So the publisher said "No". Very kindly, very politely, but "No". He also said, "I still like the courtroom scenes, but I’m still not overwhelmed by the rest."

I'm trying to figure out how I'm reacting. I'm still quite overwhelmed by how much time and energy this publisher afforded me and my book and I continue to be grateful for that. I can wish for a different outcome. I can feel disappointed to have come this far only to fail once again to reach my goal. But I can't complain that I wasn't given a fair chance by this publisher.

I can also understand why he would say "no" and yet still not take it as an assault on my skills and talents as a writer. Call it ego but I believe my book is well-written enough to be published. I just don't think the publisher felt the subject matter would sell. I've understood for a long time that a very well written book is not going to succeed if it doesn't offer a "sexy" plot, subject, or hook that will make readers want to buy it.

The Silent Goodbye doesn't seem to have those things. It's a good story. It's well told. But it doesn't stand out. It's a fairly homey novel about a small-time lawyer who finds himself in big-time trouble.

So it would seem that The Silent Goodbye isn't going to be published any time soon. And I'm left wondering where to turn next. I had been working on the next Phillip Gold mystery novel, The Final Curtain, and I might just keep going with that. I'd do so, however, not with the belief that this new novel stands a better chance of being published (it's too much in the same vein, the same flavour as The Silent Goodbye for me to believe that) but on the basis that I'm enjoying writing it, it's fairly well along and I think my nieces would still enjoy seeing their idea turned into a full-length (though unpublished) novel.

I'm toying with some other ideas as well, at this point. The one thing I'm not doing is considering giving up writing. I had feared, after sending the revised version of The Silent Goodbye to the publisher, that my reaction to a possible rejection might be such deep disappointment that I would discard my netbook and move on to some other pasttime. But I'm having no such reaction now.

Okay, I may die without ever having a novel published. Fine. But I draw too much enjoyment from the act of writing to give it up entirely.

Tags: Novels, Mystery, Phillip Gold, publishing, Writing, The Silent Goodbye

I have gotten the new year off right, I think, with a nice combination of reading, writing and TV watching, plus time spent with friends and family. I go back to work tomorrow but, so far, it's been a great start to 2011.

Patti is working her way methodically through the revised manuscript for The Silent Goodbye, my Phillip Gold mystery, court-room drama novel. Patti is one of the most detail-oriented people I've ever met and she combines that valuable characteristic with a keen understanding of the writing process so I'm looking forward to reading her comments. She tells me she's enjoying the novel in its revised version, so that's good, and has said that it seems to move much quicker now. Another real positive.

Meanwhile, I've been doing my Christmas reading. First up was Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, a collection of some of his best New Yorker articles called What the Dog Saw. These are fascinating pieces, filled with interesting information and surprising insights. I like Gladwell's style and admire his ability to take academic/scientific research and make it accessible. I am also impressed with his ability to make compelling connections between seemingly disparate topics (like mammograms and pin-point bombing) in a useful, readable way.

I think, however, that I read the book too quickly: by the time I was two-thirds of the way through, I was beginning to tire of the author's tone and formula for these articles. I should have read one, then set the book aside for a week or so before moving onto the next article. Still, an interesting read.

We've also been catching up on our television watching, after finding DVD sets from the Big Bang Theory, Corner Gas and Fringe under the tree. Big Bang and Corner Gas are tried and true favourites but Fringe is new to me: an updated version of X Files, Fringe was created by J.J. Abrams and offers a stylish, creepy anthology of science fiction/horror plots with what seems to be a neat set of continuing characters. We've only watched the pilot so far but it certainly was strong enough to convince us to watch more.

On the writing side of things, I've converted my former golf blog into a picture-a-day challenge, where I will try to publish to the blog a new photograph every day for a year. I'm pleased with the results so far: check them out at http://wordsbywalma.blogspot.com/.

