Edit

Yeah, that's what slow going on a scene usually means. It means the problems are bigger than that one scene. The new version is simpler in some ways (I'm kicking some of the plot revelations down the road) but in another way more complex; the Egtved Girl is now not just theme, but plot. 

So that's gonna take a couple more days.

Progress on bigger writing questions as well. Sort of. I went looking for editors. The pro a friend turned me on to is asking over $6K. That's not affordable, even if I thought I had a chance of matching that with a publisher's advance. I checked out Fiverrrr but they have a standard rate system that is a bad fit for novel length; pretty much everyone topped out at 50,000 words and above that it was "write and ask me and we'll negotiate."

Reedsy was worse, but in a different way. Had to request bids. With a sample. And as I went through the actually finished books I've got, I couldn't find a single sample I didn't want to stop and edit myself right then and there.

Did I mention? Before I threw the Paris book at an AI beta reader, I deleted the last chapter. Just took it out. The AI didn't notice, and I hardly noticed. It's been at least a year since removed two characters from the Athens book and I didn't regret that either. It isn't that way on Kindle, yet. I still want to do more before I update the file.

So I need and want edit. And that takes time. And that's just contemplating light edit. Maybe just proofreading. What I really want is developmental editing and...

I've barely got time to write a book once. I went back into my blog and the first words on paper (screen) for the New Mexico book were last April. Which wouldn't be so bad, but there was significant time between the last book and those first words!

But throw something else into the mix. Every full year I work sweetens the pot for retirement, sure. But that doesn't mean I have to finish the year. Every month puts a few more $K in savings (very few) and that's a good thing too.

And grabbed a copy of Obsidian to start taking more methodical notes for the SF novel. Brett over at ACOUP has given me lots of interesting ideas about everything from low intensity warfare to the definition of a polity. The picture of the Blue universe is getting clearer and clearer in my head. (The new working title: All Systems Blue.)

The list of SF books I might want to do is getting longer all the time.

At some point I will retire and I will still be short of money. Be pretty pointless to retire from a good job only to work at Wallmart, so I expect and hope to be doing something with some degree of fulfillment, artistic or otherwise.

I miss theatre. I enjoy writing. Whatever it is I do in retirement, it would be better if it at least paid costs (the difference between a business and a hobby is that a business sometimes breaks even). 

How it all falls out at the moment is that I should lean in to the last mile here. Keep working, because that brings the money in and also helps keep me on my feet working at finally climbing out of long COVID or whatever it was. Walking to work most days and bit by bit it is...well, not as bad as it was.

And somehow find enough time in there to finish ANOTHER book. One in a genre that sells, and put the work into it to help it sell, and see what happens.

And now back to my current book and finishing off the last killer mile for Penny, down the Jornada de Muerto after a killer on a horse.