Random thought: Would you invest in a drive-through dialysis and burger business if I called it “In-N-Out-N-In”?

Welcome to this week’s adventure. It’s coming to you a day late. Sorry if it threw off your email reading (or deleting) schedule. I’m sure I have a good excuse somewhere. To make up for lost time, let’s jump right into the Story of the Week. The prompt was sent in by Susan Peezamind.

              Don’t Let the Sweet Name Fool You

Susie, the bad-ass coroner known as Morgue-ticia, performed the autopsy while the detectives observed.

“Did he accidentally shave with a belt sander?”

Detective Watson laughed. “Close. He got shot and run over.”

“Just another unidentified pretty face until we get his prints back,” Detective Ramirez added. “Hey, wanna join us for drinks after work?”

“I gotta work out,” Susie said. “Work out my liver, so yeah, sure.”

Later, at the bar, Susie stared at the text on her phone. Stunned.

“The dead guy without the face… turned out to be one of my exes.”

She raised a glass. “Drinks on me!”

Prompt: Less is morgue

NOVEL NEWS & NOTES…

Had a great call with my editor this week. We went over all the notes she had sent me, as well as a slew of questions I had prepared for her. One of the interesting things we covered was a plot hole I discovered right after I had sent her my latest draft. I thought about quickly sending a note telling her I found a problem that needed fixing. Instead, I kept my mouth shut, worked on a solution, and waited to see if she’d call me out on the unexplained issue. Guess what? She didn’t notice it. I already knew I wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t exist because at some point, someone will find the gaffe. One of my recurring nightmares is giving a talk somewhere and someone says, “Can you please explain how the butler did it when he was in jail at the time?” I squirm, sweat, and then come back with a clever answer like, “I dunno. Never thought of that.”

After she confessed to not finding it, I explained my workaround, and she said it’ll work just fine. Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one.

I spent the last week attacking a number of fixes, including working even harder to get my main character into almost every scene. If I can’t find a way to include him, I’m trying other writer tricks to keep him fresh in the reader’s mind (like having someone else reference him).

Before I sign off, here’s a quick question. I’m not going to do a Google poll on it but if you feel strongly one way or the other, please do write me and let me know which name you like better for my main character: Blake Haskett or Blake Hackett. If you don’t want to email me, feel free to throw it in your comment when you rate the story.

Keep reading and I’ll keep writing.

PS:  I’m going to dial these posts back to every other week while I focus on getting this next draft done. Hope that works for you.

Scotty out