So I have a Facebook friend (Dave Cline) who has been providing some pretty good advice about "Bigfoot Ranch."

I'm not sure I can accommodate all the advice, but I'll need to do something close to what he's
suggesting. I think I can continue to write the book as is, because the advice all has to do with the McGuffin and the main character's motivation, which can change without changing the main character's actions, strangely enough.

Meanwhile, it looks like I might not need any super wilderness tricks after all, that some common sense evasions will be enough. I also don't appear to need any special outdoor journalist knowledge, either. I can look up a lot on Google. I'm going to still ask some people in that world to look at the manuscript and see if they have any advice, but if they can't do it, I think I can move forward anyway.

I may not actually spend as much time on the outdoors scenes as I expected anyway. I'd thought the outdoor part would be 2/3rds the book, but it may end up being more like half the book.

I'm guessing that in order to accommodate the McGuffin and motivation problems that I'm going to have to bring in the 3rd person character narration of the opening chapter throughout the book, with his own problems and adventures. I don't want him to be more than, say, 20% of the book, though.

I'm not going to worry about length. It will turn out all right, I'm pretty sure. I can usually find ways to texture in new material if I need to, and it usually actually helps the book.

It's going to be a little bit of a strange mix of humor and thriller. For instance, I have a scene where the main character is on the run, still wearing his Bigfoot costume for warmth because it has started to snow and an innocent hiker stumbles upon him and Hart jumps up and forgets he's wearing the costume and the guy screams and runs off.

Sort of funny and light. But later, Hart finds the guy dead, so not so funny. That sort of back and forth is there throughout the book. I can't help it. The trick is, I'm not trying to be funny. That would be deadly. The humor just sort of happens.

Meanwhile, my daily walk is the magic elixir for creativity. Over the last few days I've been stumped at the house, stumped in the shower, stumped at my desk, stumped napping on the bed, stumped on the drive out.

I start walking and within a quarter mile, the ideas just start flowing.

Which is both cool and scary. Because I'm afraid I've tied my writing process a little too closely to the walking, which isn't always possible.

Then again, I'm glad it's there!