Yes, that's right. I said it. I get lonely sitting back here in the office writing. On those occasions when I've spent too many hours writing and have gotten stiff and sore from sitting, when I totter back into the living room to catch up on the local news and stuff, I realize that I miss the sound of other people. I don't know what's up with my daughters, my brother and his family, my wife. I have to spend some time catching up with my wife but am unable to call my daughters and brother because they all work and it's usually in the middle of the day when I poke my head up and look around. Oh well, there's nothing to be done for it, the situation won't change anytime soon.
To address the first word of the title, let me tell you about the progress I've made. The sequel to Gulf of the Plains is finished, edited and copyrighted. I'm just waiting for it to be formatted and then I'll publish it. For those fans who have gotten tired of my promises to finish it; I anticipate that it will be published by September 6th and expect it to go live on the 8th.
But, wait! There's more! I have returned to writing the thriller I started while I was working on my volume of short stories. Though it takes place in the fictional city I created in the Pacific Northwest which hosts the action for at least four of my scifi and horror novels(Eggs of Empire, Taken Apart, Questionable Interests and the short story, Cold Feet), this is a straight thriller/mystery. A quartet of players from my novel, Eggs of Empire make strong appearances and serve to help drive the action. If you've read the previously mentioned novel and I know that quite a few of you have; then you are already familiar with the partners in the STD Detective Agency. That is, Julie Shepherd, Carl Tanner and Isaiah Decker. Decker's wife, DeeDee Barton is also in this story and we learn that before she married Isaiah, she was also a partner in the business and quit to raise their family. The action in this story predates their marriage and we get more than a passing glimpse of the relationship she had with Carl Tanner before Decker married her. I really can't reveal too much of what takes place in this new story. Let me just say that there is a plot twist that has the potential to leave the reader staring at the last page and asking out loud, "What!?"
Of course, now, many of you will be tempted to turn to the last page to see what I'm talking about, so maybe I'll just reveal the resolution of the twist somewhat before the final page. I've got the same problem that I always have, though. I've got a good beginning and have set the tone of the book in the first 8,000 words and I know how I want the story to end. All I have to do is to work on the progression from the beginning to the end. I'll spend a lot of that time with character development and the readers won't even know that they are reading about the villain and how he/she developed into a killer. Even this past sentence is meant to mislead you; by writing he/she, some of you may be led to believe that the villain is a transgender killer. Since I can't even think about the sheer mass of research it would take to write such a person believably, I'll just say that it isn't so. The killer may be male or female, lesbian or homosexual, or heterosexual, but not a transgender. Wait a minute...what about a lesbian or homosexual transgender? Nah. I still can't invest the amount of time it would take to learn about transgender persons and how they might think of their orientation. Huh! Like they say: "Write about what you know best." I'll stick with that.
Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies and others.
Available on Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment