World of Mirrors

Next month, my suspense novel, World of Mirrors will be published by Wings-ePress as an ebook and a trade paperback.  Yippee.  Interested?  Here's a brief synopsis. 

World of Mirrors is set on an island off the Baltic coast in the former DDR, and the year is 1990, the “time of the turn.” The Berlin wall has crumbled, but Germany is not yet reunified.   Against the seductive decadence of an old resort with its classic sailboats, nude beaches and crumbling casinos, Zara Gray, a consultant to high tech firms, and T.K. Drummond, a man who finds people and fixes situations, must track down an American software thief before he can fence a stolen copy of his company’s bleeding-edge new software.

 Zara narrates the story as she fights the fear that their mission is jinxed from the beginning.  Bad decisions and chilling discoveries threaten to sabotage the project.  The situation further unravels during a sailing weekend, and turns deadly at a Midsummer Festival.  Trapped in a matrix of betrayal, Zara and T.K. must rely on two unlikely people to help them escape the island and in a final, desperate gambit to save the software, Zara must perform her own dangerous treachery.      

Writing is Rewriting. And Rewriting Again. Yet Again. Arrrghhh!

Writing is weird.  In my novels I write a scene, and go over it the next day.  Fix.  Fix.  Then I go over the scene once more and take it to my writing group.  Bring home.  Fix.  Fix.

Onward.  First draft is finally done, a big achievement.  Listen, there is a reason why first drafts are called, "the shitty first draft."  After a suitable interval, time to tackle the scenes again.

Print the novel, and get out the red pen.  Yikes!  How did this scene already get four rewrites?  It well, it sucks.  Once again, with feeling.
More printing, more red pencils.  Cut them useless words!  Slice!  Dice!  Now we're cookin'.

One would think that everything would be perfect, and one would be wrong.  Where is le mot juste?  Le paragraph juste,  even the scene juste?

Hey, it must be perfect now.  Back to the writing group who hasn't heard it for lo, these many months.

Oh, no!  Back to the drawing board. 

Arrrghhh!  Writing is rewriting. 

Grapeshot

If you're looking for a Kindle novel that must have been rewritten 20 times, here's the link.  Cheap introductory price.  Lots of words for the money.   

The Shadow Warriors on Kindle

Here is a map of the island where the book is (mostly) set.  Learn about an interesting place you probably never heard of.