Dan Decker's Blog, page 5

Mitch Turner #6 is right on target!

Happy Halloween! It’s been another week and another draft of Mitch Turner Book 6 is done! I’ve had a couple more ideas come to me on the title of the novel but still nothing has solidified yet. Things are coming together, and with every passing day, I become more comfortable that I will hit my self-imposed deadline. There is not a lot to say about this part of the process as I fine-tune the story and the writing. 

Book Six introduces a number of new characters that haven’t been mentioned in previous books, characters that might show up again in future books. 

A new character I want to highlight today is Cook County State’s Attorney Patrick Rebane. He has a huge ego and has had mixed interactions with Mitch Turner in the past, though they haven’t ever had a case facing off against one another. The Patrick Rebane character is fun to write because he doesn’t see the world in the same way Mitch Turner does, which brings them into inherent conflict. I’m hoping everybody has an entertaining time meeting this character and seeing him has he interacts with Mitch Turner and the rest of the cast in this particular novel. 

I also just wanted to take a moment as well to talk about Kirk Hoffman, the main character in my upcoming novel The Fixer. As I’ve mentioned in other places, Kirk Hoffman is a brand new character that’s never been seen before anywhere else, but I am planning to have him appear in other books in at least one other series. No, it’s not Mitch Turner, but another one. I’m not going to reveal anything more about that yet. Hoffman is in his mid forties and has dedicated his life to making sure that he protects innocent people, refusing to take clients that he believes are guilty. His approach to practicing law is all about staying out of the courtroom as much as possible and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt his clients are innocent by finding the actual criminals. 

As I look at my schedule, I’m currently thinking of trying to get The Fixer out in the middle of November, we will have to see how it goes, though. I’ve been making enough progress with Mitch Turner Book Six, and I’ve had enough momentum that I think I’ll be able to do that. 

Since it’s Halloween, I thought I’d highlight Grizzly Wolf, one of my Halloween short stories that I published several years back. Here is the description:

Jim Cannon and his coworker Melanie have been called in to rescue an injured hiker and his girlfriend. They get out of the car at the trailhead and immediately hear a wolf howling. They don’t know what to make of this because wolves disappeared from this section of the forest over a hundred years ago.

Armed with a tranquilizer gun and a pistol, and hoping that these weapons will be sufficient should they run into any trouble, they don’t make it far before they find the torn up body of a hiker.

Fearing the worst, but knowing they still have one hiker to rescue, they push forward at considerable personal risk. Minutes later they come face to face with a wolf-like creature.

Jim and Melanie are forced to run for their lives.

This story has many twists and turns while they fight for survival. Fans of monster stories will find this exciting and chilling, while also enjoying the wild ride. Pick up your copy today!

Mitch Turner #6 is building momentum!

Mitch Turner #6 is inching forward along with increasing momentum, even though I did have a few days out of the office during the last week. I’m somewhere between 72% to 77% percent done with the manuscript. At this point I’m fine-tuning storylines, fixing problems, looking for continuity errors, and refining the story as a whole.

It’s always interesting how at this stage of the writing process, just a few words in the right place can shift the whole story. It’s always fascinating when that happens.

I have a couple of different titles that I’ve come up with over the last few weeks but, nothing’s stuck out to me as being the right title yet though so I still don’t have anything to announce on that front.

Since I’m gearing up to release The Fixer in November, here’s a little more about it:

Kirk Hoffman is about to have a blast from the past when the son of a former client is charged with murder and comes to Kirk for representation. Kirk initially doesn’t want to take the case for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that he thinks the guy probably did it, but he agrees to take a look at the case over the objections of his team. That’s when things get interesting and he becomes concerned there’s a possibility that this guy who seems likely to have committed the crime could be innocent.

Making great progress on Mitch Turner #6!

I have made great progress this week on Mitch Turner #6! The story is coming together as a whole. At this stage, I’m usually focused on what I can cut out. Many times, when I am writing, I will have various ideas that make their way into the manuscript. Many make it through into the final pass, but a lot of them don’t because they don’t fit, and because of that, I always have to be careful to look at what’s there, decide if it makes sense for it to stay, and if it does, how is it going to work into the overarching plot.

Mitch Turner #6 features Frank Ward as the defendant. It starts out with Turner coming out of a meeting at the State’s Attorney’s office in downtown Chicago. He becomes curious when emergency responders pull up to the building, and he sticks around to see what’s happening. He soon sees a woman rushed out on a stretcher and a few minutes after that, Frank Ward is brought out in handcuffs.

Ward looks dazed and confused, and when he sees Turner, his eyes light up and Turner knows exactly who Frank Ward is going to call for representation.

The problem is Turner still hasn’t forgiven Ward for what he did to Barbara.

This story has been on my mind for a while now. I knew Frank Ward would be Mitch’s defendant at some point and that it would be an uphill battle for Turner every step of the way. Things are moving very well on this project. I’m technically at the end of draft four and will start draft five soon. At this point in my process, I am usually trying to do a draft a week for a book that’s this long because I like to work on the book as a cohesive whole, and doing rapid iterations through it allows me to see the pieces that need to be brought together or massaged or edited or deleted.

Also, don’t forget that The Fixer is on the horizon and will be coming out in November! I am super excited about this book. It features Kirk Hoffman. This is the first novel in which Kirk Hoffman appears. He’s an attorney who works with a dedicated team that he has collected together over the years. His express goal is to find justice, and he’s usually interested in making it happen outside the courtroom rather than within. So be on the lookout for The Fixer! Just a reminder, The Killers Club is now out as an audiobook. Anyhow, that’s how everything is going over here. Have a great week everybody!

