Back in the mid-80s I wrote an 80,000 word murder mystery set in 1816. It was tightly plotted-- it took place in four days. One of the people in our writing group was a English professor at our local junior college, and she kept us all in line, so to speak. She has since published two or three novels, I think.
The main suspect, heir to the victim's earldom, forces the prime witness into marriage to silence her. A wife cannot testify against her husband because she is chattel. Drama ensues... it is both romance and murder mystery and hence difficult to sell. It's also in need of one final re-write.
I worked in banking at the time and gave a copy of the completed draft to one of my customers, an attorney, to read. A year later after ditching banking and the retail world for escrow, I found myself laid off due to a real estate downturn. I answered a wanted ad for a trainee legal secretary, and when I stood up to meet the attorney, the first words out of my mouth were, "Well, Lou, have you read my novel yet?"
He hired me on the spot. And that's how I got into the legal world-- but I never did attempt to publish that novel.
Every time I try to give it that extra five thousand words it needs to make it a polished, marketable prospect, it kills a hard drive. The third time it did that, I turned my attentions elsewhere to other shiny things.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-05-21 04:54 am (UTC)The main suspect, heir to the victim's earldom, forces the prime witness into marriage to silence her. A wife cannot testify against her husband because she is chattel. Drama ensues... it is both romance and murder mystery and hence difficult to sell. It's also in need of one final re-write.
I worked in banking at the time and gave a copy of the completed draft to one of my customers, an attorney, to read. A year later after ditching banking and the retail world for escrow, I found myself laid off due to a real estate downturn. I answered a wanted ad for a trainee legal secretary, and when I stood up to meet the attorney, the first words out of my mouth were, "Well, Lou, have you read my novel yet?"
He hired me on the spot. And that's how I got into the legal world-- but I never did attempt to publish that novel.
Every time I try to give it that extra five thousand words it needs to make it a polished, marketable prospect, it kills a hard drive. The third time it did that, I turned my attentions elsewhere to other shiny things.