Timothy C. Phillips's blog

Roland Longville Number Six...Finally

Well, I finally put the finishing touches on Roland Longville #6, The Burning Day. No, this is not the cover. The publisher send me a first-look galley of the cover, though, and I really like it. The Burning Day is at the editor, at this stage. I really hope that it does well. This cover is appropriate, I felt, as I have been criticized for being too violent, foul-mouthed and lurid, as a writer, which pleases me, since Raymond Chandler was criticized for all of those things also, and he is my hero. I was pumped after finishing this book, so I edited and uploaded a bunch of history themed short stories to Scribd. I touch on The Battle of Maldon, Custer's Last Stand, the pirate Stede Bonnet, as well as some other (violent, foul-mouthed, and lurid) themes.

....and now for number seven!

Kicking off New Blog

This is something that I've been meaning to get around to; the old blog just sort of petered out on me. Today  I am still trying to get more information on Mossad and less on Tiger Woods. I am still, still, **STILL** hard at work on the sixth installment of my Roland Longville detective series.

I am close to finishing the novel. It really took me a long time to realize that I had to get rid of a couple of characters and, therefore, several scenes, to keep things moving along. I wanted it to be action-packed, and move fast for the reader; and, somehow, along the way, I had gotten rather Dickensian, introducing rather too many characters, I must say, and so I had to stop and explain who each person was, and the result was the narrative was getting bogged down.

Long story short, I went back and chopped some characters out. I'll use them again, undoubtedly. Some of them are pretty cool.

Anyway check back here as I vent and seethe and comment and endeavor to explain.