Ta-daaaa!!

Just typed the words "THE END." For the first draft, anyway. I gave the last line to Oliver.

That was Chapter 23, the coda that pulls the carpet out from under Oliver's feet, about 3,000 words.

Total word count for the novel, just shy of 140,000 words. In other words, much, much too long. About twice as long, in fact, as the traditional, plain, one-crime-only, read-it-on-a-plane mystery novel or thriller.

This Private Plot has a more elaborate plot, more of the length and complexity of a recent Reginald Hill or Christopher Fowler novel (two of my current favorites), but my target is still to pare it back closer to 100,000 words. Time for a Staples run, for blue pencils and red pens. And the book will undoubtably* be twice as good for being two-thirds the length. (First casualty -- all those self-indulgent bad jokes.)

I have a minor sense of anticlimax, not because of withdrawal from my private world, but because I know -- as I mentioned in an earlier post -- that I have the cardigan mis-buttoned in terms of the plot, and there's a yellow legal pad peppered with notes of major scene shifts already waiting for me, which I've been ignoring in the race to the finish line. So in a way, this is a false first draft, an imposter, instantly obsolete, waiting for the dope test. (I had a dope test once. If confirmed that I'm a dope.)

But at least I can say I've written another book now. 


"There's no such word. Just testing.

And so to bed.

Since I haven't give him anything to do in years, Evan Marshall has probably forgotten that he's my literary agent. But he seems to be doing okay with his other clients, his own series of mystery novels, and his first-class multimedia endeavors to teach fiction writing, through books, software, and an indispensable website, Write a Novel Fast. Try it.

One memorable piece of advice I picked up from Evan was never to end a chapter with a character going to bed. (To sleep, that is.) The goal of any mystery or thriller -- or any book at all, for that -- is to keep the reader turning those pages, desperate to know what happens next. Closing a chapter with the end of a day is like handing the reader a bookmark. And, as Evan points out, since many people do their reading in bed before going to sleep themselves, you're making it all too easy for them to put the book down and turn the light off.

But I just broke that rule, deliberately. (As opposed to the times before I read Evan's wisdom, when I did it in sheer blissful ignorance.) I decided to cut my planned final chapter into two. (I know, the fragmentation of this draft is getting a bit like Zeno's paradox, with Achilles never managing to catch up with that bloody tortoise.) And today, I completed Chapter 22 (3,000 words), which wraps up the mystery.

It ends with my protagonists, Oliver and Effie, going to bed to, er, celebrate the successful conclusion of the murder investigation -- a little scene that, in my not-so-humble opinion, is the perfect blend of eroticism and restraint, reflective of the similar final moment of Murdering Ministers. (In that book, Oliver and Effie were sharing a bath at the end.) You might well expect the words "THE END" to follow. Go ahead, go to sleep. As the commentator* said, "They think it's all over."

Only the sharp-eyed might have spotted the hint that there's just a little more to come. And you might need a good night's sleep first, because it's going to surprise you. (And that's tomorrow's writing assignment.)

*Kenneth Wolstenholme, just after Geoff Hurst had scored his third goal in the 1966 World Cup final, giving England their 4-2 win over West Germany. Happy days.

Naming rites.

First draft of Chapter 21 -- actually, a short codicil to Chapter 20, but written from a different viewpoint -- completed in one day. Now, only the last chapter to go. And rather a lot to pack into it.

The best bit of today was thinking up a new character name. (Yes, I know, it's a bit late in the book to introduce new characters, but his very brief appearance makes sense, I promise.) It's a purely comic character who's a pompous theater critic. So I went back to my lists and decided, for now, on "Wedgwood Gallimaufrey." (It beat out Clovis Milkthistle, which I thought was too Hobbit-like.)

This Public Plot.

Just finished the first draft of Chapter 20 -- pursuit and trapping of the murderer. Wa-a-a-ay too long. Over 8,000 words, trimmed back to 7,000. But this is not a thriller -- it's a whodunit, and once the perp is named, you don't want to detain the reader too much longer, no matter how intriguing the chase. So it's gone to my writers group with a demand that they tell me what to cut.

Meanwhile, only two chapters to go, one of them very short. I may even finish this week.

Collector's item.

