• To not get wound around my own axles, via the love of research, enthusiasm for the plot, allowing the characters to do the writing, and fingers that won’t stop typing. In the end, all the above result in too much exposition (see #3) and side plots that appear out of nowhere, which need to be wrestled in or out depending on their value to the plot. As for those fingers that just keep typing, I need to keep them curbed, especially on dialogue. Too often, my dialogue requires pruning as though I were nibbling at centuries-old grapevines, hoping to produce an excellent vintage.

Or maybe I should get wound in my axles, maybe the ultimate quality of the story is a composite of all these attributes, and for me, guilty of all three, the editing process results in a more textured tale. Still, I would like to simplify my process. I am eternally jealous of all of you who can write multiple books per year across multiple series, while I untangle the string wound around my bike spokes.

• To add more of the natural world. I always feel like I have too many trees, bushes, clouds, etc., roaming around in my books. But maybe it is not the number but the proclivity I have to write chestnut tree when I should be describing the hand-like leaves through which the sun dapples the ground? What color is the ground? Is it dusty, gravelly, filled with worn footfalls? How does fire dance other than leap, explode, cavort, or crawl? I feel that I need to make the visual world more experiential, especially with those pesky chestnut trees that succumbed to disease after my books take place. But then there is #3 below.

• To watch for telling signs of telling. I worry that, since the Wanee books are told from Cora’s point of view, it is too easy to fall into telling. Should I add another point-of-view? Or is there another, more dynamic way to include action that happens off-stage, without having the observer relate it to the protagonist, and risk descending into telling? And what about setting the stage for a book when a few things need to be “told” to bring the reader up to date? What about that? It can be deucedly hard to avoid telling it. Though, in general, I think I do a pretty good job making it more observational than tell-y.

• To plot more, rewrite less. As if. My brain tumbles out the story in a riot of words, leaving me to fix it all later. Because of this, my current process requires me to edit, edit again, edit some more, then more, possibly even more, then smooth, smooth, smooth. Then recheck every word that looks inappropriate for the period (See #5), even though I know I checked them before. Not to mention, checking and rechecking the dates historical items came into use, like telephones, arc lights, batteries for telegraphing and clothing – OMG. I suspect that if I took laborious notes, indexed them to their locations in the book, and added comments for each, I could save myself considerable editing. Or I can just write with abandon and make myself crazy. Is it too late for me to change? Probably, but I do have more plot notes for my upcoming book than usual. Does that count?

• To figure out how best to use AI. From Grammarly to Autocrit, to well everywhere these days, AI is happy to judge and make suggestions about your plot, characters, and even evaluate your dialogue for appropriateness to the 1870s, as though you hadn’t done the research before using a word, phrase or cadence. Idioms can be weirdly tricky; Shakespeare’s can sound new and something like ‘it takes one to know one’ old, when the reverse is true. One AI critique noted that, on occasion, my characters’ phrasing is too modern. How does it know? Does it know every word and phrase used across the United States in the 1870s? I would say no since each word AI deemed anachronistic was used in the 1870s, but it missed a few that weren’t, which I caught on my gazillionth read. My favorite suggestion to date is an AI-generated list of overused words. So far, these oft-used words have been characters’ names and Mr. and Miss/Mrs. in a time when this was the proper form of address.

Can AI be helpful? Yes. It can, especially regarding grammar and finding pesky misspellings, though AI recently missed a homonym that had it not been caught by a human would have embarrassed me forever. Meaning, AI doesn’t replace edit, edit again, edit some more, then more, possibly even more, then smooth, smooth, smooth, but it does have a place.

Free resolution:

• To write a new standalone thriller, because I miss the thrills. I love writing thrillers with a little romance (Saving Calypso, Booth Island, Perfidia). I do. So why haven’t I written one in over four years? Now isn’t that just a fine and dandy question?

For more about D. Z. Church and her books, check out https://dzchurch.com.

I was reviewing all the emails I received touting how to advertise your Christmas romance, mystery, et cetera, while writing the Bodie Blue November newsletter about the dearth of Christmas Cards nowadays, when I tapped out the plot for a Christmas book in a flurry of inspiration. If you want to read the fragile ladder, you can find the newsletter at my website: https://dzchurch.com.

Now I can’t get the idea of it out of my head.

