One key ingredient among thrillers, regardless of the underlying writing style, is the cliff-hanger. Webster defines the device as “an adventure serial or melodrama presented in installments each ending in suspense”. A spot on definition. The natural bookend to the hook, or lead-in, a good cliff-hanger leaves the reader wanting more.

After seven months of working on Velocity it’s my conclusion that ending every chapter with a cliff-hanger is a very difficult task, the opposite of what I expected. This is not for want of examples. Most television shows use the technique, and I’ve certainly watched my share of those. Films do it, and I’ve read a few dozen thrillers in the last few years. How hard could it be really? To me, pretty rough going, but part of the process.

Why bother so much with cliff-hangers? It all comes back to my single biggest obstacle: a lack of focus. Not that I can’t focus at the keyboard, but exploring the back story of a character, even where it isn’t necessarily part of the story is very tempting. Extremely tempting at times. Runaway narrative is fun for the writer, not so nifty for the reader.

And that’s where cliff-hangers come in, because thinking in terms of short, tight scenes impels focus. It forces a thorough consideration of the beginning, middle and end at the scene level. Focus is the means and a natural byproduct of the exercise.

While some cliff-hangers in Velocity are more dramatic than others, with twenty-three chapters in the can, I believe the the results are worth the time. So I’ll keep at them.

I drafted a nifty blog about the Land of the Lost movie but then Cingular Wireless provided with better material. Telco politics is a plague � and I’ve no interest in a Verizon/MCI/ATT/whatever long distance vs. Cingular. There’s a wireless plan for everyone, says I.

I thought I had the perfect plan. In fact, I do have the perfect plan, one that suits my business needs. The problem: I also had a second plan. A nifty two for one deal that no one mentioned even after the first bill. While enrolled in the unlimited data plan read UNLIMITED Cingular tacked a pay-per-use data charge onto my account.

Let’s just say the bill reached hundreds of dollars before I caught wind. Cingular’s web site is utterly useless and provided no meaningful breakdown about the charges, merely a total. And that’s another rant for another time.

Why in the name of all that’s holy a pay per use data charge can exist side by side with an unlimited data plan is beyond me. Customer care indicated that when they create a plan the system forbids such a configuration. Might be neat if the stores also had that same system, no?

Allegedly this glitch was adjusted and my account was credited back the difference. Let us hope. OK, rant over.

The title 196 refers to the number of days this site and server remained up and accessible without interruption. Last night the streak ended, not because of a technical issue but for security concerns, and the downtime allowed for the application of a number of patches. The total outage was less than three hours. Not too shabby. Here’s to another 196 issue free days.

Today was warehouse day, or as some in the industry say “book scouting”. In the heat of battle my nifty scanner, Treo, and price fetch application did very well. A few modifications are necessary to enhance usability, but at the end of the day – it works. Overall a good show for someone who hasn’t coded regularly for a quite some, I should think.

My goal for tomorrow: be funny and have fun.

I crawled out from under the order landslide, taxes and coding for sixteen hours stretches just in time for the Wife to leave me. She bolted, bound for Connecticut with two strange men in a van stuffed with enough provisions for days. Never fear. This journey is husband approved. In fact, I was glad she went. Her destination – a leadership seminar, the two strange men – coworkers. Truly, I am a man of the Aughties.

Work on Velocity resumes after four days of non stop Buddhapuss Book business ( gasp ). After staring at code for a few days the road home to coherence is fraught with punctuation lesson. For instance, semi-colons are not substitutes for periods. A good rule I should think, and one I understand on an instinct level. But after pouring out a few thousand lines of code where all “statements” end in semi-colons, I caught myself writing this gem:

velocity.write( true );

Clearly things are returning to normal. A new short story will appear in the next 1-2 weeks, the exact date depends on sales.