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One last, humorous change to Dig Down I thought I’d share.

I spent some time spit balling all of the character names in Dig Down. I chose the name Rob because I felt he could tell everyone “Just call me Robbie,” when he was partying it up and making friends, but he could also go by Robert, the kind of first name you’d expect to see on a business card as the head of a company. Preston just had the feel of a name from the past, but also the first name of someone you’d expect to see running a company.

For the most part, all the names I chose made it into the final version of Dig down. In fact, all of them did, except for one.

When I got my notes from the editor, and I might be paraphrasing here, but I believe her exact words were “I hate the name of your pimp.”

So with the pimp character, I didn’t want to just use a generic name like Big Daddy or Mack Master. I wanted him to stand out, and that included his name. In the original drafts, I’d called him D Swaggzter, and had him change his name to Lord Swaggzter when he built a monopoly supplied girls to the Axel for the parties he threw for the Senators. The name Lord Swaggzter is actually a combination of 2 different user profiles I used for online games with my friends. I figured there’s no way in hell someone had written a pimp character into their story and come up with that name.

I guess maybe there was a reason for that.

It forced me to come up with a new name for him. There’s actually a pimp name generator on the Internet, but none of them felt right. A friend of mine didn’t like any of the suggestions either, and she said that if he was supplying girls to members of Congress, they’d want a more upscale service.

This suggestion ended up shaping the final version of Reginald. It gave me the idea for this whole backstory for a character that’s only in 3 chapters(introduced late in one and killed early in another), that still had me work in his original name, but had him change it to sound sophisticated enough for his new clientele, but going so overboard with it it was an obvious fake name.

I was really nervous when I returned the manuscript back with this change because if she didn’t like this new change, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Thankfully, she liked it, and aside from some last notes, critiques, the book was ready to go.

Although I came up with a solution in the end, the note from the editor about not liking the pimp name was particularly crushing to me because I actually thought the name was pretty good. It forced me to have to swallow a tough truth. The career path as a pimp was not for me. How are you ever going to get respect if you can’t even come up with a good name?

“The cubicles have been very quiet since you left,” she said, finally taking a sip of her drink. “Even now after we’ve filled a couple entry level positions, people still keep to themselves. Everyone walks around with a scared look in their eye, like we’re not out of it just yet.”

Bruce could tell she was one of those people. He hadn’t kept up with the financial world since Hadley had axed him, but there was still a steady flow of new neighbors in the park to replace those who had succumbed to the elements.

“There’s no brash hotshot, marching down the hallways, boasting to everyone that they’re the king of Hadley?” he asked, hoping to change her perspective on the bleak state of Hadley to a fond memory.

It seemed to work. Through her misty eyes, he saw a glimmer of nostalgia. A smile soon followed.

“No,” she said, before taking another sip. “You’re still a legend around there. No one will dare try to fill your shoes.”

For a moment, it looked like she was about to add something. Then her face crumbled in on itself, turning crimson as she did her best to hold it all together.

“The tales about you might even survive after Hadley shuts the doors for good.”

The broke the damn.

Bruce was cradling her head against his shoulder a moment later, stroking her lightly on the back. He buried the thought about after all those years working with her finally being able to embrace her.

“You’re going to land on your feet,” he assured her. “Companies are always looking for good people in Human Resources and you’re one of the best. Besides, like you said, Darwin’s got a job now, so that’ll hold you over for a while.”

Miranda pulled back, wiping the flow of tears from her eyes as she nodded. “I know. It’s just…all the signs are there. The people we let go are being replaced by kids fresh out of college just so we can operate as cheaply as possible. Every month, management is cutting costs somewhere. I’ve already dusted off my resume and have gone on a couple interviews, it’s just…

“Ugh, what’s the matter with me?” she decried. “I’m making you listen to how shitty my life is right now!”

“You’ll be fine,” he insisted. “You’re already being proactive about it. You’re not going to be blindsided like I was. I’m not worried about you making it safely to the other side.”

