Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "writer"

I am really happy with the reviews that have been posted so far for my book. There are several on Amazon and several here on Goodreads. I appreciate that folks have taken the time to write them.

I have had a few friends tell me that they bought the book, but haven't read it. I appreciate them, too, but I really appreciate the ones who have read it. I mean, that's why I wrote it after all.

So far, I know most of the folks who have posted reviews, though the connections grow more distant.

I'm using the feedback of the reviews as I look toward a sequel. A recently posted review spoke of the narrator's moral status at the end of the story. I like that comment.

Right now, I have several scenes for the sequel finished, but I don't anticipate using them all. I'm still looking for the driving strand that will pull the other strings along.

Those reviews are helping me in a way that I can only describe as letting me see my story from the vantage points of other people.

For some reason, I thought of one of my high school teachers this morning, someone I hadn't thought of in quite a while.

My father insisted that I take Business Math and Business Law in high school. Both were lower level classes, designed for folks who weren't likely to go to college. Too bad. I learned a lot from both classes that would help any person transition into adulthood.

The teacher for these classes was a fellow named Henry Maddox.

Mr. Maddox was too old to be teaching, I think. I say that now as someone who is 53 and has come to realize that teaching is a high-energy job. I don't know what had happened to Mr. Maddox to make him have to be a classroom teacher at his age.

He was a good teacher, though. I remember that he struggled to find someone in our class who could read aloud. Since I could, he called on me a lot. He would laugh when I did my fake news anchor voice.

I didn't really give him another thought after the classes were over.

My grandmother lived in Senoia, Georgia. She told me that Mr. Maddox had been the mayor there at some point. I think she told me that when she told me that he had committed suicide.

He had driven to his parents' grave site in Senoia and killed himself.

I found myself thinking about him this morning though I don't know why. He was a bald old man with thick glasses and a sweater and not a lot of energy, but he did what he needed to do for as long as he could.

I guess that's what we all do.

I have begun - sort of and for the fourth or fifth time - writing my NaNoWriMo book for the year.

NaNoWriMo is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. You can sign up online to take part. It greatly helped give me structure (of time, not plotting) to get a book finished. The goal is to write a 50-thousand word book in 30 days. I did it, thanks to NaNoWriMo.

That book was tentatively titled HANGING. My editor, Vally Sharpe, suggested a change using the W. H. Auden quotation that opens the story and the book wound up as EVIL IS ALWAYS HUMAN.

This current work-in-progress is going under the name WORST MURDER MYSTERY EVER or WMME for short.

I am calling it the "worst" murder mystery ever because I plan to lay out whodunit at the very beginning. Yeah, the book starts by telling who killed whom.

When I planned to try to do this (I'm still not sure I can do it; I'm trying), I knew that most mysteries follow a typical pattern. I didn't want to follow that pattern. As I did a little research of real mysteries, I discovered that quite a few real-life mysteries are far more than just "whodunits."

The big questions, imho, are WHY? and WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ONES LEFT BEHIND?

I started writing the story from the beginning of the investigation, at the moment when investigators arrive on the scene. I came up with a pretty good (imho) plot twist or two for that scene.

Then I realized I didn't really have a good whodunit because I had not written the actual murder scene. So. I put it aside and thought about it.

I also did some research, reading a novel from 1955 called VANISHING LADIES (I think) by Ed McBain. That book was supposed to be a police procedural, but it's really more of a noir-ish tale of prostitutes and bad cops.

Now I am writing again. This time I've started drafting the murder as well as doing back stories on my two protagonists. I'm hoping it works out.

There are fewer and fewer people I would like to meet. In general, I have been disappointed when I met celebrities. Meeting a politician is like meeting a walking void. If there's a group left I can still respect on whole, it's authors.

I missed my chance to meet Vonnegut. It's probably just as well. I don't think he would have enjoyed the encounter with me - I'd have been a nuisance to his schedule, I am sure. The same is true of other authors who passed away in recent years.

I did get to meet Stephen King thirty years ago, around the time he finished Firestarter. He was great and friendly and - even though this was a sign-the-book event, he took a little time to chat.

Jerzy Kosinski is dead. Richard Braughtigan is dead. Again, neither would want to waste his time with me.

So who is left?

Joyce Carol Oates, that's who.

I swear, that woman writes so many great books, it is hard to believe that she is just one person. For a while there, I was convinced that she was a team of people writing under the name Joyce Carol Oates.

The first thing I read by her was We Were the Mulvaneys, a book about a typical family that suffers tremendously. Reading that one prompted me to look up a high school friend and apologize for something that happened 25 years before. He didn't remember it. Still, I needed to do it. His family were the Mulvaneys in my little world and I had not given him credit for living through that.

I've read several other of her works, including Zombie, a fictionalized story of Jeffery Dahmer. It's a first-person take on a person who is without conscience: another amazing book.

Right now, I am listening to Give Me Your Heart, a collection of short stories. The stories are wonderfully creepy and yet extremely human.

I'm enthralled with this woman's skills as a writer and wonder what it would be like to engage her in an informal conversation. Her ability to elicit such emotions from readers is amazing. I wonder how she keeps that superpower under control in her everyday life.