{"id":6472,"date":"2018-04-20T08:03:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T12:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=6472"},"modified":"2018-04-20T08:03:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T12:03:08","slug":"three-minutes-and-thirty-seven-seconds-of-wonderful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=6472","title":{"rendered":"three minutes and thirty-seven seconds of wonderful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xLLApwKg4eY\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(I particularly like the end, where the mandolin guy goes over to hug her and she curves away from him and then pushes him away. &#8220;My pretty mouth will frame the phrases that will disprove your faith in man,&#8221; after all.)<\/p>\n<p>  &nbsp;  <br \/>On another topic:<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been rather unproductive recently &#8212; writing-wise.  I have finished the rewrite of &#8220;The Bus Station Mystery.&#8221; It&#8217;s pretty much the same as it&#8217;s always been &#8212; same story, same characters, same resolution &#8212; but more filled out. The characters are given a little more room to breathe (and suspects are better suspects when you have a clear sense of who they are). I&#8217;ll post a link when it&#8217;s updated online.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ve been wondering what to tackle next. What&#8217;s nagged at me for a while is the story I&#8217;ve been calling &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=4862\">It Was a Dark and Stormy Night\u2026<\/a>&#8221; It&#8217;s got a good beginning, a solid end, good characters&#8230; and I&#8217;ve finally figured out what the problem was (and a possible solution).<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that there are a lot of characters with a lot of fairly complex backstory, and it&#8217;s difficult to figure out how to cram all the history into this story for readers who&#8217;ve never read my stuff before.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it just occurred to me that I could do what I did before, with <em><a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?page_id=1122\">The Jan Sleet Mysteries<\/a><\/em>.  <\/p>\n<p>That was a series of stories that were designed to be read in order (a &#8220;stealth novel,&#8221; as I called it later), so each one could rely on what a reader learned in the earlier ones. Well, why not have &#8220;The Stevie One Adventures,&#8221; including <em><a href=\"http:\/\/utownwriting.com\/stevie1\/\">Stevie One<\/a><\/em>, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?page_id=4132\">One Night at the Quarter<\/a><\/em>, and &#8220;It Was a Dark and Stormy Night&#8221; (or whatever it ends up being called). The two earlier stories (novellas, really) provide all the backstory that a reader of the third one could require, and <em>Stevie One<\/em>, in particular, works really well for new readers.<\/p>\n<p>Proving once again, as I&#8217;ve said before, that I can try to write short stories, but novels are really <a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=213\">the distance I&#8217;m trained for<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pdfprnt-buttons pdfprnt-buttons-post pdfprnt-bottom-left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F6472&#038;print=pdf\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-pdf\" target=\"_blank\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/pdf.png\" alt=\"image_pdf\" title=\"View PDF\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F6472&#038;print=print\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-print\" target=\"_blank\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/print.png\" alt=\"image_print\" title=\"Print Content\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(I particularly like the end, where the mandolin guy goes over to hug her and she curves away from him and then pushes him away. &#8220;My pretty mouth will frame the phrases that will disprove your faith in man,&#8221; after all.) &nbsp; On another topic: I&#8217;ve been rather unproductive recently &#8212; writing-wise. I have finished [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6472"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6476,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions\/6476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}