And, of course, I'm starting to plan the next Phillip Gold novel, which I think will again feature a mystery plot alongside a court-room story. I'll be getting to work on it soon and will keep you posted.

Tags: Phillip Gold, The Silent Goodbye, Malcolm Gladwell, What The Dog Saw, Writing, Mystery, Novels, publishing, Big Bang Theory, Corner Gas, Fringe

With Christmas upon us and my first review of The Silent Goodbye now completed, I'm contemplating next steps. I can't actually enter the revisions into my manuscript until Patti has completed her review so I have some time to move on to other things.

My friend Clare has been e-mailing me about The Way Forward, my Rowling-World novel that follows the lives of three minor characters from the Harry Potter series (which, by the way, is available on this website for your reading pleasure). Clare is a marvellously perceptive reader and an avid fan of Harry Potter so I find her e-mails very inspiring. She is adamant that the Muggle character, Kate, should have a continuing role so I'm asking her to help me plan the hows, whens, wheres and whys of Kate's re-emergence.

I am also starting to turn my mind to the next Phillip Gold novel. As I have mentioned before, I have two completed earlier novels (A Fleck of Gold and All That Glisters) but anyone who has read the first chapters of either or both of them (also available on this website) will be able to tell you that they will need a great deal of work to get them to a professional standard. I think they have good plots and interesting characters: it's just the writing that's substandard.

The question I face is this: are those novels strong enough to make the work needed to bring them up to snuff worthwhile? Or should I just set them aside as necessary practice in preparation for later Gold mysteries?

If I decide on the latter course of action, then I could get back to work on The Final Curtain, a new Gold novel that I have started planning in consultation with my nieces, Alex and Katie. I think this one has an exceptional plot in the works and would be fun to write. I feel like I'm leaning toward this novel as my next major Phillip-Gold project, though I have to admit I have been running revisions to All That Glisters around in my brain for a while.

Complicated. Maybe I should just work on all three at the same time, moving from book to book when I either run out of steam on one or have an inspiration for another. The Final Curtain involves all new writing for Phillip Gold. All That Glisters would require massive revisions based on an existing structure. The Way Forward is very different, working with established characters in a fantasy world, and is being written somewhat in free form.

It may just be that having that kind of variety available to me will help to inspire and keep me working!

Tags: Harry Potter, Rowling, The Silent Goodbye, Phillip Gold, Mystery, Novels, Writing, Aberforth, Weasley

It's nine in the evening on Tuesday, December 21 and I have just completed my first read-through of my manuscript, The Silent Goodbye. I had one copy of the novel printed off, double-spaced, for review and revision purposes and I'm glad I did.

I found this first read a real pleasure, both because I got to sit at my dining room table with the book a physical presence in front of me and because, to be honest, I really enjoyed the novel.

I had taken three weeks away from it after completing a major restructuring of the plot, hoping to gain a little distance, some perspective, some objectivity for this last polishing exercise. I think it worked. I enjoyed reading the book and, though I knew what would happen next every step of the way, I no longer could recall every sentence, every phrase, every word I had written.

There is a lot to do to make this manuscript a polished, finished product, ready to submit to the publisher. I found dozens of typos, corrected numerous continuity errors and recognised that I have to change the tone of several scenes to make them work. I'm sure that, when my partner, Patti, finishes her careful read of the book, I'll have even more to do.

But I am happy to say that I came away from this latest review immensely satisfied with the novel. I think it works well now: it flows at a ripping pace and the characters are stronger, more varied, more interesting. I tried to stick to the suggestions made by the publisher at the end of the summer and I'm happy I did: it's clear from the strength of this new draft that he was right on all counts.

I'm sitting here at the computer feeling completely content with the work that I've done, with the novel I've written. It's a nice feeling. I've poured my guts into this book and I'm ecstatic that the result is so utterly satisfying.

