1) Motivation.
Until I reach a critical mass with a project, thereโs always the risk that Iโll lose interest or find napping to be a much more appealing activity. (Well, to be honest, it always is). So I needed to push through the first part of my mystery until leaving it unfinished felt like a crappy thing to do to all the pages Iโd written. Thus, motivation issues affected the quality of the early pages. I was more interested in accumulating them than producing quality writing. Thank God for multiple drafts.
2) Who done it.
For most of the book, like the reader, I didnโt know who the murderer was. Eventually, I decided on an extremely unlikely character, hoping to shock readers. My editor at Wild Rose Press kiboshed this first effort since it represented too drastic a switch from the portrayal of that character throughout the book. Plus, you were supposed to like the guy. So what next? At first I was upset, and I struggled to come up with a satisfying alternate ending. But it turned out that the new resolution clobbered the old one. Iโm quite pleased with the final version.
3) Female characters.
This has never been my strength, and as usual I had to work at making them balanced, realistic people, especially since several were either eccentric, unpleasant, or suspects in the murder investigation. I think I did a good job, but I guess most any woman would be a better judge of that than I am.
4) Trial scenes.
I was familiar with the tropes embedded in TV and film courtroom dramas, but I hoped to get beyond them and make my scenes more realistic. At the same time, I needed unusual things to happen in the trial to support several plot twists. So I did more research than usual, and I walked a tightrope between my two priorities.
5) What to do with it when I finished.
I always yearn for a literary agent to become excited by one of my manuscript and enthusiastically take me on as a client. Years ago, when the publishing universe was quite different, this happened a couple of times. This time, who should I query? What should my query letter be like? When should I abandon the effort and submit to my current editor? And how could I keep my mood up as my book is rejected over and over? Iโm sure this a common challenge for writers these days, and I always find it tough going.
Verlin Darrow is currently a psychotherapist who lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near the Monterey Bay in northern California. They diagnose each other as necessary. Verlin is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization. Before bowing to the need for higher education, a much younger Verlin ran a punch press in a sheetmetal factory, drove a taxi, worked as a night janitor, shoveled asphalt on a road crew, and installed wood flooring. He missed being blown up by Mt. St. Helens by ten minutes, survived the 1985 Mexico City earthquake (8 on the Richter scale), and (so far) has successfully weathered his own internal disasters.ย