Writing Update and All about Mitch Turner Book 6!

Hello and welcome back to the Dan Decker Books podcast. I hope everybody out there is having a great week this week. Over here at Grim Archer Media, things couldn’t be going any better. Things have been going very well. As you probably know, I released the Killers Club audiobook last week and that has been off to a

0:25

fantastic start. Thank you for all of you out there who are supporting that particular book. I know that there’s a substantial portion of my readers that prefer audiobooks, and so I’m glad that I’m able to get that out there for them. I’m hoping to get more audio books out soon within the next six months or so.

0:45

For me, it’s always kind of a bit of a decision to if I’m going to do an audio book or not, because even though it takes, I’m not the one doing the narration or anything like that, it does take a substantial chunk of my time to review the audio book and make sure

1:02

that I’m happy with how everything’s been done. That usually takes somewhere between a couple days to almost a full week, depending on the length of the audiobook. The Killer’s Club was a much longer book, so that took a lot more of my time. And it left me a little bit drained,

1:20

but I’m hoping to do some other audio books here in the near future. One of the audio books that I’d like to see done is Only the Guilty. And then I also want to start working on the Jason Maxfield books and getting those all turned to audio. So we’ll see how that goes.

1:36

At some point, I am definitely planning to do those books. Anyhow, the big thing I’ve been working on now that the Killers Club audio book is out is Mitch Turner No. 6.

1:47

I’ve been thinking about it today, just wondering how long it is that I’ve actively been working on this project. And I started doing it clear back in June. It looks like the first day I narrated a file was June 12th. If you don’t know, I actually do narration. I’ve found that narration works really well for me.

2:08

And I kind of have a little bit of an unusual process, I think. Well, a lot of authors don’t use narration, but for me, what I do is I actually pull out a voice recorder and I pace around my office while I dictate a chapter, usually about 10 minutes or so. Sometimes that’s a full chapter.

2:26

Sometimes it’s part of a chapter. I will dictate that. And then I will run that audio through Dragon Dictation. I have the most recent Dragon Dictation software, and then it will transcribe that for me. And then what I will do after that is then I will do a couple passes. Usually I can’t remember. Sometimes I won’t.

2:46

Sometimes I’ll just move on to the next chapter and we’ll see how it goes. So back in June, I was still working full time on Jason Maxfield number four. I was hoping to get it done before I needed to start working full time on Mitch Turner number six, but I didn’t,

3:02

it didn’t quite work out the way I wanted. Uh, Anyhow, so I started working on it on June 12th, and that’s when I would start just doing a 10-minute, maybe 15 or 20-minute amount of narration every day, and then going and working full-time on Jason Maxfield. Well, somewhere in August,

3:20

I think that first or second week in August, I finished with the present draft I was working on with Jason Maxfield, number four. I’m not sure if that was draft three or four, something like that. After I was done with that, setting it aside,

3:36

then I went and I have started working full time on Mitch Turner number six. There was some of the narration that I needed to finish. I was probably at least 50 or 60,000 words into it by that time.

3:48

And so I went and I finished narrating the rest of the book before I started going back and revising it. Usually for me, it works better to have kind of the whole book finished. or a whole outline in place. I say I’m a discovery writer,

4:03

but really what I am doing that first draft is making an outline of the book. And it’s always surprising to me that there are sometimes things I put in that I’m like, oh, I think I’m probably gonna delete this later, where I actually come back and I find a way to make it work.

4:18

It’s always kind of interesting how that works out. But anyhow, so back in August, I started working full time on Mitch Turner. Number six, I got to the end of draft one or the outline as you want. It could also be referred to. And,

4:35

About that time, it was just over 100,000 words, which was what I was shooting for. Most of the Mitch Turner books are all about 100,000 words. The Good Client’s a little shorter, the Presumption is a little bit longer, but they usually fall within that general range.

4:49

And then I go through and then I flesh out a lot of the things that haven’t been fleshed out or or what have you. So by the time I was done with that process, really draft two, I was up in the 140,000 word range, which is a lot more than I wanted the book to be.

5:08

Luckily though, as I was working here and I’d actually just finished draft four, Ray. So draft four is done and I’m now starting, just started today on draft five. But now that I have that But during the middle of draft four, it swelled up almost up to 145,000 words.

5:25

But I found some chapters that weren’t really adding anything into it. So I’ve been able now to get it down 10,000 words to about 135,000 words. which is a lot more comfortable for me for this particular book. The Mitch Turner books usually move along at a pretty good rate.

5:41

There isn’t a lot of filler or fluff to them. And so I’m happy where that’s at right now. And I’m thinking that by the time I’m done, I’ll probably get it down to about 130,000 words. We’ll have to see. But I’m feeling really good at the end of draft four.

5:58

The story is pretty much solidified and the book is all the main points are there. Now it’s just going back and reworking the details, making sure transitions are working, making sure I have appropriate foreshadowing, making sure I have all sorts of little details like that. So that’s where I’m at, feeling really good about it.

6:21

I have had some projects in the past that took me a lot more effort to get to that point. There was one project I was working on where I would go home and I’d tell my wife, not quite sure who did it yet. And I would tell her that for a month or two even on that project.

6:39

That project took me a lot longer to kind of figure out the details. Since that time, I’ve been a lot more detailed about the way I kind of approach a particular project. And what I will often do is I will make notes actually in the document as I go.

