The death of a draft

And Too Many Murders is being set aside. Too much research is going to be needed and way, way too many people were dying. I need to rethink the MC a bit (he needs to work instead of be a perpetual loafer; probably fix/sel UnWaves for his dads company) so there is more logic in how he funds/runs across the bodies. I like the characters and the setting, just can't get the story to work as pure pantsing. I was spending as much time writing notes on on who died, who killed them, how they died etc. as I was writing the story, which slowed it down to a crawl.


So I'm working on a story idea that popped into my head just before nano. Urban fantasy, of the noir/grimdark sort. Thus far the MC has possible agreed to murder someone and also effectively fed one kid to a vampire. Need to sleep; thoughts on draft and tenses tomorrow.

From nano #2.

“Did you want to get arrested?” I snapped once she was driving down the road.  “You don’t go about telling the police you believe aliens killed over three people!”

“What I wanted was for the police to not lock you up, Dennis.” Mel said.

“Lock me up? I haven’t done anything.”

“You think that matters to the police? Just because you’re a white male doesn’t mean you’re immune to being jailed for crimes you didn’t commit.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Mel snorted. “Well, not all the time and definitely not in the way you mean.”

“Point is: something damned weird is going on in Kennebec. We need to find out what.”

“We what?”

“Murders? Solving then? Try and keep up,” she snapped in turn as she twisted the wheel, tires skidding as the car rounded a corner.

“We have a police force. They’ll be calling in state troopers and the FBI, Mel.”

“So? They don’t know this town: we do. Fact: it can’t be just one person. Fact: they know our police force isn’t equipped to deal with this. Fact: they are getting away with murder. Fact: they knew who they killed and are trying to distract the authorities so it isn’t just about murder.”

“They tried to make it look like Alex and Emily killed themselves,” I said in spite of myself.

“And killed animals for the same reason. Amanda was an accident, presumably, unless they killed her first and then the animals as an attempted cover for that. There is at least a plan to this.”

“So we are assuming it’s humans rather than aliens that did these killings?”

“Without proof otherwise, yes. It probably isn’t the seven foot tall lizards in human skinsuits since they are busy being the British royal family.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”