Paducah, KY -- The problems in Chad Jameson’s latest have been solved, the young author announced proudly in a press conference nationwide yesterday evening. And beyond the record-breaking speed with which the author solved the problems uncovered in a writing group meeting two weeks ago is the impressive fact that the problems were fixed not with major revisions to the plot, setting, and characters, but by simple identification of the problems in the story itself.

“It was tough, that writers meeting,” Jameson noted from his podium, brandishing a handful of written critiques by fellow writers in Bay Area California. “They saw my novel, Avatars of Justice, Book One: Shadow Conspiracy, and they just ripped it to shreds. I mean, they told me that my main character was, and I’m quoting directly here, ‘a vehicle for the plot’, while my supporting character Evie was ‘inconsistent and bitchy’. They also told me that my big conspiracy plot didn’t make any sense, my settings weren’t there at all, and my fight scenes were completely unrealistic. I looked at those critiques, and it looked like I had months of work ahead of me.”

But then, according to Jameson, inspiration struck, when he realized that the fastest way to address the problems noted in the critiques was not to do a lengthy rewrite that solved those problems, but to instead work the problems into the story itself, identifying them so as to render them impotent.

“It’s a brilliant idea, I think,” Jameson mused, flipping open the three-ring binder that contains the most recent draft of Avatars. “For example, that critique of my main character, Hank Blade? Well, instead of reworking each and every scene to give him an actual personality, I just had two of the minor characters get together in one scene. One of them says, ‘Man, sometimes Hank seems so cold. I don’t really feel like I know him at all.’ And then the other one says, ‘He gets the job done. That’s all you have to know.’ Bam! Problem solved! Now Hank Blade isn’t an unrealized character with nebulous motivations. He’s an archetypal driven hero, equal parts Doc Savage, Wolverine, and Highlander. Joseph Campbell would be proud, I tell you.”

The same sort of fix lent itself to Evie, the supporting character and sassy love interest for Hank. “I didn’t want to compromise my story by rewriting any of her behavior,” Jameson said, “so instead, whenever she did anything bitchy, I just wrote in a little bit from her point of view where it says, ‘Evie knew that what she’d just done was cruel and beneath her. She was such a nice and supporting person most of the time.’ In one scene, she does like ten bitchy things in a row, so I added, ‘It seemed like she’d been so mean to everyone lately. She knew that she was a nice person, though, and that it was all just part of the stress that was driving them onward – the Shadow Conspiracy, and the dark forces behind it all…’ Look at that! She’s not mean or anything anymore, and she’s not inconsistent at all! That inconsistency is now depth, depth of character that relates to the stress of the novel – the plot affecting the character. It’s all about keeping it real, man.”

According to Jameson, fixing the plot was as easy as, well, not fixing the plot at all. “I went to each part where my writing buddies had said, ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ or ‘This is so stupid’, and I had a minor character exclaim, ‘But this doesn’t make any sense! It’s so stupid!’ Just like that, problem solved. One minute, the reader is thinking that the novel is flawed, but then, when they see that I’ve thought of the flaw, they realize that they’re just being carried along through my Machiavellian web of intrigue. I’ve also gotten a lot of mileage out of ‘somehow’. ‘Somehow, Hank had forgotten to bring his gun. He cursed. How could he have forgotten it? But he had, somehow.’ That just gets rid of so many issues. There’s no reason to claim that getting rid of the gun is an illogical and stupid way to force a hand-to-hand fight scene, because I’ve come up with a totally reasonable way for Hank to have forgotten it: Somehow.”

With other changes along these lines, from emphasizing that the villain’s hideout was “A big dark cave with no features whatsoever” to highlighting the fact that “Hank’s punch was unbelievably lucky to knock the guy unconscious even through a foot of bulletproof glass”, Jameson is confident that he has addressed every concern that his writing group produced – and unlike other authors, who might have had to take months to painfully rewrite flawed sections, Jameson did it in just a week and a half. “It’s just a gift I have,” he declared modestly at the close of the press conference. “Some people have to solve the problems in their novels with lots of work, but I can just explain mine away with a few sentences.”

Jameson’s writing group expressed how surprised and impressed they were at the announcement, calling the edits “hard to believe” and “incredible”. Jameson is currently accepting agent solicitations for Avatars, and anticipates it being published some time in the near future.