The Writing Life

A recap: I’m working on two books. One, Imminent Danger, that I started at the end of 2019 that dealt with a super virus developed in a Chinese biotech lab. When Covid-19 became a reality, I couldn’t believe China had copied my plot line!! At over 30,000 words, I put the manuscript aside. That’s when I wrote the fourth book, Deadly Secrets, in the Caitlyn Jamison mystery series. Last summer I was encouraged to finish Imminent Danger, so I reworked the plot line, and added new characters. In an exercise at the end of two rural library Zoom author talks last October, I asked the library patrons to develop a character. Two interesting characters were developed that I thought would make a great story. That book carries the working title of Autumn after one of the characters. I’d been making great progress on Autumn, working on the backstory of the two main characters until Kara, the new protagonist from Imminent Danger appeared on my shoulder wanting equal time. New scenes for Imminent Danger have been scrolling through my head. Thank you, Kara! Okay. I can manage this. Both books are well enough developed that I can switch back and forth as the dueling protagonists fight for my attention. But, on my early morning walk today, Sage, a secondary character from Deadly Secrets tapped me on the shoulder saying, “Remember me?” During the writing of Deadly Secrets, I developed a character, Sage, and her partner, Holly, that I thought would make a great spin-off book or series from the Caitlyn Jamison books. I had not thought about them since . . . until this morning when Sage, the owner of the art shop in the town of Pont-Aven made her presence known. Can I handle three books at the same time? I think not. I will pull out my notebook and jot down thoughts on the “future” adventures of Sage and Holly.

The characters are in charge

My next book features Autumn Whitcomb and Yuri Rachinskij, two characters developed by participants after two author presentations at two Upstate New York rural libraries. One library's patrons developed a female, the other a male. When their bios were developed by the patrons I realized these two characters could work well in a story. I've been working on this in fits and starts until recently when Autumn tapped me on the shoulder (kind of like that editor on your shoulder) and told me I needed to spend more time developing her back story. I was rushing the story too much without letting the reader know about her personality. The same was true of Yuri. At the start of the story he's the head archivist of the Ukrainian Archives. The country is under attack and the archives have undertaken a major digitization project to save the country's history and culture before it is destroyed. Listening to Autumn, I'm now back at the beginning of the story making tweaks to the text to follow her advice. That's the life of a writer - the characters are in charge.