Apologies for the lack of entries. I was on the road last week for the Golden Eagle Book Awards. The Mystery of the Mad Science Teacher was on the shortlist, and I was able to to visit a few schools in the Claresholm area. While it was great to talk to students about the book, I was really thrilled to check off an item on my bucket list. I visited the Frank Slide interpretive centre. Quite a tragic story about the townsfolk who were killed when part of Turtle Mountain fell on the town. I had heard about Frank from a writer friend and had always meant to visit it, but never had a chance until last week.
My good pal David Poulsen won the Golden Eagle Award and I was so happy to be there in person to see him get an award that he richly deserved. He helped set up the Golden Eagle Awards many years earlier, but he never won until now. The kids hosted the event and were amazing. I even had fun with the emcee and forced him to speak in a cheesie game show host voice. He was a great sport. Both emcees were brilliant, as were the kids who introduced the books and the writers.
Well after the glamour of an awards gala, it's back to the old bump and grind. I'm quite proud of myself because today I jumped back into Code Breakers Club and cranked out 2,913 words to complete chapter two of the novel. What's interesting is that I ended the chapter at an earlier point than my outline, because it felt right to end it where I did. I was worried that too much exposition in one chapter would kill the momentum, so I'm saving the exposition for the third chapter and trying to figure out a way to shorthand it or inject some conflict/tension into the chapter. I don't think this is going to be a short novel, and I'm playing around with POV. Unlike my mystery series, I'm using an omniscient third-person narrator and it's a bit of a challenge to figure out where to focus each scene. I don't want to stick with one character too longer, but I also don't want to have abritrary shifts in focus. Hmm, it's going to make for an interesting revision process. Anyway, I'm done for the day and I think I'm going to hit the gym. Tomorrow, chapter three!