6:55

Word has a comment feature that allows me to just make a comment and then I’ll go back and revise it. So when I was done with draft three of Mitch Turner, number six, and still don’t have a title yet. have a couple of things I’m still mulling over, probably will be for a few more weeks here,

7:12

if not another month or so. But I had like about 150 comments and I went through and I got most of them removed and I think I got it down to about 40. So at the end of draft for today, I was looking and I had just over 200 comments of little kind of task list items I

7:29

needed to go back and rework and revise and edit and kind of look at. Anyhow, so, uh, draft four is off to a great start and it’s just going really well. Uh, I haven’t yet said when I am targeting to release this, uh, primarily cause I like to give myself some wiggle room,

7:46

but I am hoping to release this in the December, January timeframe. We’ll have to see a lot of the Mitch Turner books have come out, uh, about that time. The good client, if I remember correctly, was released in January. Then the victim’s wife was released in December of that same year. The presumption,

8:08

I actually think I got out in August, but then I know the verdict came out in November and then the last mile came out last year in December. And so I’m starting, I’m targeting that same general timeframe. And I’m feeling really comfortable that I’m going to be able to hit that. So that’s really good.

8:24

So everything is on track with Mitch Turner, number six. And yeah, I think that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. Been very happy with how it’s going. I was hoping, and initially I was planning to stop at this point and take kind of a break and work on the fixer to get that done.

8:46

And like I said, the fixer is pretty much ready to go. I just have a couple… Edits from a couple different people I need to go through and revise and see if I’m going to put them in or not.

8:56

And then I need to print it out and read it through myself, which is something I always do now. I always print out the book and read it through one final time on paper just to make sure I’m happy with how the final product, how the final art piece has turned out.

9:14

Anyhow, so I was hoping to do that with the fixer, but I just have enough momentum going right now. on this particular Mitch Turner book and I’m feeling really good about it that I think at this point I’m planning to just power through all the way until I am done

9:30

completely with Mitch Turner number six to the point that I turn it over to my editors and copy editors and start that process, and then get the fixer out. So unless something changes, which it always could, but unless something changes, that means that I am targeting to release the fixer in November.

9:52

originally I was planning to release it much earlier than that, but time just had a way of slipping away from me this year. Uh, I hope not that everybody doesn’t start to expect two legal thrillers from me every November and December, because that’s what I did last year is I released only the guilty in November and

10:08

then last mile in December, but that’s what I’m doing again this year. So hooray, it’ll be, it should be a fun time. Anyhow, that’s pretty much all I have along the lines of updates and, uh, Thoughts for this week.

10:22

I kind of wanted to go over my process on Mitch Turner number six and talk a little bit about that. I feel like I’ve covered that pretty well. Haven’t given away a lot of spoilers other than that it’s about Frank Ward. I will say, though, that I…

10:38

I’ve been planning to do a book where Frank Ward was the defendant for a while now. I think I knew going into it, and I think it’s pretty obvious from the first chapter I was just looking at, the first dictated chapter that I did clear back in June,

10:53

that I was definitely planning that this was going to be Frank Ward’s book for a while. And I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s coming along. Anyhow, have a great week. And, oh, just a reminder, if there’s anybody listening to this who has not yet signed up for my email newsletter, if you do that,

11:10

you get a free e-book and a free audio book copy of the short story, The Arraignment, which features Mitch Turner and is read by Eric G. Dove. Have a great week, everybody. The text, audio, and music for this show are all copyrighted by Dan Decker. All rights reserved.

The Killer’s Club Audiobook is now out!

You can find it here!

My Legal Thriller Influences

Show Transcript:

Welcome to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. I’m Dan Decker, the author of The Good Client, Max Damage, and a bunch of other thrillers and legal thrillers, as well as a little bit of science fiction and fantasy. Thank you for joining me today.

0:24

On this podcast, I give a writing update and usually share a thought or two about something else. This week’s thought is about my legal thriller influences. Hello and welcome back. I hope everybody is having a great week out there. It’s been a great week for me over here at Grim Archer Media.

0:46

I’ve been accomplishing a lot of things. The first thing is I finally submitted the Killers Club over to ACX for review. Part of the reason why I’m late at getting to do that is because I have been heads down working on Mitch Turner number six.

1:01

It’s really important for me to be able to have momentum and this is why I have not been able to get the killer’s club audio book submitted until now, but good news. I finally submitted it. It’s in review. I saw earlier that it was done with the first step of the review.

1:17

Hopefully it will be done here pretty quickly and I will be able to get it out for everybody to check out. Anyhow, Mitch Turner six is going really well. I finished with the third draft and now I’m starting on the fourth draft and At this stage, I usually do a number of quick drafts. For me,

1:37

it’s really helpful to get into the story and see the whole story at once or as close to as once as possible. When you’re working on a novel, oftentimes you’ll write a piece and then you won’t come back to it for days or maybe even weeks. Not for months for me usually in my circumstances,

1:56

but there are some authors who won’t return to a piece of writing for months. And so it can be difficult to Make sure that you’re keeping all of that in your mind. And for me, I like to try to work on the story cohesively as a whole.

2:09

And by doing that, I hope that it turns out to a better story. So Mitch Turner’s number six is just coming along great. I still don’t have a title. I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve written down a couple of potential titles. I’m not crazy about any of them, but certainly my juices are flowing there.

