Writing a First Draft

For years I read advice from novelists who said you should sit down and write your story straight to the end without pausing to look back. If you were unsure about something, keep plowing on and take care of it later. Finish the first draft, they said, then go back to check out questionable details, fine tune the language, and add all those exciting moments that would delight readers.

My mind never worked that way. Each time I sit down at the computer to continue a story, I read what I wrote last to set the mood. In the process, I'll spot some word or phrase I feel could sound better and make the change. Once in a while I'll go back all the way to the first page and read through to where I stopped. tweaking here and there. My chapters also get raked over the coals of my critique group, so that gets added into the mix. By the time I finish my first draft, it's actually a comprehensive revision.

After I started on my new WIP (work in progress, for the uninitiated), I thought about this method that others consider the best way to write. It was time to do some research I wasn't particularly interested in doing at the moment, so I decided to forget it for the present and keep on writing.

What happened? The next time I resumed work on the manuscript, I went back to the last chapter, read through it and...started making changes.

Old habits are hard to break. I've set a deadline of April 1 to finish the first draft, though, meaning I can't piddle around any longer. When I get through, I'll decide if it was worth the aggravation. Meanwhile, I'm plowing ahead like I knew what I was doing.

The Real Reason I Write Mysteries

I'm sometimes asked why I chose to write mysteries. I usually give the conventional answer, about how I like books that set the world right. In the end, the good guys win, the bad guys lose. That's true, but on further reflection, I realize it is hardly the whole story.

My fascination with crime detection goes back to when I was a kid. I was an eager reader of Dick Tracy in the comics. I read Big Little Books about the fictional detective. I listened to radio shows about FBI agents on the Gang Busters programs, and I was also a fan of the Junior G-Men radio broadcasts. I dutifully ordered their badges and whistles and spy gear.

I thought about being a lawman before that idea got crowded out by the prospect of being and airplane pilot. I wound up being neither. After becoming an adult and a journalist, I switched my reading interest to a mystery sub-genre, the spy story.

I followed the adventures of Helen MacInnes' protagonists and those of John le Carre and Len Deighton. I read books about the Russian KGB and the CIA. The first novel I wrote (discounting one I did while still in college) involved the KGB chasing down a defector working as a professor at Vanderbilt University. This was back in the sixties.

I suppose I had a secret ambition to become a spy in those days. I fancied myself as being rather nondescript and able to move about without attracting attention. It was the thought of traveling incognito and ferreting out secrets that excited my imagination. I kept up with the shadowy activities of Cold War operatives, and when the Soviet Union came apart about the time I retired, I started writing post-Cold War novels in earnest.

After a lack of success with several spy novels, I segued into the detective story. My first effort, Secret of the Scroll, became my first published book. I found I was writing about guys doing what I would have liked to do. I made my hero bigger than me, bolder than me, more confrontational. He still thought a lot like me, but more important, he was an action guy, doing exciting things.

That, it appears, is the real reason I turned to writing mysteries. I wanted to experience vicariously the sort of life I might have lived. I'm happy with what I've accomplished in a long career as a writer, but it's fun playing the role of criminal investigator in my mind.

Goodbye Weird, Wacky 2010

Weatherwise, and largely otherwise, the year 2010 is going out in a familiar pattern. Meaning no pattern at all. A couple of weeks ago we had snow and 7 degrees. Today it's been up almost to 70. Before the ball drops (or, in Nashville, the guitar) at midnight, storms will arrive, and the thermometer will begin its descent after daylight, ending up below freezing.

The TV folks spent most of their time this evening looking back at the wild and woolly year. Floods and tornadoes and earthquakes vied for attention with terrorists, spies who were never out in the cold but came in anyway, and, oh yes, Obamacare. Nashville had its share of water problems with a 1000-year flood in May. The other most-talked-about event was the election that considerably altered the landscape. For us in Tennessee, it brought a Republican governor, a Republican majority in the U.S. Congress (we already had two Republican senators), and a State Legislature with the largest Republican membership in history.

Personally, I'm not sure I can compete with any of the weirdness that marked the Year 2010. One of the more interesting experiences was attending the 60th anniversary reunion of my old Air National Guard unit that provided me the opportunity for a year's adventure in Korea during the war that hasn't officially ended yet. My fifth Greg McKenzie mystery, A Sporting Murder, came out from Night Shadows Press in September. I had a nice launch party, complete with cake, at Mysteries & More Bookstore in Nashville.

The weather curse caught me the following month, however, when I was invited to talk about my new book to the Nashville City Club Book Club. The threat of nasty weather kept the members at home while I had a nice dinner with the club president and his son.

I suppose the most significant event for me this year was turning 85 in November. I don't bemoan old age the way a lot of my contemporaries do, plus many of those not as long in the tooth as me. I think it's pretty cool to still be sailing along singing a song. Actually, I don't do much singing anymore. My one problem is a cough that has left my voice sounding like somebody with terminal laryngitis.

