The Jasmine-Giada Substitution

I finally hit the point of collapse, at least as far as my story goes. When I last visited you, I shared an excerpt from the book I’m rewriting, which I’m calling Jasmine, but formerly called Unseen Obsession. I hate that title!

I’ve been doing some minor revisions in grammar, language, and spelling. I’ve cleaned up a few scenes, adding and subtracting as needed to ensure a coherent story line, but I’m not at a point where minor revisions become wholesale rewrites. As written, Jasmine is sent an envelope with white powder in it, which can only be assumed to be anthrax. So far so good. But then? Nothing. It turns out to be bogus and it disappears. There’s no point in having it in the story if there’s no real drama attached to it!

Either I have to ramp up the pressure to find out who’s behind the letter, or I need to make a substitution. My thought was to have a box rigged to look like a bomb. It’s kind of the same thing, but I avoid the whole bio-hazard angle. Trying to work that in is causing me headaches. I’ll still have to force the issue and have an investigator try to find who’s behind it, suspecting the whole time that it’s either Jasmine’s new love interest, a suspect in an unsolved crime, or a jealous ex that’s acting territorial.

I doubt I’ll figure this out by Friday and the beginning of NaNoWriMo. I’m not worried about it, but it would be nice to have that figured out before I jump into a new project. I briefly considered skipping NaNo this year, but I’ve enjoyed the challenge since 2011. I can’t just skip it. I think it’s fun, and good for me, too!

So I’ll work on Jasmine until the last minute before shelving it for Giada. Now that I’ve written that, it looks like I’m in some sort of love triangle. What the hell! Why not? If writing is my love, at least I have two women vying for my attention. I have other stories that also need some attention, but if I keep up this metaphor, I don’t think bringing up a priest or some teenage girls is the right thing to do. Honestly, it’s a little creepy. Not that I’m against creepy, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and I think I just crossed it.