It’s been a rough couple of weeks for my novel in progress, though I have made considerable progress in working to finish up my other writing project. The one that’s causing me issues deals with narco-terror in the border states.

However, it felt great to see that I have just passed the 60,000-word mark on the novel I’m working on. (That works out to about 210 pages in the manuscript format I’m using.) Work always tends to go in fits and spurts, and I had been pretty productive for several weeks before hitting a solid wall with the narrative.

Part of it has been not really knowing where a particular subplot was headed. As always, I had a pretty solid understanding of where it was headed, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to get it there. This subplot involves a drug/human trafficker who is integral to the story. Since I’m not in the business of smuggling people or drugs into the country, I’ve had to rely on secondary sources for information about what happens in the underworld of the cartels.

Luckily, a recent book has given me a new glimpse into that world. I managed to get the Kindle version of El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency. In this book, author Ioan Grillo has done the work for me–interviewing the drug mafia bosses, drug producers, assassins, mules and other cogs in the wheel so I didn’t have to. Immersing myself in this book proved to be the solution to my block, and now I’m back on track and making progress.

Next stop: 120,000 words!