Got the final edits from my editor earlier today.

Just have to go through it and it’s done.

At least the writing anyway.

Or, the writing of the novel itself, I should say.

Still have to come up with something for the author’s bio. I think. Do readers care? Who cares? I don’t know. And, have to come up with some sort of blurb that’ll make people want to buy and read the book.

I also need to format the book. Fun. Probably.

My illustrator should have the cover done next week, probably.

I’m also working on two other novels. Stuck in chapter two on one of them. Argh.

Don’t be turned off by this blog. I writes betters in the book. Hard to believe? Maybe. Probably. Blah, blah, blah. Just buy and read the book when it comes out. You’ll see. No worries. If you’re disappointed, it’ll cost you less to be disappointed by me than to be disappointed by a movie at the matinee. So, it’s a good deal.

Probably.

Someone will get that.

The beta reader for my novel, which I last mentioned here, finished reading it a couple weeks ago. Liked it, which is good.

Also, my editor (who some of you may know but who shall remain nameless until I find out if said editor can be publicly acknowledged) has gone through the novel, liked it, and given me copious amounts of things to change.

Well, maybe not copious, but enough to keep me busy.

And not so much things to change per se, but rather things to clarify and add and stuff.

So, working on that. Maybe I’ll be finished by the weekend, or over the weekend.

Also, simultaneously working on novel #2. No chance of finishing that by the weekend.

Don’t know yet if it might be legendary.

My beta reader has only made it to chapter six so far.

Has liked it so far, it appears.

So, that’s good.

Hopefully there will be more good news tomorrow.

For the past month or so, I’ve written every night. Or, on a couple occasions, I’ve merely edited. But, either way, every night, I did something with the novel.

Now that it’s done, and I’m waiting to hear from other people, I don’t quite know what to do. Don’t want to jump over to one of my other novels-in-progress just yet, because they are different in tone and, if I need to do any more work on the current novel, I don’t want to have to shift back.

Weird? Maybe. But I don’t want to get out of this zone and move into another if I then have to move back.

You may remember when I wrote this: “But Will It Be Legendary?”

You can see a snippet of Chapter One by clicking on the link there you just passed by.

And, you can read a snippet of Chapter Seven by clicking on the link there you just passed by again.

Well, in the wee hours of this morning, I finished it.

It is done.

Written and edited.

Done.

Probably.

Have a beta reader reading it now. She’ll tell me how badly it sucks. After that, I’ll decide whether I need to do some more tweaking or if I can send it off to my editor.

Here is another snippet of a work in progress I shared long ago. This is one I’ve gotten back to work on again in recent months (though the last time I did anything on it was mid-March or thereabouts).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy…

In Search of the Legendary Phineas Ray
Chapter One (snippet)
Copyright 2009 Dan C. Rinnert

   On the one hand, you could say it all started with a baseball card. On the other hand, it could also be said to have begun with a unicorn. In either case, by the time you’ve heard my entire tale, I have little doubt you’ll view the unicorn sighting as the most plausible part of it.

   I know I would.

   All I wanted to do was fulfill my dying grandfather’s last wish.

   That part of the story started with his prized baseball card. A simple thing, really. My grandfather had idolized Phineas Ray all his life. He had carried the guy’s baseball card in his wallet since he was a boy. On his death bed, he passed the card along to me.

   When my father was a boy, he had tried several times to get the card autographed for my grandfather, but was never successful. But, where my father had failed, I had hoped to succeed.

   Sure, the guy was probably long dead, but if I could get some memorabilia from this player for my grandfather, he would be more than happy with just that. It would show everyone that he wasn’t crazy.

   However, I would run into the same problem my father had, namely that Phineas Ray didn’t exist.

   At least, that’s what J. Edgar Hoover would have you believe. But, more on that later.

   There was no record of this guy. Nothing. My father had searched and never found anything, and he had done this when there was still a chance the guy could have been alive, when there was a chance that someone who had played with him would have still been around.

   Now, there was nothing. The only evidence was my grandfather’s Phineas Ray baseball card. And that had to be fake, since no other record of Phineas Ray existed. No photographs, no statistics, not even a birth certificate.

   Plus, this Phineas Ray did resemble my grandfather when he was younger, leading many in the family to assume he had been pulling our legs all these years.

   But, not me.

   Because of the unicorn.

Copyright 2009 Dan C. Rinnert

So, here’s the thing…

The Kindle, the Nook, the iPad and eBooks are all big things now. I have some non-fiction eBooks being sold online, but no fiction.

So, I thought I would put something together and put it out there and see how it goes.

My first thought was to put together a collection of short stories and sell that.

Problem is that my short stories are in various genres and don’t really mix together that well.