2:28

It’s funny to me that sometimes the titles will just come to me and I’ll know them right away. And other times I won’t know the title for a long time. So just kind of interesting how that works. The other project that I’m working on, and this is just a side project,

2:44

is I have a little fantasy project I work on every day, usually in the morning, right as I get in. And sometimes throughout and I try to work on it as a break throughout the rest of the day. But basically, I just work on that to keep me writing in general,

3:00

because a lot of times I’ll get stuck in revisions and revisions can go on for a very long time. And I like to be writing something new every day. And so writing on a side project really helps me do that. And I’ve mentioned that before on this podcast that I have some of these other side

3:16

projects that I’ve put out that I’ve put down to paper that are probably never going to be seen anywhere just because I don’t have the time to go back and work on them and make them any more polished than they already are.

3:28

Anyhow, so I had this little fantasy project I’ve been working on as well that’s been kind of fun. I was thinking this week about my influences, specifically my influences when it comes to writing legal thrillers. I’m not 100% positive, but I believe the first legal thriller that I ever read was The Firm, which is probably…

3:49

The first legal thriller that many people have read, at least in my timeframe, because that was a very popular legal thriller, was the subject of a Tom Cruise movie as well. Interestingly enough, the way I remember reading that, if my memory serves me well, is in a Reader’s Digest abridged version of that book.

4:10

I think I stumbled across a copy of that book, I think maybe from my great grandmother’s house. I think she was a big subscriber to the Reader’s Digest. I remember her having a lot of those. And I remember reading The Firm as an abridged book initially. So it must have been much shorter.

4:28

I don’t know that I read the full book. But then after that, I know that I went on and I read other John Grisham novels as well. I know I read that one when I was a kid, probably somewhere in maybe the end of grade school or junior high or maybe into high school.

4:43

But I was a kid when I read that first book. The other thing that I think is really interesting, the other big influence on my legal thrillers, and I think you can see this in my legal thrillers, is Law & Order. Specifically with Law & Order,

4:58

it’s almost two different shows every episode where you have the first half, which is the procedure or the, it’s not the procedure, it’s the investigation part where they’re going around, they’re trying to figure out what happened, trying to find the culprit. And then the second half is they bring that culprit to trial.

5:18

And in the Mitch Turner books, you can kind of see that I follow that same format where the first part of the book is an investigation. And the second part of the book is… the trial usually and you know the same format has also fallen i’ve also used the

5:34

same format with the killers club and only the guilty where you have the the investigation as well with only the guilty that one was interesting to me because i tried to break out of that mold just a little bit in terms of, I wanted it to have a little bit more action.

5:54

Burke Wyatt is somebody who thought of himself as a cop first before a lawyer, and he tends to be more active than other lawyers would be. And so that book, I think I kind of played with the formula there a little bit. But that brings me to thinking about The Fixer,

6:14

which is different from my other legal thrillers in this regard, because what it does is it focuses almost entirely on the investigation. And when I set out to write this book, that was actually my intention, was to focus primarily on the investigation side of the legal thrillers and to ramp

6:35

up the thrill and the action part of it. And so that’s really what happens. And so there is one One legal scene in the book one one trial scene I should say in the book and then the rest of it is investigation and trying to solve the problem and then trying to.

6:52

solve the other problems that come with trying to solve the initial murder. So anyhow, so yeah, law and order definitely had a big influence on me. I remember when I was in college, I would usually come home for the day from my classes. And it was very,

7:09

very often that I would sit down and find reruns of law and order on one of the cable TV channels. I don’t remember which one, maybe TNT and watching those reruns. those reruns. And so certainly those had a big influence on me. The other, other book that comes to my mind that definitely had an influence on me,

7:29

uh, and my legal thrillers, uh, is the Lincoln lawyer, the Mickey Haller series. Mickey Haller, uh, is written in first person, similar to how Mitch Turner is written. He, uh, that’s a first person narrative as well. Um, I have noticed, though, with the most recent Mickey Haller books,

7:47

and maybe I misremember this from the first one from the Lincoln lawyer. I thought that one was first person narrative all the way through. But in the latest one, the one that I just most recently read, I think it was Resurrection Row or Resurrection Walk, one of those two titles. Yeah.

8:06

And that one, what Michael Connelly is doing is he has both Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch perspectives. And so we have the first person narrative of Mickey Haller, and then we have the third person narrative of Harry Bosch. Anyhow, definitely Mickey Haller had a pretty significant influence on Mitch Turner as well.

8:29

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of John Grisham books. I don’t remember any of them specifically as standing out to my mind any more, one more than the other. Perhaps A Time to Kill stands out to me a lot just because that one was very well done, dealt with some very heavy and sad issues.

8:49

And also, I think that that was a book he worked on for a long time before he finally published it. I think that was, if I remember correctly, might have been one of the first books he was working on or he worked on it for a 10-year period of time or something like that.

9:04

Anyhow, another one of John Grisham’s books that I remember quite well is The King of Torts. Now, that book doesn’t focus on criminal law. It focuses on mass torts. It was very interesting to me to read that book and then start my work as an attorney after graduating from law school.

9:27

I might’ve read it about the same time, but yeah, it was kind of interesting to see that side of things. So far, I haven’t yet written a legal thriller that focuses more on the civil side. I’m sure I probably will at some point. I just don’t have any

9:41

Ideas that have come to me that I’m anxious and curious to write about. But yeah, that was certainly one of the books that I remember very well. Another one that comes to me is one that I remember particularly was, I believe, The Runaway Jury. That one was pretty fun.

10:01

I think I read both the book and saw the movie on that one. The whole concept of a jury consultant coming in and being very significant to the outcome of the case, or at least playing a huge role on the attorney’s team was very interesting to see and to think about.

