Second Skin Update

Finally managed to pop out the next chapter. I apologize for the wait, but this part of the storyline is a tricky one, so it might take a bit longer, unfortunately. This writing thing keeps getting tougher, but then I'm making a conscious effort to challenge myself, just to see what I'm capable of. I'm not sure if I'm impressed or not yet, but I'm still plugging away at it and still loving it.

The latest little mini-plotline will hopefully be a lot of fun for readers, but I admit it's getting my brain all tangled up in knots trying to work out the logistics. Intrigue is fucking hard. Coming up with a plausible mystery is one thing, giving all the characters believable motivations (or maybe some of them aren't so believable, but they still need a reason). I think the trickiest part as the author is knowing the whole story and making sure your protagonist only knows the parts they really need to know to keep things moving forward. That part's hard as hell for me because I'm still learning to hold back details for the sake of maintaining tension in a story. My first impulse is to dump everything into a single expository paragraph, but I know that's no fun for a reader. There's a reason mysteries are such a popular genre.

Also, nobody's exactly who they seem at first. One of the themes in this story is the idea of changing identities. If you were a fan of Blackwork and knew Mason Black from that, you already have an expectation of some kind of change occurring in Second Skin. He's not the only character in the story who will go through such a transition. I'm being deliberately vague here, but this chapter introduced a new character who will also undergo a pretty serious transition before my story is complete. It might be surprising, or it might not. I welcome any speculation, though