I thought I’d write a post about this book. I started writing Crimson Justice in October of 2019 as a writing prompt. When NaNoWriMo started, I was already half-way into writing the first draft of this book and I toyed with the idea of starting another book and entering the contest. I decided to continue writing the first draft of this book and just see if I could write 50,000 words in one month’s time. I started writing on October 13th and made it to 50k words by November 15th. Close! I didn’t actually finish the first draft until November 15th at 57k words.

I set the draft aside for part of December, but then I thought about it and decided that there was a good story in there. So I pulled out the draft and decided that I could make something of the story. I ended up re-outlining the whole story. The problem with my original story was that I had two protagonists. Technically Arnold was the protagonist and Claire was his wife at the time. I sort-of set it up as a dynamic-duo, crime-fighting team. Yeah. It was lame.

I had the ending already set and I really liked the way things came together at the end. It required the protagonist to be Claire. That required me to remove Arnold (I made him into a creepy stalker date guy) and make all the Arnold scenes into Claire scenes. That ended up being a rewrite. Ah, fun times!

The story ended up being a SciFi thriller/detective plot. She pairs up with an old fling called Ray, who used to be a cop, but he became a private detective because he was tired of the bribes and payoffs. Claire is entangled in this mess because she ended up with the wrong luggage at the airport (this came from the writing prompt). That suitcase contained a planner with codes in it. The mob and their paid-off cops are trying to get this planner back. They don’t care about Clair’s life, in fact, they would prefer she was dead because dead people don’t talk.

Ray and Clair have to unravel who the powerful people are that are controlling the police and others. They are both in way over their heads and they get further into danger as time goes on. The determination of the mob increases as Claire and Ray discover people and plans of the underground organization. Eventually, they discover a plot to take over robots (which they refer to as bots) to use for their nefarious purposes.

There is a lot of action scenes in this novel. I have been told that some of the characters are a little flat. I have to agree, and I will probably produce a revision of this novel next year or after. I took great care with the overall story. I made sure that everything is tied together. My wife (who is an avid reader) didn’t find any plot holes, and boy can see find those! She pointed out a few “issues” with grammar before I published and I have since fixed a few other grammatical issues.

I have had a few private reviews that have been brutal, but very enlightening. I thank those who have taken off the kid-gloves and told me what they thought was missing or out of place in the story. One complaint was that the book was too short. I view that as a plus. Somebody wanted more! Another complaint was that someone wanted more description of the setting. Something I will definitely pay more attention to in future books.

I am currently reading Orson Scott Card’s book called: “Characters & Viewpoint.” It’s a really good book that goes deep into writing great characters (I’ll probably read it twice this year). I’ve spent time reading a lot of other character development books, but most go into making a check-list of a character or forming an “interview” of the character. It’s easy and I’ll probably do that as well, but Orson’s book is really good.

I did manage to nail one of my characters pretty good. Both my wife and one other person said they were sad that I killed off that character. It was their favorite character in my book. I liked that character too, but I knew I had to kill him off because that fed the story. When/if I decide to do a revision two, I’ll be spending a lot more time with the bad guys.

My next book will include some beta readers. That will allow me to get feedback before the book is published. If you have kindle unlimited, please read Crimson Justice and be sure to put a review on Amazon.