I have written plenty of books that tackle Christmas, well, okay, two. And tackle might be the wrong word. They are both thrillers in my Vietnam-era-based family saga of four books. The first book ends with Christmas mayhem as the Cooper family unravels. The second book starts with the heroine picking out a Christmas tree for her cousin’s family and ends with Nixon’s Christmas carpet bombing of Vietnam. The very bombings that produced the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Napalm Girl. So, not happy holiday Christmas stories, but good thrillers.

Along with the usual Christmas movies (White Christmas to Prancer), I have watched my share of Christmas rom-coms, even a few rom-com mysteries. I get the tropes. But I’m not that meet-cute kinda girl. Of course, my Christmas book wouldn’t have to have romance in it. But I’m leaning toward it being part of the Wanee series, where romance almost always sidles through the porch door into Countryman House.

Having read the police reports for the small town that inspired Wanee, I know there was a doozy of a murder one winter in the 1870s. I’d tell you who done it and why, but then, well, you’d know. Which is a problem for writers, I think. I know it is for me. You know how when you tell your plot to others, even your best friend or actual husband, they tip their head and purse their lips, deflating your rapture with your plot like an overblown balloon slipping from grandma’s lips. If the reveal is gone, then why bother?

Let’s presume I rely on the nasty little murder from the police report. I’d start the book in the hands of Cora’s slightly wafty domestic Ellie, bouncing with holiday spirit and see where it went. It makes me grin just thinking about it.

The problem is, I have another book I have been chomping at the bit to write since I started the Wanee series. And I want to write it first. Which means I need to sit down right now and start it so I have time to publish a Christmas book by next Christmas – I mean, like NOW!

Because I’m a messy writer, it takes months to clean up my drafts before they’re ready for anyone but me and the toilet paper dispenser. The fifth book in the Wanee series took this entire year; that’s a long time even for me. I wrote two Wanee books the year before. On the other hand, I’ve had a few distractions, like my mountain cabin being rebuilt for fire insurance, some health issues, and my cat passing away.

And the Wanee series was designed to have only three mysteries per year because I hate series where someone dies every other day. I already have three planned for 1877, one published, one readying for spring, and the book I promised myself I’d write. With a Christmas book added, I count four murders in 1877. Here’s a thought: Maybe early 1878 was a wild time for the Women’s Christian Temperance movement. I could check my research.

But I am truly eager to write the WTCU book. I’ve wanted to tackle the WTCU ever since I had to take the El in Chicago from Evanston, home of the WTCU, to the Howard Street Station to buy wine. I was a graduate student at Medill School of Journalism and needed inspiration for late-night assignments. Yes, that is my excuse.

And I am dying to delve into the writings of Anne Wittenmyer and Frances Willard. They were the very beginning of the beginning of the women’s rights movement. And they were something. Oh, my, yes, indeed!

You see my problem, right? A piffle of a Christmas book based on a rather foul murder, or women marching through the streets of Wanee in sashes and boaters while a body moulders undiscovered. Come on?

It’s a plight. Christmas or the WTCU? If you have an opinion, let me know. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday and much good food.

Find out about me and my books at https://dzchurch.com. Or just start reading about the Cooper family with “Dead Legend,” and Cora Countryman and friends with “Unbecoming a Lady.”

From the first Thanksgiving to this…there is magic in our past, and in families who share their stories across that long linen-covered table filled with the food of our nation. As Americans, we often mourn the loss of the nuclear family, but that loss is as old as this country. Those who came first left the safety of a more settled world for the new. And boom! (That’s my version of a nuclear explosion.) They didn’t all stay put; some moved, east to west century after century, connecting, shifting and moving on.

The magic that links us is in the details.

My husband’s family (both sides) came to America shortly after the Mayflower landed. You can call them early adopters, or people seeking religious freedom, either works. Though one group was from the Netherlands and the other from Great Britain, they both left the Netherlands for Massachusetts on the same boat. I have visions of them, one group in their wooden shoes and pointy white hats, the other in their black-and-white Puritan best, huddled in steerage, having a golly-really conversation about Puritanism. Neither group took to it. Those from England stayed in the Bay Colonies before heading south to Rhode Island, then to New Jersey, and finally to Pennsylvania.

