Yeah, yeah. Real original, I know. | Kenneth Lowe via LG smartphone and Weather.com app

It is relentlessly, mercilessly cold out right now, but it is fortuitous all the same, since a friend passed me some supremely useful criticisms of my latest short story, another one dealing with the detective, Blackdale. I’ve posted his first story here.

This harrowing tale finds him in the midst of a theft investigation set against the backdrop of an awful winter, written largely while I was actually in Colombia, where there is no such thing as an awful winter. The story had several problems with it that I am working through, with my friend’s assistance.

It might actually be interesting to see how this evolves. Bearing in mind that it isn’t finished yet (and that it is also now on its third or fourth version), here’s what I have so far. I won’t be editing this doc any further, so folks can see it in this form and compare it to the eventual final version. Here’s the link: The Autumn Sword draft

For a “short story,” it is quite long, and considerable changes have yet to be made. Hope those changes are instructive, or at least interesting.