Dawn Reno Langley's Blog, page 6

FOXGLOVE back story

I've always loved reading suspense and, at one point in time, I was reading Robert Ludlum's books as though they were handmade peppermint patties (that I'm addicted to). I also love reading books with strong women in them, and I wanted to write one that mirrored Ludlum's but with female leads. But it seems that no one wants to read about women who don't need men, so I knew the characters I created needed to be as feminine as they were strong. The plot line for FOXGLOVE began.

The two main characters--Dakota and Iris--are as different from each other as possible. One is white; the other, black. One is family-driven; the other could care less. One wants a happy-ever-after; the other simply wants adventure. But they are partners, a pair of journalists driven by their need to show the truth of their news, and they are best friends, driven to tell each other what no one else would dare.

I love these two women and their chemistry, and I've often thought that if this book were to be made into a movie, the younger versions of Whoopi Goldberg and Goldie Hawn would be perfect for the roles because they can be equally comedic and dramatic.

This story explores countries I'd never seen before (Iraq, China, Kenya), so I was "forced" to do research. (Secret: I love doing fucking research.) I had friends who'd been to those countries, so I probed their memories, watched documentaries, read travel books. Now I think I'd rather go to the country itself, like I did for The Mourning Parade, which is set in Thailand (that book will be out September 5, 2017). When you are physically in country, the sights, sounds, and smells impress on your memory far more details than any written text can.

There is one character in this book that I stole from real life. Monsour. I studied Spanish with him in college, and his accent was always better than everyone else's in the room. We became friends and he told me about his life back in Saudi Arabia. When I started writing Foxglove, Monsour's face and personality came back to me, and though he never did what the character in the book did, his voice, actions, and lovely personality are that character/those traits are his.

One of the things I incorporate in each book I write is an issue that's important to me. In this particular book, it is racism. I hate racism. Period. And if I need to include the subtext in every book I write from now until the end of my life in order to get to at least one person, I will. Hopefully, the friendship between Dakota and Iris and the ways in which it's tested will resonate with my readers, and hopefully, it will bring a greater understanding of the reality that we're all people. Human beings with desires for love, a faith in family, and a longing for a peaceful existence.

And, finally, this is the first book I've written where I got to explore a Ludlumesque world, complete with shadowy figures with mysterious pasts who create dangerous circumstances in exotic locations.

If you read it, please let me know if I've done my job!

Peace.
Dawn Reno Langley

Foxglove

AFTER ALWAYS back story

Sometimes the kids' books are tougher to read (and to read) than the adult books are. Such was the case with this book, but I thought it needed to be written.

Sometimes inspiration isn't necessarily positive, as well. Again, that was the case with this book.

Sometimes a character crawls under your skin. Ralph Waldo Carpenito is deep in my DNA.

The story: we all hear horrendous stories about pedophilia and other types of horrendous sexual abuse in the media all the time, but you always believe it will never come to your doorstep. It has come sniffing around my house three times. In one year. That was too much.

The first time I heard about a man I knew who'd been brought in for questioning about a child he'd molested, I was shocked. He was a very good friend's husband, we'll call her Jane, and father to their three ginger-haired girls. I couldn't believe it, particularly because my friend seemed almost too calm when discussing it. But it was true, and he went to prison in another state, losing his rights to be a husband or a father ever again.

Mid-year, the same year, and I'm on the phone with my best friend. Her live-in man had been with her for twenty-three years. I'd worked with him on some creative projects. We all knew each other well.

I guess I should have been more intuitive, but I neglected to pick up on the fact that she was quite upset. Probably was too interested in telling her a story about my own life. My bad. But I could never have predicted what she would share with me.

The man she'd spent her adult life with, the man who'd raised her two girls, and the man with whom I'd had a creative relationship was arrested as they came home from a vacation. He'd been keeping indecent photos of children and had coerced several into the basement of their Boston shop.

