{"id":3359,"date":"2025-10-24T06:05:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T13:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=3359"},"modified":"2025-10-23T12:02:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T19:02:57","slug":"this-weeks-window-on-my-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2025\/10\/24\/this-weeks-window-on-my-world\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Window on My World"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just got off the phone after doing a radio interview about The Girl From Devil\u2019s Lake<\/em> with Neil Scott for Recovery Radio Coast to Coast<\/em>. Allow me to say, I LOVE doing phoners. Unlike Zoom calls, phoners require zero hair and makeup attention, and they don\u2019t demand business attire, either. I can sit in a comfortable chair in my living room without having to worry about proper lighting, computer connections or whether or not my makeup looks blotchy. In other words, doing the interview was fun.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not fun is that the Mariners lost. On the other hand, the Seahawks won, so I guess it\u2019s time to file Monday night\u2019s games in the drawer marked: Win some; lose some.<\/p>\n

With interviews and events for the new book winding down, it\u2019s time for me to get back to writing. The next Ali book, Smoke and Mirrors<\/em>, is written and still hanging out in New York awaiting editing attention. That means it\u2019s time for me to turn back to J.P. Beaumont and get cracking on Fools Errand<\/em>.<\/p>\n

More than forty years after writing the first Beau book, I\u2019m happy always glad to be back in touch with J.P. et al. That\u2019s the only way I can find out what\u2019s been happening with him while my back has been turned. That does happen, you know. Characters go on with their lives between books, and when it\u2019s time to start a new book, they have to bring me up to date. In Beau\u2019s case, you\u2019ll be happy to know that Kyle, the grandson who moved in with Beau and Mel at the beginning of Den of Iniquity, is now a college graduate. Oh, and Kyle\u2019s mother has recently remarried. As of yet, no one has bothered cluing me in about what Kyle\u2019s dad has been up to.<\/p>\n

When I was writing Until Proven Guilty<\/em>, the first Beaumont book, I struggled for months to get the story to jell. It simply would not go. Finally though, in March of 1983, while my kids were at Camp Orkila for Spring Break and I was on my way to Portland to visit a friend, I decided to try writing the story through the detective\u2019s point of view. While the train was still pulling out of the King Street Station, I got out paper and pen and wrote the following words: “She might have been a cute kid once. That was hard to tell now. She was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moment I wrote that scene, I was on the back side of Seattle\u2019s Magnolia Bluff, walking around a crime scene in J.P. Beaumont\u2019s shoes, seeing what he saw, hearing what he said, hearing what he heard, and also\u2014even more importantly\u2014hearing what he was thinking. Beau and I have been author and character ever since, for 42 years and 26.1389 books. (By the way, I count the words every day, and that\u2019s what 12,653 words equal\u201413.89% of a 95,000-word book!)<\/p>\n

I started out writing Beau\u2019s books in the first person, and I\u2019ve stuck with it. When one of my more recent editors tried to move him into third person for Unfinished Business<\/em>, that turned out to be a complete dud. In first person he comes alive. In third person he\u2019s nothing but a paper-doll cardboard cutout.<\/p>\n

In writing Fools Errand<\/em>, however, I\u2019ve encountered a unique problem. Twinkle Winkleman, from Nothing to Lose<\/em> and Girls\u2019 Night Out<\/em>, shows up as a character in this story. In Nothing to Lose<\/em>, she stayed in her third-person lane and didn\u2019t cause any trouble. In Girls\u2019 Night Out<\/em>, however, she was first person all the way, and she\u2019s doing the same thing in Fools Errand<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In other words, not only is this story told in a first-person narrative, it\u2019s told in DUELING first-person narratives. Readers who are offended by the use of first-person in storytelling\u2014and I know there are some\u2014might want to give this book a pass.<\/p>\n

Here endeth this week’s blog. It\u2019s time for me to get back to the book. I have a deadline that\u2019s actively ticking, and I\u2019m eager to find out what happens next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just got off the phone after doing a radio interview about The Girl From Devil\u2019s Lake with Neil Scott for Recovery Radio Coast to Coast. Allow me to say, I LOVE doing phoners. Unlike Zoom calls, phoners require zero hair and makeup attention, and they don\u2019t demand business attire, either. I can sit in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[50,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-j-p-beaumont","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-Sb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}