I'm finishing up chapter 7 of Seeds of Calamity, and I can't understate how pleased I am with how the plot and characters are shaping up. The prose and plotting feel to me so much tighter than they were in Tendrils to the Moon; that was something I wanted to improve on after overshooting the Tendrils's wordcount by a whopping 40 percent.
I want to talk about backtracking--namely, changing your mind about the plot and the direction you want to go in after you've already committed to a different course. I did this recently. I had to retool 9,000 words I had written for chapters 6 and 7 because I was no longer convinced a key plot device was realistic or helping the plot advance the way I wanted it to. I say "retool" because I hit upon a solution that allowed me to keep most of what I wrote instead of trashing all that hard work.
I won't give away the abandoned plot device or what I replaced it with, but I'll say this about it: The moment I conjured up this plot device, I fancied it. It added another layer of complexity to the plot, and I savored the challenge of pulling it off. But after trying it out, I had to admit to myself it was making the book harder to write. I'm already juggling half a dozen characters' personalities, ambitions, and hurdles; why complicate things further? Like expert shot maker Phil Mickelson, I wanted to hit a 200-yard screamer off the pine straw instead of a 150-yard approach shot from the fairway. I'm glad I was able to recognize this and save the book from this dangerous tendency in time, before venturing beyond a point of no return.
I also backtracked over the opening scene of Seeds of Calamity, which I wrote around August, I think. My original opening scene, where a man wakes up from drug-induced sleep, was boring, and it missed the personality of the protagonist. I was able to salvage pieces of dialogue and exposition of secondary characters, but the opening scene is now completely different. It features an asteroid mining crew finding out a rock they had gone out of their way to survey was worthless.
Another one of my goals is for the paperback to go live the same day as the ebook. To that end, I designed the paperback art and interior well ahead of time, and I received the proof copy Wednesday. I need to make a bunch of small corrections, and my fears about the spine were confirmed. The upside is I have a long time to troubleshoot these issues so they're corrected before we go into production. (Don't take this as an indication the book is complete. I'm about half done.)
Tell me what you think in the comments below! I'll reply to you as soon as I can. Feel free to read the first three chapters of Tendrils to the Moon and see if the last 9 chapters are worth your time. The paperback version is on sale at Amazon for $8.99. The ebook is only 99 cents.