The Thinking Process

When I finished writing my first draft of Dark Water, I was gung-ho and eager to write more. I had a few ideas of where I wanted to see Mickey Calloway and Erin Hayes go and I couldn't wait to start.

But putting together another Calloway and Hayes mystery was going to be a different process than I had with Dark Water.

With the first story, I didn't begin with the detectives: I started with the murder victim and the location where the body would be found. As I came up with more details, I didn't know if I was going to have a solitary detective or if that person would have a partner.

But still, before I had that figured out, I moved to the murderer and the motive, and that took a couple of weeks to sort out. As soon as I had those elements, I had to think of how the murderer actually was able to commit the act and flesh out details that let to that moment.

It was while I was toying with various ideas that the secondary arc of a plane crash came into my head (this is not a spoiler alert: the first line of the prologue reveals the crash).

It wasn't until I had the actual circumstances around the murder worked out that I started thinking about the rest of the story. And that's when I brought in the detectives: first, Calloway, but as soon as I had him figured out, I knew that I wanted another detective to work with him, and that's when I created Hayes.

I was about two weeks after starting the novel before I had Calloway and Hayes.

This time, for The Watcher, I already have my detectives. What I had to come up with was the victim and the crime scene, and I knew it had to be different than the murder in Dark Water. Yet, like Dark Water, I wanted a secondary arc to play through the main story (I can't talk about that storyline because it would spoil the book).

Before I had completed the second draft of Dark Water, I had already written the prologue and five chapters of The Watcher. I've already shared that prologue in an earlier post, and if you've read it, you know that Erin Hayes and her roommates open the story but are shadowed by a mysterious figure.

I've reworked that opening, by the way.

As I've returned to working on the second book in my crime series, I've been doing a lot of thinking. I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with the direction that I've taken and I'm wondering if I need to change my idea. Because, unlike in Dark Water, I don't have a clear sense of the murderer and the circumstances that led to the crime.

And so, I think some more.

The first draft of Dark Water was written in less than four months. It's going to take me a lot longer with The Watcher (I might not even keep the title).

Stay tuned.