Tom Frost: Blog

At the risk of getting people's hopes up, I wanted to post that I've finally started making some real, consistent headway on "Too Much Love" again.

I've got about twelve pages of Chapter 57 written and think I'm about a third of the way done with the first draft. Additionally, I have chapters 58-60 outlined and notes extending farther beyond that.

I've set myself a goal of March 22 to publish Chapter 57 on SOL. After that, I plan to publish new chapters every four weeks until I get a backlog of at least three chapters, then go back to once every two weeks.

One other goal is to finish book one in 99 chapters or fewer. Considering that it's taken 56 chapters to get through two months, expect the pace to pick up noticeably in the coming chapters.

The job search I mentioned in my last post is concluded and I've started a new job.

Unfortunately for TML, this means that I've had limited time to work on Chapter 56 and am not sure when I'll be able to write every day again. I've managed to finish two of the four sections planned for this chapter, but the rest might take a while as I retrain myself for the new skill-set.

Or it might be ready next week. I just don't know when I'll have time to write yet.

I need to take a step back from Too Much Love for a few weeks and focus on real life and other projects. Over the last couple of months, I've been stealing time from a job search to write and I really need to focus on finding a job right now.

This doesn't mean I won't be writing, but I need to polish up my skills and push harder for interviews for a while.

Expect the next chapter around November 1.

I'd just like to take a moment to note and mourn the passing of the original Tom Frost this week. Frost was a pioneer rock climber and designed pitons that were less environmentally damaging than in the past. I didn't know the man, but he seemed like a good fellow and a fine coincidental namesake. In case anyone stumbled across a story about his passing, that wasn't me.

As I work on my continuity guide, I've put up numerous tweaks and fixes to Too Much Love where continuity strayed a bit too far. Most of them are minor - characters given two different names (or in the case of Threnody's father, three different names) have gotten their name consolidated down to just one. Some dates have been changed. Some spelling has been fixed. So far, there's only been one really big fix worth mentioning.

In Chapter 43, Nick and Arwen are talking about their past and I managed to confuse myself about the year that Shelby moved to Brownfield Mills. It's established early on that she moved there in the summer after freshman year but over time, it became the summer after sophomore year. Once I realized my mistake, a lot of their discussion had to be rewritten. So if you read chapter 43 more than once and their discussion seems to have changed, it has.

There are still a number of continuity errors I've elected not to correct yet because they have low impact, but high effort to fix. Specifically, Connie Carlyle's name is spelled three different ways (Carlyle, Carlisle and Carlysle) and SSCS alternates between being Stryker-Stone Concierge Service and Stone Stryker Concierge Service.

Assuming there's another draft of Too Much Love (and there would need to be before I released it as an eBook,) I will go back and do my best to fix those, but for now, I've decided to focus on finishing the continuity guide and getting back to telling the story.