The process of finishing a novel.

Rupert Davies as Maigret. (Allan Warren.)

The process of writing a novel culminates in the finishing. The finish can be a process too. The finishing process begins when you have reached the end of the first draft.

More than anything, in a first draft I want to get to the end of the plot. I want to pace the amount of words I use in order to come out at or slightly short of the desired word count. By writing one or two thousand words a day, I get to think it out ahead of time, two or three scenes ahead at any given time. Then I sit down and try to get to the end of the scenes.

The end of the book is sort of thin and threadbare, and yet when I remember something or some thought comes up, I go back and add it in. I re-read the beginning or previous material from time to time. I add details, make a scene fuller. The start of the book is always a little denser at the end of the first draft than the end of the book. All of that is smoothed out in the re-writes, and for me they seem essential, even though my pace was good, and even though the pace of the action was good, and even though the logic seemed pretty good. Right.

For a novel, a minimum of 60,000 words is required.

I’ve got a novel underway. It’s at 52,000 words as of this writing. I have two more scenes left to do. I might even get more ideas, even though I think I know how the story turns out. If each scene comes in at a thousand or two thousand words, then everything is fine and dandy.

That would amount to about 55,000 words.

When I go back to the beginning of the book for rewriting, I will be looking for logic, in that a person can’t change names in the middle of a scene. They’re either in or out of the scene. The thing has to make sense. But what I’m really doing is fleshing out the environment. I leave out details of room description. In the first draft people are rarely physically described.

I just want to get the action down on paper. So as I go through the draft, when I come to Joe Blow I sort of see him in my mind—he’s a trooper, he’s got red hair, blue eyes and freckles no less. He’s not that tall but he’s lanky. He’s twenty-one years old and signed on for adventure.

Then I add it in nice and natural.

When they travel through an environment, I can see it in my head on the first draft. I simply didn’t bother to write it down in passing. But it’s an alien world, and that requires some attention to details of world-building, including a whole ecology of flora and fauna, the way the people live, their culture, whatever.

I began the book around the middle of June, 2013. The day of this writing is July 25 or thereabouts. Blogger will date it for us.

If I can write 52,000 words in about a month and a half, then surely this thing will be done in another couple of weeks, i.e. I wrote (or will have written) a 60,000-word novel in about a month and a half. That leaves time for another book of similar length, and then I will write short stories during what people call Nano-Month, (November) when everyone tries to write a book in a month.

I’m going to submit my new one a couple of places rather than immediately chuck it into the black hole that is the fate of most self-published authors to date.

That gets it out of my hair for a while. My hair’s thin enough as it is.

More importantly, all kinds of ideas, modus operandi and perp-profile, are coming together for my third mystery novel. Inspector Maintenon will have a real hum-dinger of a murder mystery this time. He usually solves two cases in each story, so that just makes it a little more fun for the writer as well as the reader.

In a mystery, there is the presentation of certain facts, but there are various interpretations of those facts, and of course a good deal of misdirection. When I used to read Agatha Christie novels, and my mom had a lot of them lying around, honestly, I never knew who the killer was until the very end.

That’s why we have detectives, right?

In this next one, we have a female victim in the major portion of the story, plus I’ll have a smaller mystery. That’s a first for me. I’ve written one novella and two books in the series so far. Those all had male victims.

“A certain type of victim requires a certain type of killer.” That’s what Gilles says in Redemption.

Other than that, I won’t give away a whole lot of plot points, although the series is set in the twenties, and Inspector Gilles Maintenon works homicide for the Surete in Paris, France. He’s a middle-aged man who entered the force as a cadet and his father cried at his graduation ceremony…you get the idea.

I know a lot of readers will assume the series was inspired by Hercule Poirot or even Inspector Clouseau, but it was Georges Simenon’s Maigret character that originally sort of stuck in my mind. I always wanted to do a book like that, and the original novella led to a series. I don’t even really know why, something about the feel of that world maybe.

You can get them at the following links, free where indicated.

The Handbag’s Tale (Novella)

Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery

The Art of Murder

Excerpt: Work in Progress.



Third World has a population of half a million and one spaceport. (Bardash Dmytro.)


Hank tore his eyes off Polly Morgensen and tried to contribute something to the discussion.

She sure was beautiful, though. Her chin came up and she looked his way again. He saw it in his peripheral vision.

It was like an illness with him lately.

