OOPS. I MISCALCULATED
In January, I promised a new installment to the David Morrell Short Fiction Collection, an espionage e-story called “The Interrogator” that originally appeared in AGENTS OF TREACHERY, an anthology edited by legendary bookseller Otto Penzler.
It turns out my plans were greater than the time I had available.
This is what happened.
A week into the new year, I was steaming along on a new novel, accomplishing 1,500 words a day, which for me is a lot.
Simultaneously, I decided to write a very ambitious introduction to “The Interrogator,” explaining all the espionage training I received and recounting some of my adventures. This is a topic that I discussed in some of my teaching sessions, but I’ve never written about it.
The introduction got larger and larger.
And then my excellent editor John Schoenfelder (Mullholland Books at Little Brown) phoned one evening. We talked for 90 minutes. He told me how delighted he was about MURDER AS A FINE ART and suggested that I expand some of the plot points.
Expand? Almost always an editor wants trims, not expansions.
I love 1854 London so much that I had plenty of ideas for new material. So, the new novel came to a halt. The long introduction to “The Interrogator” came to a halt. I returned to Thomas De Quincey’s hair-raising ordeal in mid-Victorian London.
Three weeks later, the revisions on MURDER AS A FINE ART are complete. The book is 30 pages longer, and readers will feel even more that they are on those long-ago terrifying streets.
Meanwhile, in February, I’m giving talks in Chicago at the Love Is Murder conference and at the Amelia Island Book Festival in Florida (where Steve Berry and I will have an on-stage conversation).
As soon as I get back from Chicago, I’ll finish the espionage introduction for “The Interrogator” and hope definitely to have it available as an e-package the second week of February. Ha.
Then I’ll dive back into the new novel. But I expect that by then I’ll have more MURDER comments from John Schoenfelder, which will require a further interruption.
I guess my point is that some people might think that a novelist’s life is leisurely, but in fact the days can be hectic, and I never know from morning to morning which project I’ll be working on.
Believe me, I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t want any other vocation. But leisurely it ain’t.
MY SPIDER-MAN PROJECT
Here’s another example. In 2007, I wrote a two-part SPIDER-MAN comic book for Marvel Comics. The artist assigned to it is legendary Klaus Janson, who worked with Frank Miller on BATMAN: THE DARK NIGHT RETURNS, the project that rebooted modern interest in comics back in the 1980s.
Klaus has so many obligations with Marvel that he was able to work on my Spider-Man only now and then. One year passed. Two years passed. Three. Four. I decided that the project wasn’t going to happen.
Then last November I got an email from my Marvel editor Steve Wacker who said that Klaus was ready to get to work on my project but that he had an idea for adding more material.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, the suggestions were terrific, so I interrupted the new novel I was telling you about and dove back into Spider-Man. Klaus loved my revisions, and my editor said that all systems are go. I’ll post news here and on my Facebook page as soon as I have a pub date.
Ditto the pub date for MURDER AS A FINE ART.
Meanwhile I can’t wait to get back to the new novel, which features protective agents Cavanaugh and Jamie from THE PROTECTOR and THE NAKED EDGE (as well as three short stories). The topic is extremely controversial.
Whew.
MY FACEBOOK PAGE
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Happy Reading!
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photograph by Jennifer Esperanza, copyright 2002
www.jenniferesperanza.com
