People often ask me about my process for writing books. It’s really pretty simple. I start at the beginning and write to the end, finding out what’s going to happen as I go along. I do NOT outline. I met outlining in Mrs. Watkins’s sixth grade geography class. I hated outlining then, and nothing that has happened to me in the intervening decades has changed my mind about that. Oh, there’s one more thing. Since I write murder mysteries, I usually start with someone dead and spend the rest of the book trying to figure out who did it and how come. Easy peasy, right? Well, not exactly.

I kicked Joanna #22 off in my usual manner—with someone finding a dead body. Since there’s a bullet in the back of his skull, clearly the he’s the victim of a homicide, but he doesn’t have a name yet though because the victim has yet to be identified. That’s what I meant when I mentioned out learning things as I go along, see above paragraph. To begin with, I was pretty sure the dead guy was also a bad guy. Now that I’m 10,299 words (I count the words every day) into this as yet unnamed book, I’ve changed my mind about that. At this point I’m pretty sure the dead guy was actually a good guy. I’m also reasonably sure about who’s responsible for his death although I can’t say that definitively, either, because I’ve yet to meet that particular individual.

You can chalk my being able to make changes like that along the way to my taking a page out of the Evie Busk Handbook of Sage Advice which reads as follows: A wise man changes his mind. A fool never does. Changing my mind about a character is something I’ve had to do on any number of occasions over the course of forty-plus years of writing close to seventy books. Ditto for discovering along the way that the person I originally thought was the killer didn’t do it. In one instance, I didn’t come to that surprise realization until two chapters from the end of the story. Believe me, it’s a whole lot easier to do that EARLY in a book than it is at the last minute.

Years ago I saw a production of August Wilson’s play, Two Trains Running. The central idea of the play is there are two trains running, one going south and one going north. If you don’t happen to like what’s going on at your end of the track, then get on board a train headed in the opposite direction.

Early on in writing this book I realized that the storyline was feeling like pretty thin gruel. Then, overnight one night, I realized there was a second storyline unfolding in Joanna Brady’s life at the same time, one that’s running parallel to the other one. Now though, with both stories chugging along in the right direction, I’m happy to be along for the ride.

As for why the book is still unnamed? So far suitable title hasn’t presented itself. I trust that will happen. After all, it’s always done so before.

Joanna #22 is currently at the 10% mark. As for the other 90%? Again, as Evie would say, if it is to be it is up to me, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I should probably stop working on the blog and go back do working on the book. The first thing I need to do on that score is to bone up on my Southern California geography. So no, I’m not off to see the Wizard. Instead I’m going spend some time communing with Apple Maps.