It's Been a Long Time Coming

Yes, I know, my posting has been very sporadic since the inception of this blog. Though I've been a writer since I was nine years old, I have never been much of a journal-keeper. Recording the made-up stories inside my head always had much more appeal to me than recording real life.

My daughters, on the other hand, are rabid journalists, and they keep telling me that it's beautifully cathartic. So I'm going to try and do a little more here, see if they're right. Besides, I'm told that a web presence is going to be important to my book marketing soon, so I need to get into the habit. THIS blog will NOT be used as my professional web presence; this is for me and my friends.

So since last I posted here, I finished the novel I was working on. The Fallen's first draft was finished on the second of December, weighing in at 428 pages, approximately 76,000 words. It took me seven months to write. For those who don't already know, here's the description that's in my query letter:

Malcolm Grey is a professor of comparative religion at University of North Carolina in Charlotte. He's an incredibly normal guy, smart mouth sometimes, but well liked, lives a quiet bachelor life. At least that's his cover story. Actually, he's named Maltharius, and he's a Fallen Angel. He took Satan's side in the Big War, and was kicked out of Paradise when the war was lost. He spent the next few millennia as one of Satan's inner circle of reliable Evilmongers.

Then he had a change of heart, and asked to be let back into Heaven. God answer was a qualified "yes." He has now spent nearly a century on Earth, serving out a term of probation, living in a human body, and occasionally running "errands" for his angelic parole officers. Those "errands" include exorcisms, spying on his fellow Fallen and their minions, and doing good works, which is pretty hard, considering he was really good at being Bad. He has some of his old Fallen powers (he can shoot lightning from his hands, he can summon darkness, he can create homunculi, among other things), but mostly, he tries to downplay that and stay off Hell's Radar. All he wants to do is score enough brownie points to get back into Heaven, and he's getting tired of waiting.

Then he gets tangled up in a series of ritual murders being committed in the churches of Charlotte. At first he's a suspect, but then, once he's cleared, he gets called in as an expert. And oh, is he an expert: the rituals are summoning an old Hellside enemy of his. Meanwhile, he's also being stalked by one of his former minions who wants his old position in Satan's inner circle, and has decided that eliminating Mal is a good way to fast track that ambition. On top of that, he's trying to hook up with a lovely Math instructor at the college, with whom he shares a powerful mutual attraction.

All without blowing his cover, getting noticed by Hell, breaking his parole, or getting killed.

As of now, the finished first draft is sitting on top of my piano. It's going to be sitting there until the end of spring. I need to get some mental distance from it before I start revising.

Writing The Fallen was the culmination of a steep learning curve for me. I have written, gosh, seven novels in my life, counting this one. They were all terrible. The last one was in 1993, the year my father died. That novel was -- how do I put this gently? It sucked monster balls. It was painfully bad, and I trunked it. Okay, I didn't trunk it, I burned it. Yes, it sucked that badly. I spent the time between then and now writing non-fiction, writing short stuff, starting novels and not finishing them, writing online, and basically teaching myself the chops I obviously didn't have. I sold a few things, fiction and non-fiction, had some rejections, had some close calls, and basically learned a hell of a lot.

Do I have the chops now? Is this project the one that's going to be my breakthrough into larger markets? I think so. If it's not salable, it's still the closest I've ever been. I know it's a good story. I firmly believe that. The question is, are my writing skills enough to tell that good story.

We'll see.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the project I'm working on now.