I have a tendency to write several projects at a time. That way, when I hit a blockage on one, I can jump to another. The flip side is that I can get bogged down in one of them and ignore others. That is kind of where I am right now… I know that either Sniper… (Guardian) Angel (of Death) or At Arm’s Length will be the next one out. Both are REALLY close to going out to my beta readers (always looking for volunteers). Instead, I am writing on Invisible Jack and Chased.

I tend to categorize the stories by word count, at least as far as when I will do with them.

• Short Story – under 4000 words
• Short Story (episodes) – 3000 to 20,000 words
• Novella – 15,000 to 50,000 words
• Novel – 75,000 to 100,000 words

There are holes and overlapping areas… so I have to wing it sometimes. I also have to re-examine a story sometimes, too. If it is short of a novel, but too long for a novella, does it need more detail or more trimming? Is the story complete? Is it overtold.

I have also been experimenting with POV – point of view. Classically, most stories are told in third person. More and more, though, I see novels published in first person. The change is basically from “Jack walked into the room and looked around” to “I walked into the room, looking for Amy.” There are advantages and disadvantages to either POV.

In the traditional third person, the narrating voice can know what is on the mind of multiple characters (or have limited omniscience). They can be a fly on the wall or inside people’s heads. But it also separates the reader from the character… for good or bad. It is easier to read a character that the reader doesn’t identify with in a third-person narration.

But in first-person, the reader is asked to step into the character. They know what the character knows, assuming the author wishes to communicate that info. But they can only guess at what is inside the mind of other characters. Unless the POV shifts from character to character, usually at the chapter level.

I am trying this with Shining Star. It does require a different mindset to write. Instead of being able to reveal something, I might have to jump to a new chapter for the reveal to allow the correct character to voice the new revelation.

Colt swung around and lunged at the photographer that had crept up behind him. The man still grinning, knowing that he had captured the winning shot, Selena Sparrow’s ultimate wardrobe “malfunction.” Colt grabbed the lens of the camera and pushed it back into the face of the photographer. Then he pulled it back, dragging the middle-aged man with it by the neck strap.

“Hey, asshole, let go of my camera,” the man shouted as Colt punched under the camera, hitting the man squarely in the jaw.

He yanked the camera strap over his head and pulled the camera fully away from him. With one hand he popped the card slot door of the camera, pulling out the card. With the other, he slammed the camera on the ground.

“You, hey, don’t,” a cop shouted as the camera shattered on the sidewalk.

Colt took the card and ground it into the pavement. Selena hadn’t even had a chance to react, she was sitting in the car waiting for him to close the door. The cop grabbed his arm and spun him down into the pavement, subduing him. He didn’t resist.

“Hey, officer, it isn’t what it looks like,” Colt said.

“Shut up.”

“He busted my camera, Dude,” the paparazzi complained.

“Officer, can I talk to her for a minute before you take me away,” Colt said calmly.

The cop nodded and Selena quickly hopped out of the SUV. He whispered in her ear, and she blushed, then nodded. She took the keys from his pocket and walked around the other side of the truck and carefully climbed into the driver’s seat. She pulled away slowly as Colt was loaded into the back of a patrol car.

***

“Colt, you’re out of control,” Ellen Stewart said to him, facing him in the private jet. She ripped the glass of single-malt scotch out of his hand. “Like the raging bull on that Lamborghini badge. You don’t think. Now I have to fix it. That photographer wants to sue the crap out of us… and if he actually knew anything…” She shook her head in exasperation.

Ellen was the Dixon family “fixer”. Young, beautiful, both a legal degree and a degree in international business, but it seemed to her that she spent half of her time bailing out Colt… or fending off his advances. But this time might be the time he went too far.

“Selena told me what happened, but I know she didn’t tell me everything. Why don’t you.”

“Nothing to add. Just do your job, Ellen.”

They sat in silence for a while before Colt started back in on the family fixer.

“You know… you could take care of me,” he said. “Who knows… it might just save your job.” He smiled smugly at the young woman. He was barely eighteen, and she was twenty-five. He’d had a crush on her since the moment she’d been hired, but she rebuffed him at every opportunity.

“Why do you insist on acting like a bag of rancid assholes?” she said to him before rising and walking to the front of the plane.

The next day, Colt found out that he would be losing the battle with Ellen. She got a paid vacation and a salary bump. He was going to have to get a job after graduation. A grunt job.

He flung the driver’s door open, hopping into the sumptuous interior. Leather, mahogany and carbon fiber greeted him. He watched as the gauges jumped to life when he fired up the 7.2-liter marine V12. Lamborghini installed the engine in a few of the LM002 sport-utility vehicles, but it had been designed for offshore powerboat racing, and the roar coming from the exhaust belied that. Even with the mild tune that he had applied, it belched out more than six-hundred horsepower. As he blipped the throttle, the tach needle jumped from its peg, wrapping much of the way around the gauge… another raging bull just below the needle’s pivot point.

He pulled out of the parking garage of the opulent hotel in Hollywood, the vehicle becoming a little less raucous out of the confines of the concrete parking deck, and headed to the home of his latest girlfriend, a young actress and singer that was attracted to his “bad-boy” status. Colt Dixon, mysterious young playboy. He had a surprise date for her that he was hoping would push her to her limits.

Because his mother had pounded into him the need to be a gentleman, he held her door and helped her up into the modified “Rambo Lambo”.

“This isn’t a Hummer, is it? My dad has a Hummer, and this looks… different,” Selena said, her brow furrowed.

“It’s a Lambo.”

