I spent a good part of my day thinking about boats. I have some meetings coming up where I will be talking about Disruption, the first book in the Emily Graham series, and the core of that story rides on a Mississippi River towboat. In fact, I had no idea about Emily Graham at all when I started writing Disruption, just the boat and what was happening there. If I recall, Emily didn’t even show-up until around chapter 20, which is something I’ve taken some flack for. I’ve been told by formal editors that “your protagonist should always be introduced early in the story so your readers know about them quickly”. When I have explained to them that I did not know about Emily until she showed up, several have suggested (insisted) that I need to go back and rewrite the first chapters so she is introduced sooner. I haven’t done that. Maybe I should, but Emily won’t let me. She insists that rules are just things that hang around so we can break them when we need too.
I’ve been thinking about what I might write after all of the thinking, and came up with what I think is the best thing to do. Instead of me telling you anything about the boats, I invite you to take a few moments and jump on to take a look at see what it’s like to start the morning as Captain on a Mississippi River towboat!
