God told me to do it, but he called me stupid!

Did I mention that the title of the new book is TO BEAT THE DEVIL? Seems I was the only one that liked KEY WEST LATITUDE. I have too much going on in my head to remember if I did or not.

I guesssed, a year ago this month, that the book would be about 200 pages, good enough for an eBook, or so I thought.

I believe, as a writer, I get ideas, and like a farmer, I plant them and, like the farmer, hope tomatoes come up where I put tomato plants and a story develops from where the idea was planted.

I planted this idea a year ago, as I said, and it grew as words began to fill the blank screen of my laptop. Somewhere along the line, I lost control! An incident changed direction of where the chapter was going and that changed the next chapter I had in mind and that . . . well, hopefully, you get the point.

Last week a man that has read my books and wanted to meet me, knew I usually spend Friday happy hour at the Smokin’ Tuna, North of Havana, Cigar Social Club. He visits the Keys from Pennsylvania a few times a year and follows my antics on FaceBook. He showed up Friday and we had a good time, but he made a point of wanting a new book in the series to read.

When I woke on Saturday to write, I thought a lot about what happened Friday night. I knew I was weeks away from the ending, if I followed the timeline I had. Then God spoke to me, something He doesn’t do too often! “Move the time line closer to where you are in the book, stupid!” Well, I think it was God, but did he have to call me stupid?

Anyway, with the guiding hand of providence, I moved the timeline, tossed aside some incidents that would’ve kept the book moving and figure the 200-page idea will be this side of 350 pages! So, please excuse me while I go follow providence.

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