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Butchering Farewell, Something Lovely

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I’ve been looking once again at Farewell, Something Lovely. The intent was for it to be a sequel to “For Simple Coin” (published in On Spec, Winter 2009 issue) but now I think I’m going to change the protagonist to ‘the Butcher,’ the main character in an unfinished sword noir genre story. That’s not some kind of cool nickname or nom de guerre, she is an actual butcher whose debt to a crime boss puts her in the middle of a bad situation. This could be a sequel to that origin story.

I’m also dumping the first person narration. I used first person because this is an adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. While I liked it, first person narration is very hard to sell. Nothing will be changed by switching to limited third person narration, so that’s another change to make.

Finally, I’m going to change a fundamental aspect of the macguffin character, but that’s something integral to the story, so I’m not going to be spilling it here.