or the beginnings of one. Check it out and play the demo https://ashwake-4rz9fhtb.manus.game Let me know what you think... this is a really really rough drafting

One fix. One Friday. This week: the invisible problem that makes readers feel vaguely disconnected from your story without being able to say why. The problem nobody names Voice bleed is what happens when your characters stop sounding like themselves and start sounding like you. Not dramatically — nobody wakes up one chapter and suddenly talks wrong. It happens gradually, one scene at a time, until your detective and your villain are finishing each other's sentences and you can't hear it anymore because you already know who's speaking. You can't catch this by rereading your own manuscript. That's the whole problem. Your brain fills in the voice from memory before the words even land. You read "said Todd" and you hear Todd, whether or not the line actually sounds like him. The tags are doing work the prose should be doing, and you don't know it. The fix is a test that takes ten minutes and is slightly uncomfortable. That's usually a sign it's working. The shuffle test Take a scene with three or four characters talking. Copy out eight to ten lines of dialogue. Strip every tag — no "said Mary," no action beats, no attribution of any kind. Then shuffle the order so the lines aren't in sequence anymore. Now read them. Can you tell who said what? If yes, your voices are working. If you're guessing, or if two characters feel interchangeable, you've found the bleed. Here's a live example from the Hollow Bean series. Four characters: Todd (the GM, practical, slightly self-deprecating), Mary (the shop owner, warm and aphoristic, economical with words), Ariel (high energy, self-interrupting, runs on emotion), and Ben (measured, ancient register, speaks like someone who has time). Tags stripped. Order shuffled. See if you can place them before you read the answer: "I think I'm doing okay. I think this matters to them. I think maybe I matter to them." "The door's never locked. You're always welcome." "I am never dating again. Never. I'm going to become a hermit. I'm going to live in a cave and talk only to bats."

6 Days in and it's FRIDAY!!! Those if you in BIAM this month can double dip here and just have double accountability! I am behind! My target of 2000 words a day is down, way down. I have an idea, I started brainstorming it, but 3 days of really strong painkillers and two other projects have delayed me a bit. Who needs help? Glad to do a live write in with a group anytime if that would help? Just be aware my speech is a bit slurred so I'll do my best. I sound a bit like 5th grade me before 2 years of speach therapy. So everyone making the attempt this month Chime in with where you are and what you are working on.

Six hours post-op and I'm somewhat wakeful about to take the next round of pain meds and trying to get used to the temporary dentures that feel like the football mouth piece I had in High School some 40 years ago. When sick or feeling bad I do my best to sleep as much as possible or read and do research so of course I have 156 tabs open with the beginnings of some new things. I'm a Pinterest junkie as it is always good for new ideas in one life direction or another. Today it was card and online games. Tarotcrafter will be done this weekend so that's the card side. I love board games and have a large collection of them. Some unplayed still as my boys are not much into them and my lovely and wonderful wife never played them much growing up, so it's a bit of an effort to sit down and play. Anyone heard of Zillions of Games? It's a system developed back in the late 90's to script strategy board games like chess and go. Some 3002 of them are on the site, but you can't pay for a software license anymore. I think this needs an updating. I shared a portion of the book shelf beside my bed earlier in the week. It's seven shelves all 8 feet long of mostly paperbacks. The other one next to it is for 8 foot shelves of mostly hobby, how to and maker books. I've spent over twenty years running, cofounding or being involved with makerspaces. Now here's the kicker. I have most of these as ebooks as well that I can access from my phone or tablet from the house server. The last thing I did last night was start linking the books on the server into my mindvault app. Calibre is good but doesn't handle the total number of books well. I had looked at librarything but it's a bit of overkill for only one user. The boys just aren't interested in books either. I tell you all this because the physical TBR "pile" is an entire shelf. The immediate stack on the night stand table are: Before You Leap - A frogs eye view of life's greatest lessons by Kermit the Frog (current read). Shifters by Jaime Johnesee is on Kindle 1

Apologies folks, but tomorrow I begin a new personal adventure and am admitting my age (partially). I'm having all of my remaining teeth removed and beginning the quest for dentures. By the end of the day I will have no teeth in my head and a set of "smiling teeth" (functionality unknown) in my hand. This is an incredibly expensive adventure that due to healing and multiple surgeries will extend into 2028 before all is said and done. I am NOT looking forward to this with a clear sense of dread. So i will be offline tomorrow and probably most of Thursday.