My friend, we'll call her Mary, lost it. She was normally the friend I pointed to as an example of the type of brilliance I admired. She had incredible confidence, a dynamite sense of decorating with antiques, and an unflagging curiosity about life. She was the woman I wanted to be. To see her totally disintegrate after the arrest and resultant jail sentence made me question my own sense of human beings. Did I really know people at all?

The third man to be arrested that year was a family in-law. Too close for comfort. He'd spent time with my two nieces. Too much time. And this time, my family members were harmed by the situation. Again, the man ended up in jail. Again, the family was torn asunder by gossip and accusations. Again, little girls had their lives completely changed by a man they trusted.

Everyone I knew at that time was involved with one or more of these men. Stories about what had been done and to whom seemed to appear with the rising of every sun. Women lost their sense of self. Both of my friends now live alone and have absolutely no interest in having a man in their life. All of their children have no contact with the father figure. Thankfully.

But the writer in me thinks about the story that's going on behind closed doors. I thought about writing from the point of view of the pedophile, but I couldn't. I toyed with some stories from the woman's point of view, but at one point or another, the woman fell apart. Just like in real life. I couldn't finish them.

I kept playing the writer's game: what if? What if the child affected by the actions of the father was male? What if the father was wrongly accused? What could happen to the family who underwent a traumatic event that might have been avoided?

Then I wondered what kind of kid could make it through such an event unscathed. R.W.'s voice immediately came to mind, and though the original version of the story was written in third-person, R.W. pushed his way through. I had no choice but to write the story from his POV. And it was the right thing to do.

I gave R.W. all the strength I wish my friends and family had. He's a powerful little sucker and the only one who can show that, while the family is breaking apart, life still continues.
Still, the uneasiness of living with someone you don't quite believe anymore makes even the strongest family member question their own beliefs.

I must admit that one of the reasons I followed R.W.'s voice is that I couldn't find another way--a safe place--from which to tell the story. The women's stories were far too painful for me to tackle, though I do hope to incorporate some details of their emotional expressions of pain in a future novel.

I haven't written many books for this age group, but I do have a couple of others I'd like to work on. I hope that I can nail a character like R.W. again. He definitely got under my skin.

peace
DawnAfter Always

ALL THAT GLITTERS back story

Ah, this is my baby, this book. My first published novel. I worked on it for approximately four years, enjoyed great reviews for it, and the book was nominated for Best Glitz of the Year through Romantic Times. It's a book close to my heart.

The story is about a woman who is a true rags-to-riches character. Diana Colucci grows up on the mean streets of Boston, but she makes it to the salons of Europe, and ultimately, becomes synonymous with the best of the best in the international antiques business.

The setting is as much a character in this book as Diana herself. I lived in the house Diana grew up in on Orleans Street in East Boston with my first husband (an ill-fated marriage, but that's another story for another blog). I smelled the sickeningly sweet bubblegum factory stench in the middle of the summer, and I walked down the street to that corner store where tubes of mortadella, capicola, salami, and pastrami hung in the window.

Diana's lifestyle is far more glamorous than mine ever was, but I did lend my expertise about antiques to this story. I loved doing the research because it took me to multi-million dollar auctions, led me to research art and furniture that I would never be able to afford, and taught me more about Europe than the trips I've taken there since the day I finished the novel.

But the most precious and personal element of this book is that Diana's nephews are based on mine. It wasn't difficult to build her relationship with those boys and to make it believable that they are the most important component of Diana's life, the thing that would make her break every law to protect them. I would do the same for mine.

Diana's lovers are completely fictional. I'd love to say that I know those guys (even the nasty Luis), but they're composites of a number of people. However, I think we're all afraid of getting involved with someone who simply is the wrongest type of wrong. That fear has been part of my body armour since the trauma of my first marriage, so creating Luis to define the metaphoric violent man most women fear wasn't difficult.

One thing I promised my family when I was writing this book (which, by the way, was originally titled AMARYLLIS, but the editor requested I change the title) was that I would take them on the trip Diana made throughout Europe. I've never followed her footsteps, though I've promised myself many times that I would. Someday.

