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The first thing Preston saw when he opened his eyes was the cab driving shaking him awake. Looking around, he realized he’d slept the entire way home.

He stood at the mouth of his driveway long after the taxi drove off, staring at his front door. The trek seemed an impossible gauntlet. Preston inhaled deeply, reminding himself that each step brought him that much closer to his bed. He was still exhausted after the week he’d put himself through.

There was no hero’s welcome for him when he trudged through the front door. His wife was washing dishes in the sink, sparing him no more than a glance over her shoulder. Preston expected the mood to be frosty for a while. He just prayed she didn’t start in on him. He didn’t have the energy for it.

“Where’s Robert?” he asked as he unburdened himself of his luggage. The first thing he needed to do was apologize to his son for missing his game. Again.

Oh, Robert. I don’t deserve your constant forgiveness.

“In his room getting ready for bed,” she said, not taking her eyes from her work. “There’s a plate for you in the fridge, if you didn’t stop to get dinner along the way.”

Preston recognized it as a peace offering. He felt unworthy of her tolerance as well. He’d laid out that these would be trying times while he and Pierce laid the foundation for their firm, but each of these trips emphasized that he’d either grossly misrepresented how tough the path would be, or grossly underestimated what it would take to forge his future.

“I came straight from the airport. I’ve been away long enough.”

She sniffled as she dropped the sponge in the sink, turned, and flung her arms around him. It stabbed his heart to see the tears in her eyes as she kissed him. He couldn’t keep doing this to them, but the firm was so close to providing an income they could live off of without the need for further expansion.

It had to be.

He was the one to break the embrace. “I’ve got to see Robert,” he stated. “The boy’s been without his father for too long.” When she nodded her understanding, his heart felt so weighted with grief he didn’t know if he would be strong enough to walk out the front door for another week.

“He didn’t have a good game,” she called to him as he headed toward Robert’s bedroom. “H was really depressed you weren’t there.” She raised her hands in surrender when he turned on her. “Not trying to fight. Just thought you’d want to know what you’re in for.”

Preston nodded and resumed his march to Robert’s bedroom. His son was listlessly pulling his PJ’s over his head.

“Hi, Robert,” he said softly from the doorway. He berated himself for wishing his son was excited to see him. He didn’t deserve his son’s enthusiasm.

“Hey, dad,” Robert said as he crawled into bed, not even looking at him.

Preston frowned as he walked over to tuck Robert in. “What’s wrong?”

“Ricky and TJ aren’t talking to me,” Robert said glumly, staring up at the ceiling instead of looking at him. “They’re saying it’s my fault we lost the game.”

Preston chastised himself for being happy Robert’s team had lost so he selfishly wouldn’t have to feel guilty for missing another game.

“They’ll get over it,” he assured him. “And even if they don’t…Robert, you’ll find there are more important things in life than being popular.”

“Like making money?” Preston winced. He didn’t think a child was capable of a barb like that. “Are you done leaving us? Soccer starts next month. Are you going to be at those games?”

His mouth hung open for the longest time before he admitted to himself he had to tell the truth. “I’ll see what I can do, Robert. These meetings went very well, but…now other companies have heard how good we are, and want us to come and meet with them.” He thought about tantalizing Robert with all the toys he’d be able to buy him, and nearly vomited over the fact that he’d contemplated bribing his son for his affection.

“But I promise,” he pressed on, “I’m going to try to make all the games I can.”

Preston was hoping for a reaction, but all Robert did was roll over on his stomach to face the wall, so he wouldn’t have to risk looking at his father anymore.

“That’s what you said last time.”

Breaking up Dig Down into alternating timelines was done to serve two purposes. The first was to regulate the pacing of the story, as it starts out with a conversation between Rob and Preston, and then becomes a lethal chase where Rob is pursued by vicious criminals and any wrong move would lead to his immediate death. The second purpose was to hide the nature of Rob’s true character.

While I primarily made the decision to structure Dig Down this way because of the pacing, I also had concerns about how readers would react if the deplorable things Rob did in Preston’s townhouse were the first things they experienced Rob doing. I had a real fear that readers would be so turned off by it they’d put the book down forever. Breaking up the story so that it alternated back and forth between the townhouse and the chase allowed readers to get to know Rob a little better before they realized who he truly was. At that point, the hope was that they’d be invested enough in the story to want to know what happens to him, albeit, their perspective of him and the outcome they hoped for may have shifted.

Writing it this way presented me with another challenge. Every scene now had to be written in a way that you were both cheering every time he made a narrow escape and groaning that he’d eluded his pursuers. The scenes had to be presented in such a way that if someone picked up the book again for a subsequent read through, the reader would be rewarded with tension that still proved engaging, even though they already knew the ending.