But, I have an “abandoned” work that I’m hopeful I can finish. You may remember this and this.

Well, I am actually further along on that than I thought. You see, I worked on that (off and on) from 1992 to 1993, and then picked it up again in 1996. I went through several variations, changing point of view and plot and so on. I ended up with something like ten drafts before I gave up on the whole thing and tossed it in the trash. (I later dug it out of the trash.)

At some point along the way, I had mapped out the whole plot of the book, but never could make it work quite right for whatever reason.

I have on my hard drive nearly 3,500 words of the story. But, I pulled out my file and I have more written. And, a lot of what is already written can be rewritten and weaved into the storyline I had already mapped out. Last night, I typed in a couple pages I had in my file, which brought my word count up past 4,900 words. As I typed, I was rewriting, so that section fits right in. I’ll naturally need to do some editing later, but for now I can move on to the next section.

I’m not entirely sure how much of the story I have prewritten. I’m guessing maybe half of the story is complete and the other half needs to be written. Unlike some of my other WIPs, this one is all mapped out with a beginning, middle and end. So, it just needs writing and editing.

The other benefit of this work being so old (and having been through so many drafts) is that I don’t care anymore. Don’t take that the wrong way. I mean that I am not invested in the characters. I’m not married to the plot. And that makes it easier to make changes than when you’re sitting there thinking, well, this needs to happen and this needs to happen. I can look at it with a more objective viewpoint than perhaps I was able to all those years ago.

So, I figure I’ll finish going through all my notes and handwritten work and type it all in, rewriting as I go, and see what that gets me. The way it looks, it may end up being more novella length than novel, but that may be okay. I can wrap it up, get it out there and see if any one buys it and wants to read more of my work.

It was a dark and stormy night, and things only got worse from there.

The place was old Manhattan. Not New York, but Manhattan, West Virginia.

The time was the turn of the 20th century.

The bar was empty, except for Billy.

“Hand me that spanner,” said Billy.

The bar was empty, except for Billy and Joe.

“Hear you go,” replied Jim, as he handed the tool to Billy.

The bar was empty, except for Billy, Joe and Jim.

“Do you hear something?” asked Joe.

“It’s just the wind,” said Billy.

“Sounds like someone talking,” said Joe.

“It’s nothing,” replied Billy. “Hand me the electric drill.”

Joe obliged, handing the yet-to-be invented tool to Billy.

“There it is again,” said Joe.

“What?” asked Jim.

“The voice. It’s talking about us,” said Joe.

“I don’t hear anything,” said Jim.

“Neither do I,” said Billy.

“It’s quiet now,” said Joe. “But it’s definitely a voice.”

Billy continued his work, while Jim scoffed at Joe.

“There it is again!” exclaimed Joe.

“You’re mad,” said Jim. “You need to see a shrink when we get back.”

“You don’t hear that?” asked Jim.

Billy pressed on, hard at work, tangled in wires, tooling around with a machine that didn’t seem to belong in the early 20th century.

Jim sneered at Joe. “You’re imagining things.”

“No,” said Joe. “Didn’t you hear it? It said Billy was working, tangled in wires, which he is. It said that you sneered at me, which you did.”

“I don’t hear nothing,” said Jim.

“Can you hear me?” asked Joe.

“Yes!” said Jim. “I’m standing right here!”

“Not you!” replied Joe. “The voice. I was talking to the voice.” He paused. “Can you hear me?”

Yes.

“There!” exclaimed Joe. “Did you hear that? The voice answered!”

Jim just turned away, waving Joe off with a flip of his hand.

“Who are you?” asked Joe.

Does it matter?

“Why are you talking about us?”

I’m telling your story.

“Our story?”

Yes, your story. I’m writing all about what happened to you on this fateful night.

“Tonight?”

Yes.

“What’s going to happen to us?” asked Joe.

I can’t tell you.

“Are we going to die?”

Two of you are. Well, no. Sorry. I can’t tell you. It’s going to be quite a tale.

“We’re going to die? How? When?” asked Joe. “Can we stop it? What can we do?”

Billy and Jim continued work on the machine. Joe decided he should jump in and help as well.

“I didn’t decide that,” said Joe.

So, Joe decided to jump in and help finish the repairs on the machine.

“Nah, I haven’t decided that yet. Is using the machine what gets two of us killed?”

Joe decided to stop talking to himself and pitch in to help Billy and Jim with the machine.

“Why do you keep pushing me toward fixing it? Will fixing it save us and get us away from danger, or will it take us to the danger?” asked Joe.

After a long hesitation, Joe decided to help Jim and Billy repair the machine.