Talking of An Embarrassment of Corpses ("my Embarrassment," as I refer to it for short), the book came out toward the end of the year, perfectly timed for Christmas gifts but already past the deadline for Edgar Award consideration -- at least, that's my excuse. On Christmas Day that year, my brother-in-law Tom gave me a suspicious package, which turned out to be a copy of my own book.  And he and his then wife had autographed it for me, complete with their academic qualifications. Ha bloody ha. But at least it was a sale.

I used this book as my general tote-about copy, including the notes and page-turn cheats I needed when I made the audiobook. (And the egregious typos.) But then it occurred to me that if my in-laws were claiming to have written it, what if other people did as well. I started asking my fellow authors at conventions if they'd also claim it as their own and sign it to me. And they did. S. J. Rozan and Dale Fututani Flanagan added their chop. Carole Lea Benjamin added the signature and pawprint of the excellent Dexter. And memorably, Sparkle Hayter gave it a kiss-print. (Lucky book.)

The list of great mystery writers continues with (in no particular order, honestly) Val McDermid, Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman, Sujata Massey, Donna Andrews, Jerrilyn Farmer, Janet Lawrence, Barbara Jaye Wilson, Penelope Evans, Tom Savage, Gerald Schiller, Sue Henry, Joyce Christmas, Susan Moody, Polly Whitney, Dean James, Brenda English, Tom Kreisberg, Jackie Girdner, and Nancy Bartholomew. And my particular friends (this time in strict alphabetical order) Rhys Bowen, Meg Chittenden and Kathleen Taylor, who is often spotted around these parts. And now Gene Wilder, since I had the book with me at last week's conference. He's not a mystery novelist, but he did write the screenplay for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

(I didn't have it with me for Janet Evanovovich, but she cheerfully wrote that she loved my work when she inscribed a copy of Hot Six for me. Of course, she's never heard of me. Who has?)

So long at the fair.

The boys' elementary school had its annual fair today. Secundus comes out of the book sale and thrusts a 2005 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records into my hand. (Clearly, I am the designated porter for the family. I walked home at the end of the day carrying a cake.)

"But you already have a later version of this," I protest.

"Yeah, but I don't have that one," he explains.

Third grade logic. Maybe I can find a buyer for last year's telephone directories?

* * * * *

Later, the organizers announce a desperate deal over the PA system -- grab a bagful of unsold books for $1. I have enough unread blocks of paper around the house, but to the bibliophile in me, this is the muezzin's call to prayer. I grab a five-minute respite from running the frog-flipping stand. The book room seems to be the place where lightly used copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting go to die. But there, on the hardback fiction table, still unsold despite the price -- a tattered, ex-library, ex-Salvation Army thrift store copy of my own An Embarrassment of Corpses. I buy it to give it a decent burial, but in the end give it to my friend and fellow mother Robin, who was handling the frogs in my absence.

(I wonder if another friend and fellow mother and fellow author, Annabel, has these problems?  She co-wrote a book called Click: The Girl's Guide to Knowing What You Want and Making it Happen, which was very popular around these parts. I have a feeling that her teenage readers aren't giving up that particular bible to school fairs anytime soon.)

Progress retort.

Okay, you lazy git, I hear you cry, what of this so-called novel of yours, the raison d'etre of this blog?

When last we referred to This Private Plot, I was nearly at the end, having written the "reveal" chapter, with only the brief chase scene and the final mystifying plot twists still to go. Well, as I mentioned at the time, the reveal is clearly the point where you can see your entire clockwork edifice for the first time. I certainly decided there and then to tweak the mechanism -- removing clumsy threads, bolstering the identification of the killer with a couple of extra clues. No doubt there'll be more changes in later edits.

But I also realized that there were some glaring structural issues. I was holding too much back for this chapter, tipping a whole box of greasy padlocks onto the table to be picked instead of having the entire mystery solved by the gentle turn of a single tiny golden key. This is a plot-heavy book -- hence the title --  and so, amid the distractions of conferences, workshops, taxes, and Spring Break, I've been seriously shuffling the deck, dragging revelations to earlier places, lightening the load of the final stages. It's a bit like rebuttoning your cardigan after you discover you matched your first button to the wrong hole.

Most of this is in my head. Much of it is in note form, with diagrams and arrows. But just as I was about to go ahead and make the changes to the text, I remembered a timely piece of advice: Don't do any rewrites until you've completely finished your first draft.

