I'm still not feeling compelled to start a new book. I think part of the problem is that I have two stories I've left hanging 2/3rds of the way through: my novella "The Wyvern Riders" and the little fantasy I started in November called "Castle La Magie."

So I've decided to finish these before I do anything else.

I also want to attempt a rewrite of "Takeover."

The first  step will be to simply take out those scenes that I don't think work or which are only there for character development. I can take about four out of the first five chapters and take snippets of the character development and add them to later chapters that are part of the plot. I have one character who is a poet and I've inserted 3 poems in the book which I will take out. Things like that.

The parts that aren't working are mostly the interface between the politics of the book and how it is presented in the book to the public. Things like news conferences and declarations. They just didn't seem altogether convincing to me. Either I cut these completely or refer to them obliquely or paraphrase them somehow.

Thing is, the action parts of the book work really well, actually, and I went in and added enough of this action to the first half of the book to maybe not need all the other setup.

So what I'm going to do is simply remove every scene that strikes me as lacking and see how it reads. I'm hoping there is still a story there that can be saved by new transitions.

I think about 2/3rds of this book works very well. But the 1/3rd that doesn't work is dragging it down. If I can just simply cut the 1/3rd and still have a story, well, there you go.

I doubt it will be that easy.

I will keep a file of the current version just in case.