First Draft of Coe's Story, NOT-SO-SHINING ARMOR, is done!

Coe Rodas, a secondary character in STARTING FROM SCRATCH, finally has a story all his own—yay! It was only supposed to be a novella, around 40K, but as I kept writing, a much larger story line evolved.  Before I knew it, the end-of-November deadline I gave myself came and went.  December was full of holiday travel, ice skating Christmas shows and promo for SfS, so I couldn’t finish it then. January rolled around and I made huge progress on Coe’s Story… until a 2^nd re-titling paper and Developmental Edits came in for the book now known as ONE HOT SECOND.  I began to think I’d never see the end of Coe’s story.

But I did it.  This past weekend I finished the first draft—YES!  I still have a lot to do, like adding a kissing scene and a ridiculous texting conversation between the heroine and her sister, but these are little things.  For the most part, it. Is. DONE.

As always, I’ve written up a blurb for it. Blurbs help me see what’s important in a story, and what should be hacked away as dead weight. Its working title is NOT-SO-SHINING ARMOR, but this is me we’re talking about, after all.  No doubt this book will have at least half a dozen changes in its title before the perfect one gets chosen. 

Hope you like the sound of it. :)

NOT-SO-SHINING ARMOR—A Bitterthorn, Texas Novel

Miranda Brookhaven is in Bitterthorn for one reason only—to return patent rights to their rightful owner, Coe Rodas. Years earlier, her father callously used her relationship with Coe to steal the design of an ingenious fuel valve. Now her father's dead, and she’s stuck with righting a wrong that lost her the two men who had once meant the world to her.

Coe’s learned that life never goes according to plan. His dreams of hitting it big were gutted when Miranda, a little princess if there ever was one, stabbed him in the back and stole his valve. But to his surprise, Miranda is the one who feels she was wronged. To add to his confusion, the once-pampered princess can’t afford to buy milk, lives in a condemned trailer in that hellhole where he grew up, Garden Court… and everything he thought he knew might be completely wrong.

It’s irrelevant to Miranda that Coe believes her superpower is the ability to hold a grudge. What matters is that while she fights to get him the patent rights to the valve—the only thing of value he’d once had—he can no longer get under her skin. But as Thanksgiving rolls around, the spirit of the season threatens to open her ferociously closed-off heart. Or maybe it's not the season at all.  Maybe it's Coe, who seems determined to play the role of knight in not-so-shining armor.

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I've not yet put together an official Pinterest storyboard for NSSA. I did, however, collect all the images and articles I used in writing this book, in case you're interested. :)  Thanks for reading!