Chastened by my betters, I pass this nugget on. And it makes sense. Why risk going through fifteen drafts without ever reaching the end? Isn't it better to make your changes after you've seen what the entire beast looks like? And why postpone that motivating sense of achievement that comes from typing the words "The End."

The End. (Or is it?)

The faces of Oliver. . .

People sometimes ask me who I think would play my characters in the movie ("Hello? Hollywood, are you listening? Movie rights for sale. Help me, Obi-Wan -- you're my only retirement strategy.") I don't know who could do Oliver right now, but for a guideline, I often cite the appearance of James Spader in 1994's Stargate.

But oddly enough, Oliver's appearance is partly based on a real actor, called Robert Longden. (Oliver's actually an amalgam of a fellow psychology student at Oxford, Longden, and a Chase Manhattan banker who used to work for my ex-wife, who all shared a vague resemblance. Not my ex-wife.) It was Longden's appearance in a 1980 Agatha Christie television play that registered with me, but no amount of Googling or Binging has brought a picture of that performance to light. And then yesterday, I was watching a documentary on advertising from Britain's Channel Four, which included a segment on Peter Seller's last work -- a 1980 television commercial for Barclays Bank that was shelved following Seller's death a few days after filming ended. His costar was the young Robert Longden, and here's a screen capture of him from that long-unavailable film.

Good night, sweet prince.

Whenever I’m asked who I think is (or was) the most beautiful movie star ever, I usually say Jean Simmons.

And then I usually have to explain that I mean the English actress who starred in Great Expectations, Guys and Dolls and Spartacus, not that guy from KISS with the long tongue.

Alas, today’s news brings word of the death of 80-year-old Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier’s choice for the film role of Ophelia when she was only in her teens. A sad end to a week that also unexpectedly took Robert B. Parker. Mind you, he went at his desk.

However, as I’m looking at the brief tribute to Ms. Simmons on the BBC News website, I notice there’s a box showing the current ranking of the most popular stories. The latest from Haiti is number one, Venuzuelan oil number two, Jean Simmons’ passing number three, some fresh horror story from Nigeria, number four . . .  All with today’s dateline.

But at number five, a report headed “Bed Sharing Drains Men’s Brains.” From 2006.

Intrigued, I click and discover that for men, but not for women, the sleep interruptions that come from a partner’s movements in the night is enough to impair their mental ability the next day and increases stress hormones, at least according to an article in New Scientist based on research at the University of Vienna. And a sleep expert from an English University comments: "Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.”

Perhaps what’s even more bizarre, though, is the fact that this is currently the number one shared story for BBC News, four years after its first appearance.

Why do I think most of the sharing is between husbands and wives? But which direction?

Why I've just started blog number one hundred and thirteen million.

Once, I was on my my way to being a moderately famous author. Then I took a break from writing fiction. (It's complicated, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, even though it wasn't.) Now, I'm planning to get back, mainly so I have something interesting to say at cocktail parties when I'm asked  "so, what do you do?"

Not that I like going to cocktail parties. Which is odd, because I like cocktails.

I was told that the modern author needs an online presence. So, I'm blogging.

Here's what you can expect:

Reflections on the black art of mystery writing, as I round the final curve with the first draft of my third novel, This Private Plot. (Fourth, actually, but I've finally given up on the publishability of my first, apprentice piece.)

Dispatches from the home front -- if there's any humor to be found in the life of a bemused English ne'er-do-well cruelly trapped in the body of a minivan-driving, middle-aged, work-at-home, New York-suburban soccer dad, I'll report on it.

Odd thoughts and the occasional joke.

Here's what you won't get:

Detailed political analysis, religious tracts, conspiracy theories, or arcane philosophies of life. I promise.

I did try this once before. When I was ten, I was given a Letts junior schoolboy diary for Christmas, and I resolved to start a journal of my life from that point on. This coincided with my first week back at Beavers County Primary School in Hounslow, Middlesex, after the winter break. (That's fifth grade, for those of the American persuasion.)

My first entry, on the Monday, was "Normal school day. Prefects elected." (Modesty seemed to have precluded my mentioning that I was one of those prefects.) My second entry, on Tuesday, was the equally engrossing "Normal school day." By Wednesday, this had become "N.S.D." I never made it to the second week, but I think there's something there to fascinate future generations of social historians. At least, if they can read between the lines.

Let's hope I do better this time.