I guess when it's all said and done, this book has been the one that most closely defines my home. Boston will always be the place that defines who I am, though I won't ever live there again (too cold, too noisy, too crowded . . . I like places that are warm and on the ocean these days).

Yup, Boston is a major character in ALL THAT GLITTERS, but Diana and her crew certainly can hold their own, as well.

If you read this one, please let me know what you think of it!

Peace,
D


ENTER to win a SIGNED copy of ALL THAT GLITTERS by Dawn Reno Langley. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

Affaire de Coeur called the story "powerful and suspenseful." The Daytona Beach News Journal said the story is "filled with action and interesting characters." Diana Colucci had what it took to get to the very top: the dream of making a name for herself in the world of international antiques--and the beauty and brains to turn her fantasies into breathtaking reality. Leaving the crowded tenements of her girlhood far behind, she became the protégé of a fabulously wealthy Boston Brahmin-moving from the high society of Beacon Hill to the jet setting royalty of Europe. Transformed into a woman of power and extraordinary passion, Diana was swept off her feet by a dashing South American prince charming... Until her fairy tale romance exploded in devastating heartbreak --and she was plunged into a deadly web of hate and revenge. From Malibu and Rodeo Drive to Paris, London and Rome, she carved out a magnificent empire--only to risk losing it all before she found the love she'd been searching for a love beyond the dream...beyond the fantasy...and beyond her heart's desire. Originally published by Kensington Publishers. Nominated for Romantic Times’ Best Glitz Novel of 1994.

LISTENING TO THE SUN back story

Listening to the Sun
It's kind of fun explaining what inspired me to write my books, and I do hope that hearing the back story makes the reading experience more pleasurable.

LISTENING TO THE SUN is set in Northern Vermont, several miles from where I lived for seven years. The area is often wild, sometimes isolated, and always incredibly beautiful. Sometimes going around a corner that I rounded every day would reveal a new scene, an awe-inspiring sunset, a brilliant field of flame-colored maples at the height of autumn leaf-peeping season, an animal caught mid-flight: a hawk, perhaps or a sedate and stately deer. The sun might glint off a mountain of snow, creating a blue and diamond mirage, or the early morning mist might rise off the glass surface of Belvedere Pond.

It is that pond on Route 118, right before you make the final bend to the picturesque town of Montgomery Center, that intrigued me, especially after I heard the stories of what the pond had swallowed through the ages.

The pond is surrounded by the Green Mountains, majestic and maternal, the heavy growth of maples and fir trees hiding the strength of the mountain beneath. Route 118 lowers you right into the twists and turns before the pond spreads out in front of you, the mountains to your left, glass pond and mountains beyond to your right. There's a space there where people can pull over and ooh and aah. When the sun is right, you can take a photo of the pond and there's no way you can tell up from down because the pond's reflection is a mirror image of the mountains above.

I love Belvedere Pond early in the morning when the mist settles around the edges of the pond, a marshy area that locals know as home to almost every wild animal in Vermont: moose, bear, deer, herons of all shapes and sizes, fox, beaver, raccoon, etc. They are so bold that I've often had to stop my car and wait fifteen or twenty minutes for them to get out of the way.

When I lived in Vermont, I made my living as a photo journalist, so my camera was always in my car. I made special friends with a moose and her twin calves one year, often getting within three or four feet to take photos in that swampy area. I felt like the Northeast Kingdom's version of National Geographic.

The pond has a personality that is austere and cold. It's uninhabited because the mountains go straight up on all three sides (the marsh is its fourth side). Locals tell tales about the pond being bottomless. Full herds of horses pulling carriages went into the pond, cars disappeared, people committed suicide or murder. Stories abound about the pond and its history. I heard them all and dug around for more, finding that the more I heard, the more I was convinced the pond had spirits in it and around it. My imagination was stoked.

But it was one particular incident that convinced me to write LISTENING TO THE SUN.

