Well, shit.

My "thriller" has turned into a quirky little adventure story.

Damn.

I'll go ahead and finish it because I really like it, but I'm not sure it will fit the bill. Thing is, I can always write another book. I have a lot of confidence in my profligacy. 

Should have 10K words by the end of the day. It's just rolling off my fingers. I think because it's 1st person.

Chapters 2 and 3 and 4 of "The Last Honest Man" written on the same day. Moving right along.

I've always had a suspicion that 1st person narration is too easy. That's why I haven't done it until recently. I felt I needed the discipline of writing characters that weren't in any way me, who came completely from my imagination.

No matter how much I try to avoid it, when I'm writing in first person it's my own voice, one way or another.

In the current novel, most of the events that I talk about are things that happened to me, if not quite that way.

"I Live Among You" is the only novel I've written in 1st person, after writing more than 20 books in 3rd person. I recently wrote  a novella, "The Toad King," that is not only in 1st person but in present tense, but that was somehow different.

This current character, Hart Gallegher, isn't me and yet in many ways, he is me.

So what's wrong with that? Author's voice is all important, right?

The biggest problem is that it very hard to judge the quality. I'm not quite as objective about what I'm writing. I find it harder to cut words, or add words, based on some outside measure.

I've never had a hard time expressing myself. I can babble on endlessly about anything--and that's the danger. Instead of looking for "telling details" I'm afraid that I might be providing too many. I can't really tell.

Thing is, if this actually works, it will be enormously liberating. I will be able to just tell my stories in my own voice. I'll have the tone, the characters, and the setting I can live in.

How fun.