Plot holes are the bane of every novelist. Sometimes large, sometimes small, they are things that keep writers up at night and drive them bats on the eve of publication. They are problems that hide in plain sight.
If authors are lucky, they or their editorial assistants will spot them in a novel's formative stages. If they are not, they will hear about them from readers after the opportunity to fix them has come and gone.
As the writer of time-travel novels, I must be particularly vigilant about inconsistencies in the narrative. I must keep track not only of universally accepted facts and circumstances but also of ones I create.
The night before I published The Fire, I planned to celebrate the novel's release by hosting a dinner for my editor. Instead, I spent a good part of the evening fixing a plot hole. With his help, I took care of a matter that should have been addressed weeks, if not months, earlier.
I would do it again, with less drama, in later books. In the American Journey, Carson Chronicles, and Second Chance series, I labored for weeks to work out the particulars of time portals that were, for all practical purposes, smoke and mirrors. Though time travel is fantasy, it is fantasy that has to make sense. In some cases, entry and exit times in portals had to be worked out to the exact minute.
Despite my best efforts, I haven't always gotten it right. In Class of '59, I left behind a plot hole, or at least a serious omission, that I chose not to fix. When Donna Ryan traveled from 1959 to 2017 to permanently rejoin her sons, she left Charlotte, the beloved family cat, behind.
I thought of the many close calls this week as I put out another fire, a plot hole in my current work in progress. By going through my first sixteen chapters, line by line, I was able to eliminate a potentially serious problem, in this case another time portal issue.
For that reason and others, I have taken a slower, more deliberate approach in producing this novel. I have attempted to address issues when I see them and not put them off for another day.
As for the book itself, it is coming along. I still expect to publish The Time Spring, my twenty-seventh novel, in December.
