Blog Post 106

Tessera Trilogy blog post 106

Received several informative insights into infantry tactics at varying levels, i.e. squad, platoon, company which will assist in clarifying novel narrative and flow.

Received additional insights and suggestions for Sooley Base medical terminology and narrative.

Editorial critiques are expected shortly from a retired US Army Ranger who served multiple tours in Vietnam and is currently reviewing segments from Sooley Base.

Attended the October meeting of the Riverside Writers Group (RWG) which was a writers workshop as part of annual Parade of Prose and included an Open Mike segment. Several RWG writers displayed their most recent published works and I bought one, “The Secret Diary of Ewan Macrae” by Judy Hill. Judy is a bit older than I and confessed she worked on the novel for eleven years. It is available as an eBook from Amazon.com, and from reading just a bit thus far, and recalling segments critiqued at RWG meetings, I highly recommend it.  I opened as the lead in the Open Mike reading … a segment involving a helo attack on a ship defended with Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). There were no written comments, but another published author said he thought the style was a huge improvement on previous (I think he was recalling the earlier novel, which admittedly had far too much narrative). I now have my reading style down … two and a half pages, printed with 1.5 line spacing, equates to the five minute limit.

Even as I read I noted some necessary changes, and have incorporated those. The effort goes onward, if slowly. Word count now stands at 95 K and page count at 198, but these will vary as the draft moves forward. Chapters will be renumbered and resized and in a few cases are being retitled.