Bruce could tell she still needed convincing.

“Some of our other colleagues though,” he stared. “Is Bill Werner still there?” He waited for her to nod. “Good. Because I don’t think he’d last ten seconds if he was unemployed. Do you remember the time he was calling up I.T. all morning bitching about how his computer wouldn’t start, only he kept calling the travel unit by mistake?”

That got her laughing. “And when he finally called the right number,” she jumped in, “they asked if his computer was plugged in?”

“And then they wanted to know why he’d unplugged it the night before, and he didn’t want to tell them it was because he’d been charging his phone.”

While she was recovering from her laughing fit, Bruce thought up another anecdote from their time at Hadley. They spoke of was and when, of happier times, and cherished memories.

Miranda kept reminding him he could have more drinks if he wanted, but he still kept his total low. It wasn’t until she got a call from Darwin asking if everything was alright that they realized three hours had flown by.

“Sorry again about bemoaning my own problems,” she said as they walked out of the bar. “After what you—”

“It’s okay,” he waved off her apology. “It’s…oddly…made me feel…good.”

“Really?” she asked, flashing him a quizzical look.

“For the first time in…I don’t know how long…I’ve done something other than wallow in self-pity. I was actually able to help.”

It felt odd to say, but he said it anyway. “Thank you, Miranda.”

“For what?”

“For making me feel like the big shot I used to be.”

With the decision to tell Dig Down across alternating timelines, one challenge this presented was making sure the audience understood where they were in Rob’s attempt to escape with his life. It’s here that the initial draft would look unrecognizable.

There were two things that I did to signify to the reader whether Rob was in Preston’s townhouse, or had already left and was fleeing for his life from the many people who wanted him dead. The first was writing the sections that took place in the townhouse in italics. I thought that this would make them stand out, and the reader would be able to associate, just be seeing a page full of this font, that these were the townhouse scenes. I had it in my head that all italics was the way most authors indicate a flashback scene. As I did some more research after the first few drafts I saw that not only wasn’t this typically done, the reason it was avoided was because it bothered readers.

The second thing I did was separate the two timelines with a title card, although the title cards wouldn’t say ‘Chapter 1’ or ‘Part 2.’ Instead, the title card would read something like ‘The Shark’ or ‘The Cowboy.’ This was actually the reason why so many characters have nicknames in the story, because they would coincide with when they were either introduced or did something of relevance. The first section would’ve been called ‘The Shark’ because that’s when Rob runs into him as he tries to escape, the second was going to be ‘The Battering Ram’ because that’s when I first introduced Spears’ nickname, and the last section was going to be named ‘The Succubus.’

Two things kept me from keeping it this way. One, while I had a title card to separate the two timelines when it went from Preston’s townhouse to Rob after he left, I didn’t have a title card for when it shifted from Rob’s escape back to the townhouse. The story just went from normal font back to italics on a brand new page, leaving the reader to figure it out. The second was that I realized that even though this was my 22^nd story, and that I’d spent years experimenting with different story structures, no one else knew I’d been testing different styles, and this would’ve been a huge leap for readers. It was already going to be different enough bouncing back between the two timelines.

In the end, after a little feedback that it was tough to tell where Rob was in the plot, I added time stamps to the chapters, literally days before its release. It’s one of the best decisions I made for the overall presentation of Dig Down, and it’s probably insane to think of how last minute that change was.

“You still with Darwin?” Bruce asked almost as soon as their drinks were placed in front of them. It’d been on his mind ever since she’d called Hadley telling them she had to take the rest of the afternoon off.

She’d ordered a margarita, he’d settled for a light beer. She’d told him to order whatever he wanted when they sat at the bar, that it was her treat, but he stuck to the lowest ABI he could find on tap. He wanted to be as coherent as he could be while still having a drink.

“Yes, we are,” she said curtly, sensing he was still waiting for their relationship to fall apart so that he could get a chance with her. He couldn’t help but notice the slim traces of a smile.

