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Here it goes: I’m finished! Well, the first draft anyway. Some people who aren’t writers have asked me if I’m ready to send that novel off to my publisher, Pantera Press. Ha! I wish I could write a flawless first draft. I can’t. Nobody can. Decades ago, when I was inexperienced and much more sure of (read: full of) myself, I was certain my early drafts were as close to perfect as they could be because I had such a instinctual understanding of story. But time’s taught me I’m an idiot. And it’s also drilled into me a question that almost incapacitates me before any session where I sit down…
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First off, a warning: if you haven’t read Just Another Week in Suburbia, this scene is going to be something of a spoiler (as will this post). The reason for that is because in both versions the conclusion is the same. It’s the journey to get there that differs, but get there they both do (hence the spoiler warning). However, in the published book, the journey is a simple, tempered conversation. The characters are spent. All they have left now are words. But it wasn’t always that way. Originally when Casper and Jane met, it went like this … Chapter 52 (in the original manuscript anyway) Jane’s wearing a…