The Nederlanders migrated to what became Johnson County, Indiana, where they farmed and became Presbyterians, producing many ministers. Then, almost three hundred years later, the offspring of these immigrants met in Syria, one as a missionary, the other teaching, and, well. Think of the time they could have saved if the two families had married into each other on the way to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

More magic

My father’s mother’s family were Cumberland gappers and verified DARers (yes, they’re in the book). The Alsace-Lorrainian farmers on the other side arrived in the 1830s. Reports handed down through the family drum, which has proven quite accurate, and, with a family bible as evidence, claim that one of those pesky people who keep marrying into families (you know the sort) also hung out in Johnson County, Indiana and married into my father’s line.

If the evidentiary bible is correct, that family sported a Low Countries surname, not dissimilar to that of my husband’s mother’s family.

So, did my husband’s relatives and mine coffee clatch back in Johnson County before each packed up and moved further west? My family to Illinois (is that really west?), my husband’s to Oregon, back when, though a state, it was pretty frontier-ish.

Ruminate on this: How do two people, one from Oregon and one from Pennsylvania, whose families shared passage on the same boat to the New World in the 1600s, end up in Syria about a day after Lawrence of Arabia left and marry each other? And how does their offspring end up marrying a woman in California whose family roosted in Johnson County, Indiana, in the 1800s, when one was born on the East Coast and the other in Illinois?

Gabble away over your turkey

You might discover connections to your past that lead to a future. I urge you to remember, as you write your next tale, nothing is too weird or coincidental when it comes to a family’s past (translation: the duck might be somebody’s uncle).

Happy Thanksgiving. Lots of Turkey. And hugs to all.

Update: For those of you who worried about my lost file. I found it!!!!!! And restored it!!!!! And the book, ‘The Orleans Lady’, is being beta-read right now!!!!

For more about me and my books, go to https://dzchurch.com, where you can sign up for my newsletter and find juicy facts about all my books, including The Wanee Mysteries and The Cooper Quartet. You might even find yourself clicking through to buy one or two, or, heck, all.

I lost a file.

I’m of course not talking about any file. I’m talking about the file, the one where you’ve gotten the last draft almost exactly where you want it. You know, sage, wise, fast-paced, thrilling, the bad guys are really bad, the good guys are in character. In short, if your readers are paying attention, they know who did it and what’s going on. Pride fills you; you make a note that bliss has been reached.

Then, the file is gone. Without a trace. A weird sort of calm sets in. You can handle this. Did I misfile it, like accidentally drop it into another folder? You search the file name through every blasted folder in your writing directory. Then the whole computer. Nope, it’s gone.

You check your backup. Nope. Gone. I mean, really, how can that even happen? What is the backup for if not to backup? What is the trash bin for, if not to collect deleted files and accidentally deleted ones? Reason takes flight. You begin to pant like Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters. You know how dangerous this is; people faint. Remember the kids’ game? So you take a breath.

Now, I’m no amateur at finding files. In my day, I ran a proposal center that produced pages and pages of explicit, required text. Four proposal managers and a host of support people kept this churning. Files went missing. I had an assistant who could locate most files, even the ones you didn’t want unearthed. But when we arrived one day at 5 am, a vast swath of a proposal due to ship in two days had gone walkabout, in the Aboriginal sense. Gone, nowhere, unfindable, outta here. People were waiting to edit, print, and collate it. I’m talking millions and millions of dollars on the line.

We cocked our heads in opposite directions at near the exact moment. The last person in the file was our most precise and careful proposal manager, who was assisting the proposal manager in charge because she was on the verge of hysteria. You know the look after a while. I opened our rather massive file base, my assistant over my shoulder, and tried to think like a man. We found the files squirreled away in a directory in his sector, not the proposal sector, marked XXXX.

The moment he waltzed in, I walked into his office and uttered something akin to #$^%& were you thinking? His answer? “They’re in the proposal files.” I challenged him to find them. He couldn’t. Turns out, dog-tired, he had cleaned up a bit … you know how that goes, slide the files into the wrong sector, log out, go home at 4 am, get a shave and grab some food, come back at 10. What a piker.

