I finished writing the extra action scenes that AJ at Cohesion wanted. I think it works great.

Basically, from the start, Cohesion has asked me to build up the tension and the action, and in each case they've been right.

They also asked that I do a timeline with this draft. A countdown. T-minus 12 hours. T-minus 6 hours, etc.

So I've been trying to oblige. I think it's one of the harder things to do, frankly. It's very difficult to measure time in fiction, to give it an exact placement.

On one hand, I think a countdown might be very annoying. Hopefully it's unnecessary. The story all takes place within two days (and an epilogue on the third day), and there are many overlapping chapters, so I'm not sure it really helps.

I'm went ahead and did it, but my own opinion is to go lightly. If anything, do a time stamp every few chapters instead of every chapter.

BUT, and this is a BIG deal, the timeline made me look at the story closer. I realized that in at least two different places I have an extra day. Mostly, the timeline for the people out on the ocean didn't match the people on shore.

It forced me to telescope the action at sea.

What's cool is that it made the story better, and actually closer to the way it would probably be.

For instance, I have a fishing boat taking a couple of days to get out to the deep ocean from Seattle. But in fact, modern fishing boats can go up to 60 or 70 mph! So it would only take hours. Which is great, because I needed the character out on a boat in the morning, and then out on a different boat in the afternoon, and the new timeline actually works better.

The second example was having the main heroes spend a night at sea, and that can't happen. But because they were in the dark, they got to see the bioluminescent snakes and all that, which is very visual and I really didn't want to lose that.

So instead of night, I have it being very dark and cloudy, like a heavy woolen blanket in the sky, almost dusk. It works, really, it isn't unbelievable, and again, I since don't need the extra day, I can fit it all the action in on the one day.

So the countdown made me look at what was happening and fit it into place properly.

I'm going to need to give it a complete read through to make sure the continuity matches the changes. But other than that, I think the book is ready.

I hope.

Unless Cohesion wants more snakes...