That doesn't mean, of course, that it will ever get published. But I can now honestly say that I did some good work in The Silent Goodbye. And that' gives me a fantastic feeling of accomplishment.

Tags: Phillip Gold, The Silent Goodbye, publishing, Novels, Mystery, Writing

Twenty days have passed since I put the final touches on the revised draft of my mystery manuscript, The Silent Goodbye. During that time, though I have often thought about the book, I have not once actually gone back and looked at it.

I wanted to take some time away from it before going back for revisions and polishing. Time to gain a little distance, some objectivity, some perspective, so that I will be better able to see its flaws and its strengths when I begin to work on it again.

With a goal of having a polished manuscript completed by the end of the year, however, it is now time to take my editing pencil in hand and get to work.

How am I feeling? To be honest, I have a strange mixture of excitement and fear roiling around in my stomach. Interesting. Excitement, I expected. I've enjoyed the process of reworking the novel that I began at the end of the summer so it should be no surprise that I am excited to get back to it.

But fear?

Hmmm....

Editing and polishing the manuscript is going to be a big job, for sure. And it's going to require me to find solid blocks of time for the task, time when I can concentrate without distractions. Not easy at Christmas time. But I have to be able to focus well enough to recognise inconsistencies, to keep track of the colour of each character's eyes, the shape of their face, the sound of their laugh. One of the things I'm worst at is remembering from one page to another how I've described certain people or places and part of the polishing job is to make sure that those things are consistent and convincing.

And I'm going to have to make hard choices, to the point perhaps of having to edit out scenes that I've laboured over, loved even, simply because they don't work.

Yeah. So maybe the little tinge of fear I'm feeling is justified. The job of polishing the book involves all those little things that I don't do naturally.

So I've got my file cards ready. I'll make note of how I've described each person and place on a separate card, then check the card every time that same character or place appears.

Writing is, apparently, more than just capturing on paper (or screen) the free flow of your creativity. Sometimes it's hard work.

No, check that. It is always hard work. Fun, exciting, sometimes thrilling, no doubt. But hard work nonetheless.

Tags: Phillip Gold, The Silent Goodbye, Mystery, Writing, Novels, publishing

Two positive things to report today.

First, I went to my neighbourhood Staples outlet and had my revised manuscript, The Silent Goodbye, printed for review purposes. Double-spaced but double-sided, the novel fills 390 sides of paper and now sits happily in a black binder, waiting for Patti's attentions and then mine. As I have said, I hope to have it revised and polished by the end of 2010 to be ready for submission to the publisher in January. I think it's a reachable goal and it's a nice feeling to see the whole thing so neatly presented.

One of the reasons for printing it out at this point is because Patti prefers to have a physical document in her hands when she reads and to be able to make comments and corrections right on the page. Another reason is the fact that I composed the novel entirely on-screen on computer: when I come to review it, I am hopeful that the new format (black print on a white page) will help me to gain some distance and perspective on the manuscript.

The second positive development is the fact that I have posted a revised and extended version of The Way Forward, my in-progress Rowling-world novel featuring characters from the Harry Potter series of books. For those of you who have already read the original four chapters, you'll find new material at the end of chapter four and in chapter five. I should mention, of course, that I have corrected and polished all four of the original chapters, even adding in several new scenes along the way. So, if you have the time and inclination, you may wish to re-read from the beginning.

I very much enjoying writing this novel, probably because I feel I know the characters so well from Rowling's books. I just throw them into new situations and see how they respond. I'll probably continue to write new material for The Way Forward for a while yet, at least until I dive back into the Phillip Gold manuscript for the final polish.

I don't really have a final plot plan for The Way Forward so we'll just have to see what develops for Minerva, Aberforth and George.

Tags: Phillip Gold, The Silent Goodbye, Mystery, Writing, Rowling, Harry Potter, Aberforth, Minerva

On Friday morning, before going to work, I made some final small revisions and then saved the final chapter of my new draft of The Silent Goodbye to the hard drive of my netbook. I then opened a new file, copied the text from each of my chapter files into this new file, and saved the entire manuscript as a single entity.