10:21

I haven’t really played around with that idea very much and probably will at some point. Now, this doesn’t really count as an influence on me, at least not on my earlier writing. I hadn’t discovered Peter O. Mahoney until just recently, but I read his book, The Southern Lawyer, sometime within the last year, and I really enjoyed it.

10:43

He did a really good job telling a very compelling story, giving it a very Southern feel, which I’m sure you’ve noticed John Grisham does in a lot of his books. I imagine, but don’t know, that both Peter O. Mahoney and John Grisham spent a lot of time in the South,

11:00

and that’s why there’s a good distinct Southern flavor in their books. It’s Part of why I’ve been trying to put out a couple legal thrillers based in my local area, even though Salt Lake City and Idaho Falls don’t really have a ton of crime per se. There’s not a lot of criminal trials here,

11:20

especially not to the extent that you would have in a big city, right? There’s not the extent you’d have in New York or Philadelphia or Chicago, which is where Mitch Turner is based. But I really enjoyed The Southern Lawyer. Had a really good time reading that one. I should try to pick up the next book sometime soon.

11:40

Anyhow, that’s me rambling about my influences and the book I’ve been reading recently. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show. I hope you have a great week, and we’ll talk to you later. Oh, before I forget, if anybody doesn’t know, you can go to my…

11:58

website and sign up for my newsletter and get a free ebook and audio book of my short story, The Arraignment, which is a Mitch Turner short story. So if you’re not familiar with Mitch Turner and you’d like to know a little bit about him, go ahead and go over there and you can totally get that for free.

12:13

The text audio and music of the show are all copyrighted by Dan Decker. This show is published by Grim Archer Media, all rights reserved.

Updates on The Killer’s Club Audiobook, Mitch Turner #6, and more!

Show transcript:

Welcome to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. I’m Dan Decker, the author of The Good Client, Max Damage, and a bunch of other thrillers and legal thrillers, as well as a little bit of science fiction and fantasy. Thank you for joining me today.

0:24

On this podcast, I pretty much just give a writing update and maybe share a The Killers Club audiobook is now done. I just need to get it submitted to Audible. After I have submitted it to Audible, they take a day or two, sometimes a week or two,

0:43

to review an audiobook before they go ahead and publish it and get it all put out there. So that is coming forward here pretty quickly. I will make sure to notify everybody once the audiobook is finally available. For anybody out there who’s been waiting for… The audiobook now is your opportunity.

1:04

I’m so glad that it’s turned out so well. Eric G. Dove has done a great job with the narration, and I really couldn’t be happier with how the whole thing has gone and how the project has come to fruition here. Eric G. Dove is just a great narrator, and it’s a pleasure to work with him.

1:21

Once the audio book is officially published, I will make sure to get it out there and get word out there so everybody can go ahead and download it. It did make me think this last couple of weeks going through the Killer Club, a little bit about Audrey Spencer and how she came to be.

1:37

I came up with her as a character after I’d done a number of legal thrillers with Mitch Turner because I wanted to write another legal thriller, but I wanted a break. I like to take breaks in my writing and work on other different projects.

1:51

So that way I feel like I’m staying fresh and trying new things and trying to keep it fun, et cetera, things like that. Anyhow, I knew for sure I’d be writing from the prosecution’s perspective. And I just sat down and I started writing it.

2:05

I am generally speaking a pantser, which means I just write my story as I go, making it up as I go. The times I’ve tried to do outlines, it usually doesn’t work very well for me because I never follow the outline.

2:18

And so what I try to do is I try to make an outline as I go or after the fact and then try to look at it and then analyze the story from there. So The Killer’s Club is one of the longest books that I’ve actually written and published.

2:31

I’ve probably written longer books, but I never ended up publishing them. The first book I ever wrote was War of the Fathers and The first draft of that was almost 200,000 words. Put that in perspective, Audrey Spencer’s novel is 145,000 words finished, out the door and ready to go.

2:47

And most Mitch Turner books are somewhere between 90 to 120,000 words. The Audrey Spencer novel ended up being a little bit longer than some of my other novels. But I really had a good time writing that one. It was fun writing that from the prosecution’s perspective and to just get in there

3:05

and look at it from that side of things. The other great character in that book is Gregory Pope. And I feel like it’s his daughter who’s killed and starts the story off. And so… It gives him a lot of interesting scenes where he is trying to come to terms with

3:22

his grief as well as trying to let Audrey Spencer handle the prosecution. And it’s not an easy thing for him to do by any stretch. And Audrey is coming from a perspective of having really not had a full-time regular job. She’s been working full-time hours, but she’s also been trying to maintain and balance her family.

3:41

And she’s finally getting back into the workforce. And it’s been her dream to be a prosecuting attorney for many years. And now it’s finally her opportunity. And she feels like Gregory Pope has selected her to do this because he probably thinks that she’s going to bow to his will and let him backseat drive the case, which,

4:00

of course, she has to set him straight on himself. numerous times. So yeah, The Killers Club is one of my favorite books. Of course, all my books are my favorite books, but I had a really good time writing that. The other big character in The Killers Club is Barry Michaels, and I really like Barry Michaels.

4:17

He definitely is OCD. I think you get that sense as you read through the book. I think that’s going to be a theme for him as he tries to deal with that and how to figure out how to live his life with obsessive compulsive disorder. I think he recognizes it on some conscious level,

4:35

but he isn’t yet willing to fully acknowledge it and deal with. So those are the three main characters. We also have Mary Ramirez. We don’t see a lot from her in this book. I do have plans to develop and further flush her character out in other books. So we’ll see how that goes. But yeah,

4:52

the story just starts off with in the middle of what she thinks is plea negotiation with a very unsavory defendant and an attorney who’s just an attorney who is hassled and just trying to do his job and doesn’t know exactly where things are going to go and things like that.

