Patti's Kill-List

It’s finished!

Well, not entirely, but I was able to type THE END on my novel, Highwayman, and put it aside for a much-needed rest. Writing is a labor of love and hate for me. I don’t write fast, and I balance my writing between life and work, moving at a pace that might remind some of Aesop’s, Tortoise and the Hare. Just the same, I do it, because I hold out the hope that someone might sit back and enjoy my writing. 

That’s the payoff. 
The more readers, the better. Because writers are closet performers. We want your attention, we just want to do it from a remote location, away from the possibility of flying beer bottles and hissing crowds.

Back in 2015 over a beer in a New Hampshire pub, I was sitting across from my friend, Philip Perron, each seated behind a tall cold beer, waiting on a pastrami sandwich to arrive. We were sitting outside on a patio, the sun shining down on us and the conversation was about writing. I was telling him about a manuscript I’d started, that it was a police procedural thriller and that I was about 80 pages into the first draft. I think I also said I felt confident that the story would be my next novel. The working title: 4.

Philip said, “You should write a throwaway.”

“Throwaway,” I asked. “I’m not getting you.”

“Write a short novella related to your new project and give it away for free. It might spur interest in your new novel.” Philip and I were interrupted then, by the server who set a salad in front of us. Something with green apples in it.  “Something between 60 and 100 pages. You could give it away electronically.”

The wheels began turning inside my head. “Okay, I’ll give it some thought.”

About a month later, I typed the words:

The time was 1:00 am, Wednesday night, and the bar was dead.

And that was where the journey began.

The throwaway was initially titled: Lance. The premise was to write a story from the perspective of the antagonist from my Novel: 4. An antagonist who is destined to be a sociopathic monster. The fear was that people might like the sociopath, but I didn’t want to people to identify with someone who takes pleasure in killing. Besides, that idea has been adopted by authors like Jeff Lindsay with his series of books dedicated to Dexter Morgan.  What I wanted the reader to see was an individual who does horrible things, what his thought processes are and how he endeavors only to get worse. So, I set out to write the novella, Lance, which eventually was renamed Highwayman and I finished the first draft in the fall of 2016.

Well, sort of finished it.

A friend of mine, a fellow scribe named Jake Anfinson, beta-read Highwayman and he thought that the ending was sort of anti-climatic. The difficulty, of course, is that a prequel is almost always destined to be anti-climatic because in most cases you already know what the outcome is going to be. Case in point, the prequel to John Carpenter’s THE THING already tells us what happened to the Norwegians Camp in Antarctica. We already know it isn’t going to bode well for the Norwegians because they’re all dead in the opening to John Carpenter’s cult classic.

So, the Novella, which was around 140 pages, was set aside while I pondered what to do with it. Or rather, how to fix it and as a result, the novel it was written to introduce also stalled.

While I deliberated, I set out to do some other writing. Mostly short stories and I focused on my art and my photography.

But still, my mind kept coming back to Highwayman.

What to do? What to do?

After about six months, I realized that Highwayman felt wrong because it wasn’t a novella. It wasn’t meant to be compressed into 140 pages, it was a novel trapped inside a novella, and if I ever wanted to get it to print, I would have to rewrite it.

So, that is what I set out to do.

This time, I enlisted the help of a constant reader named, Patti Holycross, who is a transcriber from Florida. Patti had offered in the past to be a beta-reader. I sent her a message and asked her if she was still interested and she said, “Yes.” Maybe even, “Absolutely!” but that could be just an ego induced memory.

I informed Patti that my process would be to send her a chapter every week and she could go through it and give me feedback. I would be tearing the book down and rewriting it, and she agreed. What I got from Patti, wasn’t just a beta-reader, but a research assistant and a fact checker and the inspiration to carry on.

We got to work. Back and forth every week. Her favorite saying, “Back at ya.” When she sent me back a chapter with track changes and comments. But she also kept me in line with dates and times and [cough cough] body counts. Out of this was born a document called: Patti's Kill List. I can’t tell you enough, how helpful she has been, and as with most people in the writing community, she did this for nothing except the love of the story.

Beta-readers are a selfless bunch who should be showered with respect.

Thank you, Jake Anfinson and Patti Holycross. Thank you so much.

So, the story is done. There is some fact checking and a bit more blood on the pages to contend with, but after a little hiatus, I am going go back over it and smooth it out. Then I will be writing a synopsis which I intend to send to a publisher down south. We will see where that takes me. Once I find a home for this new book, I will get down to work on its companion.

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough.

Nothing else to report.

MJ Preston