Today is August 17, 2009, and I'm back to counting down the days until August 25, the official publication date of my debut novel, GONE FROM THESE WOODS. Even though I haven't posted a note about GFTW here (in my countdown series anyway) for the past few days while I was on vacation, I was still counting down, as you can imagine!

So, a few days have gone by without a note. If we don't count today, we have seven more days until P-day! I'll try to find time to post at least seven more notes.

In my last note, I talked about chapter one of GFTW. Today, we'll move on to chapter two. One of the most interesting things about chapter two, which begins on page 14 of this 192 page book, is that this particular chapter two wasn't in my original manuscript. The chapter two you see in the published book was added by me during an approximately eight month long rewrite at the request of my editor, Michelle Poploff. In fact, I probably added about four new chapters to my book, in part to flesh out the adult characters, at Michelle's request.

One of the characters who first appears (but is mentioned earlier) in chapter two is Frank Hooper, the neighbor who drives up in his pickup truck full of barking dogs. Frank was a later addition to my book and is based on the late George Langdale, a man who owned almost 70 acres of land behind my family's land, and who used to drive by me when I was doing my early morning exercise walks around the area. I was very pleased to put George in my book as Frank. He was quite a character in real life and works well in my fictional story, too. While I was at it, I grabbed his truck and his dogs and put them in my story.

Pay close attention to the world around you. What you need for your fictional stories may be walking by, or driving by, or barking at you right now!