5:12

So yeah, The Killers Club, it’s going to be out soon as an audio book. You can obviously get it as an e-book or I believe a paperback or even a hardback at this point. But yeah, go ahead and check that out. Mitch Turner No. 6 is moving forward. It’s going pretty dang well.

5:29

I’ve been pretty pleased with the story. At this point, the manuscript is a little bit longer than my other Mitch Turner manuscripts tend to be. I usually turn those in at about 100,000 words. The fixer… Not, sorry, not The Fixer. That’s a different book. The Last Smile, the most recent Mitch Turner book,

5:46

I believe was about 105,000 words, something like that. It wasn’t 120 or 130. I believe the longest book in the Mitch Turner series was The Presumption, which was 120,000 words. Anyhow, Mitch Turner is going along very well. I’ve been very pleased with the story. As I’ve mentioned in other places,

6:07

Frank Ward is the defendant and he has a situation where he loses consciousness. He wakes up, he’s on the floor of the file room at the state’s attorney’s office where he works. and there’s a dead body several rows down, and everybody thinks he did it because he’s there. And so he goes to Mitch Turner,

6:25

and of course Mitch isn’t happy about taking the case, considering his ill will from other things Frank Ward has done in the past, but eventually Mitch overcomes it and takes him on as a client. It’s really turning out to be a very fun and thrilling story.

6:40

I can’t wait to get it all out there for everybody to read. I just think it’s going pretty well. I’m pretty comfortable with how it’s going. I think it’s going to be worthy of the predecessors and the other Mitch Turner thrillers in the series. I want to be very careful to not say too much more about it.

6:57

I feel like I’ve already looked the lid a little bit on what the story’s about and how it’s going to go. I like for people to be surprised and it’s always a dance. There was part of me that didn’t want to even say what the story was about just

7:09

because it’s shocking that Frank Ward is going to be Mitch Turner’s client for this next book. but I obviously have to tell people what it’s about to some degree. So anybody that’s listening to the podcast is getting the inside scoop on what’s

7:21

going to be coming down here as I get that story ready and get it out to get it published. So the fixer is grinding away towards publication. And it’s getting really close. I’ve been letting this story move a little slower. The process for this story move a little slower for a variety of reasons.

7:41

One, I wanted to get the Last Mile audiobook out. Two, I wanted to get the Killers Club audiobook out. And also… Releasing new books in the fall is a thing, and last year I released Only the Guilty and The Last Mile within a month of each other, even though they were written further apart than that for sure.

7:58

But anyhow, the fixture is getting very close towards publication. The last step for me is to go through a few revisions, get those revisions put into the the story, and then I actually print it out and I read it through one final time myself just to make sure I’m happy with it,

8:15

try to catch any of the last typos and things like that. So that will be coming out here hopefully within the next month or so. We’ll have to see. The other big issue is the fact that it’s a presidential election and people’s attention are turned more towards politics than reading books at this point. But

8:34

I think I’m just going to publish it regardless of what’s going on with the presidential election and just get it out there so it’s available for anybody who wants a distraction from politics. Okay. So that’s pretty much the big writing updates. We have The Killers Club. I mentioned that. We have Mitch Turner. I talked about that.

8:52

I have The Fixer and I talked about that. I do have the Jason Maxfield book four kind of sitting on the floor at the moment. I was working on that over the summer and then hit pause on that to go work on Mitch Turner.

9:05

I’d set myself a deadline for, regardless of where the book was at, I was going to make sure that I Went and started working on Mitch Turner because I like to get him out towards the end of the year. We’ll see how it goes.

9:18

The fact the story is going long might mean that I have to take an extra couple months on this. We’ll see how it goes. My instincts tell me I can probably get it out in the timeframe I want, but we’ll have to see. But I was reminded this week about… Kind of how I started writing.

9:34

I’ve been writing now for many years. But when I started writing, it was just me sitting at my parents’ computer. It was in the kitchen at the desk, in the kitchen. And I was just trying to write, pound out stories. And I remember that ever since, as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer.

9:53

And so I was always sitting down and pounding out these stories. Most of them obviously didn’t go anywhere. I do remember a story I had to write for an English class. I believe it was in junior high. I think that was when I was at Taylorview Junior High, actually, in Idaho Falls.

10:09

And yeah, I’m from Idaho, grew up in Idaho. That’s why the Only the Guilty story is based in Idaho Falls. I wanted to base something in my hometown. It’s fun doing that, by the way. I’ll have to talk about Only the Guilty some other time. But anyhow,

10:21

I remember writing the story for an English class where I was talking about, or the story was basically, the city that was on a mountain and there was a dragon that lived underneath it that was keeping them safe or something. I don’t remember much more about the story other than I think there was an

10:37

altercation with another dragon or something cheesy like that. It’s fun to look back and think about that story. And I was thinking also about another story that I was writing. I think it was in high school, my first year of college. And I have pages for this somewhere. It’s out there.

10:51

I’m never going to see the light of day, and I probably never would turn it into a story. Probably just too derivative, more fan fiction kind of writing at that time. But yeah, another story back from the day. for me to stop and think about where I started and how it’s come and where I’m at today.

11:09

It’s fun to be a professional author publishing legal thrillers and thrillers. And I do have science fiction and fantasy, other stories I will try to be putting out at some point as well. Anyhow, I think that’s all for this week. That’s the writing update. I hope you all have a great week.