“Well, it was probably easier surviving the recession Preston and Moore caused with someone else,” he commented.

“It was tough,” she said, nodding, but noticeably treading lightly. Whatever she and Darwin had gone through, she knew it couldn’t compare to what Bruce had experienced.

“He lost his job too. We burned through our savings pretty quickly, and for…I don’t know, eight months…it was definitely longer than half a year, we were living off my paycheck. By the time he got another job, we were getting notices from the bank about being months behind on our mortgage.” The way she glanced down into her drink made it seem like the margarita was home to a bottomless pit.

“Thank god he got a job offer when he did. We’d already scaled back on everything that wasn’t essential, had had monthly garage sales, and were still behind on our payments. And the bank wasn’t dealing with us because so many other people were behind in their payments as well. They could only deal with so many people at once.”

“Maybe we could’ve been neighbors,” Bruce said, then paled. “I take that back,” he added quickly.

“No, no, it’s okay,” she assured him. “I deserve that.”

“No, you don’t,” Bruce sighed. “I know it wasn’t your decision to can me.” He shook his head as he drained half his bottle, then scowled at himself for having done so. She’d buy him another, probably would buy him all the drinks he wanted today. But, for the first time in a year, he really didn’t want to drink.

“It’s just,” he went on, “It’s always bugged me. I mean, why me? I did a lot of good work for Hadley. And…I got to be honest; it actually kind of took me by surprise when you called me into your office in the HR department to break the news.”

 “I made a strong case to keep you on, I swear,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. It was the first time in months someone touched him without a look of repulsion, or wanting to fight, in their eyes.

“I reminded them all about your stellar record signing new clients to the firm,” she said. “It’s just, they were only looking at the last year of the firm’s data…”

The frown swallowed what was left of her trailing voice. Bruce filled in the rest for her. “So all they saw was the clients I signed leaving in droves to set up accounts with Preston and Moore, and that I wasn’t bringing anyone else in to replace them.”

Miranda nodded. “All the raises you’d gotten from bringing in all those clients didn’t help your case either. It was between you and Stevens. And him and his wife just had another child…no one wanted to be the one to put him out on the street facing these economic conditions.”

“But they had no problem doing it to the guy who had no one to come home to,” Bruce said glumly.

“We all thought you’d land on your feet,” she said. She hadn’t touched her margarita since it’d been placed on the table. “Those investments you always bragged about, about how close you were to having enough passive income to live off of…the directors thought you’d have to tighten your belt a little, but that you’d see it through.”

“Those were,” he started, then didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know. The goal I had to earn a living wage off of my investments always seemed just out of reach. And when the bombshell that was Preston and Moore went off, most of the stocks I owned lost half their value within the month. The renters that I had couldn’t afford to live in my apartments anymore, no one could afford to move in, and because the real estate market was in the toilet, I couldn’t find a buyer until I was willing to take pennies on the dollar.”

“I’m sorry,” Miranda said, finally retreating to her drink for a sip. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

“No, it’s alright,” he said, polishing off what was left of his beer. “Like the directors surmised, I didn’t have a family to provide for. This is the first time I’ve been able to talk to anybody about what Preston and Moore put me through.”

The decision to make Rob Moore a bad guy from the start had huge ramifications for how I was going to tell the story, both good and bad. It helped explained why his father would refuse to help him in his greatest time of need, but it also created a challenge for me in terms of when the reveal to the reader he was evil.

This led to monumental change in the structure of Dig Down: telling the story across two alternating timelines.

My concern with making Rob bad was that if the reader knew everything there was to know about him at the start of the story, namely how he came to his father’s doorstep begging for his help, that they might be so turned off by what he did to Preston and the aide that they might put the book down forever. While this action never wavered, I felt the book’s audience would still stick it out if he was overall a nice guy who found himself in a desperate situation. Although it’s not an apples to apples comparison, Crime and Punishment comes to mind.