One early summer afternoon, several friends and I loaded a canoe into the pond so that we could practice for an upcoming triathlon (running, biking, canoeing). We were a team, so we needed time together, and Belvedere Pond was close and calm. Until that day.

We were in the middle of the pond when the storm starting moving in. The rumbling started far off over the mountains, and Rich (our "teacher") said, "We probably should get out of here. Lightning will find this pond, and we don't want to be here when it does."

The three of us struggled with the canoe, hauling ass up the hill to his truck as black clouds came in from the east. Thunder echoed through the valley the pond created. Louder than I've ever heard. Lightning streaked blue in the sky. I could smell it. The hair on my arms rose straight up.

We sat in the cab of the truck, too fascinated to move, and watched the clouds from the east hover over the center of the pond. Suddenly, orange and purple fire balls shot into the pond, a wind whipped up, the truck rock.

"Holy shit." I held on to my friend Wendy, who was sitting in the middle. "What the hell?"

From the south, came another band of clouds and they collided with the ones already above us. More fireballs. Louder thunder. The truck rocked so hard, Rick threw on the emergency brake. We screamed, but I could only hear myself though I saw Rick's and Wendy's mouths open.

Then, unbelievably, a THIRD front moved in from the west. The three sets of thunderclouds jockeyed for position, sending out Thor-sized bolts of lightning, sparking balls of fire that instantly dissipated when they hit the pond, and the sky darkened completely. The only thing providing light -- the fireballs.

For fifteen minutes, the storm raged, and finally, the skies opened up and it poured quarter sized hail. We sat in place, unable to see more than an inch outside the truck windows, until the storm slowed down.

Shaking, we drove home at a snail's pace, and we've been telling the story about that Greek-god-strength storm ever since.

I remember feeling that the storm felt like a battle had been fought in the sky. Almost an alien battle. Then I wondered whether there'd been a storm like that before, and whether some of the people who'd disappeared into the lake had been swallowed up by such a storm.

LISTENING TO THE SUN was born that day, but it went through many changes before finally being published, and I'm sure there are some who might believe my story could actually happen. Especially those who make Northern Vermont their home and have seen the mist rising from the pond's edges on those early mornings when nothing else moves but the mist itself.

I'd love to take people to those places I wrote about in Vermont and talk about the process!

Peace,
Dawn
Listening to the Sun

LOVING MARIE's back story

I told someone not too long ago that there's a story behind every book I write. Sometimes it's a simple "here's where I got the idea" but often, it's much more than that. Such is the case with LOVING MARIE.

It's never easy to lose someone, but I think it's ten times more difficult when the person is your age. And when the person is your best friend, someone with whom you shared a deep connection and secrets of the most personal kind, a soul sister of sorts, the loss rips your heart out, fries it up, and puts out the fire with a pitchfork.

One of my best friends in junior high/high school was a small girl with a big laugh. We couldn't have been more different, both physically and emotionally, but there was something I loved about her that no one else had. She embraced every moment of life with so much energy that she cut through everything traumatic she had to endure.

Claire had a heart defect, had suffered with it throughout her whole life, and because of the issues it had caused, her parents were (rightfully) over protective. As a result, Claire fought for every blessed moment she could have alone, any evening or afternoon when she could leave the house without one of them acting as chaperone. Most of our "friend time" was actually spent with her parents, whether it was hours playing music and eating chips/drinking Coke at her house or traveling an hour every Friday night to go square dancing (which I surprisingly loved. I think it was the petticoats.). She couldn't have a relationship unless her parents, staunch French Catholics, blessed it. Imagine how they felt when they found out she'd fallen in love with a kid who went to the vocational school, a tough James Dean type with greasy blonde hair and a black motorcycle jacket.

They shit a brick.

Claire and I created a plan (a set of elaborate lies) designed to create moments for Claire and Eddie to get together. I'd pick her up at her house and we'd walk to his, I'd disappear for a while, then we'd meet and walk back to her house together. Or we'd devise another scheme to meet somewhere else. I felt very adult planning these trysts. Secretive. Part of me even felt like we were getting back at her parents.