11:26

One last thing I want to mention, if you are new to me or new to my work, and even if you aren’t, you can go to my website and sign up for my newsletter where you can get a free ebook short story of The Arraignment or get a free audio book of The Arraignment narrated by Eric G.

11:46

Dove. This is something provided to everybody who signs up for my email news list. So go ahead and go over there, go sign up. It’s dandeckerbooks.com. And if you go right there, you’ll see it right there, or you can go to dandeckerbooks.com slash newsletter.

12:01

The text, audio, and music for this show are all copyrighted by Dan Decker, all rights reserved.

A writing update and early look at The Fixer

Writing Update

The big project I’ve been working on this week is finishing my personal review of THE KILLER’S CLUB audiobook. As I mentioned in other places, Eric G. Dove is returning to narrate. He’s done such a superb job on the Mitch Turner books that I wanted to see how it would be for him to do a legal thriller in a different series. 

The audiobook sounds fantastic! In addition to reviewing it myself, I have a couple other reviewers that have gone through it for me and provided feedback. With any audiobook or project of this nature it’s always critically important to thoroughly review the work for typos and bugs. Then we get those notes over to Eric and he takes those notes and puts them into the final finished product. It’s been awesome listening to him take these characters that have only existed on paper, and in my head, and bring them to life. I’ve told Eric in the past that with the Mitch Turner books that I sometimes hear his voice narrating the characters  as I am working on a particular line of dialogue, especially for Mitch Turner, Frank Ward, or Winston. The voice he uses for Winston is distinct and very memorable. I often carefully consider my word choice as I write a line of dialogue because of that! 

It’s exciting to have Audrey Spencer now brought to life in audio format. It’s been very entertaining listening to Audrey, Barry Michaels, and Gregory Pope all interact with one another. And it’s made me nostalgic for working on THE KILLERS CLUB. I am thinking of working on a sequel some time here in the next year or two but no promises on that yet. In addition to wanting to write sequels to both THE KILLERS CLUB and ONLY THE GUILTY, I also have a new thriller and legal thriller in mind with brand new characters. I’m very fortunate to be in a position of being able to publish standalone books along with having My two main series, Mitch Turner and Jason Maxfield. But the fact of the matter is that I have way too many potential projects and not enough time to do them. I’ve been sitting on several other manuscripts for the last couple years that I was hoping to turn into something, but didn’t have a chance to do it because I was busy working on other things. I’ve now decided I won’t ever get to them. If I ever do write books in those worlds, I’ll treat those early manuscripts as a world building exercise instead of a manuscript that I will polish for publication. 

Anyhow, now that I’m done with the audiobook review for The Killers Club, I’m now back working on Mitch Turner Book Six full time until it’s time for me to do my last pass of The Fixer, which is coming up here in a few weeks. I probably would’ve gotten to that by now, but I knew that I had the audiobook review of The Killers Club coming up, and in addition to that I wanted to make sure I was spending enough time on Mitch Turner Six! 

I also keep thinking about Jason Maxfield Book Four that I will picking back up as my next big project right after Mitch Turner. I got a lot of progress done on that already over the summer and it will be fun to get that going here in a few months. The Killer’s Club audiobook should be out here within the next week or two. I’m very excited to get that out and I can’t wait for everybody to experience it.

A thought:

Now here is my inspirational thought for the week. I admit that it might be coming from an unusual source but it has stayed with me all week so I thought I’d share it with you. 

It comes from Satya Nadella, the current CEO of Microsoft. This is what he said that resonated with me. This quote is coming from Moneycontrol.com:

“I think the world needs today, more than anything else from leaders, are optimism and energy. It’s easy to be down on everything [but] my true measure of any leader is who can come into a situation, bring clarity, generate energy, and solve over-constraint problems. As long as you do those three things, I think the world will be a better place.”

I particularly like the part about bringing clarity and generating energy. It’s vital for a leader to be able to come in, assess a problem, and then decide what the best approach to solving that problem should be.

Now I have a little snippet I’m going to read from my upcoming novel The Fixer. Please note this is just read by me. I’m not going to narrate this book when it is eventually published as an audiobook, but I thought it would be interesting for you to get a sneak peek at what I have coming down the pipe. 

A first look at The Fixer:

The young deputy district attorney on the other side of the table reminded me of a hawk. Dominick Barnard was tall and bony with a curved nose, and his face was covered in sweat. His dark hair had enough gel to make sure his messy mop stayed in place all day, even with the rainstorm dumping buckets of water just outside the diner door. Barnard’s skin was so pale that I thought he might be sick, probably because he never went outdoors for long. They worked them hard at the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office.

We were at Denny’s, and I waited to drop the bomb until after we’d ordered breakfast but before it was delivered. 

Barnard’s hand trembled as he read the affidavit I’d just given him. I followed his eyes and saw he was halfway through the first page.

“Tell Cal Dobson he has twenty-four hours to drop all charges against my client,” I said.

I felt bad for the kid and hated that he had to bear the brunt of this. That’s why I was addressing him as if he were the messenger. 

“And then I’ll take this matter out of his hands, and it will get ugly,” I added as the waiter delivered our food. I took a sip of my orange juice but didn’t reach for a fork, not yet. I didn’t want to distract him from his reading. 

Barnard had been cocky before he’d seen the affidavit. He now bit his lip, turning whiter the further he got. I’d gotten the feeling when we’d first met up that he was proud to be doing this on his own, but he probably now wished he had the more senior Deputy District Attorney Cal Dobson with him.