Done. Wow.

The writing adventure that I began on September 8 has come to a close (at least temporarily). As you might recall, I sent my mystery novel submission package to a publisher in early September, expecting to wait for weeks if not months to receive the inevitable rejection. Instead, I found an e-mail in my inbox two days later, asking for the complete manuscript to be sent by return e-mail. I sent it and, again expecting a long wait, I was amazed to find not an outright rejection but a very helpful set of suggestions from the publisher just four days after I had sent the full manuscript.

That was Sunday, September 8.

My original draft had two major plot lines: the action plot, where Gold is hunted by a trained killer after witnessing the assassination of a police officer; and the trial plot, where Gold represents a street-gang leader on trial for sexual assault. In that first draft, I had arranged these two plots consecutively. In other words, most the action plot took place in the first half of the novel while the trial took up most of the second half of the book. The two then came together at the end.

The publisher had some nice things to say about the writing of the trial plot and advised me to restructure the novel to have the trial begin at the opening of the book. This would require me to do a complete rewrite, in effect to have the plots run concurrently, trial by day, action plot by night. It made a lot of sense and, as soon as I began the rather difficult task of reordering the scenes, I found it brought a new pace, a new life to the entire book.

The publisher also made some clear character-related suggestions, which resulted in my writing one fairly prominent minor character out of the book completely, reducing the role of a second, and transforming a third into an entirely new person. Once again, however, I found that, as I was doing the work, the novel was getting stronger and stronger.

Back on September 8, I had set myself a target of completing the revision before the end of the year and submitting the revised manuscript, properly polished, to the publisher early in the new year.

I'm still on track. I think the work I've done to date has been good and I believe the novel is the better for it. I have more work ahead of me in the correcting, editing and polishing process but, for now, I have to put the current manuscript on the shelf for a couple of weeks. I need to get a little distance from it, so that when I go to do that final polish, I'm a little more objective, more able to see what needs to be done.

Still, it's a great feeling to have gotten this far. And to be as happy as I am with the outcome.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Mystery, Novels, Writing, The Silent Goodbye

I haven't been writing much lately about writing. The main reason for that is that my work on the revisions of The Silent Goodbye are coming along really well and I didn't want to interrupt that by writing a blog about it.

I have been working in regular concentrated sessions on the revisions and have been making excellent progress. In fact, I have now begun work on the final day of the novel. That is very, very exciting for me. What's more exciting is how pleased I'm feeling about the revised manuscript to date.

In accordance with the suggestions of the publisher, I have started the trial right at the beginning of the book and then intertwined the courtroom scenes with the scenes of Phillip Gold's duel with the trained killer. It's working well. A nice balance, in fact. And it keeps the pace moving at a heck of a rate.

I plan to finish this draft by the weekend. Wow. I can't believe I actually typed that sentence. I plan to finish this draft by the weekend. Then it will go on the shelf for a couple of weeks before I return to it in mid-December with a fresh eye.

The hope is to have a polished manuscript to send out by the end of the year.

So far, so good. I'm enjoying the writing and happy with the results. The Silent Goodbye may just make some noise yet!

Tags: Phillip Gold, The Silent Goodbye, Writing, Novels, Mystery, publishing

It has been about a week since I've had a chance to work on the revisions for my Phillip Gold mystery novel, The Silent Goodbye. Life has been so busy that I haven't had a chance to sit down for any reasonable period of time to work on it. I have managed to read some of Douglas Adams' Mostly Harmless here and there in the five and ten-minute breaks in life but the writing project has been unreachable.

It's very frustrating. I had been making excellent progress and had really found a groove. Now I'm out of it and trying to find a way back in.

