Hello, Ladies ~

Hi, my name is Kimila, and I’m a “dark and twisty” writer. So, what on earth possessed me to think I could write a middle-grade fantasy book? Well, I’m sure you all like me have no control over your imaginations!

My husband and I used to camp with family every year on Memorial Day Weekend, rain or shine, at Sunset Bay Park on the Southern Oregon coast, just south of Charleston. The campground is nestled in a beautiful woody setting, and the bay is just a short walk away. With the tree line as a backdrop, the bay is rimmed with towering bluffs. Rock formations at the bottom of the bluffs are dotted with tide pools filled with all manner of sea creatures.

But my favorite part of this beautiful spot is the island that sits at the mouth of the bay. From the moment I saw it, I thought the landmass looked like a pirate ship frozen in time. I should’ve said above that I have an “overactive” imagination!

Every time I visited the bay and walked the sandy beach, I would talk to the island as if it were a pirate ship. Comments like: “Oh, the stories you could tell.” “What year are you from?” “Were there pirates in the area in the 18^th century?”

My sister, Mona, thought I was crazy when I said, “Someday, I’m going to write a kids’ book about three young friends who go to the island and wake up on a pirate ship.”

And hence the idea for “Midnight Sail” was born. As with any book idea, I dropped into the rabbit hole of research. The first thing I decided was to write this book under the pseudonym D. J. Henson to honor my son Derrick, who passed away. And of course, I knew I would include an autistic character among the three eleven-year-old friends. It took a few days of noodling, but I finally came up with my three characters. Now I have Cyrus, my protagonist, Alex, the brains of the group, and Jaxyn, the girl of logic.

I’ve compiled mounds of printed research about pirates sailing the Pacific Ocean in 1757, buried treasure, and time travel. I know I can’t bring my “dark and twisty” creativity to this book, so I made a list of “no-nos” to keep me from accidentally adding them to my manuscript.

My favorite writing style is three points of view, and it didn’t occur to me that I should research whether three POVs are acceptable for a middle-grade fantasy book. I also didn’t consider that a POV from a law-enforcement character who interacts with the missing kids’ moms might not fit within the parameters of this type of book.

But as luck would have it, I spent last weekend with Paty Jager, who stayed in my RV with me while we worked at the NIWA book booth at the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest. As you can imagine, during our downtime, Paty and I enjoyed talking about writing and our current projects.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to have Paty as your sounding board, you’re missing out. She listens, then asks great questions, weighs the answers, and … when you see a certain look cross her face, you know she’s about to offer valuable insight about your work in progress.

Paty shared her concern about me using the three POVs, and I countered with other children’s books I’ve read that use multiple POVs. When the conversation became about my law-enforcement character POV and the moms being front and center in those chapters, Paty carefully explained why she didn’t think kids would enjoy reading those chapters.

“Your middle-school readers want to go on the adventure by themselves,” Paty said. “And the characters, along with the readers, will assume the moms are worried, so I don’t think you need to show that in your book.”

Paty encouraged me to keep the pirate chapters, but to use the POV of a teenage pirate instead of the ship’s adult captain.

I’m sure the look on my face suggested I wasn’t thrilled with her assessment. I did say I would reconsider the law-enforcement POV and the addition of the moms. I promised I would do some more research into using three POVs in this genre.

As we worked the rest of the weekend, I tried to keep the idea that I would now have to rework and rewrite my almost-finished manuscript. One of the things I absolutely love about my creative brain is that it enjoys working a problem. With the distraction of selling books, I turned over this manuscript’s challenges to my subconscious, and by the time I woke up Monday morning … I knew what I needed to do.

First, I researched whether using three POVs in this book would be a good idea. To my surprise and relief, I found several articles saying this approach to telling the story is acceptable. I printed off some important guidelines and tackled my next hurdle: rewriting the law-enforcement POV chapters and using what I’d learned in my internet search to strengthen Cyrus’ chapters; then I focused on creating a new voice for the pirate chapters.

Drum roll please … I worked non-stop (a nasty coughing cold sidelined me to the couch) all week on rewrites, restructuring, and finished “Midnight Sail” yesterday afternoon. I celebrated for a few minutes, but know the real work begins as I do my first round of edits.