There was something else that happened during that year. I watched two people fall so completely in love with each other that if one of them stopped breathing, the other one would have, as well. They were the lovers in West Side Story. They were Tristan and Isolde. Romeo and Juliet.

They fought everything to be together, Claire and Eddie did. And when they finally met each other in that church aisle and said their "I do's," there wasn't anyone who cried louder than I did.

The next couple of years were wild. Claire and Eddie started their marriage, and I got married, too, but it wasn't as blissful as theirs. (Long story for another day.) Needless to say, Claire and I didn't see each other as often as we used to. I moved to New Hampshire, then several more times, and it's amazing anyone could find me. But we always managed to reconnect. My mother would see Claire or I'd find her when I came to Boston for the weekend. Then she moved to Colorado.

Colorado became the impetus to reconnect, and we did so in letters. She and I had written notes and passed them to each other between classes in high school. As adults, those letters became missives about our kids and our lives. She had made history when she gave birth to Cherie, because as she was giving birth, she was being prepped for a pacemaker. And that little girl was a gorgeous combination of Eddie's blonde hair and Claire's wide brown eyes. She and I would kid each other that our girls looked enough alike to be sisters.

She wrote to about the Colorado winters, how much she loved seeing the snow-covered mountains, then she'd tell me about the spring melt and the bright blue flowers that bloomed in the area. She sounded so happy that I knew without a doubt that she and Eddie proved that there was such a thing as true love in this life.

But during her second year there, I didn't hear from her for a while, and I began to wonder why she wasn't answering my letters. Then one day when I was in my driveway running a yard sale, a car pulled up. It was her. Eddie was driving.

I was thrilled to see her, though a little shocked at the weight she'd gained. She looked tired. Uncomfortable. They couldn't stay long, were heading back to Colorado, so we spoke for only a few moments. Claire's eyes filled with tears as we said goodbye. I remember walking up the driveway in tears myself and telling my husband I didn't know why I was crying.

Within a few days, Eddie's sister called me. Claire had passed away. Everyone was devastated. Nothing was wrong, they said. She'd had the flu, but she was feeling better that night. She and Eddie made love, then he heard something, and she was gone.

I couldn't help but wonder if she'd known something when we talked that day at my house. Maybe there'd been a reason for her tears.

At the church funeral only a few days later, I watched Eddie, devastated, and his daughter, equally devastated, trying to support each other as they walked down the aisle behind Claire's casket. A six foot tall blonde man, uncomfortable in a suit, and his seven year old daughter, straight blonde hair the color of his streaming over her shoulders. They leaned against each other as if terrified to move away. I've never seen anything more heart-breaking.

For years, I couldn't talk about Claire. I still feel my eyes fill with hot tears as I'm writing this now. I constantly wanted to call her, to check in and see how she was doing. I missed her terribly.

Then one day, I saw Eddie at the pancake place, and as soon as he recognized me, I know that he experienced the same rush of a million images of Claire that I was seeing, he too heard the sound of her laugh, the way she'd dismiss any issues as easily as she would a mosquito. He and I held onto each other for a long time. Then it was a few questions: how was he? how was Cherie? what had I been doing? And I could tell he wasn't okay yet, but he was proud of his beautiful daughter who had just gotten married.

That felt like a bit of closure for me, that chance meeting with Eddie. I could talk about Claire after that, and I knew that I'd want to write a story inspired by her, yet exploring a very different type of life, a story of another woman.

What I wanted to do more than anything with LOVING MARIE was to explore the boundaries of friendship and the intimate connection we have with so few people in our lives. Celebrating that kind of friendship often requires that we look deeply into our own reasons for how we feel about the people in our lives. The honest way we feel. There are some parents who have to admit they don't love their own children. Some colleagues care more about each other than they do their spouses. Some friends offer more respect to their friends than to their own parents. We don't need to be related by blood to be family for each other. And occasionally, we find that one person who feels like someone you've known for more than one lifetime.

