My blog this morning is short and to the point. I write both fiction and nonfiction. I will be publishing my 11th book in 2025. It is a crime novel of sorts. By that, I mean it is more about the characters than the actual crime. My goal was to delve deeply into the primary characters. The first chapter of “The Devil Came to Visit” is subtitled “Who, What, Why and When.” The crime is only exposed once we know the background of the primary players in great detail. It’s risky because I would have failed if I failed to capture the reader’s interest in the characters and the role they will play as the story unfolds. So, for the past eight months, I have written and rewritten what each character looks like, where they are from, and every bit of information that defines them without hopefully becoming boring.
I spent four decades as a Producer, Writer, and Director in motion pictures and network television documentaries. Those medium are far different than creating a novel. I was used to authoring screenplays and TV documentary scripts. Once retired, I turned to writing fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction was easier because what I was writing was all about research first, writing second. Writing fiction came from my imagination and proved to be a major learning curve. It is from my movies that I quickly learned it was all about the characters. If they were not properly developed and directed, there was a good chance you had a bad movie on your hands. So, as a fiction author, I am all about character, character, character. When the novel is published in 2025, reader’s will decide if I achieved my goal.