FILLING BLANK SPACES: October 2020

Sunday, October 25, 2020

PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 24, 2020

OKAY, A COUPLE OF PIECES OF IMPORTANT BUSINESS TODAY,

SO LET'S GET RIGHT TO IT.

First and foremost, the first draft to the SOLITAIRE novel is done!

The manuscript came in at 67,000+ words between 34 chapters.

Game plan now is to put on my editor's cap and go back over the manuscript to see where I can tighten and/or polish it up a bit before sending it on to My Friendly Neighborhood Beta-Proofreader for her review and input.

Second, but by no means least:

SHERLOCK HOLMES, CONSULTING DETECTIVE VOLUME 16 has been released by Airship 27!😀

Featuring the creative talents of

*I. A.—no known relation to Doctor—WATSON's

"The Adventure of the Anarchist's Apprentice" (Who's raging havoc and destruction on London?)

*GREG HATCHER's two short stories

"The Adventure of the Disappearing Diplomat" (a race against time to save Mycroft and a foreign dignitary) and "The Adventure of the Man Who Died Twice" (did a widow really lose her husband twice?)

*ROB DAVIS' interior art, cover (based upon an illustration from the Italian adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four), and formatting

*Along with MY NOVELLA "The Adventure of the Unimaginable" (can Watson solve a mystery alone when Sherlock's on holiday?)

Who could ask for anything more between the covers of this amazing volume?

The book is out now via Amazon in PRINT or KINDLE E-BOOK format.

Sunday, October 18, 2020

PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 17, 2020

I'm so near the end it's absolutely frustrating!

66,000+ words and 32 chapters into the SOLITAIRE novel.

Either this chapter or the next will be the last that ties everything before to everything I've written beyond where I'm at at the moment.

Then I'll have to go back and reread the entire manuscript. Give it a second pass and polish it up a bit before I send it to My Friendly Neighborhood Beta-Proof Reader for her opinions.

In any event, I better get back to writing now.

Take care.

STAY SAFE!😷

And I'll see you around the Internet.

Lee Houston, Junior

18 October, 2020

Sunday, October 11, 2020

PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 10, 2020

Well, as you can imagine from the image on the right, I'm not quite finished with the SOLITAIRE novel yet.

Almost 64,000 words as I start Chapter 31.

I know the end is in sight because at least half of those last 4,000 words are the finale and epilog to the adventure that I wrote weeks ago.

In any event, I do have ideas to tackle for the rest of 2020 and beyond, it's just a question of who is done when versus what else might happen in the meantime.

Air Captain Ron Fortier's latest post on the Airship 27 website will be quite interesting to fans of both myself, SHERLOCK HOLMES, and my friendly neighborhood beta-proofreader.

I better get back to writing now.

Take care.

STAY SAFE! 😷

And I'll see you around the Internet.

Lee Houston, Junior

11 October, 2020

Sunday, October 4, 2020

PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 3, 2020

I truly wish I could say that the first draft to SOLITAIRE is finished, but not quite yet.

I am 62,000+ words and on Chapter 30.

Not sure how many actual chapters there will be, but this past week I did write the concluding scene and tweaked the existing Epilog accordingly.

The goal is to close the gap between all that and where I actually left off in Chapter 30 before I jumped ahead again.

Now the way I see it, there's nothing wrong with jumping ahead when necessary.

After all, if you've got a strong idea for a scene later than where you actually are in a manuscript at the moment, you certainly want to get it down in writing and not run the risk of losing it.

What if, when you finally come to that moment later on, you forgot what it was?

Better to have those parts ready and waiting for however long it takes to reach the point where you need them instead.

In any event, I better get back to writing now.

Take care.

STAY SAFE!😷

And I'll see you around the Internet.

Lee Houston, Junior

4 October, 2020