I’ve been AWOL lately, and not just on this site. Much of my normal daily life has also been on hold lately. If you have written to me lately and I have yet to reply, I apologize, but I have every intention of catching up with my correspondence one of these days. Since April or so, I’ve been working on the first one hundred pages of the sixth Alafair Tucker mystery. Poisoned Pen Press, who published the first five novels in the series, requires that each novel be vetted before they will give it a place on their publishing schedule, and the way they do that is each returning author sends the chief editor the first one hundred pages of the proposed work. That way, if it’s a dog and they don’t want to publish it, you’re only out a few weeks of your life and not six to eight entire months. Or alternatively, if the book is the dog’s dinner but may be salvageable, the editor has time to help you make something of it before it’s too late.
In any event, if the one hundred pages didn’t have to be consecutive, I’d have no trouble at all. However, sewing the scenes together and making the story flow from beginning to end are another ball of wax, at least for me. So, the first one hundred are more or less done at last. My husband is off reading them right now. He’s the first person to clap eyes on it. He’ll have several suggestions, and I’ll do a little rewriting and rearranging before I send them off to the Big Chief at PPP by the end of this month, I hope. Then, if she approves, I have to come up with the rest of the book. When that happens I will once again be Whereabouts Unknown until the book is finished.
Until then, if you haven’t read any of the Alafair books, I invite you to click on “About This Book” under any of the titles to your right, and read an excerpt. Alafair would love to see you.
More Places to Go
Donis on Facebook
Type M for Murder