My most shocking accomplishment, maybe weird would work here, came earlier this week. In A Sporting Murder, one of the characters talks about gambling a few times with the murder victim at Harrah's casino on the Ohio River at Metropolis, IL. Greg McKenzie thinks:

"Jill and I made that trek up I-24 to the Illinois side of the river occasionally. We looked on it as a recreational thing and set a fairly modest limit for what we’d spend. Sometimes we came back winners. Most of the time we didn’t."

That was wife Sarah and my personal experience. This time we took our usual $400, realizing we might come back empty handed, but hoping otherwise. We had two free nights in the hotel and coupons for free meals. After day one, Sarah was about ready to pack it in, but I assured her I would win it all back (did I mention I'm an incurable optimist?).

The last day she suggested we play a small cluster of new Blazing 7's slots near the entrance. They were quarter progressive machines, meaning the jackpots constantly increased, though only a penny at a time, staring with a few hundred dollars. After playing a bit on my $20 bill, winning a few small rounds, watching Flaming 777's popping up above and below the payoff line, suddenly I looked and there were three of them lined up in the middle. The machine lit up with JACKPOT.

The guy who came to pay me off and reset the machine said it hadn't increased much since the last jackpot. We went and played some other slots, feeling much better though not winning a lot. Later, as we made our way back to the entrance, Sarah said, "Let's play these Blazing 7's again." Having never hit a jackpot before, I was sure my luck had been depleted. But I sat beside her at the same machine.

Before I had hardly spun the reels 10 times, up came three Blazing 777's and the JACKPOT sign flashed again. It was still paltry compared to what you'd get on a dollar machine, but to a guy whose luck had always been lousy at best, it was quite a thrill.

So I'm looking forward to 2011 with a new lease on luck. Meanwhile, I'll keep writing mysteries and plugging along as usual, weird or no.

It's Snowing for Christmas

As I write this, the clock has just passed midnight, making it officially Christmas Day, and for the first time in 17 years, snow is falling on December 25th in Nashville. As my protag Greg McKenzie pointed out in the new book, A Sporting Murder, if you're looking for a white Christmas, this isn't the place to look. But here it is!

For the first time since I can't remember when, we won't be having a big crowd for Christmas dinner. Our brood has outgrown our house. Sarah and I joined two families when we married 11 years ago, and both of them have been busily expanding. Jointly, we now have 6 children, 11 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren. Add 7 spouses to the mix and that totals 33 people, including us.

We split up for Thanksgiving, with Sarah's crowd gathering at one of her granddaughters and my crew dining here. For Christmas, my older son is staying in Pennsylvania, where he'll have his two sons and two grandchildlren for dinner. And my younger daughter stopped by Christmas eve on her way home to Oak Ridge with her four kids, for their first Christmas at home in years.

With snow on the ground, and in the streets, we plan to have a small dinner here with two of my kids and Sarah's grandson. We may miss all the usual hubbub, but it will be a time of relaxing and reminiscing. At our age, that's a good thing.

I'll close with my best wishes for all to have a merry and joyous Christmas, and may your best dreams come true in the New Year.

Infamy Isn't All Bad

Let me start by saying I'm reasonably pleased with the way my life has turned out. For sure there are things I would have changed, had I known what I know now, but I'm quite happy with the overall result. At this point, you're probably thinking what the devil does this have to do with infamy?

It goes back 69 years to that fateful December 7, 1941. What happened that day put me on the path that led to where I am now. It was one of those blockbuster events that cause people to recall what they were doing when they heard the news. I was riding in my dad's car, listening to the radio. It was around 1:30 p.m. when the news broke on CBS Radio (WLAC in Nashville). I don't remember if I heard the initial announcement or a follow-up. But I remember the message.

The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. You can listen to the original radio reports at the Modesto Radio Museum website.

I had just turned 16 and gotten my driver's license. I didn't get to use the car much back in those days, and even less after gas rationing started in 1942. But like every other boy in my school, I couldn't wait to get out and join the service. My older brother was drafted after finishing his first year in college. I was only 17 when I graduated but promptly enlisted in the Army Air Corps Reserve, getting called to active duty a month after my next birthday.

In his famous declaration of war speech, President Roosevelt called December 7 "a day which will live in infamy." For me, it was a day that set the course for my life. That decision to join the Army sent me on a circuitous route around the Southeast Training Command. My final assignment was at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas.

While there I worked with a fellow Aviation Cadet who had studied a year at Yale before entering the service. We were talking one day about what we'd do when the war was over (it was winding down at the time), and he said if he had it to do over he'd have studied journalism. Up to that point I had never considered writing either as a hobby or a profession. But the idea struck a chord, and I decided to find a journalism school to attend.

One thing leads to another as things develop through life. If the Japanese hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor that day, I probably wouldn't have joined the Army Air Force, wouldn't have wound up at Randolph Field, and wouldn't have been steered into a writing career. So for me, that day of infamy started things in motion to produce a life that has been uniquely satisfying.

