Tom Frost: Blog

The plan this week is to post chapters 10-12. partly because I don't want to break up the July 4 chapters between weeks and partly because I'm mostly done with the writing all the way to chapter 19.

If everything goes according to plan, I'll post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The only obvious possible snag is that I haven't edited and formatted any of those chapters yet. I've been too busy writing.

Last night at 2 AM, I was struggling to stay awake long enough to write one of two pivotal sex scenes at the end of Chapter 18 in The Billionaire Life. Good cider and Zyrtec are apparently a bad combination for staying focused and awake.

I've been holding the scene in my head for about a week - ever since I came up with the character Shelby (who won't show up in the published version until I post the Fourth of July party in chapters 11-12.) So, I was eager to finally get it on paper.

I managed to get it down before going to bed, but it was awful. The scene involved character development for two POV characters and a number of edgy elements. I didn't feel like the characters would actually behave the way I wrote them even as I was writing them. The edgy elements seemed to come out of nowhere and, as result, the whole scene was just Bad Porn.

This morning over coffee, I threw the scene away and started from scratch. I like it much better this time. It's still fucked up, but there's a natural, feline playfulness to both characters that comes out.

It's tricky on SOL where I post chapters of stories I haven't finished writing yet, but I've learned to trust my writer-brain when it tells me a scene isn't working and backtrack until I figure out why. Sometimes, it's just that one scene. Sometimes, it's because I've pushed a character's growth or descent too quickly to suspend disbelief.

The Billionaire Life is turning into a longer work than I originally expected - largely because it's a coming-of-age story for at least six of its characters and I don't want to rush them faster than it makes sense for them to go.

Chapter 9 of The Billionaire Life is going up now. IRL, I've left one job and am only starting to get into the swing of looking for the next one, so I've taken advantage of the time to get some writing done. Chapters 10 and 11 are on the table to be edited for release next week. Chapters 12-17 are written, but need a final edit. At some point, I'll drop back down to one chapter a week because the chapters are a lot longer. Chapter 18 is already 18 pages long and still has probably another 10-15 pages to go.

For everyone who's waiting for New Rome to continue, I'm working on doing a final edit and proof for the first book, while I'll be releasing on the Zon as The Elevation of Corvus Gallicus. I've got about 100 pages of Man of the People that I've rewritten three or four times now, but I'm not sure they're the first 100 pages or if they're just going to be backstory for where we pick up the action.

I appreciate all the feedback I've gotten on The Billionaire Life so far (both positive and negative.) The book is turning out to have an unusual shape and pacing. There are so many characters who have to get from Point A to a point somewhere much farther down the alphabet for it to get where it's going that it may wind up being the longest book I've ever written, but at least I'm finally getting to post the parts Kiki would call "sexy-good."

As I used to routinely mention on my external blog, I post on SOL largely to get a sense of whether what I'm working on has an audience, so I love feedback. =^..^=