This is real nuts and bolts stuff.

There is the advice for writers to challenge themselves.

"Takeover" was a challenge. I decided I would write character sketches to a bunch of characters before writing the novel. After I'd written about 8 of the sketches I realized that the sketches themselves were telling a story. Not in a standard narrative, but obliquely. I liked it quite a bit. So I set out to write an entire novel in the epistolary format.

Right away I had doubts. I wondered if it was too experimental, too challenging. But here's the thing--it was the only thing that got me to write the story at all. I think if I'd approached it in the standard way, it never would have gotten written.

So about a third of the way through I realized that if I wanted to advance the plot that I was going to have to stray from the pure character sketches and impose a narrative. I kept the epistolary format but started to have the characters narrate to some extent.

I ended up liking the last two thirds of the book quite a bit. So now I had a Frankenstein of a novel. The first third made up of character sketches coming at the story sideways, and the last two thirds more standard in plot.

I moved around some chapters, beefed up one of the main characters with more narrative, but it still didn't get there.

I set the story aside. There were several times when I almost submitted the book the way it was. It was in interesting experiment and if the readers gave it a chance, then they'd get to the part of the story where the plot kicks in.

Then I published "Deadfall Ridge" and it sold better than any of my other books and I realized that I could write a series of books with the same protagonists, especially Hart Davis, but also his paramour, Nicole, and his woolly friend, Granger.

I also realized that "Takeover" could be turned into a "Hart Davis Strawberry Mountain Thriller."

I needed to turn the beefed up main character of "Takeover" and turn him into Hart. He is essentially the same character with a different name, so that wasn't impossible. I could turn the love interest into Nicole. I could bring in Granger as one of the secondary characters.

All well and good until I sat down to actually do it. That's when I realized it would be a huge challenge.

Well, fine. In some ways it's easier for me to do a rewrite with big changes than with small ones. It engages the storytelling side of me more.

Right away, I realized that I needed a stronger start. My character sketches were just too oblique. I needed something a little more straightforward. So I realized that I could do a kind of prologue that would set up all the characters and the situation, as well as start on a more standard narrative form.

I thought of an incident that would work, noodled around with it for a few weeks, and finally in the last few days sat down and wrote the chapter. And damned if it doesn't work.

The next step is to take 6 of the those original character sketches and combine them into 3 chapters and move them a little further back into the story.

That's today's project.