So yesterday I decided that step one would be to re-read what I've already completed. Remember, I'm currently attempting to re-weave the two plots of my novel into a differently coherent whole. Though there is quite a bit of writing involved, there is also a great deal of blocking, copying, revising and editing to make it hang properly. It's a tough job, tougher than I had expected.

I am about a third of the way through and I think it's working well. I re-read the first three sections and enjoyed them. I had to do some fine-tuning, however, to catch minor inconsistencies that have cropped up due to the re-ordering of scenes and the reduction in the roles of several characters. For example, in the first courtroom scene, as Gold is giving his opening address to the Jury, I had forgotten to edit out his reference to his old friend and mentor, Bob Smythe. The reason: Smythe has not yet appeared in the novel at that point in the revised version.

Little things like that keep cropping up: scenes that were moved from evening to morning needed polishing to remove references to the "thickening darkness" and stuff like that; I'm finding that I missed the odd reference to a character by her old name; or I find that a character will refer to something that hasn't yet happened.

That's why the re-read is so important. I had the old plot structure very clear in my mind. I have to replace it, now, with the new structure so that I can make sure the novel flows in a clear, consistent fashion.

So now, in order to write, I have to read. There are worse fates, I guess.

Tags: Phillip Gold, publishing, Writing, Mystery, Novels, The Silent Goodbye, Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

I finished printing the elements of my novel submission last night. All that's left is to address the envelope, affix the stamps and mail it.

I feel a great sense of accomplishment, with a wash of fear lending interesting highlights.

It's an interesting process. The website for the publisher gives you instructions on what they expect you to send. You read books and articles that help you to understand what the website actually means. And friends who have done it before offer their insights as well.

The first step is the cover letter. In that, you include the name of the novel, its length in words, a brief, jacket-blurb-style description, the tiniest bit of information about yourself (to convince the publisher that you are the right person to write the book) and a dignified request that the publisher take your book on for publication. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it's not. It's one of the toughest things you'll ever have to write. You feel like all your hopes for that novel rest on that single page.

Then you have to write a longer synopsis of the novel. But how long? The guides say one page of synopsis for every 25 pages of novel. But the whispers say no publisher wants it that long. Make it short, make it snappy. So you sweat over every word and die a small death every time your word processor moves onto a new page. You want to keep it short but you worry that you have to make it as thorough a summary of the events in the novel as possible. So you suffer.

And last but not least, there's the sample of writing: in this case, 15 to 25 pages from the novel. Some publishers want the first 25 pages of the book, which might be easier. All you'd have to do then is work and rework every word in those 25 pages, recognising that you have to grab this particular reader and convince him or her that your novel will sell better than any other. In my case, however, the website does not ask for the first 25 pages: it asks for any section of the novel, so long as it's between 15 and 25 pages.

That makes it, in my opinion, much, much tougher. The question is: which 25 pages? Do I simply go with the first 25? Do I look for the section that I feel is best written? most exciting? most indicative of my style and approach? What if I choose the wrong section? What if I choose action and the publisher really wants to see character development? What if I choose a section in which I've tried something inventive and the publisher wants to see plain ol' solid writing?

Two different people told me the trial scenes in The Silent Goodbye are excellent and advised me to use one of those. So I quickly narrowed it down to two different parts of the trial. But which one to use? I weighed the pros and cons, carefully reviewed and revised each. Sweated the decision. I went so far as cutting and pasting each into its own file and then formatting both, just to see how they looked. I had hoped that I would find one to be too long or too short and the decision would be made for me. No such luck. They both turned out to be around 20 pages. Perfect.

So I let my gut choose. I picked the one with the stronger opening. Get the publisher interested early. The decision as to whether he or she wants to see more will be made in the first couple of pages, I thought. So, I went with my gut, printed the section and got the rest of the submission package ready.

Today I mail it. Then wait. Worried. Hopeful at times, fearful at others. For how long, I don't know. We'll see.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Novels, publishing, Mystery, The Silent Goodbye