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Congratulations to Porter-Gaud graduate, Tess Ferm, on winning the Miss South Carolina Teen competition. She's not just a beautiful young lady, but her initiative, "From Fear to Freedom" is pretty unique. Off, now, to Furman to study psychology. Furman is an absolutely beautiful campus in Greenville, SC, and their psychology program is among the best. She had some tough competition. https://www.abccolumbia.com/2025/06/28/new-miss-south-carolinas-teen-crowned/
As I work on the next chapter, it crossed my mind that the favorite songs of my youth and those of my sweetheart were radically different, yet we both learned to love each other's favorites. If I had to name one song from those halcyon days of yore, it would be Shattered by the Rolling Stones. It's kind of funny since it's about NYC and I really dislike NYC. Start Me Up would be a close second. On the other side, my sweetheart would list Beneath Still Waters or Boulder to Birmingham by Emmylou Harris. There is no possible way those songs should end up on the same playlist. Anyone out there in SOLville have a wider difference in musical taste than that?
I'm back from Africa and will get to my mail as soon as I catch up on a few other things. Great riding, as usual, and saw some big cats this time, which is always fun.
It's cooler at this time of year than I remembered. There are gift shops in the Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport departure terminal named, "Out of Africa". The name makes me smile and I always say to myself, 'I'm going to watch that movie. It's been a long time.' But then, I remember it's been a long time since I've watched any movie and I don't. I'm back to work on "Lean on Me."
When a story gets as long as the Jack Pierce Chronicles, the number of people naturally grows. As I write the next chapter, I can keep the growing number of characters or let some of them slide into the background to keep from overwhelming my readers. There are some obviously central characters but there are some on the periphery as well. If there are some that you think, "Please don't let this person fade out of the story," let me know, please. It's not a matter of whether certain characters are more or less important. It's simply a matter of keeping it a bit more streamlined so that it's readable. I strive to make it easy to follow. If you have input, fire it my way.
Thanks
I'm currently working on the senior year of the Jack Pierce Chronicles. My goal is to have it published before.............Christmas. It takes a while.
For those who are curious, here's my process. Each author has their own.
Write. It takes between 3-8 days for me to write a 20 page chapter. I will continue to write until I get to either Christmas break or the end of the school year, depending on how it's going.
Rough edit. I work back through the entire book, looking for continuity issues, major editing errors, adding necessary clarifications. I'll break that down into chapters ranging from 15-30 pages in length.
Second edit. I work through each chapter, making minor edits. At the end of each chapter, I send it off to:
Steven - he receives each chapter only after I've beat it to death. He edits it and sends it back.
Last chance - I'll work through it one more time before publishing each chapter.
In spite of all that, I've made some misses, using complement rather than compliment, peddle rather than pedal, and canon rather than cannon, and the like. I'll still get an email from grammar nazis telling me I should have had an extra comma or didn't need one. I don't mind.
This is a hobby. Kids, foster kids, attorneys, horses, and my own vacations tend to slow me down, here and there. Because of the lengthy time between episodes, I do my best to remind readers of who familiar characters are, without getting bogged down. Characters like Veronica or Cheryl are left out for chapters at a time so that I only have to re-introduce them once.
I do hope you enjoyed the tie in between Beach House and JP Chronicles.
Once I have
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