Turn and face the strange. Or in this case the mistakes and awkward bits of my first draft.

I've done the first reread of Breaking Bread. Next comes the rewrite in which I have two major changes. For one, I'm adding a scene I left out that will explain some of the extreme hostility of Maya's mother. That part of the conclusion is thin and it needs a few paragraphs to flesh it out.

The other change is this: Kiki Curtis-Stevens. It's not that I don't like the name, I do. But… Kiki is my niece Kathleen's nickname. Fortunately, she doesn't read my blog. I think. When I first wrote the character, 'Kiki' just popped into my head and I went with it. Honestly, I never intended to use the name all through the book, I just never came up with anything better. But I don't want the criminal to be named after my niece!

I gave Kiki the full name of Katerine, the Italian version of Katharine, so one possibility is to call her Trina Curtis-Stevens instead. That works pretty well except that it sounds very similar to Tanya. Trina and Tanya. Tanya and Trina. Close enough be confusing. So now I'm thinking about changing Tanya's name as well. I named one of their cousins Stacia and I might swap their names since the cousin has no role in the story other than being mentioned. Aren't you glad you don't have to read this story again?

Just a side note: I mentioned to a few of you that I considered an evil alternative ending:

When they discover that Tanya has been paid twenty-five thousand dollars to sabotage Maya's cafe? The financier is really Brad. An obsessed Brad who only sees the cafe as an impediment to getting what he really wants: Maya. In this scenario, Brad gets increasingly jealous and possessive which results in driving her closer to Juan Paolo and that in turn triggers violence against JP, etc, etc…  (I hadn't worked all of it out, obviously…) Any of you who read Book 2: Seeing Red will get the connection here to Brad's half brother Ethan, the football player/stalker. So I figured I already wrote that story in Seeing Red. Still, it would have been fun! And unexpected I think.

Ok, back to work…

Header Image: Ian Cleary