Monk Quixote

The (long) first chap­ter is edited and wait­ing for its chums to hurry up and catch up. It’s grown a lit­tle in revi­sion, which is not entirely desir­able, but I think it now estab­lishes the key themes in the plot a bit bet­ter. And as it’s moved for­ward in the read­ing order, it makes sense for the estab­lish­ing scene to be the longest in the book.

I’ve been up since 5:30 — once I get in the novel mind­set I tend to be pretty con­sumed with it. Not good for con­ver­sa­tion (as I tend to mainly want to talk either in or about char­ac­ters), but very good for pro­duc­tiv­ity. I really feel like things have finally clicked into place, and the cre­ative engine, which was a lit­tle tem­pera­men­tal — per­haps it’s a diesel brain — is now purring along nicely.

Thanks to Lau­rence for the com­ment yes­ter­day. I do appre­ci­ate it when peo­ple speak up from the ether. I’ve revised the long blurb (offline) to make things a lit­tle clearer and I have pro­duced a con­densed ver­sion more in line with the tone of the book, and so suit­able for a teaser.  What do you think — I keep tin­ker­ing and tin­ker­ing, and I’m still not entirely satisfied?

~o~

Tom Esher lives in a world of his own. Well, two, if you count the time he spends as Monk Quixote — itin­er­ant knight, occa­sional hero and entirely vir­tual. Mag­gie, his girl­friend, tells him that there’s a third — the space between his ears. These worlds – his uni­verse – are gov­erned by strange rules and rit­u­als that he makes up to help him keep the Gods of Irony at bay. It’s mostly harm­less fun, isn’t it?
Tom’s com­fort­able mud­dle of a life is turned upside-down by the dying wish of Frank, his estranged father — a request that will lead Tom on a very per­sonal adven­ture – a quest for under­stand­ing, for­give­ness, and redemp­tion that will span his entire universe.

~o~

I don’t know if I need the fur­ther descrip­tion of Monk Quixote (he’s a char­ac­ter in an online game, but I’m not sure you need to know that if you’re just read­ing the back cover. He’s also a sil­ver chee­tah, but that’s by the bye). I’m also not happy with ‘com­fort­able mud­dle’, which smacks a bit of ‘ooh, look at him try­ing to write fancy’. I know, the irony is crush­ing. But hey, every­one learns even­tu­ally, eh?