Chapter 1: A Stash House NEW VERSION

Now that I'm about 42,000 words into the rough draft, I changed my mind about the opening scene. You can read the original version here.

The original version was an Ice Monster! scene, but to give the reader a taste of danger and excitement before the novel backs off and goes into foreshadowing mode. (More on that at the original post, link above.)

However, the original scene was a bank robbery, which had little to do with the plot. Here, I've changed the location of the crime to a stash house in the affluent community of North Scottsdale. A stash house is a house or other location where human traffickers kidnap the very people they led over the Mexican-US Border and then demand ransom from their families back in Mexico or points south. This relates more closely to the Border themes in the novel.

Hope you like it. I'll take comments off of moderation soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to talk about it, feel free to Tweet me. My twitter handle is @TKKenyon, and there's a button over in the right hand column to follow me.

Chapter One: The Stash House

Comments restricted and on moderation

Dear Friends,

Sorry that I've had to restrict comments to members of this blog, and even those are moderated. It seems that Passive Voice Guy's blog has now been attacked for posting Kris's article.

These publisher-lackey hackers are giving real hackers a bad name. Real hackers are anti-establishment and moderately anarchic. These publisher lackeys are hacking to help multinational corporations. What kind of slacker hackers are they? Yuck.

I've run my anti-virus, and I seem to be clean. I'm going to make sure my Carbonite is up to date.

TK

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Updates on Royalty Statements Post: Something Rotten in New York City

This blog post was posted on Kristine Kathryn Rusch's blog a few days ago, and soon afterward, hackers took down her site. 

And then she posted it on another site, and they took that one down, too. 

Kris gave me permission to repost on my blog to spread this news. Other blogs are doubtlessly reposting, too. 

If you're an aspiring writer, you need to read this. If you're a publishing writer, you MUST read this, and then read your own royalty statements, very carefully. 

Kris Rusch: Updates on Royalty Statements Post: Something Rotten in New York City

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  

Kris Rusch's website is now up and running. The excellent blog post can be found here: http://kriswrites.com/2012/05/02/the-business-rusch-royalty-statement-update-2012/

TK

Selling Handcuffs Chapter 1: Hostages at a Bank Robbery

Hello friends,

Here is Chapter 1 of my novel-in-progress, Selling Handcuffs. I previously posted the prologue, which had some insight into the main character, Angel Day, but isn't necessary to understand what's going on here.

For writers: This is an "Ice Monster!" scene. For more on story structure and the concept of the "Ice Monster!" scene, watch Dan Wells's very good lecture series on YouTube here. Basically, an "Ice Monster!" scene is an interesting hook for the beginning of the novel and relates to some of the main problems in the novel, though not the main conflict, and it basically starts the novel off with a big bang (literally, in this case) rather than a bunch of talking or back story. You tell the reader, "Look! Ice Monster!"

Caveat: This is a rough draft. It's really rough.

I haven't added how much force it takes to pull the trigger of the .308 sniper rifle yet.

You'll notice that I also haven't even decided on the side three sniper's name yet. It's denoted as "BBB" in the draft. If you have a bright idea for a name, leave it in the comments or email it to me, because I'm stumped.

Chapter 1: Hostages at a Bank Robbery 

Selling Handcuffs: Prologue

Okay, so I talked to people about whether or not I should post my first draft up on my blog, just to start conversations with people about writing and stories, and there were a lot of opinions out there about whether or not it was a good idea.

Many of the negative comments were based in fear: mostly fear of pirates finding it, copying it, and publishing (mostly e-publishing) it as their own.

So, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to post each chapter for a while, then take it down.

So, this is the Prologue, or perhaps it will be inserted somewhere in the middle. Haven't decided yet. As I mentioned above, this is a rough draft. It's a little bit of back story, but mostly characterization.

It's really rough.

Before it is published, I'll fine-comb it for spelling and grammar and all that. Don't worry about that.

Beyond nit-picks, I'd love to know what y'all think. Feel free to leave your comments or email me.

This is the first time I've tried throwing rough drafts out there, and so the caveat is: this is a ROUGH DRAFT. It's pretty close to a FIRST DRAFT.

And here it is:

Prologue: Swan Dive 

Quality: A Response to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Post

As for the question of quality, I read about 50/50 indie books vs. trad books nowadays, and it seems like the bell curve of quality is about the same for both types of books.

However, I can say for sure that the two worst books that I’ve read in the past year, which were so bad that they stayed with me and I must restrain myself from ranting at the crappiness of them, were both traditionally published. My book club ranted at both these books last night, so it’s not just me. These were actually outliers on the quality curve, a two-book blip on the left end of the long tail, they were so bad.

I have not read any indie book that approaches the sheer badness of those two major NY-pubbed books.

It seems like when an indie writer is bad, they’re amateurish in safe, predictable ways, and sometimes you can actually see them improve during the book.

When a NY-pubbed book is bad, the writer is arrogant and blind to how terribly the book has gone wrong, because they are a Professional NY-Published Writer, Dammit, and then the book gets worse as they go farther astray and defend their terrible, terrible choices. The badness becomes exponential.

Yes, quality is not the exclusive domain of the large publishers, and shlock is certainly not limited to indies.

TK Kenyon 

Friends -- Do you really want to read my horrible first draft?

Friends,

Some writers post their first drafts of their novels on their blogs. Seems like I've seen a couple lately.

Should I do this? It might be fun. It might be interesting. I'd be interested in what y'all have to say about it, either that you hate some things or want to see more or something.

I'm working on the first draft of the first novel in a series. It's about a woman (Angel Day) who is a sniper for the Phoenix PD. She used to be on the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team as a sniper. She likes to kill people a little too much, but the people she kills desperately deserve it. (In the first chapter, she snipes a big guy who had a shotgun duct-taped to a small woman's neck, and he was counting down to zero.)

What do you guys think?

TK Kenyon