“Drifters.” Hank had run across one or two over the years.

They were little better than the nomads, who at least had purpose, following the great herds across the unbroken steppe of Third World’s northern hemisphere. Drifters were just that. Nomads stayed clear of settlement and cultivation, knowing there was plenty of room in the world. They needed open range, good grass and water. Drifters sought many things for many reasons. They tended to gravitate to more settled areas. During harvest, when hands were short, they were welcome in some places more than others.

“That’s what they say. They’re camping up around Marjorie’s Way.” Red glanced around, but the other shoppers in the general store ignored them. “Word is they’ve been there a while.”

Perhaps the other people had already heard the news. Hank came into town once or twice in a month, usually a Monday but other days as well.

Nomads follow the herds. It's a big place. (Wing-Chi Poon.)

Marjorie’s Way was a notch in the hills just over the eastern horizon, obscured by the tops of barren pines, one of the few introduced species to do well here. On the other side of the hills there was a brackish marsh at the end of a small run-off that brought a few of the indigenous waterfowl in season. After that, the trail petered out into a maze of hunting camps and thin ribbons of water in a vast marsh which had never been properly explored. People thought it went clear to the Blue Mountains. It was possible.

Drifters were often desperate, fleeing the law, debt more often. Sometimes it was young people running away, or just unfortunates looking for a new home someplace else. Hank had never really thought about it.

“I see.” Hank Beveridge’s homestead was four kilometres out towards the morning sunrise, in the rolling hills where the true grasslands began.

He had a small river, and had painstakingly tanked up the seeps at the base of the hill where it came down. Hank had a small herd of pack, draft and riding animals which he sold in an emergency, or when all else failed. He needed them for the business, or he would have done with only one or two animals. In the off season there was always work or worry.

The men watched a girl, her name was Polly. She and her mother haggled and fussed over a bolt of good red broadcloth. It looked like they were after a few things. Winter was coming and the kids would need shirts and pants and coats for winter, or even school. Polly was a fresh-faced beauty with a hint of a blush in her cheeks, almost as if she was aware of their scrutiny. She had long, straight black hair, with fine pale skin, long curling lashes and big dark eyes looking at everything in the store with an air of serious intent. She stood up straight, and that was one of the things he liked about her. It said much. Out of politeness, Hank took off his most prized possession, a pair of spectacles framed in thin steel wire. He put them in the case to protect them, as they were irreplaceable, and stuck them in his side pocket.

Hank’s purchase wasn’t urgent, but he’d been planning it for some time. Accounts receivable were one thing, and actually collecting them was another. He waited for long months on some accounts. The whole trade was predicated on long turnaround times. When possible, he paid for things in cash, which meant he owed few people and kept what he earned. It just took a little foresight, and he had some of that.

Red went on.

“So far no one’s talked to them.” He looked around, but as long as Peltham was busy, he wasn’t going to get any cartridges, which was what he had ostensibly come in for.

Red could kill a half a day in town on three or four errands. The butter and eggs were running out and he didn’t do that on his own little plot, although he did have a respectable vegetable garden. It was something he was good at, and he could at least walk away from it, for a few days at a time, to go hunting or if some kind of work came up.

He sold cabbages and other produce at the end of the year, and Hank always looked him up as turnips and such kept pretty good over the winter. Red waxed them up real good.

Hank studied Polly. Women were as scarce as hen’s teeth around these parts and she looked to be getting close to marrying age. He thought about it from time to time, her and one or two others. He fantasized about a few other ones, married as they were and so unattainable except in a daydream…at his present age of forty or thereabouts, it was pretty much all fantasy.

Red cleared his throat.

“You’re pretty close to Marjorie’s Way.”

Drifting.

Hank nodded.

“It’s about two and a half kilometres from my place.” It was to the north of his homestead, the sides of the hills and banks were very steep along there.

The valleys ran all east and west. The hollows were full of scrub and there was no easy way through, so he hardly ever went up there. It was easier to get there from town, as the northeast trail ran through from here. They might even be camped on a corner of his land. Not that it mattered, they could do little harm as the first grass fire season was over and the land was lush and surprisingly damp this year. The odds were they would move on. Cold grey clouds had dominated the weather for weeks.

Drifters were nothing new. One heard stories of course.


End of Excerpt.

Working Title: (Not too sure.)

A nice, quiet little science fiction story. Oh, yeah, and some romance in there as well.