Second draft revisited

To answer some of your comments, I’m much happier with the characters in this second draft of my latest mystery, and I think they’ll continue to grow, which is important for a series I’ll want to go back to. It wouldn’t do for the author to get bored with the backdrop and characters in a series too soon.

How does the emotional factor compare with my earlier mysteries? Shadows Fall was intensely emotional, since it dealt with Beth Gray’s PTSD and related phobia, as well as her dramatic family interactions. That was a different kind of story. It’s been called psychological suspense by some, and I think it tips in that direction. This story doesn’t go that far into psychological drama, but there’s a strong people element, as well as romance, and these characters have their histories, which to a great extent drive them to do the things they do, for good or ill. Instead of psychology, here I’m exploring one area of parapsychology—or at least paranormal experience. Nothing creepy or horrific about it, but I hope it will intrigue all the same.

If by emotion you mean romance, there is romance in this story. We’ll see how it stacks up. When I wrote Shadows Fall, I was listening to a lot of Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, and their ilk—so maybe some of the credit goes to them and their ability to affect my mood. However, this is a series, so romance is trickier to deal with. In a standalone mystery with a romance you can get to a happily-ever-after scene and not worry about what to do with the romantic element in later books. I don’t want future mysteries in this series to bog down in domestic contentment. The pair that appears to wind up together in this story may have a lot more to get past before they’ll be happy together, if they ever are. (Yes, I’m being deliberately cagey here.)

No characters have been carried over from my other books. I’ll do that again with more stories set in the Sierras. Shadows Fall and Snow Angels took place in sparsely populated towns in imaginary Wilder County in the Sierra Nevada, so it seemed natural to have some of the same characters show up—Sheriff Lester Kendall, his deputy Duane Prescott, and Peter Lloyd. This story, which I’m frustrated to say doesn’t yet have a working title, takes place on the Redwood Coast. Again, in an imaginary town. Costa Sequoia is larger than Wilder or Cedar Creek, though it retains a small town atmosphere, as many of our mid-sized coastal towns do. In the future, who knows? They all live in California. Anything could happen.

Writing this story has made me itch to take a trip up the coast, even though I know Costa Sequoia doesn’t exist there, exactly. I miss it. Of course I’ll get to visit during the editing phase, but that’s not the same as the kind of living-in-the-story we do while we write. But I’ll be back—if the series sells—and maybe next time I’ll get to spend more time in the woods, or by the ocean.

I have a few trusted readers who’ll go through the manuscript for me, but I’ll likely do at least one more major edit before then, with lots of trimming down to size. It feels great to have a whole story instead of chopped up bits, though, and a real ending instead of what I thought I wanted to call an ending in the first draft.

Point of view (POV) can be a bugaboo or a blessing. I enjoyed exploring the two POV characters in this novel. If Snow Angels had one weakness, other than being a backward-derivative (long story, for another post) of Shadows Fall, it was characterization. At least I see it that way, even if others don’t, which is why I’ve given it away as a free ebook.

I have some future stories for this series planned, in which I look forward to writing still more points of view. One I’m going to enjoy writing a lot is that of Iris Somerset’s sixteen-year-old half-brother, Rayne Roarke, who’s only mentioned in the current book. Where do these characters come from? Are they inside of us? Are they composites of people we’ve known? Are we channeling? They become so real, it just amazes me sometimes.

Where I am now: I’m writing a scene-by-scene summary to help me with the big cuts and edits. I also have to come up with a title. With every other novel I’ve written (including those packed in boxes in my attic that will never see the light of day), I’ve been able to come up with a working title I like by the end of the second draft. Not this one, and I’m not sure why. When I titled Shadows Fall I had no idea there was a band by that name—in fact maybe there wasn’t yet when I first thought of the title. I wanted it to be unique, and learned it wasn’t at all, after publication, and that bothered me. So, although I know a publisher may re-title the book, I plan to spend some time ruminating over the working title I’ll use to submit this one.

I’m thinking of calling it The Cutting Garden, because a pivotal scene takes place in a cutting garden, and my vision for that garden is of a real flower garden I saw in Cayucos one summer. Cayucos is a small beach resort town on the California coast—a lot farther south than Costa Sequoia, mind you. I’m also considering Finding Ian, since it describes much of Iris’s quest in the story, a quest she’s sent on by spirits who’ve passed on. I’ve also thought of Iris in Bloom, since in this story Iris is just discovering her ability as a medium. But that one sounds kind of lame to me, and it’s a mystery, so perhaps it needs the requisite “death” or “murder” in the title? You see my dilemma. With the trouble I have making decisions, it’s amazing I get anything done.