Priorities

 

     God knows there's a lot of shit going on out there. Our government, starting with Musk and his vice president, Trump, are robbing America blind in real time and removing any regulatory and enforcement mechanisms that before, in a slightly more law-abiding age, could've stopped them. 

     And over the last two and a half weeks or so, I've tried to keep up a steady output for my fiction as well as adding to this blog every day that I can. And, don't worry, I'm not going anywhere on either front. But sometimes I have to prioritize one over the other. Up until 17 days ago, I was prioritizing this forum more out of a sense of alarm and outrage over what's been going on. Then I decided to step back from that a bit.

     It was as much a mental health break as anything else, if not moreso. But I've been plugging away on a short novel since last spring then, after making good progress on it, I got stuck on a plot point on chapter 18. For months, I added not a single punctuation mark to the book. It made me feel more guilty with each passing day. It was also frustrating because I'd doped out the ending not long after I began the book.

     So I somewhat staved off my incipient sense of guilt by pouring all my literary energies into this blog in the run-up to the election because I felt I had something of a patriotic duty to do so. The existential threat facing this country was real and serious and, since the inauguration of a 34 time convicted felon, we've come to find out that the reality was actually worse than the gloomiest of the doomsayers were predicting.

     Then, 17 days ago, I decided to finish this book in one last, mad push. Since then, I've added exactly 30,000 words to it. If you want a synopsis of this book, click on the image and maximize it. The blurb is on the back cover.

     It's a Scott Carson spinoff featuring just Kelley (whom you might have met in The Doll Maker and Hollywoodland). Virtually the entire book is told from her point of view, which is something I'd always wanted to do since I wrote Hollywoodland in 2020. 

     Except for fairly regular blog posts and dabbing away at one novel or another that would remain unfinished, I hadn't completed and published a new book since Hollywoodland first launched in December 2020. Barbara's condition and then her death paralyzed me and I couldn't concentrate on anything. And between the emergence of her dementia in 2019 and her death in 2023, I'd transitioned my identity from that of being a writer to being her caretaker. And even after her death, it was damned near impossible to fight and reclaim my writer's identity.

     So that's when I decided enough was enough. Barbara, always my #1 fan, would've wanted me to keep writing. Paralysis was useless, needless and illogical.

     Nearly a year ago, I was on Facebook and I saw a post that someone had written about the murder of Joseph Bowne Elwell, a Bridge expert and Wall Street investor who was shot and killed in his home on June 11, 1920. The Elwell murder was something out of Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan-Doyle because it was a real-life locked room murder mystery. The doors were locked from the inside and the windows were barred. In other words, the killer had no means of escape let escape they did.

      Now, to a historical psychological thriller author like yours truly, that's like catnip, especially when I find real-life cases within the timeline of my work's chronology for my characters to investigate. Elwell's murder on June 11th 1920 dovetails perfectly with the timeline in Hollywoodland when Scott and Kelley get married in LA that month. But she has to solve Elwell's murder while preparing for her departure from the New York Times.

      So, in my mind, this is the spinoff I always wanted to write plus it had to be written for several reasons. Number one, I had to get my writer identity back. Number two, like many writers, I like being prolific and coming out with at least one new title a year. I've never gone for anywhere near four plus years without a new book launch. And lastly. the timeline of Elwell's murder dovetails perfectly with part of the timeline in Hollywoodland.

     Plus, as stated earlier, I'm at the point where I desperately need a distraction from the madness billowing from the Beltway like a sewer gas leak.

      I'm up to well over 66,000 words and I haven't taken a day off in those 17 days. Since I'd set a word limit of 80,000 words, which would make it my shortest novel by far, that means I should have this book's first draft knocked out in a week or so. Then there will be revision, copyediting and reformatting and I should definitely have this out on the market by this spring.

     In the meantime, if you're able, please make a Paypal donation to help get me to my next check later this month. $25 or more will get you a free Kindle copy and $50 or more will get you an autographed paperback that I'll mail to your house at my expense.

     So, as Rachel Maddow says, "Watch this space."