The Mystery of Novel Writing

Note: Below is an excerpt of the blog I recently wrote for Printasia, the online bookstore. Be sure to follow the link to read it in its entirety.

This afternoon, while sitting on a folding chair on a footbridge along the Drinking Horse Mountain Trail, I wrote “The End” to my fourth novel in the Sean Stranahan detective series.  I’ve not yet settled on a title, though the setting is Montana’s Crazy Mountains and it’s hard to pass up using the word.  Lost in the Crazies, Deep In The Crazies, A Killing In The Crazies, any — the most apt would be the first, for I certainly was lost for a long time writing it. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, that writing a novel is like setting sail for a distant land. You can see as far as the horizon, and that will get you a few chapters in, and at a certain point you’ll smell land or a shorebird will perch on your mast, and you’ll be able to see the end and work toward it with a sense of excitement — say over the novel’s last four chapters. It’s those 250 or so pages in between when you’re lost at sea, sharks circling, and no stars to take a bearing, that separate those who wish to write novels from those who actually do.  READ THE REST HERE