My expectation was that at the end of Dig Down, readers would no longer side with Rob, and I wanted to create an experience where if they reread the book, knowing what they now knew about him, that tension in the earlier chapters would still hold up. Hints about Rob’s character are spread throughout the story, I made sure that he doesn’t change as a character from beginning to end, which I believed would help readers maintain their disgust for him if they read the book again. When the audience reread Dig Down, they’d now cheer over things like The Shark holding Rob up at gunpoint, and then grumble “He was so close!” when Rob escape that, or maybe yell “He’s right over there!” when the cops were arresting The Shark.

In order to get this effect, I did my best to inundate the reader with a barrage of close calls. Rob is supposed to be running for his life from many people who all want him dead, so the danger is baked into the premise. By constantly throwing him into harm’s way, regardless of your perception of him, you’ll want to see what happens. Does he squirm free at the last second, of do the walls close in on him for good?

The chase wasn’t the only part of Dig Down I had to structure so that it would hold up to these two conflicting perspectives. Next week, I’ll review how the conversation between Rob and Preston had to be meticulously crafted.

“Again.”

Preston recited the firm’s past six and twelve month track record. He made sure to emphasize the higher growth rate they’d achieved in the most recent quarters.

“What’s the firm’s strategy?” Pierce fired at him.

Preston laid out the firm’s mission statement before diving in the details. Unless a CEO had run a company before, they avoided investing in startups, focusing on companies with proven track records.

“What can Franklin and Moore offer that we’re not already getting?” Pierce shot another question.

Preston explained that their commissions were priced competitively, offering cheaper rates than could be found anywhere else. He then reiterated that they had also outperformed those more expensive firms over the past year, even in this bear market.

Pierce shuffled through the notecards of their presentation. The disapproving frown never left his face.

“Again.”

Preston sighed as he began from the top for the fourth time. Pierce lobbed another brand new set of questions at him as he presented. Preston fielded them all, even though every word of the pitch had lost all meaning to him long ago.

As worn down as he was, he didn’t dare stumble once.

“Again.”

Exasperated, Preston glanced at the time. It was pushing one in the morning.

“Pierce, if we go at this any longer, it won’t matter that I’ve got the whole thing memorized. My head will be too fried to present.”

His partner turned to the clock, grumbling at it as though it had backstabbed him. “I suppose, “ he finally conceded. “You’ve got a great grasp on the number, and I think you’ll be able to field any concerns tomorrow.”

Preston’s head felt weighted as he rose to show his partner to the door. His head would only have the use of a pillow for a few hours. Pierce would be pounding on his door to make sure he was up bright and early, just like he’d done every day this week.

But this couldn’t wait.

“Pierce,” he said as his partner opened the door. Hard eyes met his own tired gaze. Preston decided to butter his partner up first. “We’re going to blow them away tomorrow. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Pierce said, before adopting the same bravado he’d spoken with at each of the week’s pitch meetings. “Definitely.”

“We’ve been closing deal after deal for months leading up to this meeting. And they’ve kept the light on. But this one, this presentation tomorrow, is what’s going to finally set the stage for us to expand.”

“I know,” Pierce said, and Preston detected a hint of joy at the feat. And dare he say, relief. Now was the time to ask.

“So I was thinking, after we knock their socks off, that I’d take some time—” his voice faltered at his partner’s immediate frown “—just a week—” he tried to keep his momentum going “—and spend some time with my boy. I’m…I’m missing so much of his life this past year already.”

For the first time, Pierce showed a sign of exhaustion, belching a deep sigh. “Preston, we’ve talked about this, and now—”

Pierce kept going, but his partner had already begun tuning him out. Whatever was said, it wasn’t going to be anything new. And Preston had heard the autobiography enough times already. Pierce recited it every time Preston gave the slightest indication that there was something else in life outside of Franklin and Moore.

It was the same song and dance. About being diagnosed with colon cancer two weeks after starting the company with Preston. About working on investment strategies while he sat in waiting rooms and during chemo treatments. About never once taking a sick day before the surgery. About never once asking Preston to pick up the slack.

Preston didn’t need to be subjected to the same guilt trip again.

“Once we close this deal, we can’t afford you to be out of the office for a week! We’ll need to hire more staff to handle the workload. And spend months training them. Then we’ll be able to take it easy. Just a little bit longer, Preston. We just need to navigate the company through the upcoming expansion. Then things will be different.”

Preston held his tongue until he’d closed the door behind Pierce before muttering, “That’s what you said last time.”

Hello everyone!

I know that I said this week I would go into the two roles each chase sequence in Dig Down had to fulfill, but I’ve decided to postpone that a week to make an announcement.

While there are still many more steps to go, I just finished writing and revising my latest book to the point where I believe it’s ready to go to an editor (who will no doubt catch countless mistakes, some of which are so obvious you’d wonder how it got by me draft after draft). The manuscript still has to go through numerous rounds of revisions, and I still need to finalize a cover design for it, but I like the way it’s progressing along.

A title reveal will be coming soon.

Have a great day.

“You’re not making his game, are you?” his wife asked as soon as she came on the line.

“Before we get into that,” Preston started, hoping to corral the path of the conversation before it flew off the tracks.