As I continue to navigate the uncharted waters of writing my middle-grade fantasy series and venture into the mystery genre with Sapphire Stone Mysteries, I won’t hesitate to run a concern by Paty. I can’t promise to be thrilled if my story ideas or writing style are questioned … but I do promise to listen and let my creative brain solve the problem.

Happy Writing ~ Kimila

When I write I have a set of practices that have evolved over the years, habits that are so automatic that I don’t really think about them. I just follow them. One of the simplest ones is beginning with a blank sheet without setting up a standard publishing format—double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt., title set one-third space down the page, and more. I just start typing regardless of what I know the manuscript should look like. 

And then comes editing. I do edit as I go along, correcting misspellings, poor sentence construction, misplaced modifiers, dangling particles, incomplete thoughts, and digressions. The last are the most obvious parts to get close attention at every stage—in the first typing of every brilliant thought (that dims as I progress through the sentence) and the first read-through (which usually has me gnashing my teeth and cringing in embarrassment). When I print out a draft I’m free with my pen—crossing out long sentences, half of a series of paragraphs, all those darlings we’re supposed to kill. 

But something has changed with this book. I’ve never had trouble blackening the majority of a paragraph or even a few pages and hitting delete, though I’m sad to see the fervid description of a newly arrived secondary character disappear. But I’ve always held to the belief that if it doesn’t belong there, wherever that is, it doesn’t belong anywhere. I’m not going to write a paragraph or a scene to fit it in, which in my view will just throw off another part of the story. In effect I accept that the material in question is throwing things off and it’s better to get rid of it. So I delete.

Only this time things are different. I’m copying first and saving to a separate document. Hmm. I didn’t plan to do this; I just found myself doing it. As I go along, pulling out passages that don’t really work no matter how much I like them, I’m shortening what I’ve got, but staying more tightly focused on the narrative. This isn’t a cozy or traditional mystery, so I have to pay attention to sections that are a little (or a lot) different from what I’m used to writing. And committed to this new genre, which seems like psychological suspense, I have less trouble erasing, deleting, removing. So why am I saving these rejections?

I don’t have an answer to that question, but I did have a surprise—for me at least. After several excisions of longish paragraphs, some of which I particularly liked and thought useful if not quite right where they were, I took a careful look at all of them, reading down the chunks of language written at different times and in different moods and for different purposes—description, character development, transitions, plotting. And the surprise was this—they all fit together. I don’t mean they all demonstrated my personal writing style, my quirks and particular interests in the details that reveal character. I mean in that both tone and sequence they made a single body of narrative with some of the connective tissue missing. When I returned to the main work in progress, I didn’t find anything missing. I hadn’t removed anything crucial. Yes, there are passages that need to be developed, but there are no obvious gaps. So what’s happening?

Apparently I’m writing two novels at once—two novels with the same set of characters and location, but different in tone and tension: a psychological suspense and a traditional mystery.

This is weird. The discovery suggests I have the traditional format so deep in my thinking that it’s going to pop up no matter what, and I have to learn to silence it.

This revelation has me wondering about all the passages I’ve trashed while writing, going back to the early 1990s and my efforts to write an acceptable, publishable first mystery. Murder in Mellingham began with a very different opening, and I remember writing numerous first chapters, each one affixed before the existing one until I had three opening chapters over forty pages and no idea what I was doing. Eventually I figured it out, but now I think about all those pages (and all those floppies) lost forever. I don’t know if I’m the only one who cuts and saves and discovers gold in the leavings, but now I have to push myself to focus on the main narrative—the one with bones and sinew and connective tissue and, I hope, coherence. It’s far from finished, so the struggle will continue.

Meanwhile, in the shadows (on another page on my computer) pulses a half-conscious tale that might or might not get enough connective tissue to become a finished traditional mystery. It’s weird. 

By donalee Moulton

• 235 ml (1 cup) light cream
• 1 cinnamon stick or a sprinkle of ground cinnamon
• A sprinkle of nutmeg
• 3 egg yolks
• 235 ml (1 cup) sherry or brandy
• 30 g (2 tablespoons) sugar
  
  • Bring the cream slowly to a simmer. Add the spices. Stir regularly.
  • Gently beat the egg yolks and add slowly to the mixture. Continue stirring to avoid curdling.
  • Pour in the alcohol and add the sugar. Simmer the mixture but avoid bringing it to a boil.
  • Pour into cups, sit back, inhale the delicious aroma, and savour the moment. With a good book, of course