Meredith Mansfield, Author

My last post was about rereading Lois McMaster Bujold’s A CIVIL AFFAIR to help me work out some of the kinks in the romance part of my paranormal romance BLOOD IS THICKER. I’m still working on BLOOD IS THICKER, though I’m in the last quarter, now and my focus has shifted.

Now I’m working on a little mini-caper plot point. In this case, I haven’t read or re-read anything exactly. I’ve relied more on this episode of Writing Excuses. This caper will only last through a couple of chapters, but hopefully adds a bit of action and suspense to the story leading up to the action surrounding the final resolution.

This is something new for me. I’ve written action scenes before, but never tried anything resembling a caper before. I’m sure that this will need more tweaking in the next draft. That’s okay. It’s good to try new things and stretch yourself a bit.

Meanwhile, I’ve also started the second draft of THE BARD’S GIFT, which is a young adult alternate history. It’s interesting to be working on two such different stories at the same time. We’ll see how that works out, too.