“You broke your promise to your son to be a bigger participant in his life,” she stated flatly.

“I’m working hard to make that happen. You know I am. I just—”

“You broke your promise to me you’d do this for our son.”

It was out there now. He knew she’d been harboring resentment towards him ever since he’d dove in headfirst after Pierce to start their own investment firm. Preston had wanted to bring up that she’d broken her own promise to support him while he was laying a foundation for their future, but knew that’d just lead to an argument that’d get him nowhere.

“He needs his father,” she insisted. “You don’t see it because you’re never here.”

Preston just stood there, clutching the phone, forcing himself to take it. He didn’t feel numb. Numb would’ve been preferable.

At least if he felt numb, he wouldn’t have felt like a failure.

“I’ve been letting him stay out late with friends because I’m looking for anything to distract him from the fact that you’re not here. When he’s home with nothing to do, he just waits by the phone for you to call.”

Preston flinched at the imagery. “It’s tough for me too,” he said softly, hoping she’d find it in her heart to be understanding.

“You’re a grown man. He’s a child. Your child!”

He loathed that she was forcing him to see himself as the bad guy. He was pursuing the American dream, going into business for himself, building a company from scratch, something he could pass on to Robert when the time came.

A family legacy.

“If you keep missing out on these moments, you’re going to regret it.”

“I do regret them.”

Every last one of them.

If it were up to him, he’d never leave his son’s side.  Robert was the most special thing in his life. He wanted to celebrate everything with him, whether it was learning to ride a bike, or the birth of his first child.

But he had to sacrifice these precious moments. Preston couldn’t remain at his old firm. He’d been fortunate enough to survive the latest round of layoffs, but the longer he stayed, the more likely he’d be sacked as the company scrambled to save a sinking ship.

The last thing he wanted was to end up like his own father, a slave to the whims of management. Sure, his father spent plenty of time with him, but that was because he always found himself searching for jobs. His father usually held onto a job long enough to pay off the debts he’d accumulated during his previous unemployment stint.

He’d had plenty of opportunities to seize control of his own fate, but did he ever actually do it? No.

“If you don’t change soon, you’re going to lose him.”

Preston didn’t want to follow his father’s path. He didn’t want to lose the ability to retire because he had a mountain of debt to pay off. He didn’t want his son to regret not spending time with him in his golden years, when they would both know the time he had left was short.

He didn’t want Robert to resent him the same way Preston resented his own father.

“I will change,” he said. “I am. You’ll see. In time you’ll see. We almost got this account. Things will be easier after. I’ll still have to make these presentations, but they won’t be as often. We just need to get this account so we can pay the bills. And put food on the table. Get off of the ledge, you know?

“You’ll see. When I’ve got a job waiting for Robert, you’ll see it was all worth it. And when I’m grooming him to inherit what I’ve built, and he doesn’t have to struggle to choose between work and his own family, he’ll appreciate what I had to give up to make life easier for him.”

By the end, he wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince more. Her, or him.

After spending most of the outlining process figuring out what kind of person would be involved in the scandals of Dig Down, and developing their backstory, that still left me with a monumental task:

The actual chase.

The initial concept for the book was a man running for his life, pursued by numerous criminals who all want him dead. Although I finally knew who he was, I hadn’t come up with dire scenarios and daring escapes.

I only had three ideas for escape sequences: one where a loan shark has him at gunpoint, one where he was being chased through the mall by two different enemies, and one where the surviving characters were in the middle of a standoff (think the end of Reservoir Dogs). But anyone whose read Dig Down knows: two of those events occur in the first 6 chapters of the story, which are (aside from Chapter 6) among the shortest in the entire book. The last is the finale, and while I was confident that this was how the book needed to end (just about) I didn’t have a roadmap of how to get there.

These were the last two questions I needed answers for before I could start writing. The answer I came up with had to do with the purpose of Rob going to Preston in the first place. After entering Preston’s townhouse at the end of Chapter 1, he emerges from it to start Chapter 2 lugging a briefcase. I knew what would be in it, but as part of the reason for alternating between two timelines, the reader wouldn’t. The intrigue of its contents hopefully helped keep the reading turning pages, but its purpose helped me determine what Rob would do next, along with the impossible situation he’d get snared in.

Going to Preston for the suitcase was already the reason he would find himself held at gunpoint by the loan shark. Getting out of that situation caught the attention of the sociopath, who became one of the two parties involved in pursuing him through the mall. The circumstances surrounding his escape would lead him to arriving at Dr. Kine’s office needing medical treatment. Stealing the sociopath’s car there would explain how Rocco knew where to find him at the end of the story.

When I applied necessity to each sequence, the plot of the chase became clear. Since I’d already established he was in danger if he was found by multiple parties, anything he had to do or anywhere he had to go to escape could be turned into a moment of tension as he had to escape, so long as the setting was a natural next step Rob would take.

Next time, I’ll review how every chase sequence had to fulfill two purposes.