“You flipped Jim and Billy this time. Why? Is there some significance to that? Did you move Jim closer to me because we’re the two that are going to die? What’s going to happen?”

Since Joe wasn’t helping repair the machine, Billy and Jim decided that, when it was time to go, they would leave Joe behind.

“They’re leaving me behind? Does that mean they’re going to die?”

Meanwhile, Jim snuck up behind Joe, carrying a heavy metal pipe, planning to hit him in the head, possibly killing him, just to get him to shut up.

Quickly, Joe spun around.

“Hey, Jim’s not there! You were trying to trick me!”

Suddenly, the machine roared to life.

“It’s fixed!” exclaimed Billy.

“We can go home!” exclaimed Jim.

“Wait!” exclaimed Joe. “Should I let them go? Will they die if I let them go? What if I break the machine? Or, is trapping us here what results in two of us dying? Oh, what should I do?”

To be continued…

…by Speedcat!

The bad story meme is like a never-ending story. Or, maybe someone will end it. Who knows? Let’s see how far it goes. Anyway, so what you do is write your part of the story and then tag someone else to finish the next part. I’ve tagged Speedy!

I have seen the little children dream,
While floating in their boats down the stream,
Only to wake with tears in their eyes
At the dawn of the morning sunrise
As they find all’s not what it may seem.

To fantasies they say their goodbyes,
And let go of their reverie’s prize.
As night meets its end, this they may gleam:
Cruel to eyes is the morning sun’s beam.
So they pray for a cloudy sunrise.

More from my fiction archives. This one as per Speedy’s request…

“Crossing”
by Dan C. Rinnert

From the relative security of the grassy mound, she watched the beast stagger down the smooth-worn path. She figured she could safely cross in front of it, unless it sped up, which these excitable creatures were prone to do. Better to wait, she thought. Birds of her size, easily overlooked by the lumbering giants, frequently became meals for the vultures and rats who would brave the traveling herds for fresh and tenderized flesh.

She watched as the animal crossed in front of her, its gray hide crackling and flaking from age. The bird poked her head out of the thin brush for a better look, but the ancient beast did not return her stare as it plodded along.

After the old creature had passed beyond a small hill, the bird inched toward the path, stepping carefully, and looking nervously about. She sensed something and paused. She sniffed the air and looked around. She could see nothing to her right, and the hill blocked the left side. She glanced down at her feet, as she felt a vibration through the ground. A herd! she realized, and ducked back into the brush.

She began to hear the roar of the pack as it drew closer. The sound grew louder and louder, until the first beast reached the crest of the hill and entered her sight, followed by many more. The bird recognized them as a younger lot.

A large black beast led the pack, followed by smaller animals with hides of purple or red. Amongst these puttered slightly smaller creatures with skins of orange or yellow.

They all looked similar, so she guessed the smaller ones were either women or children. She could see none that looked like babies, but perhaps they remained behind in nests.

The herd passed just as quickly as it had come. The path stood empty. The bird stepped cautiously across. She looked to either side, and studied the ground carefully with the soft-bottoms of her feet. No sound, no vibration and nothing in sight. She continued across.

Zoom! A thin animal, with a hide of yellow and black, zipped passed her at an incredible pace. The bird paused, questioning whether to continue or turn back. She opted to keep going and, disregarding her instinctual caution, scurried across the rest of the way as quickly as her feet could take her.

She reached the opposite side, and looked around for the treasure she sought. Damn! she thought. Never falls in the same place twice! Most days, she did not even need to cross the path to reach it. It could usually be found in the brush, or the plain, or sometimes the bushes on her side.

Her sharp eye caught a glimpse of its shiny blue surface. She scampered over to a rolled bunch of leaves wrapped in a semi-transparent, glossy blue husk. It meant nothing to her, but her master would give her a treat for bringing it to him. She grabbed it with her beak behind a small bulb at the end, and carried it back to the edge of the path.

She looked both ways, concentrated on her feet and, hearing no sound and sensing no vibration, darted across. Just as she reached her knoll, a lumbering monster rolled past, barely missing her. Surprised, she dropped the bundle. She turned and gave the monster a few disapproving squawks as it continued on. Once it reached a safe distance, she retrieved the husk and dragged it across the plain.

At the plain’s edge, she hopped up a few planks, struggling with the weight of the bundle. She skipped across the wooden floor, and proudly placed the treasure at her master’s feet.

He gently patted her head, and dropped some corn kernels to the ground.

She quickly gobbled them up. She heard him speak to the other ape creatures sitting around him. She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was pleased, even though she didn’t understand the words: “And, that, my friends, is why the genetically-enhanced chicken crossed the road!”

“Crossing” by Dan C. Rinnert. Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.