VIP Rewards picks up exactly where Adventure In Anxiety ends. Tina is on a plane to California to finally fix the biggest mistake of her life, claim her man, and collect her Venice VIP Rewards. She's facing divorce, selling off her gallery business, starting a fashion brand, and a total upheaval in her life.
Joe is entering a new phase in his career. His touring days are over. He's building new partnerships and a future as a part-time performer and full-time producer. With his legal battles behind him, Joe yearns for a simpler life, close to home. Life is never simple for Joe. In VIP, he will pull off his biggest coup of his career, changing his business and life.
VIP is 35 chapters. The first ten chapters are a mix of old material from Lit, the divorce period, and brand-new writing. Once you get into the teens, it's 100% new writing. Near the end, there are a few chapters of mixed material, the final scenes of the Lit Punks version, and the end of the 2025 rewrite.
This book was 32 chapters, completed weeks ago. Then, while doing a final pass from the beginning, I began to feel the ending was not right. Every time I break off a book and start a new one, I look for a seam in the timeline. In the VIP case, Tina gets on that plane to change her life, an easy call. It's not always so clear.
I must also decide which side-stories I will carry on to the other side of the break, and which to close out. After this book was complete, I added three more chapters to put an end to a long-running storyline that I had planned to carry into the next book. Once I wrote this new ending, I was very pleased with my decision.
--- FUTURE PUNKS ---
After VIP will come White Wedding. I make no guarantees or predictions when you'll see the next book. It's too soon to tell. I have a lot of work to do as my first drafts of WW chapters are a bit rough, and I must change them to include the new realities in Joe's life, like Jeanie living in LA, and the butterfly effect. After WW, I'm taking this project in a new direction, breaking the timeline and my chronological storytelling.
While writing VIP in the mid to late chapters, it dawned on me that there had not been a sex scene for several chapters. For a long stretch, there was just the usual innuendo, teasing, and a few references to Joe and Tina fucking after a homecoming.
I was tempted to drop a scene in the middle of that, then decided no. If I did not think to include an erotic scene during that stretch, maybe the story didn't need one. Maybe it never needs them. I don't want to force it, writing erotica that doesn't serve a purpose other than being naughty. This caused me a period of contemplation on where this story is going, future punks.
While I kept a good amount of erotica from Lit in this rewrite, I also removed many scenes. Back in 2022, I was writing for Lit, learning to write erotica. While reworking that version in 2025, I felt the number of sex scenes distracted from the story. I saved those scenes; some were redeployed elsewhere in VIP, and others may get rewritten for future use.
My next challenge is to make stories about married life interesting. I am literally mining my own life as a husband, father, and partner. It's back to the write what you know mantra I used in the first chapters of ATYP. I know how difficult marriage and co-parenting can be. I can torture Joe with that shit.
On the other hand, I'll have to get creative, using Joe and Tina's history and hyper-sexual relationship to conjure sordid affairs. And of course, there's always anxiety and insecurity with this headcase couple.
I can't figure out how you can write so much, so well and still have time to be a husband, father and partner.
ReplyDelete