It was at this point that I decided to change the story’s structure to flash back and forth between what happened once Rob stepped inside Preston’s townhouse, and everything that happened after he left. This opened up a lot of possibilities that I don’t think would have been options had I stuck to telling the story chronologically.

It allowed me to delve into Rob and Preston’s relationship a lot deeper than I’d originally intended. The exchange between father and son was originally going to be surface level and last for a scene. By breaking it up so that it consisted of half the chapters, it really allowed me to explore their relationship, and by extension, Rob’s shady past and how he came to arrive at his estranged father’s doorstep.

I was also able to pace the story the way I wanted to. Instead of a potentially long scene between father and son being followed by a frenetic pace in which Rob is fleeing from one deadly circumstance after another, I could still keep that intensity up, but give the readers a chance to catch their breath but still hit them with emotional haymakers between Rob and Preston.

Changing the structure to alternating timelines didn’t solve all the challenges I would face in writing Dig Down. It presented all new challenges that needed to be overcome, which I will get into next week.

Bruce shifted his weight indecisively between his two feet.

“You’re looking well,” he managed to mumbled, then wondered why he’d said that.

“Thank you. So do you.”

It was an obvious lie, but as he analyzed it, he noted a trace of something, but it wasn’t malice. If anything, she sounded like the friend she’d always been when they were colleagues.

“Surprised to see you out of your cubicle,” Bruce said. “I remember I was never able to pry you away to a restaurant for a meal.”

She chuckled. “Well, there aren’t any more mortgage payments eating up half my salary, so I finally took your advice and started treating myself to something more than a tuna fish sandwich.”

Bruce smiled as well. He’d never forgotten how natural it had been to talk to her. The two of them had gotten used to calling each other their office spouse, and the whole building had played along, calling them their favorite power couple.

“So what brings you down here, Bruce?” For the first time that he could remember, she sounded guarded while speaking to him, and he finally recognized that what he was picking up in her voice wasn’t malice, but nervousness.

Why would she feel nervous around me?

When he’d first turned to see her, he’d found it hard to meet her eyes. It was embarrassing to be seen by someone who knew him before his fall. Now that he’d spoken to her a little, and saw she was the same woman he’d chat up every Monday through Friday for six years, he felt emboldened to project himself as the person he’d been when he’d still been a valued employee at Hadley.

“Well, you know…I used to own this district,” he said, repeating a line he’d told her often enough in the office, hoping to put her at ease. “it’s been awhile, thought, I’d visit the old stomping grounds.”

That seemed to do it. Despite her efforts, she couldn’t contain her smile.

“Yes,” Miranda said, trying to sound serious. “This place just isn’t the same without you.”

His false sense of bravado was fleeting as they stared at each other in silence. Bruce snuck a few peeks down at his attire, hoping it wasn’t as tattered as he felt it was. His beard started to itch, and he hoped the fleas weren’t visible to her.

The silence between them felt foreign. They’d always been able to strike up a conversation, even if it had been weeks since they’d see each other due to a combination of hectic schedules and vacations. He couldn’t speak for her, but Bruce knew the only reason he’d settled for being her “office husband” had been because she already had an actual one waiting at home.

“Well,” she broke the silence. “I should be getting back.”

Bruce was taken aback by the abruptness of her attempted escape. “Oh…um…I just thought…” he stammered.

“Yes?” Her eyes studied him eagerly, but all he could fixate on was her voice. He finally recognized the nervousness she’d been speaking with.

I frighten her, he thought sorrowfully. He used to adore every minute he got to spend with her, and now, he repulsed her. Even still, he didn’t want to say goodbye.

“I just…just…thought…now that you were treating yourself, you might want to take the afternoon off. We could catch up.”

His skin crawled as he watched the nervousness spread to her eyes. They danced back and forth faster than a tennis ball in a heatedly contested rally. Finally, they slowed to a stop, settling on his.

“You mean you’re not mad at me for firing you?”