Proving Motive

I'm most of the way done with this latest draft. I'm thrilled with the edits. As usual, my agents suggested some very good fixes, and the book is better for it.

One of their suggested edits involved the motive for the central murder in this mystery. They were right: the original motive sucked. And now, finding a new motive is my last plot clot. I'll get this thing back to them by the end of this week, I think. The only problem is that I would have liked to have mailed it back last week.

I'll have more on this later. Hopefully, I'll be able to report to you at the end of this week that the manuscript is once again on its way to New York.

In the meantime, Oldest Son has returned from the Cape, Middle Child has already begun third grade, and Daughter still believes she's in charge of the household. She's certainly in charge of we who possess Y Chromosomes. The Saint has figured out Daughter.

The Saint, by the way, is still a rock star. She's preparing for another year, taking on an honors-level class in addition to all her other stuff. She's not terribly wild that I post about her here, but blogging about her is a lot more fun than blogging about my novel. Don't you agree?

Now that I've made that disclosure, let me mention that my college roommate, the first person not named Nick Alicino with whom I really discussed writing, married a woman (I also knew her in college) who grew up about four blocks from where I live now. We finally visited the other day. We'd spoken and e-mailed quite a bit, but we hadn't actually seen each other since Oldest Son's baptism, almost fourteen years ago. Of course, seeing each other again (the brief description, for each of us: significantly less on top, slightly more in the middle), we felt like fourteen seconds had elapsed instead of fourteen years. Nice having friends like that, right?

Finally, you might see a few vicarious travelogues here in the coming weeks. Seems my parents have decided to visit Italy. Best Man and Godfather has gone to Vegas. And Cousin Matt is in Merry Olde England.

I had a motive in writing all this, but I seem to have misplaced it. Oh, well. Back to my edits.

Adam