Book of the Week: ‘Jimmy the Kid.’

Hrm. Which Donald Westlake Dortmunder books have I done, so far?

:clickity clickity clickity:

…Good God.  Ten years, and I’ve yet to do one?  Not a single Dortmunder ‘comic criminal’ novel?  This is worse than a mistake; it’s a blunder.  I’m embarrassed for myself.  You should be embarrassed for me, too.  It’s an abject failure on my part, is what it is.

OK.  Jimmy the Kid.  They made a really, really bad movie starring Gary Coleman out of it, but that’s not Donald Westlake’s fault.  All he did was cash the check.
Continue reading Book of the Week: ‘Jimmy the Kid.’

Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day Twelve: 14 Chapters / 30,864 words.

Kind of at the halfway point here at Frozen Dreams, folks.  Kind of weird, seeing the manuscript form.  Kind of weird, thinking about the really difficult parts coming up. Continue reading Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day Twelve: 14 Chapters / 30,864 words.

Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day Nine: 11 Chapters / 24,708 Words.

Although I’m debating about splitting this last chapter of Frozen Dreams into two chapters and expanding them out a bit.  I also have to decide whether to go to a certain location.  It’s a really bad idea, but since when has that ever stopped a protagonist? Continue reading Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day Nine: 11 Chapters / 24,708 Words.

Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day Eight: 10 Chapters / 21,224 Words.

More chapters, and fewer words, than I expected.  Although, no, actually it’s a little bit above a target number of 60K words for the whole thing.  Scrivener is I think estimating that Frozen Dreams will probably hit about 180 pages or so, which isn’t bad.  Respectable, even. Continue reading Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day Eight: 10 Chapters / 21,224 Words.

Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day SEven: 8 Chapters / 17,420 Words.

Yeah, this part of Frozen Dreams is definitely going to need some plot work.  Gotta remind myself more that this is a first draft, not the magnum opus. It can still be a little clunky.

Continue reading Frozen Dreams Working Draft Process, Day SEven: 8 Chapters / 17,420 Words.

Book of the Week: Theater of Spies.

SM Stirling’s Theater of Spies is coming out in May: it’s the second book in a what is rapidly becoming dieselpunk alternate history series with Teddy Roosevelt running a rather larger USA in World War I.  I’m reading it chapter by chapter now on Stirling’s site, and I find the little hints of “they should watch out for these social trends, two decades or so from now” to be quite of interest.  It’s not really surprising to see, if you know anything about early 20th Century American history; but if you don’t, well, the world was a lot different then, and not just in the ways that you might think.