Last
summer, when I began writing the third Quill Gordon mystery, Not Death, But Love, I expected that it
would be finished and up on Amazon by the third quarter of this year. Instead,
it became available for pre-order this week.
The book
itself will be available May 27, after my editor, Lauren Wilkins, has given it
her toughest look and I’ve accommodated her concerns. That will surely improve
it considerably in the details, but it will still be essentially the same book
it is now in story outline and tone. I feel pretty good about it — better than
pretty good, actually — which scares me, because there’s a saying in publishing
that an author isn’t necessarily the best judge of his own work.
Nevertheless,
I’m going to trust my instincts until proved wrong. I think the plot and
characters are more complex, and, if I do say so myself, I feel I came up with
a pretty good confrontation-with-the-killer scene at the end. Let’s see if the
readers agree.
One Thing Leads to Another
This wasn’t
originally going to be the third book in the series, but things happened. In
2012 I was hired by a family foundation to write the family’s history. It’s one
of the best jobs I’ve ever had, because it paid generously and the work was
fascinating. By the end of it, I felt the long-deceased family members had come
alive inside my head and that I was able to convey a reasonably good sense of
them to the readers.
In the
course of that work, I came across several things that were a surprise to the
people who hired me. There were no terrible scandals, but there were lawsuits
and family schisms they hadn’t known about until I started digging. At the
time, I was simultaneously working on my second mystery, Wash Her Guilt Away, and at some point it occurred to me that a
family history with a deep secret — one worth killing to keep — could make the
basis for a good mystery.
One of my
plans for a future book had been a story centering on a controversial land-use
plan, something that would make use of the knowledge I picked up working as a
consultant for Wells Fargo Bank and The Home Depot more than a decade ago. I
decided to combine ideas to make the land development part of the family
history, and was off to the races.
In the Character’s Own Voice
When I was
working on the family history, I often lamented that none of the family members
had kept journals (at least none that had survived). I decided to give my
murder victim, a retired English teacher named Charlotte London, a journal. It
was originally supposed to provide a set of clues to complement those in the
family history, but it ended up being much more than that.
Simply put,
in the course of creating the journal sections, I discovered that Charlotte had
come to life most vividly, and, surprisingly to me, became one of the most
dominant and complex characters in the book. Not to be gooey, but I got to be
rather fond of her, and I’m hoping the book’s readers will, too.
The history
aspect carried through the rest of the book as well. I found myself wondering
about, and inventing, histories of various elements of the book. These included
the lake, the Italian restaurant where the characters ate dinner, the Rotary
Club, where community and political alliances were cemented, and the town where
the story was set. Such details, I feel, are what add richness to a book. They
can often be what a reader remembers long after he or she has forgotten
whodunit.
