Chapters 11 and 12 - Writing the Mystery Novel

Chapters 11 and 12 of the Glen Valley Compact were probably the most difficult so far.  It is at this point that the list of suspects narrows down.  At this point, I expect some of my readers will figure it out, but will they be right?

There is the possibility of romance. Even the latest murder victim had her moments, it seems.

There are surprises, things I never expected when I started to write but that is always the way it is when characters.  

I am going to make a concerted effort to finish the third draft by tomorrow night.  Then it's a matter of putting the book in the right format, checking spelling and grammar, and designing a cover.  

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Today, amazon.com finally was able to get our second e-book collection of Black Coffee Fiction on their lists.
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Coffee-Fiction-More-Caffeine-ebook/dp/B00FPOTA1G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382833271&sr=8-2&keywords=black+coffee+fiction

Almost immediately a friend bought an e-book copy of Volume 2.  Three copies were sold at Smashwords.com so far that I know of.  If we sell a few more copies we'll have some kind of royalty check in December.  Wade reports that we are going to have royalty payments from our work at the end of this month and I have another due about November 5.  Suddenly, our words are making us a little money.

So it's back to work on the mystery. I now see the possibility of making a small living at my craft.

Chapters 9 and 10 - Writing the Mystery Novel

Today's task was to set out all the possibilities as the librarian and two garbage men worked out what they knew to be true and what they knew to be false. Slowly, the suspect pool narrows.

I introduced a new character, a mean and nasty white cat based on a cat who lived in this house for eighteen years. Her name was Mean Old Ms. Baby Doll and that is the name of the cat in the story. MOMBD hated Gary and the cat in the story hates the heroine.

I continue to move bits and pieces of the story around to keep the momentum going while hiding the conclusion from the reader. As usual, I find something constructive to do when I run into a problem. Today it was making vegetable soup, thinking while chopping, stirring and tasting. By noon the soup was made and the chapters were done.

I have five more chapters to go. The last two are in place with very little to change so I expect to be done by Sunday night. Next week I will see if I can order the paperback.  There is one problem and that is the cover. I'm not sure what I should do about that.  Should it be of a garbage truck, a dumpster, an alley, a library? Or just a body?

It's time I learned to Photo Shop.  

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This afternoon Wade Peterson posted his latest short story at Black Coffee Fiction here
  http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com/2013/10/dinner-and-photo.html

It's a story about doing good things in difficult situations.  How's your karma?

This means I have to write the next short story. I had a wonderful idea for another depressing Christmas story while I was out walking two days ago, but darned if I can remember what that was.  Oh well, something will come to me.

If I write three more Christmas stories, I will have enough for a collection in time for Christmas, 2015.

Chapters 7 and 8 - Writing the Mystery Novel

My favorite time to write is early in the morning before Gary wakes up.  By 6:00 am I am in front of the computer to get two chapters of the mystery re-edited.

First, I have to read through the two chapters to make notes about the changes I want to make.  This morning it was adding clues and red herrings to confuse the reader. I don't want too many misleading things going on because that would be cheating. The reader should be no more confused than the detectives. In this case the problem is too many detectives. There are six sleuths with varying theories. Which one is right? And what if one of them is just hiding the fact that he or she is a murderer?  

Once I've made my notes I start working through the chapters. One thing I have to change is the names. Originally the garbage men were Mike and Gary. I changed those names to Elywn and Fenton. The librarian was Arlene when I started the novel but now is Shirley. It isn't that easy to catch each and every place those names changed.  

I am not writing a romance, but there still is a little sexual tension going between the two main characters. How much of it do I want?  And what about humor?  It always sneaks into my writing. And sometimes I have to cut some of it out.  I'm writing a mystery novel, not a joke book. 

Today, I re-wrote the grisly murder at the library. I really enjoy writing death.  Does that make me weird? In the eighth chapter we learned more about the first victim. What had he been doing in the years before he was murdered?  The sleuths find out about that at the same rate I think it up. 

Tomorrow, I introduce a very mean cat. How will she figure in the mystery?  

Chapters 5 and 6 - Writing the Mystery

Today, I worked on Chapters 5 and 6.  I thought I would be working on the next murder, but it looks like that won't happen until Chapter 8.  There is however, a funeral in Chapter 6 and that amused me.  The characters are breaking apart, suspecting each other. That interplay is difficult to keep even. I don't want to show who the murderer is this soon in the book. Motive is still a big question for my sleuths. In this book, almost everyone has a motive.

I am finding I can work four hours a day with no problem but today there were some distractions.

