Rough time but getting back...

I'm tired of whining about my writing or lack thereof. Weary of wondering if it's any good or, in some cases, too good for what I do write. Which is something I never thought I would think. But I am pleased as hell with the concept I came up with for The Beast in the Nothing Room...and the tag line for it -- How do you stop a serial killer who kills no one and doesn't even exist? However, even with that book, every now and then I wonder if making it a MM story killed its potential for sales.

Which is stupid and childish and insulting to the story. I've been told by people who have read it that it's the most terrifying story they've ever read, and moves lightning fast. I've even been told my take on DNA is spot on, by someone who's in the field. There is one complaint I have to agree with -- I didn't develop the relationship between my MC, Finn, and a German cop, Christian, in the depth it deserved. I just let it happen and assumed everyone would fall in line with how much sense it made. That was wrong of me.

I use this story and the responses to it to prop myself up when I'm feeling uncertain and scared. Even when writing A Place of Safety, which has a straight protagonist in Brendan...for the most part. BNR pretty much wrote itself, once I had Finn set, and I had to do very little rewriting. It would not have hurt to do another draft before publishing it, but too late to change things now. And I'm not planning to do it as a screenplay, like I did with Porno Manifesto, where I corrected mistakes in that story to make it stronger. I'm of the mind that one can only do that with an adaptation.

I'm back to reading more, now. I got a DVD of the new Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and also bought a copy of the book. I watched the Angela Lansbury TV version from 1991 (which was close to awful) and am appreciating the neat job done by the 2022 screenwriters Carol Cartwright and Anthony Fabian. It's a lovely fable in the movie, and a charming character study in the book...sort of.

But seeing these three different takes on the same story is helping me settle my uncertainty regarding the path APoS is on. It's all right. I just need to relax and let it be.