Writing Again
A few days ago I pulled up some chapters of a mystery I started a year or more ago, a book I abandoned half way through. The novel had gotten so complicated and impossible that I had set it aside, hoping maybe to discover what went wrong some day in the future.
It was one of my Axel Brand mysteries, set in late 1940s Milwaukee, a big industrial city where tractors and electrical equipment and steam shovels were built. It was a diverse town, first and second-generation German and eastern European, with a tavern in every neighborhood. My hero, Joe Sonntag, was a detective who often had to deal with the beliefs and habits of different people from every corner of Europe.
It had a great beginning in which a husband, a dental technician, shoots his wife at a church supper, a deliberate act intended to be seen by the whole congregation. He cheerfully confesses his crime, and awaits his fate. The couple's four children had vanished one way or another years earlier.
But the story got complicated beyond my abilities, and I finally set it aside. It involved things usually not seen in mysteries, such as liturgy, even some theological beliefs, which is why the murder occurs at a church social event. But now I have revived it. I've read the seventeen completed chapters, made some changes, altered the story here and there, and am ready to plunge in again. It was in better shape than I had supposed all these months. Yesterday I wrote a few pages, my first writing since June, and I am very glad that it went well. I should finish the book this spring.
It was one of my Axel Brand mysteries, set in late 1940s Milwaukee, a big industrial city where tractors and electrical equipment and steam shovels were built. It was a diverse town, first and second-generation German and eastern European, with a tavern in every neighborhood. My hero, Joe Sonntag, was a detective who often had to deal with the beliefs and habits of different people from every corner of Europe.
It had a great beginning in which a husband, a dental technician, shoots his wife at a church supper, a deliberate act intended to be seen by the whole congregation. He cheerfully confesses his crime, and awaits his fate. The couple's four children had vanished one way or another years earlier.
But the story got complicated beyond my abilities, and I finally set it aside. It involved things usually not seen in mysteries, such as liturgy, even some theological beliefs, which is why the murder occurs at a church social event. But now I have revived it. I've read the seventeen completed chapters, made some changes, altered the story here and there, and am ready to plunge in again. It was in better shape than I had supposed all these months. Yesterday I wrote a few pages, my first writing since June, and I am very glad that it went well. I should finish the book this spring.
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