I also wanted to examine the ways a woman might fear abuse so much that she endangers almost every one around her. The Stockholm Syndrome happens every day in American kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms. I kept that as a sub plot, though it almost intruded upon the backbone of the LOVING MARIE plot: the way Krista falls into Marie's life, hook, line, and sinker.

Once I started this story with a tiny sperm of an idea, the characters demanded a different plot than what I initially imagined, I've learned to let that happen, and in this story, Marie and Krista became quite different women from the ones I envisioned when I started.

But I'm glad they did.

Peace,
Dawn

LOVING MARIE gets another chance

Sometimes in a writer's career, one realizes that chances were offered and not taken or one didn't work quite hard enough or long enough or gave up too early. Sometimes we just made the wrong choice at the wrong time -- a choice that would have very different consequences had it been made at the "right" time.

The e-book industry has gone through some turbulent times during its short period of existence. During the late 1990s, I thought that e-books were going to take over print books, simply because of the ease of using them. Who wanted to carry a knapsack when you could simply plug in a CD to your laptop or use that newfangled e-reader to hold hundreds of books -- with less weight than one paperback. Who wouldn't want that?

Well, not many people thought the way I did back then. The electronic book publishers who'd opened the doors to a flood of books that might never have made it between covers soon flamed out of business. Those of us left with CDs of books that few people read (basically because of the inconvenience and "strangeness" of it all, I believe. Remember, cell phones didn't have screens back then. We used them to talk or text. Only.) felt that we'd lost that particular book forever.

Some of us moved on. Others were left by the wayside. Or chose not to write for a while. My decision to choose not to write wasn't determined by the industry, however, but rather by a personal choice. A choice that I've regretted ever since beginning to write again.

That long intro brings me to the reason for today's blog. I'm giving one of those e-books another chance. In fact, I'm reviving most of them. I've put them into print (for the first time!), created new covers for them, updated their interiors, and I'm beginning to market them. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that I've timed these new releases perfectly. I don't have a crystal ball, but I sense a sea change in this business, and if I apply what I can to market these books, perhaps each will support the other?

Anyway, please join me in welcoming LOVING MARIE into print. It's the story of two friends, their love for each other, and how one of them learns lessons from the other's life. I've put a Goodreads Giveaway up for 6 copies of the book -- starting next week -- and I'll take any book club questions or visits we can arrange!

More coming soon!

Peace
Dawn

Reissues -- and marketing

For the past month, I've been preparing my novels for reissue, and it's been more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I sincerely give props to those who do this regularly, because it take a bunch of time, a lot of thought, and some artistic skill.

I fought with CreateSpace's cover template for weeks (with each of the six books I'm in the process of preparing) before finally giving in and asking for help from my neighbor, a graphic artist. It was worth it, because now I have covers that not only look consistent, but are also pretty cool, if I say so myself.

Memories from when these books were first published have popped up as I go through the many bouts of changes and editing and am forced to look through these manuscripts with a much more critical eye than I had when they were first written.

I think about the big chance I had with my first published novel, and how I lost it. I've always blamed myself for being too communicative with the editor. Whatever the case, somewhere along the line my quickly rising career (they told me "we'll make you a star") took a nosedive. The novel was a good one, no doubt about that. So now I have control over that one and am releasing it for those of you who haven't read it yet. It's called ALL THAT GLITTERS and it's about an antiques dealer from Boston who gets into trouble with the wrong guys. Diana is one of the strongest women I know -- and our common thread is that we both have nephews we'd give our lives for.

After ATG came out, the publishers decided I should change my name for the next novel. I'd spent a lot of my own money, had traveled all over the United States, sent mailings to friends I'd made through the years, made bookmarks and posters and t-shirts to promote that book. And now everyone I had contacted would not know my "new" name. Now for the first time, THE SILVER DOLPHIN will be published under MY name rather than a pseudonym, and maybe readers will fall in love with the Hawaiian islands and Krista Bordon-Hathaway's tumultuous life as I did.

