Archives for October 2010

Everybody says the first part is key. They say you have to hook the reader in your first sentence, your first paragraph, the first ten pages, the first chapter. . . So I want to share the first scene from my current work-in-progress with you. It’s a novel called “The Hidden Institute” (working title). Tell me what you think. Would this grab you? Would you keep reading? If not, why not?

Note: This excerpt has violence and some profanity.

—

Lord Wheylan Simmons was not in attendance when his valet was murdered. If one were to ask him whether he aught to have been there, he would smile kindly and change the subject.

Blast! With only a half-hour left to go, after doing noise removal and normalization, the audio is still too low quality to edit. This is probably due to the fact that I was trying a new configuration for the recording apparatus, which put the microphone slightly further from my head, and has apparently altered the audio enough to make it untenable.

As a professional, I know I have to scrap it and start over. I’ve had to do it in the past, but it’s never fun. Worse still today, because I’ve put so much work into getting the whole thing done in just four hours.

Just got to 9:47. All the audio is recorded now, and I’m ready to start editing. The plan was to get two hours of editing, starting at 9:00, so I’m pretty far behind now. Still, if I can get 30 minutes of audio edited in one hour-thirteen then I can celebrate this victory with an ice-cream sandwich and an episode of Doc Martin (cause I live in the fast lane).