Currently I enjoy writing mystery novels and have no plans to break off in another direction. I've had a lifelong adventure with words. I tell the full story on my website in an essay entitled "Reflections on the Writing Life - my 60-year odyssey with the written word."

Book Signings Can Be Puzzling

Awhile back, I did a book signing at a library in a small town south of Nashville where they had a large group of authors from the area. Last year at the same event, I sold enough books to make it well worth the trip. For some reason, that didn't happen this time. I didn't see a lot of signing going on anywhere around me. Not all that many people showed up. My single sale came when another author bought my latest book.

Signings are funny that way. You never know when one will knock your socks off and another will make you wish you had put on two pairs because the reception is so cold. But invariably you get to meet a number of nice people who make the experience worth experiencing.

When I'm doing a solo signing at a bookstore, my wife, Sarah, plays the role of a warm-up act at a night club. She stands at the entrance and greets people, handing out my small promo folders and telling them the author is signing  at the table "over there." Sometimes, a customer will stop and chat with her about the books. That frequently results in a sale.

She gets most of the questions from people wanting to know the location of the restrooms, where to find the magazines, and who knows what else. I get the ones who want to talk about the book they'd like to write. If somebody is actually working on a book, I'm happy to give my advice on whatever they need to know. It's usually about finding a publisher or an agent. The only problem comes when I get a talkative person who stands there forever, blocking the way for people who might want a book signed.

When Sarah takes a break, I stand at the door and greet the customers. I ask, "Do you read mysteries?" and it's appalling how many come back with, "I don't read books." Makes you want to say, "What the hell are you doing in a bookstore?" Of course, some will tell you they just came for the coffee.

It's interesting to watch people's reactions. Some appear intimidated by the appearance of an author and shy away from the table. Others zip right by as if you weren't there. I used to set up an easel near the table with a large blow-up of the cover of my latest book. However, watching people's eyes, I rarely saw anybody notice the poster.

Invariably, someone will stop at the table, take a book, turn it to the back cover, look at the photo, then up at me. "That's you," they say with a look of surprise. "You wrote this." Duh, if I didn't, why would I be sitting here?

Those you never see enough of are the ones who charge up to the table, grab a book and say, "I want this one. Will you sign it for me?"  Occasionally, at a signing like the Kentucky Book Fair, where I have all my backlist available, a reader will look them over and say, "I want one of each. I can start with the first and go right through them."

On the few occasions where sales have been almost non-existent, I found the person who invited me more distressed than I was. I've been around long enough to know these things happen. But the store manager will apologize profusely. I had one small independent owner who was almost in tears. Heck, everybody has a bad night once in awhile. You move on to the next one and hope for the best.

What They're Saying about A Sporting Murder

Here are a couple of reviews about the fifth book in my Greg McKenzie mystery series:

In the week before Christmas rumors have surfaced that something is amiss with a proposed deal to bring a National Basketball Association franchise to Nashville. Local P. I. Greg McKenzie, with his wife and partner, Jill, are hired to investigate by a group of hockey fans opposed to the NBA’s coming, fearing loss of the hockey team’s fan base. An informant promises information on the deal that will “blow your mind,” but turns up shot in the face instead. Is his murder the result of being in the wrong part of town or connected to the case? Greg and Jill determine to find out.

But this will be no ordinary Christmas week. Besides the murder and Greg’s finding the body, an old case rears it head in the person of a former Air Force lieutenant whom Greg had helped convict of drug-dealing back in his days as an OSI investigator. He’s out of prison, and still carrying a grudge. As the book moves along at a fast pace, the McKenzies are hard-pressed to unravel the events and dangers into which they are thrust. Are they connected to the NBA deal or to Greg’s old enemy? We are kept guessing until the disparate threads all come together on Christmas Day in a rousing and satisfying climax.

Readers of Mr. Campbell’s previous books will be pleased to be back in his Nashville with Greg and Jill McKenzie. His writing is clean and spare, giving us enough sense of place and character to feel as if we’ve settled in with friends, and then in turn ratcheting up the tension and suspense. Greg McKenzie is not a hard-boiled private investigator, but he’s tough and smart, well aware of the qualities Jill brings to the partnership. The way the case plays out against the backdrop of their lives gives them a genuineness that makes the reader feel these would be good folks to spend an afternoon with - or to have along in a gun fight. Once again, Campbell has hit the mark.

Copyright ©2010 Larry W. Chavis in The GenReview


Christmas, the NBA, Hockey, a mysterious informant and add murder. Mix well, with a cunning P.I. and his not so shrinking Violet of a partner wife and you have a not so cozy mystery. The past comes calling to bake the mix into a read to tingle the toes of all the fans Chester D. Campbell. New readers may find the landscape a bit bare so reading the previous books is suggested. A Sporting Murder kept this reviewer focused right to the spine jarring end. Read at your own peril. You might find it hard to get anything else done.

David Brown, Military Writers Society of America Reviewer