Summer is over and I’m on the Writers’ Blog Tour
My friend, the author Lauren B. Davis has tag teamed me for the next Writers Blog Tour. This summer, I’ve been isolated on a remote rock in the Georgian Bay, away from the online world but here we go again–the digital bliss of interconnection. I’m to answer the four questions below and then ‘tag’ two other writers to pick up the challenge:
1. What am I working on?
I’ve just finished my third draft of my new novel, The Dead Celebrities Club. It’s about a white collar criminal (born in Toronto) who runs a dead pool in an upstate New York jail. The idea is to pick the celebrity who will die before the other ones do, and there is a prison jackpot for the lucky winner.
2. How does my new novel differ from others of its genre?
I can’t think of another novel that resembles The Dead Celebrities Club and I’m not sure how to classify it. Maybe the safest thing to say is that it’s a portrait of a certain kind of individual, the sly fox, who is always up for a new way to make money, an optimist who is out of touch with his feelings until the events he sets in motion catch up to him.
3. Why do I write what I write?
In Heroines of the Sexual Gothic, my recent theatre show with the Billie Hollies (an all female Gothic Noir musical group), I talked about how the protagonists in my novels represent a part of me that I repressed when I was younger because exposing that side of myself would have been dangerous or humiliating. But The Dead Celebrities Club has nothing at all to do with this theory of mine. So there you go!
4. How does my writing process work?
After I think and think and think and after I do a lot of research and make notes on a huge drawing pad, listing things like the ten most important scenes, and each character’s three favourite words, I dictate chapters in my first draft on an audio file. My assistant or myself types up the chapters. Then I revise until I’m blue in the face. For me, writing involves discovery although I usually have a bare bones outline that I use to start myself off. I don’t write about what I know exactly. I believe in writing about what obsesses you, and what you know will inevitably come into the story.
Have you heard of the Writers’ Blog Tour? (Google it, and you’ll see all the various writers on the Tour.) Each writer tagged to join the Tour posts answers to the same four questions on their blog. They might post answers all at once, or one at a time, whatever suits. They also provide links to the posts of writers who came before. To see what Lauren wrote, check out her blog below. And to see what the other authors wrote on their blogs, google the great Writers Blog Tour.
Lauren B. Davis, Author: Writers’ Blog Tour – Why do I Write What I do? Question #1