How Dinosaurs can fix your need for speed
I self-published Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen on the first of January, but before that, the book sat in my trunk for two and a half years. In the last editing-run through I did in preparation for publishing, I was expecting (dare I say “hoping”) to find that the two books I’d written since had taught me something. I hoped I would find big fat rookie mistakes to fix. I did, but I also found some scenes that were really good. Better, in fact, than anything in my subsequent books. There are scenes in Tyrannosaur Queen where there isn’t much action going on, the plot isn’t moving, and we’re not learning about the characters. We’re just watching a velociraptor hunt or a quetzalcoatlus fly or a tyrannosaur stand in the rain. In my later books, I knew more about how to efficiently craft a story, but I had apparently forgotten how to stop and smell the dinosaurs.
