How do you start a book?

I’m in the process of working on the plot for my fifth Greg McKenzie mystery. So far it has been mostly ideas stirring around in my brain. That’s been going slowly, I suppose, since the brain deteriorates with age. Doesn’t it? To paraphrase an old folk song, "the old gray matter, she ain't what she used to be."

Oddly enough, the first idea out of the box did not deal with character or setting or plot action. Well, setting, in one of its narrow aspects. We're talking about time. The series has been moving at a leisurely pace through the calendar. Designed to Kill took place at the first of November, Deadly Illusions followed with the first blush of spring (does spring really blush?), and The Marathon Murders sweated out the steamy days of August. So, I reasoned, the next adventure should occur at Christmastime.

Wouldn’t you know, in Greg years, it’s still 2004. If I could do that, I wouldn’t be quite 80 yet.

Okay, back to the plot. As all my fans (both of them) know, I am a seat-of-the-pants plotter. I don’t outline the whole story in advance. I take a basic idea, brief my characters on it, and shove them out the door. Heck, why should I do all the work?

The problem is I have to come up with more characters than Greg and Jill McKenzie, my indefatigable pair of senior sleuths. That’s where the fun begins.

With a one-paragraph plot summary on paper, I quickly came up with job descriptions for four possible bad guys. And just as quickly I spotted the one who really “did it.” I started out by giving him an age, then began to delve into his background. What about his early life would make him an interesting character? How did he become what he is today?

Okay, this is a mystery, and I’m not giving you any clues. I did a lot of Googling and bounced around the Internet quite a bit to track him down. I even used one site to pick his name. Hmmm, come to think of it, when I first began searching stuff online, Yahoo was the big thing. But you don’t hear of people Yahooing. They’ve been sort of left in the dust, haven’t they?

The subject of the plot is not one in which I’m particularly well versed, so I also searched about for some basic information on the business. I’ll give you a little hint there. It concerns professional sports. I decided my best bet to start my research in that field would be with a TV sportscaster. Interviewing one of the local guys will be my next step in the process.

I haven’t decided how Christmas will fit into the plot, but I’m sure Greg and Jill will be able to handle that. They’ve carried the day through four books so far. I have unlimited faith in them.

Sometimes I start a book before I’m ready with a full-blown plot by sitting at the computer and writing a first page. It may not be the same first page I end up with, but it gets the window open and the curtains blowing. I’m close to that point now. I’d better wrap this up and get me a cup of hot coffee. I think I here the Muse plodding up the stairs.

Call me curmudgeon (but don't be nasty)

I suppose it’s my time to act curmudgeonly. I recently read a mystery that has been highly praised by some big-name authors. The main character is quite well drawn and is an interesting mix of tenacious cop heavily flawed by fate and a highly abrasive manner.

He has some serious medical problems that are described at great length. Ditto his personal problems with some ladies. Maybe I’m too jaded, but for me all the personal introspection and excess police department rivalry slow the story and impede the progress of the mystery. Admittedly his illness ties in with the plot, but at times it seems to weigh it down as if tied to a concrete block.

There’s also the tendency to over-describe the settings. I can do without knowing about every knick-knack that fills a room, whether it be in a home, a bar, or an office. I like to throw in occasional scenes in restaurants and other locales that add color to the story, but I get the feeling this book overdid it. It’s not alone, I hasten to add.

As I indicated, I readily concede to being a bit of a curmudgeon here, but I’m a fan of the faster-paced mystery. My style is to keep the extraneous stuff to a minimum and keep the action on target.

Perhaps it would be better to call this book a character study more than a mystery. My problem is that though I felt sympathy for the cop, he was too harsh to enjoy a score much above a 2.5 on the Likability Scale. His determination to get to the bottom of the crime was admirable, and of course he made it by the end of the story, but his penchant for laying waste to the landscape left scant room for endearment.

I like my protagonists to be flawed. That’s what makes them interesting and believable. But this guy carried a chip on his shoulder the size of a two-by-four. And one other thing. The “f” word was thrown around like a ping-pong ball bouncing about the table. That’s one of my pet peeves. Sure, some cops cuss like sailors. Some sailors cuss like cops. But if you’re not going to tell me every other word they use on a regular basis, why dwell on this one? Use it once or twice and I know it’s in their lexicon. More than that it’s gratuitous trash.

Okay, enough ranting. This, of course, is one reader’s opinion. Others, maybe most others, may differ. They will see the book from an entirely different perspective and probably give it five stars. I hope it does well.

One final note, my new Sid Chance mystery, The Surest Poison, due out in April, can now be pre-ordered from Barnes & Noble online.