Before I get to the usual biz, I wanted to share this random photo I took this morning. It was from a hotel in Reno I was at. Why Reno? Working on a couple of cold case homicides. Don’t ask. It’s a long story. The point is, check out the ingredients (or more accurately) what are they bragging about that is not in the shampoo.

I know what you’re thinking: Vegan and cruelty free? Not only did the shampoo contain no meat (much to my relief), but it was also spared being mistreated or mocked. Regardless of your political affiliation, I think having vegan and cruelty free shampoo should be something we can all get behind, right? Ditto for the conditioner and body wash. There may be lots of gambling in Reno, but not when it comes to hotel shampoos. Whew!

Enough with the hair care product news. Let’s dive right into the Story of the Week. Sending out my gratitude to Hy Kerr, who provided the prompt that led to the story. Thanks, Hy!

      Shop ‘Til They Drop (Each other)

Deep down, they loved each other, but when members of the Winfield family were slapping each other like The Three Stooges, it wasn’t always apparent.

Waiting in line at Wal-Mart (one of their favorite places to commit spectacles), twelve-year-old Malika, like a demolition derby champ, enthusiastically rammed a shopping cart into younger brother Daryl’s cart. Flailing backward, Daryl accidentally dislodged Mom’s glass eye (from a prior shopping cart incident). She flinched, causing the back of her head to crush Dad’s nose. As the blood spread across the floor, the familiar intercom announcement echoed throughout the store. “Winfield cleanup on aisle two.”

Prompt: rumpus

Novel News & Notes: The detailed outline for the next draft of my novel Questionable Characters is done. I put in the bullet points for each scene and then I went through my massive rewrite document. I think it was around twenty pages and it was a bit of a hot mess. It had a lot of ideas I had generated throughout the outline process. Some were very specific. Some even contained dialogue. Sometimes I just wrote questions to be addressed later such as, “What if Blake discovers that X is really (delete spoiler here)?

When it came to working my way through this chaotic document, I decided to very methodical and to absolutely resist two temptations: First, I wouldn’t allow myself to go off on any tangents, and second, no notes/ideas/questions would be skipped. No more kicking any cans down proverbial streets. I did not allow myself to move further down the page until I had either found the perfect place to include the idea, delete it because it was already in the new outline, or just trash it.

This made for a slow process, but it allowed me to discover that I had made more progress than I realized as I had worked on the detailed outline, and it also revealed some pleasant surprises regarding things I had forgotten. Oh sure, I still have one or two nagging ideas I want to play with, such as a really fun scene involving an FBI profiler that was in the first draft but has been slashed from this version. I still think I want to find a place for it in the next draft, so I’m holding onto the idea. If space allows, I’ll bring it back.

Next up: Writing a two-page synopsis of the novel. This serves two purposes. It will let me see how the overall story reads in narrative form. I think it will also help my developmental editor analyze the strengths and weaknesses of my intentions for draft number two. I hope to craft this in the next few days and get it out to her so she’ll have plenty of time to read it before I meet with her on September 16th. That’s coming up quick, so I need to get on it.

Wish me luck. I’m going in.

Scotty out

PS: Next week, I’ll fill you in on how the synopsis came out and whatever other shenanigans I’ve been up to in the writing world.