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Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Chapter 9 of News From Dead Mule Swamp

The West Side Gang is meeting tonight, and I wanted to have something new to take. The group is doing one thing for me that I had hoped: poking me with a stick.

I finished the next chapter (first draft of course) of News from Dead Mule Swamp. In it Ana Raven (the main character) meets Jerry Caulfield, the newspaper editor. Here's a sample:

As I sipped the wonderful coffee, Jerry placed a small white china plate with a black border and silver edge in front of me. The black border wasn’t plain, but was enhanced with a black-on-black intertwining of two Greek meanders. The butter knife he added was sterling silver, bearing the letter C. I was starting to feel inadequate again, just from the weight of the money in the room, but he grinned amiably and tossed a paper napkin on the plate.
6489 words so far, with the story maybe a third told- so I'll estimate 20K words for the book. That's about the length I was thinking- a short, fun mystery. Maybe that's too short- it works out to about 100 pages in print. Should I go for 150 pages?

Is anyone following this at all? Should I introduce Ana on the blog?

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