I received a letter from the publisher of the children's book I wrote back in 1991.  It seems there may be copies left.  If so, I would like to order extra copies. I only have one on my shelf. From time to time, I need a present for a child so I would like to have some on hand.

Wade and I Skyped today about our next short story collection. I received the proof today and am pretty happy with it.

It won't be available for a couple of weeks either as this paperback or as an e-book.  Right now it joins five other of my titles on the shelf. By the end of 2013 I want eight books there.

Day Two - Re-Writing the Mystery

As I worked through Chapters 3 and 4 today, I remembered that the names of the garbage men were originally Mike and Gary, but I had begun to change them to Elwyn and Fenton.  However, Mike and Gary keep bleeding through the pages wherever I forgot to make the change. I went over and over the first four chapters and hope I now have that right.

I realized today that while I have plenty of suspects, I need to hide some clues here and there. I will be thinking about that tomorrow.

I need to add to the sexual tension between Peter and Mary Beth, the two lead characters.  I want to develop the role of the Chief of Police.  And of course there are those two garbage men, Aggie at the diner, Mike (he took over the name for one of the garbage men) at the hardware store and other suspects.

How long should the book be?  Our short story collections are just over 30,000 words.  My romance novel is 75,000.  So far, my mystery is about 55,000 words and that doesn't seem too far off to me.

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While this is going on, I'm anxiously awaiting the proof copy of Black Coffee Fiction, Volume 2: 33% More Caffeine.  When it arrives I have to go over it and report back to Wade with any corrections.

I want everything done by October 31 so I can spend National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) working on yet another novel.

And of course, there are those short stories for the blog, too.

I am one busy writer these days. 

Day One - Re-writing the Mystery

I figure it will take me seven days to re-write the mystery, doing two chapters a day.  The weather turned cold and windy.  No garden work, no long walks. Days like this keep me inside working. This is why the bulk of my serious writing work is done during the winter.

I've had a book on writing mysteries around for years that I never got around to reading.  It is part of my makeup that I never follow rules. I always think I know everything. That's not likely to change at my age but today I thought I needed to think of ways to fix the problems I'd run into during the first two drafts.

In fact, the book indicates I am going at the re-write the proper way.  It also points up the reasons I haven't been satisfied with the mysteries I've been reading.

My book starts with a serious and significant crime. It doesn't dilly dally around for chapters until something happens. The main suspects appear within the first two chapters. I am hiding nothing from the reader nor going off on tangents. (I hate that!)  The solution must be the result of detection. There will be no surprise clues or suspects that show up in the final chapters.  The reader must have all the facts.

In my first drafts, identifying the culprit was too easy.  Today, I was setting up all the alternatives, not so much false clues as other ways the murder could have been done.

The book says to have a rousing denouement and that I have always had.  I am good at beginnings and endings in my writing.  It's only the middle I've ever had to struggle with.

So far so good.  I finished the first chapters and e-mailed them to a friend to read. She has never seen this book so far, so we will see if she can figure out "whodunnit", preferably later instead of earlier.

I am on schedule.  

Out for the Day

Today, Gary and I went out to look at the last vestiges of autumn 2013 in our part of the world.  Fall is heading south too fast. I think about following it down to Illinois for a stay in the Dixon farmhouse, but it looks like that is not to be.  There is too much to do here with two novels to edit and publish before the end of the year. The weather is cooperating in that way, with freezing temperatures at night and rain during the day. It keeps me glued to the computer.

But today we went to a farmhouse near Manawa to visit a young couple who just moved in. They talk about raising chickens, having a garden, maybe do some craft work.  They now have a barn, a chicken house, and a granary.  They talk about turning the granary into a guest house, too. I see decades of work ahead of them. I envy them for their dreams, but am so glad that we are planning to move to a house that will require little upkeep.  We are too old for anything else.

From there we went to the Little Wolf Market in Manawa.  I was there on Wednesday before my book talk at the library but didn't have time to explore the offerings.  This time we came away with more crystallized ginger, corn and flax seed chips (yummy), dark chocolate covered almonds (even more yummy), and jasmine rice.  We will return there whenever we are in the area.

We meandered home on back roads, flushing out big flocks of turkeys. They disappeared from this area around the time I was born but they are back in big numbers. There are still some flocks of geese, but most have left already. We checked out the Wolf River.  Because of the late spring, we never got to canoe down the Wolf, the first time in decades we didn't get our water journey. The canoes are in storage now.

I felt we were saying a final farewell to summer and fall.  By the end of this week, we can accept snow. It won't stick, but there will be no turning back.