot more going on, and I'm trying to show how insidiously that insulates itself into the town's society. It's a dark story but with some humor...I thought...so I guess if you don't buy into Jake as someone you want to follow, you aren't going to buy the book.

Thinking about it, I had a vaguely similar complaint lodged against Bobby Carapisi, a few years back -- that the story didn't get started until it reached Allen's letter detailing how he raped men. I guess I need to make it clear that, even though there is sex in the books, it's not the raison d'etre for the books. That never has been the case in my writing, though the sex does get pretty damned intense, at times.

I dunno...maybe I'm just writing a Russian novel, with hundreds of characters and each playing his or her own small part in the full story...and fancy myself the gay Tolstoy...

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