Intro... Why?

The goal of this blog is follow my "adventures" while I take my latest novel, The Sapphire Sirens (SS) from a bunch of thoughts in my mind to a finished novel for Daw books that will be appearing in bookstores in Dec 2009.

My hope is that other (newer) writers my find this process interesting (or at least not totally boring) and perhaps even learn something from it. My thoughts will go directly from my mind (such as it) to this blog which means it may be a bit raw and slight visceral. But that's a good thing. Right?

I may on occasion break off on a slight rant on whatever I happen to be thinking about at the moment. But I will try to control myself and for instance not to complain about how myopic and partisan both major political parties in this country can be. (I get a bit tired of the we're always right and they are always wrong attitude...but I will control that I promise. All I will say is, change is good.)

Now on to the writing process:

My last novel The Flaxen Femme Fatale (FFF) is totally out of my hands now. Editing the proofs is done and it's a go to hit shelves in December of this year. The cover is on amazon and I am really pleased with it. That means its now time to take Sapphire out of the thinking stages to the writing stages.

My writing process is three fold with each of the folds having various levels. The first fold is the thinking part. Here is were I do a good deal of the work without every actually writing much down. The goal here is to decide the story I want to tell. This book will be the seventh with this characters so I why to take the story to new grounds while still keeping many of the features my readers have come to expect: the interplay between my PI Zach and his holographic assistant HARV, the whit, the social commentary, the pulp satire and of course the incredibly beautiful and intelligent woman Zach deals with on a daily basis.

I decided this story will have three parts (I'm big on threes) a simple mystery that Zach will solve. Turns out the mystery is test by the women of Atlantis they need somebody to solve a crime and wanted to make sure Zach was their man. They basically PI-nap Zach and take him to Atlantis where he must discover who tried to murder their leader. Zach wraps up this case only too learn this was just part of another test a much bigger test to see if HARV posed as a danger to society. As the women of Atlantis worry that a computer smarter than humans will spell the end of humanity. I can't say more without giving more away (obviously). It should be a fun story to tell.

Over the course of the past few months (as I made final edits to FFF) I've been formulating SS in my brain. Now that FFF is done and I am happy with the general ideas behind SS it's time to go to the second stage. That is what I am starting today. The outline. Yes, I outline. It's a rather complete outline with dialog and descriptions as they pop into my mind. My outlines are pretty complete road maps but I always allow room and time for detours. So while they are maps they are not etched in stone.

The final stage is the actual writing and then editing and more editing part. I am still a good two months away from this part. Luckily my outlines are usually so complete in many ways this is the easiest part.

More on the outlining later. I hope to ad something every other day as it will force me to keep the process going.