Dobson was an experienced prosecutor who was supposed to be showing Barnard the ropes, but he was a real piece of work and the most dishonest attorney I’d ever encountered. I doubted Barnard was learning anything useful from the man.

I could genuinely say I liked most people on the other side of the aisle, believing them to be honest and sincere individuals who were trying to do their jobs. 

But that wasn’t Dobson.

It was a shame Barnard had been assigned to this case with Dobson. Barnard had only been with the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office for ten months, and I doubted he’d last another ten. This job wasn’t right for the kid. Perhaps he belonged in corporate practice, tucked away in a cubicle at a big firm where he never had to interact with the other side. 

It had been my intention to meet with Dobson when I scheduled the appointment, but he backed out and sent Barnard in his place, perhaps sensing what I was up to. 

I’d suggested to Barnard that we meet on neutral ground as a way for him to save face since I’d known what was coming. I didn’t want to embarrass a young attorney by having him show up in my conference room, surrounded by my staff. I could’ve suggested we meet at his office downtown, but I didn’t want to risk one of his colleagues overhearing our conversation and witnessing his reaction. I wanted to give the kid an opportunity to recompose himself and spare him the indignity of having bystanders as I torpedoed their case against my client. 

Destroying their case is mandatory, I thought, but ruining this young attorney’s confidence isn’t required. I had him by the throat, and he knew it without me making it worse. 

And there wasn’t anything he could do. 

I wouldn’t have been so kind to Dobson. 

Perhaps another criminal defense attorney might’ve taken some satisfaction from pushing their foe into an uncomfortable corner, but I didn’t. 

I was just doing my job. 

“If it makes it easier,” I said, my features softening, “I know this wasn’t your fault.”

And that was the truth. 

The decision to withhold exculpatory testimony and evidence had to have been made by Dobson, not Barnard. Dobson had likely convinced this gullible young attorney to go along with it, telling him it wasn’t exculpatory or even relevant, so there was no obligation to turn it over.

“But, Mr. Hoffman,” Barnard said, “surely, there’s some arrangement we can—”

I held up my hand. “When you say that it sounds like you want to make a deal to bury this, and you and I both know that’s something you’d never do.” I held his eye. “You’d be risking your license if you offered up something foolish like that.” 

The boy nodded as he swallowed, shaking his head and muttering. I didn’t know what the kid was thinking, and I wouldn’t let him go further for his own sake.

“The way I see it is one of two things happened,” I said. “Your team made a mistake and forgot to turn it over, or somebody hid it.” Barnard looked up, and I could tell the truth without him admitting it. I held his eyes. “Now, I wouldn’t accuse you of doing that. A lawyer fresh out of law school remembers the rules of professional responsibility better than somebody who’s been practicing for twenty-five years like Dobson.” 

That was the last implication I’d make that this was Dobson’s decision because Barnard appeared to have some culpability, even if Dobson had stuffed it down his throat. 

“But mistakes happen, kid,” I continued. “Almost every attorney finds himself in a bind at one point or another. It’s always better to fix it yourself. That’s why I came to you instead of going to the judge.” 

Or a reporter, I thought but didn’t say. 

“I’ve gotta call Dobson. Give me a sec.” Barnard stood, left the diner, and walked into the rain. He stopped as if he’d make the call right there but then went to his car. 

Writing update for Sept 13, 2024

It’s hard to believe we’re already in September. Pretty crazy how that has been going. Anyhow, things have been going very well over here at Grim Archer Media. I’ve been working a lot on Mitch Turner number six this week. I still don’t have a working title for that.

I’m hoping to come up with it here in the next month or so. there’s a couple of different things I’m thinking about, but just haven’t quite got there yet. Anyhow, this case, this story, as I’ve mentioned before, involves Frank Ward. It’s, very fun. I can’t wait to get it out there for everybody to see. It’s really going to be pretty exciting.

Anyhow, the other thing I’ve been working on this week is The Killer’s Club audiobook review. Eric Dove has been getting me the files for the last few weeks, and I’ve been reviewing them. So far it’s going great. I was a bit curious to see what it would be like to have him record a different book that wasn’t a Mitch Turner book, and I’m happy to say that it’s going great.

I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s sounding. So that should be finishing up here in the next few weeks, and then that should be published and released. So look for that to come soon. Also, the Fixer cover is pretty much done. Here you can see what it looks like, at least in the current incarnation.

It’s going to be changed and edited and tweaked a little bit in between now and the time it’s finally published, but I thought you’d be interested in seeing that as well. That’s pretty much all for the writing update this week. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you have a great weekend!

Fun stuff, happening soon!

Just a quick note to let you know that I have not one, but two new things coming out soon. The first is The Killer’s Club audiobook.

The second is that The Fixer book featuring Kirk Hoffman is almost ready to publish!

Also, I have a bunch of new posts up over on Patreon for anyone who’s interested. Below is a sample I just posted this week.

It has been another great week of writing. It is curious to write as a full-time author because before you get to this point, you feel like writing every day, all day, would just be amazing and awesome, but there are some tough days. Occasionally you write things that you think are all garbage. Generally speaking, when I feel this way, I just keep pushing through, and then I go back, look at what I wrote before, and wonder why I was thinking that because I’m usually fine with it, and I can see what it will take to get it up to the level I want it to be.

Anyhow, I’ve been pleased with the progress on Mitch Turner #6. The story is exciting and involves a lot of intricate moving parts, which are always difficult but very rewarding to make sure they work together in a cohesive story at the end.