And then the electronic book publishing first wave hit. The publishers came and went like autumn leaves in the wind. But they did do one thing: they accepted novels and edited them, so FOXGLOVE and LISTENING TO THE SUN and LOVING MARIE found homes they might not have with traditional publishers. I was excited about the trend, hopeful that it would help us save trees, and make it easier on students who had huge backpacks to lift. That didn't happen.

Those books have now found a new home with this conversion into paper and the new (and much improved) ebook versions.

I have several children's books that I believe will be re-issued soon, as well, but they have illustrations, so I need to find the people who drew my characters for those books.

Next on the horizon: marketing these books and laying the groundwork for the novels I'm working on now.

Another Rewrite

It seems like every time someone looks at a novel, they inject their own opinion about how it should work. As a result of the last couple of readers' comments, I did another rewrite of THE MOURNING PARADE before sending it out to more agents.

Okay, lesson here: when you start sending out a manuscript that comes close (in my case, several of the top agents in NYC asked to see a full copy of the novel) but isn't getting picked up (by either agents or editors), then it's time to look at their comments and determine whether there's any validity to them. If you think anything that they say has any credibility, then you should think about making the changes you're comfortable with.

In the case of MOURNING, I'd heard from two people that the tension between the antagonist and protagonist was uneven. Hopefully, I fixed that. And one of the agents suggested another point of view. I'd gotten mixed comments about that idea, but I considered it.

Instead of exploring the point of view of one of the humans, I chose to delve into the other important character's perspective: the elephant.

At this point, I have no idea whether that will work for the agents who are going to read the new version, but we'll soon see, and I'll let you know the outcome!

Interview

I was interviewed by a writer friend for his blog recently. Read it here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Post NaNoWriMo

I've rewritten ELEPHANTS FOR DANNY completely. Even the title has changed. It's now THE MOURNING PARADE. The title was a suggestion from a literary agent who acted as my developmental editor. She still has the manuscript, and I'm waiting to hear from her regarding possible representation. In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on the novel I devoted all of November/NaNoWriMo to completing.

I didn't complete it yet. In fact, tonight I was working on it and realized there were a few chunks that needed to be inserted. Large chunks. They weren't on my original outline, so I resisted putting them into the storyline. However, the story bogs down without them -- and it loses some of the framework I'd built for the characters early in the novel. This particular work uses some epistolary techniques in the form of letters between the main characters: an interracial husband and wife. The letters really revealed a lot about them, their thoughts, their plans for the future, and when the plot moved on, I lost that technique. I realize now that it's important to keep that thread of the story going because the novel is set in 1960 and this couple has no other way of keeping in regular contact with each other.

That rather large discover was, for me, another insight into my own creative process. I like having a map to follow when I'm working on a novel, and through the years, I've learned a lot about preparing the way by developing characters, place, and being sure of the major roadblocks along the way. Sometimes I've been more successful with that than others, but I do believe I'm getting better at it. (Why keep on writing if I'm not improving, right?)

There are so many ways to delve into a novel's world, and I'm always in awe of those who just open the door and walk through. I not only need to know what the door looks like but in which direction it will open, what it's made of, what the interior of this new world will look like and what my company--the characters--will be. But no matter how well I know them, I often find myself sitting and waiting for them to tell me what comes next.

The long and short of it is that I'm unsure whether I ever really know where I'm going with fiction. Creative nonfiction is so much more organized, to me. I understand the shapes of the stories I want to tell and how they might interlink with a larger metaphor. I know that sometimes I want the past to overlap with the present; sometimes I want to mix points of view or voice. Those are interesting issues to decide, and working with a shorter piece helps me to see whether the two parts of the essay -- the real and the creative--intersect effectively.

I love fiction, but man, it makes me work. It makes me work so goddamn hard that I love to hate it.