Unresolved Business (Post #6)

"Write any story that you feel like writing. Just be sure you make it a good story." - Robert Erisman, "Writer's Digest" (April, 1941)

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I missed February! I am so sorry; it was a very busy month between work and doctor appointments & hospital visits for the kids, that before I knew it, it was March! My deepest apologies.

Now, to the business at hand. Or should I say unresolved business? I do have some good news from the busy schedule of February that I would like to begin with: I will be going to my first live event to sell my books! Nervous? Yes! However, an opportunity came across my path that I could not pass up, where two friends of mine were doing the same event and decided to surprise me with getting me a table on their dime in April. Naturally, I was both blessed and at a loss of words. While I will be attending said event with a limited supply of physical books---what I could afford to stock up with, as we have a third child on the way and all available financial resources are going towards saving up for and getting ready for the arrival day---I will nonetheless hope to at least get my name out there beyond the digital reach of the internet. If I can sell the 21 books (7 copies of each title of my books) then I will be a very blessed & happy man.

Now, the name of this blog post does not sound like something to relate to the doing of business and sales. And you would be most correct! While I might have mentioned this in a prior blog post, I can now officially say I am neck-deep in the editing process of No Tears (Reckoning). Despite my best efforts and the desire to keep the book to a shorter length like No Tears (Northern Company) verses No Tears (Inheritance), I will be completing the Reckoning storyline in the next novel which, if all things go as planned, will be the final book to the No Tears series. I wanted to avoid a Part I & Part II in the Reckoning story, as I wanted to preserve the unique titling for each book and each book's stand-alone nature. Admittingly, I might reverse course on this and end up doing a Part I & Part II but---as it stands 5 chapters into editing---I will be maintaining the stand-alone titles. I think I can do it, as I had decided through my draft notes to move a story element to the next series of books that I was going to originally explore in the No Tears series. Time will tell, as the old saying goes.

Now, to finally explain that blog post title. Reckoning and if there is a Part 2 of the same title, is very much a bridge book. It serves as the story vein from the first 2 books of the No Tears series and to the last book, setting up all lingering unresolved business/story plots to be correctly resolved. And that last statement (correctly resolved) brings me to the point of this blog post; while looking back at things and through several constructive reviews, I understand that I could have wrote No Tears faster. Instead of a slow burn Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time approach, I could have written a faster story like a Mission Impossible themed approach or James Bond approach. Especially for Bond, a rich & detailed story that is nonetheless action packed and wrapped up in a few days. However, like Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time, I was exploring an incredibly rich world with historical characters & events that, I feel, deserved as much time and detail as the title character in Giovanni Salzano did. And that brings me to my last point: I was and am telling a story about Giovanni Salzano: it is his story, his pain, his future, and his complex path that we are following through these historical characters & events, which all such things added together, will take time to write, flush out, and read. I am not trying to write books to make a living or steal people's hard-earned money with lightly detailed or fluff-added stories. Instead, I want to tell such a rich story that you can pick any character in the books---Giovanni, Margaret, William de Croy, etc.----and find both a reason to love or hate them and to follow their story more than anyone else's in the books.

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“There is no honorable way to fight. When you are fighting for your life, it does not matter how you fight, as long as you survive. Fight dirty, it will not matter how you ended it to the dead man."

Marcus Felix Brutus
pg. 174; A Story of the Beginning (Revised Edition)