Lance Charnes's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Making Science Thrilling: Guest Post
The very first guest post on the Burrow! Kristen Elise, author of
The Vesuvius Isotope
, explains something I tried (and failed) to do in three attempts -- incorporating science into a thriller without wrecking the science or putting readers to sleep. Maybe I should've tried biology instead of archaeology...
Read her post here: http://www.wombatgroup.com/general/kr...
Read her post here: http://www.wombatgroup.com/general/kr...
Faking It
Enough people have asked me this question that I figured I finally need to answer it: other than reviewing movies, what have I been doing? I’ve been writing something new. Except it’s old.
Back in 2007, inspired by a trip to Florence and Milan, I wrote a mystery called Fake. Its protagonist was a thirtyish man on a post-divorce trip to Florence who’s recruited by a shady-but-cute operator to help find out who’s behind a scam involving looted Holocaust art. I finished it, ran it through my critique group, and finally figured out it wasn’t very good. So I shelved it, thinking I’d go back and revise it someday.
Fast-forward seven years...
Go to the post to get a sneak preview...
Back in 2007, inspired by a trip to Florence and Milan, I wrote a mystery called Fake. Its protagonist was a thirtyish man on a post-divorce trip to Florence who’s recruited by a shady-but-cute operator to help find out who’s behind a scam involving looted Holocaust art. I finished it, ran it through my critique group, and finally figured out it wasn’t very good. So I shelved it, thinking I’d go back and revise it someday.
Fast-forward seven years...
Go to the post to get a sneak preview...
Fake is for Real
My work-in-progress Fake — a rewrite of a 2009 attempt at an art-crime mystery — now has a beginning, middle and end all in the same file.
I hesitate to call it “finished,” because it’s a long way from that, but I now have a completed draft. It’s way overweight at 105,000 words and 374 manuscript pages, but it’s possible to read all the way through. I started this rewrite in January of last year; now the first step is finally over.
I still don’t know what the real title will be (there are seven books titled Fake in the first two Amazon search pages) or what I’ll do with it, but at least now I can take a short break and let this thing marinate. Stay tuned.
I hesitate to call it “finished,” because it’s a long way from that, but I now have a completed draft. It’s way overweight at 105,000 words and 374 manuscript pages, but it’s possible to read all the way through. I started this rewrite in January of last year; now the first step is finally over.
I still don’t know what the real title will be (there are seven books titled Fake in the first two Amazon search pages) or what I’ll do with it, but at least now I can take a short break and let this thing marinate. Stay tuned.
