Archive for the ‘Writing Process’ Category

I’ve decided, instead of going through all the hullabaloo of writing the whole book, editing it, formatting it, sending it out to the self publishing venues I usually send it to, and wait for my five bucks a month to come back in the royalties, I’ll just post Diaryland Murders, Book 7, Pastor in a Pasture right here, a little piece at at time. Hopefully, it will get my creative juices going again. It’s been a while since I’ve written. So here goes.

I don’t know if anyone is still reading this blog. My life has gotten pretty hectic since the last post, if that’s any excuse. I got a new full time real job. I sold a house and moved. My other full time job just started school. It’s nuts.

I guess the folks at Lollygagger’s Acres are hibernating until I can give them some proper attention. They’re not banished from existence, not yet, just in a kind of stasis. It’s hard after ten years to keep them vital, growing, interesting.

Part of that process is allowing my characters to change and grow. I don’t know if readers appreciate that or not. Some of of the more popular suspense heroes and heroines I’ve witnessed in the last decade never really seem to do so. They just soldier on from one crisis, one dead body, to the next, no residual repercussions, no great psychological changes, just keep your head down and wait for the next blood bath.

Does that seem logical? Does it matter? Is the expectation of the reader so tempered into acceptance, that no emotional investment is required any longer? I wonder. I know the publishing houses don’t seem to care. “Just crank out what we pay you for, please.”

I hope I’m not doing that. I hate to be formulaic. I guess we’ll see.

If you’ve ever wandered over to my Facebook page, you may have noticed that I post page numbers to mark the progress of whatever book I happen to be writing. Presently, I am working on Dairyland Murders Book 7, Pastor in the Pasture (copyright 2017). Currently, I am on page 21.

My goal length of any story is usually around 300 –  5 X 8 inch pages, somewhere between 90 and 100 thousand words. I rarely get there, and I admit that I am frustrated by that fact. But then I am reminded of my first and favorite mystery author, the grande dame of who-done-its, none other than Agatha Christie.

None of her works were long, drawn out journeys. Dame Christie was quite economical with the amount of literary real estate she used to lay out her elaborate webs of murder and intrigue. Yet, nothing is lost in the way of prose, of description, of detail, and her writing methods are still as valid and engrossing now as they were almost a century ago.

So, perhaps when I hear another, “I read your last book in a day and a half,” I will take that as a compliment, rather than lament in my lack of words. It helps when the following comment is, “I couldn’t put it down.”