After a week long hiatus, I’m back. Actually it was a little more than a week. What have I been doing to further my writing career, you ask?

A few things. I put out three or four calls for launch team members for China Tour. Twelve people responded. I e-mailed them the book, and outlined the tasks for them. Most of that happened before my week away. Over this week I’ve been getting comments back. So far five from the team have told me they finished the book and given me comments. Based on those comments I’ve been brainstorming and editing.

One common criticism was that the book starts slowly. Those who coach writers say at the very start of the book you should introduce your protagonist and plunge him/her into conflict. The Brownwell’s conflict at that point is marital difficulty. The start seems slow, I agree. Yesterday I may have come across a way to overcome that. While the Brownwells are on the ferry returning from Hong Kong to Kowloon, a meeting of key players in the Taipei office of the CIA is meeting, explaining the need to get the dissident out of China. Hopefully this will stir things up a bit more at the beginning.

Beyond that, on China Tour, I’m working through the book from beginning to end, looking for inconsistencies in the plot, places where the wording can be better, typos, or just any improvements I can think of. I have about 70 pages left. I’m also looking for photos to use on the cover, though in truth I haven’t done a whole lot of that.

Also on the table this last week was completing what was needed for the print edition of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. Veronica completed the cover, sent the file to me, and I uploaded it. It was accepted with no problem. Thanks, Ronnie, you did a good job. So I ordered the proof, reviewed it, and found one mistake in a font size of a running header. I fixed that last night and uploaded the new file.

Today the e-mail came saying the book is acceptable per CreateSpace standards, and was ready to either order another proof or publish it. I decided to publish it. It’s available to purchase right now at CreateSpace, for $14.00. Here’s the link: https://www.createspace.com/4213834. It should be available on Amazon proper within a few days. However, I make a significantly higher royalty on CreateSpace, so if you’re thinking about buying it….

So, now you know why I was absent for a week. China Tour will be my main writing focus until it’s published. I still don’t know when that will be, but I’ll keep you all posted here.