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

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