So first off, Burnaby Burning got its first review.  I’m pretty happy.  It’s four stars.  It reads in part:

Have not read a book yet that followed a similar storyline. Once I got into the story by the end of the first chapter I couldn’t put the book down.

I think those two sentences sum up what’s important to me as an author.  A unique plot and compelling story.  That’s not to much to demand of myself is it?  Think up something novel, and write it very well.  It’s harder than it sounds.  But I appreciate the review, which can be read here:  http://www.amazon.com/Burnaby-Burning-Gordon-McFadden/dp/1480144452/  and clicking the customer review link.  This is conveniently located next to the “Buy the Great Book” button.  Just saying.

And for the record, when writing  Burnaby Burning, I followed the story structure outline by my older brother, Tony McFadden, which he details here : http://www.tonymcfadden.net/wotb/?page_id=826 . I decided to follow his guidelines to see if produced a better structure than I achieved with the writing of Loop Vacation.And I did.  The structure is much better.  And it is a better book than Loop Vacation, even though I think Loop Vacation has a better plot and could have been a better book.

And this bring me to book number three, currently titled Assassin Rebuild.  I have been tinkering with this book for three years now.  It has grown entirely organically. I wrote the antagonistic view first.  Then a friends mentioned the book would be better if there was a balancing “good guy”.  So I added a couple of detectives a year later. At first I wanted the detectives to be the good guys at the beginning of the book, a=but become the bad guys by the end of the book.  Then, about six months ago, I thought they should be reusable.  Of course the idea of writing a detective series as well received as the Prey series by Sandford is just a dream, you can’t get there if your detectives are corrupt asswipes in your first book that your readers hate.  So I made them real good guys.  With some personal parts that could be explored in later books.

And the result, as it stands right now, is a big pile of steaming, well written, disconnected yet oddly compelling crap. And maybe well written is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is compelling.

What it needs is structure.  So starting in about three minutes – I’m going to make a coffee – I am re-designing the story completely.  The bad guys are going to be bad – real fucking bad.  The good guys are going to be good but human. And I think I have much better ending.

I have a weeks vacation.  I’m supposed to be spending it with my parents what visiting from Nova Scotia.  I guess I better make them a coffee too …..