Writing from a woman’s point of view is interesting—and challenging. I finished a draft of a “novel novel”(working title Blade) two or three years ago with a woman protagonist. For some reason it was easier to depict her as a very tough loner, emotionally guarded, which makes me wonder about the difficulty of writing well from the point of view of women in healthy relationships. My next challenge.
The book was supposed to be a break from crime novels but somehow the characters kept straying. I’m not sure the book was entirely successful though it certainly had its moments. It hasn’t been published as I’m still not sure what I think of it. I should take it out, reread it, and see if it passes the test of time. It did include some characters I grew very fond of, including a jovial waitress in a town a lot like Eastport, a creepy hotel clerk, a smarmy real estate salesman. Once you’ve invented these characters, it’s hard to abandon them. After all, they are living, breathing people.
In PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake novel, Brandon gets a full dose of bad guys. A brawl in a funeral home introduces him to Joel Fuller, a sociopathic hustler. Fuller is fresh out of jail and determined to take Brandon out—after Fuller and his sidekick Kelvin shake him down.
Rocky isn’t a tough guy. He’s a skinny little kid with crooked glasses, and he shouldn’t be homeless in Portland, Maine. When McMorrow and Roxanne pluck him from under the stomping feet of a gang of street kids, Rocky latches onto McMorrow–and drags him into a world of murder, both old and new. Why is McMorrow protecting Rocky? The cops want to know. Why is Rocky on the run? McMorrow wants to know. Why does death follow in Rocky’s wake? Jack and Roxanne need to find out before they’re added to the list. 
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Well, you just answered all the questions from my last post, about the creative process
Which I found interesting, as usual.
Well, thank you! When I was finished King’s Gunslinger series (after reading each book obsessively one summer) I read everything I could get my hands on about the series. He wrote about the fact that it took him 20 years to finish because he kept putting it away in a trunk and writing other books, like Carrie and The Stand, but all the while those characters in that trunk were banging to be let out. Some of them made it into other books, in fact. He describes the process very similarly to what you’ve written.
He also describes not really having a total plan as to where his books will go. To simplify it a lot, he finds as he starts writing that the characters seem to direct him. I’m curious, how much of what will happen in your plot do you plan ahead of time? Do you write a tentative outline for your novels? Or is it a more organic process. I would imagine that with mysteries you have to plan ahead much more carefully, so that you can plant evidence and clues along the way. I wonder if different genres follow different rules. My husband and I were talking about this over margaritas last night. ( I’m sure it was a mostly lucid conversation:) He maintains that memoirs should be a different process, since the author just needs to have interesting stories to tell and a good story-telling style. But after reading some really good ones, like those by David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, and Alexandra Fuller, as well as some fairly crummy ones, like Ellen Degeneres’, I think that those authors need to follow the same process. Yes, they are not creating a plot from their imaginations, but they still have to be able to weave a story with character, conflict, climax, etc…and use all the tools a fiction author has at his disposal to make the story read like a narrative…and the .same is true for non-fiction. When I read “John Adams” only very very occasionally was I aware as a reader that I was not reading a narrative with John and Abigail as the heroes and Hamilton and Jefferson as protagonists. So, I’m just curious from the reader’s point-of-view. How much variety do you think there is among “good” writers in the process? I mean, aside from the obvious differences like where you write.
I’m just throwing this out there. Maybe you could just direct me towards something to read that discusses the writing process for writers.
By the way, I sent the Maine book to my mother for Christmas and she loves it.
Andrea
Oops, Hamilton and Jefferson were antagonists. I blame my mistake on the frozen mudslide. I got a Magic Bullet for Christmas and so far have limited my experiments to frozen drinks