Kicking my outline's ass... and other stuff

Hello again! I'm back from vacation. First things first: my new and improved word count after all the work I did on vacation is... exactly the same as when I left. *fist pump*

Yeah. Here's how it went.

First, I finished reading Vicki Pettersson's ridiculously fabulous debut, The Scent of Shadows. Then, I further indulged myself with Keri Arthur's Kissing Sin, the follow up to the first in her Riley Jenson series, Full Moon Rising. Both, tremendous works of fiction. Intricate plots with richly developed characters that leave you begging for more (don't be surprised if you see that line in my soon to be posted reader review of Vicki's book!). Which called attention to the rather two-dimensional quality of my own plot and potential for character development. *sigh*

So, wallowing in the misery of the all too obvious fact that I was going to have to re-plot yet again, I cracked open Patricia Brigg's Blood Bound, the sequel to her fantastic debut Moon Called. Blood Bound, although not quite as complexly plotted, was a great read and I was really drawn in by the characters just as I was with Moon Called.

By this point, I was on the first of my two flights home and left with nothing more to procrastinate with than the $5 Dell Pencil Puzzles book I'd brought. Which completely sucked. So, I finally dug out the notebook and began jotting down a few of the ideas I'd come up with during the week and reasoned through a few more.

The Atlanta airport saved me from getting too much done (heaven forbid) with a copy of Possession, the second in Jennifer Armintrout's vampire series, beckoning me from the newsstand right next to my departing gate. I only made it 24 pages in before my dry eyes called it quits and I was forced to fitfully nap the rest of the way home.

Hence, no actual writing accomplished on my vacation.

This weekend, however, I started re-working my outline and I AM KICKING ITS ASS! YEAH! I brought back a second love interest I ditched early on in the original plotting process and layered in a new character. I also re-did some of the villain plot to make that a little more complex. My villain is really cool and I need to find ways to get more interaction with her. Hard to do in a first person POV book when your narrator isn't the villain. Well, hard to do in my first person POV book. No spoilers! Ha ha. You know, for when I get published. Ahem.

Anyhoo, I'm outlined up to my eyeballs through the first ten chapters or so. I have a basic sketch for another several chapters, then it gets a little vague. I have an idea, but not a lot actually plotted out scene by scene. We'll just have to see what happens. Ten chapters is more than enough to get me started though.

I'll have to re-write most of what I've already done, but that's alright. I knew I'd have to re-write the first scene anyway. Oh, and I've changed my MC's job for the fiftieth time. The cop thing was just getting in the way too much, throwing me off. This new job will give me some of the same dramatic elements but in a much more comfortable way.

Well, back to real life tomorrow morning. Too bad vacation can't last forever...