Happy New Year, dear readers. It's been an amazing year for me as a writer.
My first mystery novel, Speaking of Murder, was published by Barking Rain Press in September. I did as much promotion as I could--dozens of guest blogs and a half-dozen speaking events--but haven't seen any earthshaking sales or important reviews.
I signed a deal with an agent, John Talbot, and then a three-book contract with Kensington Publishing. I wrote the first Local Foods mystery and sent it in, and have 30k written on the second one (a few thousand words more by tonight, I hope!).
I had a short story, "Stonecutter," accepted for publication in an anthology, and two other stories were published in the Burning Bridges anthology where all proceeds went to charity.
I decided to self e-publish two previously published short stories whose rights have reverted to me, because they are actually the backstory to two important characters in Speaking of Murder, and I have formatted them for Smashwords and gotten covers done (by StanzAloneDesign - aren't they cool?). They'll be available for all ereaders sometime in the next month.
I attended a dynamite Donald Maass writing workshop, the Writers' Police Academy, and New England Crime Bake and learned so much from each event. I even plunged into the world of smart phones and Kindles.
All this went on while I was working full time writing software manuals, exercising most days, selling and buying a house and moving, and sitting with my mother while she died in April. Whew!
I'd like to thank all of you who stopped by to see what was up all year long and especially to those who commented and who read my writing. It means so much to me.
May you have a happy, healthy, harmonious new year filled with lots and lots of reading!
I finished the first draft of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die! That's a big milestone. The deadline for turning the manuscript in is September 1. Sounds like I'm way ahead, right?
Wrong. Those little words "first draft" are significant. That means, in the words of writer Anne Lamott, from her book Bird by Bird, that I was able to finish the "shitty" first draft. Now the real work begins.
When I write the first draft, I occasionally type [CHECK THIS] or [CAN A GUN SHOOT OFF A LOCK?]. It's so I don't pause in the creative flow to go exploring the internets or books in search of an answer. I might not be back for an hour if I start that kind of process.
Now's the time to catch up with all those. I spent Saturday morning making a note of all those comments in square brackets on a piece of paper. No, on two pieces of paper. I have more than 40 items to check out. Groan. I started by ticking off the easy ones: Make the chief of police more suspicious at the farmers' market. Does Lucinda know about the sabotage? Make Kryzanski have a slight accent. Give Cam a chipped left incisor. What do you call a wooden plank lock on a barn door?
The hard ones remain. I made some progress on one of them, and now need to rewrite one of the most important scenes in the book. Did you know that gasoline is no good as an accelerent for arson? Did you know you can't shoot a lock off with a handgun? Yep, nope. Things are not as they appear in the movies. Mix that gas with motor oil or diesel and, sure, you can drizzle it around an old barn and light it on fire. Get a hunting rifle and a deer slug and, sure, you can break a padlock or shoot out a bolt lock.
And then there's the advice we got from Donald Maass at the workshop in mid-April. One of the big takeaways I got was, "What's the one thing your protagonist has always feared would happen? Make it happen. Then make it worse. Then make it worse again." So I'm working on that. Once you keep that mantra in the back of your mind, you start to write differently. Even that scene I need to rewrite based on the advice I got from a long-time firefighter and arson specialist -- I wrote that after the workshop and had already worked in some of that "make it worse" approach.
After all those changes are in, I'll let the book sit fallow for a few weeks. Then it's time to jump in and look at pacing, at the timing of suspense scenes, at the logic (for example, "No! She can't suspect the chef BEFORE he drops that clue..."). Solicit a read from a few sharp-eyed fellow writer-editors. Revise some more. Print it out and read it aloud. Do my own edit. Hone the first sentence and the last sentence.
Because I want to deliver the very best book I can to the actual editor at the publishing company. I want to give this book, the first in the series, my best effort.
If you hear me running around screaming toward the end of August, not to worry!
Writers, what's your post-first-draft process? Readers, can you tell when a book hasn't gone through the whole process?
Dear Readers, you will notice a pause in my regular postings. Life has intervened, as happens on occasion. I shall return.
Meanwhile, be sure to check out reports of the recent fantastic Donald Maass workshop on Writing the Breakout Novel that Sisters in Crime New England sponsored. Oh, so many inspirations on going forward and so many concrete suggestions for improving the work in progress!
I signed a deal with an agent, John Talbot, and then a three-book contract with Kensington Publishing. I wrote the first Local Foods mystery and sent it in, and have 30k written on the second one (a few thousand words more by tonight, I hope!). 
I decided to self e-publish two previously published short stories whose rights have reverted to me, because they are actually the backstory to two important characters in Speaking of Murder, and I have formatted them for Smashwords and gotten covers done (by StanzAloneDesign - aren't they cool?). They'll be available for all ereaders sometime in the next month.