“I’m not dumb, I know what a Lambo looks like, and this isn’t one. They are low and fast and stuff.”

“I assure you, Selena, this is a Lamborghini. Anyway… we need to go; I have fun stuff planned.”

He kissed her lightly and then closed her door. Rounding the LM002, he hopped in the driver’s side and put on his seat belt. A minute later they were sedately motoring along Hollywood Blvd. on their way to the desert. He wanted to know what his new toy was capable of doing.

***

Once past the confines of LA traffic, Colt cracked the throttles on the big V12. It let out a mighty roar as the heavy off-roader picked up speed like a muscle car. Soon, they were barreling down I-15 in the triple digits, both of them laughing as the Lambo floated over the uneven road. Colt thought it handled a lot like an offshore powerboat, dampening the undulations of the road, but leaving him feeling a bit disconnected.

Past Barstow, he turned off the interstate highway and into the desert. Sand roads, washes and paths were more like the terrain this beast was built to tame, and Colt intended to do just that. He knew a few routes that might be exciting.

“Have you ever driven a stick before?” he asked the girl sitting next to him.

“No… actually… I’ve never driven before,” she replied.

“Seriously?” He couldn’t imagine a sixteen-year-old not wanting the freedom of a driver’s license and their own car. He’d been waiting with his mother two years before on his birthday, a license being the most important thing he could get that day.

“I always have drivers and stuff… I guess I never thought about it.”

“We can fix that later, if you want.”

“Maybe,” she replied, her bottom lips curled nervously between her teeth.

Colt downshifted and slammed the throttle to the floor. He cut the wheel to turn into a sand wash, sand spraying up in the air from the tires digging it. He left a rooster tail of dry sand as he accelerated along the wash in the deep powder. The Lambo wallowed back and forth a bit as he sawed the steering wheel around the bends of the dry river.

The speedo pushed higher, the Lambo floating over the sand. Colt was barely in control, and he knew it. A wrong move, a mistake or an unexpected obstacle could send them flipping out of control. He craved the adrenaline. Selena Sparrow laughed loudly next to him. She loved knowing there was danger, but thought the risk was as well managed as a theme park ride.

Colt cut the wheel again, making for the road. As the Lamborghini approached the road running along the dry wash, it leapt into the air on a rise. The suspension noises abated, leaving only the roar of the revving engine. Everything was suspended in midair as the vehicle floated a few feet off the road, seeming to hover for a moment… until crashing down, the suspension absorbing the weight of the vehicle slamming into the rough road.

He didn’t lift, instead accelerating again, headed deeper into the Mojave Desert along the old road.

Ahead, the road turned slightly. Colt sawed the wheel, deftly flicking into the turn. As they slid sideways, the four-wheel-drive system struggled for traction and Colt battled to retain control. Below them, the rocks and gravel of the road rattled like machine gun fire on the bottom of the SUV.

A rear tire fell off the edge of the road causing Colt to lift slightly from the throttle, then he pegged it down again. A moment and an eternity later, the rear tires grabbed traction and threw the truck back onto the road, threatening to toss it the other way.

Again, he turned into the slide and brought it back under control. Selena had no idea how close to the edge of control they were… that Colt had never driven this vehicle this fast. She didn’t know that he thought they almost rolled when the tire dropped from the edge of the road. She just fully trusted that he had everything in hand.

For much of Colt’s young life, he appeared to have everything in hand, but the reality was that he didn’t. He careened from party to party and school to home, barely in control. From the outside it looked smooth and seamless, like he knew what he was doing, but inside… that wasn’t the case. There were a thousand small adjustments he made as he drove. Some he thought about, others were just reaction. But much of the time, it was luck.

Colt assumed his luck would never run out.

***

He slammed on the brakes and the Lambo slid to a stop in the middle of a dry lakebed. Around them for miles was nothing but parched ground, mountains visible beyond.

“You ready?” he asked. Sand filtered down, their rooster tail catching up to them, coating the exterior with dust.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt your car.”

“There is nothing for miles. I’ll teach you how to drive. It will be fine.”

“I don’t have a Learner’s Permit…”

“Seriously, Selena?” He looked at her for a minute. He could see in her eyes how nervous she was. If he pushed, she would either break down or rise up. He walked around to her side. “Come on. No time like the present. You’re almost seventeen… it’s a rite of passage.”

Her resolve gathered. The set of her jaw changed. The quiver disappeared and she unlatched her seatbelt. She spun around and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. “I’m ready,” she cooed in his ear.

***

That evening, as they left dinner, again he held the door for her as she climbed up into the Lambo. She hiked her leg up to hop into the seat. Colt Dixon noticed two things at the same time. Glancing down, Selena Sparrow, Teen Sensation and “good girl” was not wearing anything under her skirt. Before he could really process that, he heard the sound of the paparazzi’s shutter firing.

The result is that I generally have several projects going at one time. Right now I have three or four solid novel starts. Using working titles, currently I have are: Death Star, Invisible Jack, Sniper and At Arm’s Length. Of course there is another that I am kicking around, but it isn’t as far along, Railroaded. And another that I have the idea for, but haven’t really started writing. I’m hoping to have book number 10 out by the end of March.

Without opening all of them to look, they are between zero words (the aforementioned story I haven’t started writing) and 50,000 words. I usually use 100k words as a goal. But, how far along a book is in word count doesn’t portend to when it might come out. Triple Cross was written in a month or so… straight through… while other stories languished. Some of the stories in Grafton had been under construction for almost a year. They also changed from “novel seeds” to novellas.