The good news is that I'm healthy. The bad news, from your perspective, is that I seem to have stopped blogging. I'm not sure why. Part of it is that I've been focusing on revising the beginning of my novel,
Mercury Falls. Truth be told, I was never really happy with the opening chapters. I wrote the first three chapters before I had any idea where the book was going, and then once I got an idea of where things were headed, I just kept writing until I got to the end. But then I still had these shaky first three chapters that seemed to be both integral to the plot and mismatched in tone with the rest of the book. I couldn't remove them without screwing up the plot, but they didn't make a very good introduction to the book either.
Anyway, I believe I have finally come up with a solution. I made some revisions to the opening chapters that I think have vastly improved the book. At this point I think Mercury Falls is about as good as I can possibly make it. If you enjoy this blog, you're definitely going to like Mercury Falls. There are several chapters that I think are as good or better than anything I've posted here and, just as importantly, I believe the book as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. The story arc came together very nicely.
I'm going to start sending the revised version to agents soon; if I don't get any bites by the end of the summer I'll probably just self-publish the thing. I also wanted to say thanks to everybody who has
signed up for the interest list and/or displayed the
Mercury Falls banner on your blog. 318 people have signed up already! I'm hoping that will carry some weight once I start querying agents again. If you haven't signed up yet,
please do. You're under no obligation to buy the book, and I won't spam you or anything (I think I've sent exactly one update to the list so far). You can also
become a fan of Mercury Falls on Facebook.
I'm not sure what's in store for Mattress Police. I started this blog on a whim, with the lowest of expectations, as a place where I could post the crazy random stuff that goes through my head. I find that lately, however, I have less and less funny random stuff going on there that I care to post. I'm not sure if that's a temporary effect of channeling my randomness toward Mercury Falls or if it's a more permanent condition. In any case, I wouldn't expect much in the way of posts for a few weeks.
Don't worry, I won't stop writing. Besides Mercury Falls, I've been toying with the idea of a sequel to Antisocial Commentary and/or a semi-autobiographical book to be titled Not Living Up to My Potential. Oh, and some ideas for a sequel to Mercury Falls have already started to scratch at the rear screen door of my mind as well.
Thanks again to all of you who have supported this blog (and me) over the past two+ years. It's been great "meeting" many of you, and you've been a continual source of encouragement and gratification for me.
Diesel out, for now.