Mondays Rock! Chapter 4 of Rubbed Out is Done!
Monday mornings are fantastic! No, that is not a typo. I have to admit, when I was working at my traditional career I didn't often feel that way. The amount of energy it took to get up so early it was still dark (at least for half of the year), make myself presentable, put on the suit or at least the khakis and long-sleeved oxford, battle the commute and then work on solving the problems of retail banking didn't cause me to leap out of bed in joyful anticipation.
Now, however, even though it is still dark when I open my eyes in the morning, the prospects of jumping into an exciting alternate reality to see what happens next always makes it easy to get up and get going. And there are four more days just like it that will follow! This is a pretty good gig, I must say.
This morning I wrote the first draft of Chapter 4 of Rubbed Out. In this chapter, the main character Ae-Cha, who has just spent four days in a lousy motel in Tijuana and survived a harrowing midnight illegal border crossing into the U.S., continues her journey north from the border to Los Angeles. On the way, she has to deal with an unexpected threat, and in doing so reveals something of her character to us.
A word about the plot structure at this point; I am alternating Ae-Cha's story with Max' journey to find her at Ethan's request, never spending more than two chapters on one plot line before switching to the other. The timeline of Ae-Cha's storyline is three month's prior to Max', so I'm going to have to reconcile those at some later point in the book if Max and Ae-Cha are to appear in the same scene. Which of course, they must. I'm not exactly certain when those two will merge yet, which is part of the fun of writing. Chapter 5 will return to Max' storyline, with the beginning of his journey west to find Ae-Cha.
It was a great week for the website last week, with 1,439 hits. That is the third biggest week ever, following the second biggest week ever. I think Goodreads and Twitter are helping with that volume. I tweeted late last night that I needed another 9 people to register for the Flesh Wound giveaway on Goodreads and I'd hit 600 total, and as of Noon today I'm up to 663! So over 70 more people registered for the giveaway since my tweet. The pace had been moving at about 25-30 per day before that, so I'm thinking Twitter played a role! I've also noticed my website volume has picked up ever since I registered on Goodreads. So I think being active in multiple social media sites is paying off. It's all good! That's more people who are introduced to Flesh Wound!
I hope your week is out of this world! Take ten minutes today and read something that makes you wonder. Thanks for reading! -Jon
