lichtyd: Blog

I've uploaded chapter 12. It should go live Wednesday morning.

Chapter 13 is still undergoing conversion but is should be up Saturday morning. I hope this posting schedule suits everyone's reading schedule.

My writing career has reached a new milestone: negative comments! The first comment pointed out that i'm "...A week writer." The second focused on my making Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a former president of the United States.

One of my writing goals is to "show" and not "tell." It's quite possible I've taken this too far with using AOC as a prop. Early on, I decided handguns are very uncommon in the Loyalty Gene world. Why? Because it would be too easy for a bad guy to shoot one of my protagonists.

Instead of writing circles around handguns, I took the easy way out and made a progressive a former president. It makes sense, doesn't it? Those evil progressives would take away all the guns, right?

So, if a reader wonders why Gene didn't just shoot someone, its because AOC took away the guns!

My "crime" is excessive subtlety. Consider this a lesson learned.

I'm not sure if I should leave the political comment up. regardless of a reader's opinion, TLG doesn't have a political agenda. The comment is out of place.

Now, I want to discuss pacing.

Chapters 11, 12, and 13 are slow-ish. I needed to put all the characters in position before kicking off the fun and games. Please let me know if you think they are too slow.

If you absolutely must discuss politics, send me an email. Please include links to back up your points.

lichtyd

Chapter 11 is up!

I've rewritten large sections of part two several times. Each version brought the story closer to what I wanted. My beta readers plugged away reading these different takes and advising what worked.

Part two consists of ten chapters. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Part three is in development. The outline is complete and I'm pressing forward to the finish. My goal is later this year.

The second draft of part two is complete and with my beta readers. Some small changes to part one became necessary. The updated chapters are up.

If you reread part one, you'll notice the differences are minor. The plot hasn't changed.

My apologies for taking so long with this release. COVID and family issues took precedence.

Chapters eleven through eighteen are "in the can." Chapter nineteen is in work and it's shaping up pretty well. Once nineteen and twenty are finished, I'll give the whole mess to my editor.

I'd hoped to get this finished sooner. Real life had its own plan.

Chapters eleven thru sixteen are content complete. Seventeen is mostly complete. I'm working my way through it now, tweaking things and correcting continuity issues. Chapters eighteen and nineteen are outlined.

Chapter seventeen contains a scene I've built towards since the beginning of part one. It's key for what transpires at the end of part two. I mention this because it's cool to finally get to these parts of the story.

The oldest version of this story started with the male protagonist reuniting with his childhood sweetheart. For me, the story always began with part two. I'm glad I wrote part one and kept working on it for so long. It gave me a much richer base for the story, and the characters are better.

Also interesting is how much the story has changed. The Roger character was originally the female protagonists deceased husband. Back then, the addiction and its resulting bond was a vague concept.

All this is cool, but why isn't the story finished?

I'm lucky in that my employer designated me as essential. While so many have been unemployed, I've worked a full shift each week. There was a brief COVID scare, but I didn't catch it. The other reason is I re-write until I get something that passes my internal BS detector. I hate reading something that feels "forced."

Unless something comes up, I should finish chapter seventeen this weekend. Eighteen and nineteen will likely take three or four weeks. There's a lot happening there and I'll be working from a two-year-old version. I'm unsure about chapter twenty. My current plan is to pull a chapter from part three and use it to introduce another character << spoiler>>(Stephanie's oldest sister)<< /spoiler>>