And it just goes and goes...

Pumped up the interview with the gay reporter. Named him Zacharia Oldman, and he gets Simon to start seeing that the town is run by the Prosecutor and police, and that no one wants to cause trouble. There's a certain way things are done there, and Simon is upsetting everything by not taking a deal.

It's still on the weak side but works for now. It helps that Zack is black or partially so. I don't think I'm going to specify except to say his skin is the color of Simon's tea, which is a quarter milk. He may play into this later.

Something I've realized about my writing is how few minority characters I have, overall. I don't really specify race, for the most part, though I have included Muslims and Jews. But there are next to none who are black or Asian except in the very periphery.

Jake is half-Irish-half-Persian, in VoT, and I've found a digital content creator named Sean Hammond who is exactly that. Hunter has a couple black guys in fair-size parts at the end, and Bobby has a couple teammates who are black or Latino in BC. Dirc doesn't care if the men he grabs are white, black or Latino, in DDB and DDC.

But ReShawn and Viona are my first fully black characters who are important to the story...and along comes Zach, who is probably half and half and I'm not going to specify. He just is. And I like that.

I'm at 59,000 words, now, and still adding. Yeah, this is going to be a full-fledged novel.

Which is cool.