A Place of Safety

Well, setting the story in 2008, just after Prop H8 in California was passed, works a lot better. It still takes place in Fairview, Washington, but now it's not a wedding happening, only a commitment ceremony between Dair and Wallace, the lawyer who handled his defense against lawsuits put forth by Adam's parents. What that did, however, was kick out some cultural references I'd made that were too recent, and it's making me adjust the technological capabilities of everyone concerned. At least iPhones were around, and since Jackson, Wallace's best man, is coming from Tokyo, he'd have the latest version. That plays into it. Unfortunately, this led me into a problem. The characters' ages and whether Dair is younger or older than his brother, Gareth. Initially, he was younger...but I thought it might be better to make him older and maybe an early baby...except that didn't really work. It changed the dynamic between Dair and Gareth (not to mention his bi

I've got 372 pages and more than 83,000 words done on Dair's Window , and I'm at a fork in the road that I can't seem to get past. All of the action till this point, except for memories and background, takes place in the week before Christmas. In one direction is playing out the rest of the story in a straight line, which would take it all the way to Easter. The other direction is truncating it to end on New Year's Eve. But I feel like that's kind of rushing it...even though it makes sense, emotionally. I've spent hours trying to figure out which way to go, and I'm stuck. I could kill off another character in a tragic accident but that's so trash-TV, it makes me laugh. I halfway think it's the original script dogging me, here. That was set between Palm Sunday and Easter, which was not at all realistic. I tried watching some of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Acorn but my mood wasn't great so I got all nit-picky. They're set in

Spent today clearing up the places and things in my head over Dair's Window . I'm making up a town for this to take place in and got totally lost as to who was where and what, so worked up a map. I also did a timeline for the two main characters -- Dair and Adam -- so I could keep things in order...because the book is working out to be rather non-linear. On the map, Dair's house is the lower right. It actually used to be a ski lodge owned by his father, who signed it over to him when he went to live in Nepal and contemplate his navel. Dair set his studio up in it and was living there with Adam as he created his stained glass artwork. Dair's mother, Marion, owns Tidwika Lodge, at the top of the map, and her main competition is Tomika Ski Resort, operated by her other son, Gareth. They don't get along well. Dair's grandfather is Reverend Samuels, whose church is to the middle left. Dair's working on a massive window for the church, as well, but having