The Homestretch

I've never written a book this quickly before.

Usually, it takes me years to write a novel. It took nearly 10 years to write Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary; it took about three years to write my teen fiction, JT (I even wrote some of it while I was living in South Korea); and it took more than two years to write my first spy novel, The Spy's The Limit.

Heck, I started writing the sequel to Songsaengnim in 2010, two years before the first book was even published, and I still haven't finished Gyeosunim.

In March of this year, I told DW that it was time that I started a new novel. Perhaps, I would even put my blog on hiatus once again to devote time to writing fiction. I told her that I'd like to try my hand at a murder mystery, and that weekend, as we drove down to Toronto to visit with Kid 2 and some dear friends, I started thinking of a good murder.

The Monday after I returned from that weekend, I was laid off from work after 19 years with the company. And I saw it as a sign.

Instead of taking a break from The Brown Knowser, I used the hours that I usually spent doing technical writing to write my fiction. And it has been working out really well.

For the first five weeks, I was averaging 20 pages per week, and that included a day of editing the new content. By the time our family left for our Peru vacation, I had more than 100 pages written.

In the past two months since we've been back in Canada, I haven't been writing at the same pace but I've always been moving forward. Some weeks, I'd simply research legal procedures and gather information about the Ottawa Police Services (the story is set in Ottawa). I even looked into criminal activities, online, hoping I wouldn't raise any alarms and have the police knocking on my door.

I'm more than 160 pages into the story and feel that it'll be wrapped up in about another 100 or fewer.

But this week, I've taken a break. Even though I feel I'm in the homestretch—that Inspectors Calloway and Hayes have all the pieces of the puzzle and just need to finish fitting them all together—I needed to recharge, to distract myself from the story.

This week, I've focused on videos for my YouTube channel. I put together the video of Saturday's Lock & Paddle event on the Rideau Canal, and I've spent the rest of the week finally putting together the first video of our trip to Peru.

With kayak season in full swing, I've been keeping our travel videos on the back burner. But no more: I plan to have the first video out on Monday, if not sooner.

Next week, I'll be back to working on Dark Water. I'm loving the story and think it might be my best work to date, if I do say so myself.

With any luck, I'll have the first draft of the fully-completed novel finished in early September. And if that happens, it'll be a record time in my novel-writing life.

Stay tuned.