At the very least I am a film actor.

Let me explain. My novel, and my short stories, are written linearly I started at the front, write  the beginning, then the middle, and then the end. After that I go back and edit and clean up. Deleting bits that didn’t work, tightening passages and sentences until they go from crap and so-so.

What this mean is that the emotion hearts of the scenes are written as they occur. Love and Loyalty has me in some new territory.

I have a list of 13 new scenes that need to be written and inserted to expand the scope of the novel to fit my new vision. They are not being written in a linear fashion. That means one moment I’m writing a tender love scenes between two characters and the next scene is one of characters manipulating and deceiving each other, then to a scene of high-powered politics and office games with dangerous consequences. Emotionally I am being whipped back and forth as I write in a fashion to is alien to me, yet it has not been a stough as I thought it would have been.

I can see the end of the process. (thank god) I so want to push this out to my beat readers and see if this is working as well as I suspect.

I also want to get back to reading novels and to writing them. (I don’t read novels while I write one because if I did better writers would suck up all my time and I would get nothing done.)

So I am nearly 17 chapters into Love and Loyalty , out of a total of 30 chapters, so I can seen the end of the project. I am spending a lot more time writing and less blogging and gaming as I speed toward the finish.

I have also finished with the correction to Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. Now I need to format it, copyright it, and submit and I will have self-published my first anthology.

I got a lot done on Love and Loyalty tonight. New scenes edited, a fill chapter edited and corrected. really without the headaches plaguing me I can get back into my old groove. However I lost track of time and I will have to wait until tomorrow for my Sunday Night Movie post. The novel must come first.

Got home late from an off schedule writer’s group meeting, so I will do the Sunday Night Movie tomorrow night.

Today turned out to be a pretty good writing day. I have gotten a full two chapter corrected and saved, bringing my total to 11 chapters edited and corrected. The novel was originally 29 chapters long, but that number is no longer valid. Current count is 30, but I knew new chapters a waiting to be composed. Still I am a good way into the latest version and I fairly happy with the results.

I have to doff my hat to my writers group for their truly invaluable assistance. Their sharp and helpful critiques have shaped and strengthened this novel. The narrative flows better and the book starts stringer thanks to their feedback. If the headaches stay away, and I see my headache doc tomorrow, then I should be able to maintain a good flow on this project.

So I set today aside to work on the cover for my anthology Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. This project is moving along very nicely and I expect to have a copy turned over to my sweetie-wife for proofreading soon, possibly by the end of next week. After that it’s formatting issues, filing for the copyright registrations, and submitting it to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords for ebook distribution.

My honest expectation is that aside from a handful of copies I really will not sell many, but even just a few means that these stories are being read and that is the purpose. For a story that is not being read is a sad thing indeed.

Now, here is the cover as it currently stands. Let me know what you think.