So, you’d think I could handle losing a file. But no. I lost my tiny little mind. Thinking, thinking. If I accidentally deleted it and it wasn’t in the trash bin, might it not magically appear if I went back in time? I went to OneDrive and ordered my files restored to one day before the file took a hike. Don’t do this. Ever. Well, not ever, it can be beneficial.

When I checked the restore, the file wasn’t there, nor were any of the other changes I’d made in the last three days, all wiped out in my madness. Luckily, it was mostly the Bodie Blue Books newsletter (a copy of which I’d sent to my BBB partner) and sales reporting (which was recoverable).

Still, I thought, who cares? I’d used my ReMarkable for the final run-through and had my handwritten edits; all I had to do was open my unedited file and make those changes again.

Sigh. The notes were there yesterday, not today. Why, because the OneDrive restore resets the ReMarkable, wiping out all my edits. After considering several implements with which to slit my wrists, I had this major cool idea. What if I restored the OneDrive to yesterday?

We’ll see how that turns out. It’s not like I lost the whole book. Right?

For now, I await the recovery of my OneDrive files, hoping the notes on my ReMarkable magically reappear. If not, well, you know how that goes.

Let this be a lesson to you. Do not be me!

Discover more about D.Z. Church and the Wanee Mysteries, The Cooper Vietnam Era Quartet and my thrillers: Saving Calypso, Booth Island and Perfidia at https://dzchurch.com

There are some strange pitfalls for those of us who write by the seat of our pants. And pantsers come in all sorts of varieties. There are those who start out knowing the beginning and end. Those who have specific emotions and adventures they want to tell. Those who do a brief outline, including chapters and chapter headings as hints. So, as you can see, a wide, wide variety of pants are involved.

I fall into the I know the mystery in the book, where I want my characters in the end, what I want to put them through, and, a real plus, I know what they were up to and how they were relating with each other at the end of the preceding book. Since I do not write detective stories, no one walks into my characters’ offices to hire one or the other or calls over the phone (especially since the telephone has just been invented).

Do you know how much I love The Rockford Files? Of course, that may be an enduring affair with James Garner, whom I first saw at the drive-in leaning on a Quonset hut in a movie that I was too young to see. The drive-in showed the kid-friendly movies first, then the adult movies. I never could sleep through the second feature, unlike my older sister, who could zonk out pretty much anywhere. All of which is off topic, but maybe not. When writing the first draft, which is really the world’s longest synopsis/outline, I distract easily. Especially when a new character pops into the tale, or when I find the perfect historical nemesis to worry my hero(ine), like James Garner in that movie, though I think Marlon Brando was the star.

Imagine then, the distractions when you are writing a historical mystery/adventure taking place on a Mississippi riverboat in 1877. So many possibilities for action, adventure, scoundrels and growing passion. Oh, my!

I have the perfect beginning, three riverboat tickets to find a missing person, and two men wooing the same woman (one believing he is in the lead), that being the ending to the preceding book. And what I hope is the perfect ending. Though, to be honest, I am still struggling because the ending as envisioned will cause upheaval in my little town of Wanee, not to mention complicating the rest of the series. Though I admit to being eager to give this particular complication a keen run for years.

I thought I had the tale in hand until I discovered a wonderful, magical, evil, talented man who became the first gang boss in Chicago. One with ties to New Orleans. The whole book went south, which was good since the boat was on its way to New Orleans.  By south, I mean, it was suddenly invigorated in unanticipated ways, which required rewiring some of the plot, then, while seeking adversaries to the boss, another historical discovery added yet more possibilities and whimsy.

Which means the passengers have been meandering toward the ending I wrote months ago. So long ago that the text disappeared from the end of my working draft, where I drape things like that. You know those bits and pieces that fit somewhere. Or, in this case, the destination for the entire book, like Memphis for my Waneean passengers, if they make it that far. I found it in an archived draft from last month, when it suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t hang the ending off the paragraph I was writing, the book would never end. 

Now, part of the problem is that I enjoy my Waneeans, their characters, and their conniptions, and part of it is that the ending is a conundrum, because of what it means for the series in the future. As for the length, the Cora Countryman books average 84,500 words. The new one? Well, it sits at 90,000, meaning I have some trimming to do. Which, as any pantser knows, is what the second, third, fourth, fifth — draft is all about.

So, Sayonara for now (hint, hint).

Find out more about me at: https://dzchurch.com.