I’m deep into revisions for the third book of my Phantom novel, and as expected–it’s getting longer.  Originally, when I thought the trilogy was only two books, this portion was only the second half of the second book.  This is my first serious revision pass treating it as an independent volume, and the major thing I’ve realized so far is that I need more at the beginning.  Plenty of plot threads or emotional moments were adequately set-up if this was part of something larger.  As a new book, they come out of nowhere in the first few chapters.

So I’ll be expanding the early chapters quite a lot.  So far I’ve mostly just marked places where I need to add a scene (or three), but from what little I’ve started writing, the book has already grown more than 2,000 words.  I’ll be surprised if I don’t end up adding at least 20,000 by the time this is done!

For today, here’s a bit I already added.

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I glanced at the one locked drawer in my table, and my mood dropped.  I hadn’t opened the drawer since before the mob arrived.  I’d been avoiding it.  There was something I didn’t want to know.

But this was getting silly, and if I was going to see Erik today, I ought to just find out—before I could decide against it, I unlocked the drawer and pulled it open.  There should have been a folded sheet of directions hidden away in the very back.  The directions Erik had given me to his home before, the ones I hadn’t needed to use in months but had kept on hand, just in case.

They weren’t there.

Trying not to attract any attention with the movements, I sorted through the old playbills, cheap jewelry and handkerchiefs that filled the drawer.  I wanted the directions to be here, not because I needed them, but because I needed to know that they weren’t somewhere else.

That they hadn’t been used by someone else.