I'm 75% through with the current round of revisions on my novel. I made some pretty major plot changes as a result of the feedback I got at the writer's camp I attended last month. One of my secondary characters, a seven year old stuttering, psychic little girl, has become more important, and Nana (another secondary character) is now mildly, non-violently schizophrenic.
Research:
I did a fair amount of additional research as part of my rewrite. For example, I found out what a dead body would look like fifteen years after the murder victim was entombed in an underground, abandoned coal mine! I also talked to a very nice man at the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources about abandoned mines, subsidence, and the events that lead rescuers to abandon their searches for entombed miners (they don't make that decision lightly).
I also researched the blooming time of the poisonous herb that one of the victimized secondary characters uses to try to off the bad guy. It turns out the herb blooms in the early spring and my novel WAS set in the fall! So I'm incorporating a 'season change' in this rewrite and moving all of the events to early spring.
Attending Writer's League of Texas Summer Conference:
I recently joined and will attend the June 2009 annual conference of the Writer's League of Texas, headquartered right here in Austin. I'm eagerly looking forward to it. I also joined the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers, Inc. I've been a member of the Romance Writers of America for some time.
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