Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

First off, the first of two October sales of The Killer and The Dead starts tomorrow! (UK and US) 1^st to 8^th of October. Start off the spooky season with a serial killer facing down the undead and his own familial dysfunction! You know you want to.

I am making progress on the next book. It has evolved into a new way of writing for me. Those hardy souls who are familiar with my writing journey down this long road know I like to experiment with each book, and this time out it is no different, but for the fact that this was not a consciously chosen experiment.

Maybe two experiments at once.

The first is writing as collage. What is that you ask? Here’s a stab: writing episodes within the story without the express intention of just writing it out of sequence, which would be less collage and more just coloring in blocks within an predesigned sketch, when instead I’m proceeding in a fragmentary exploratory fashion, not being a slave to anything written before, down to the choice of place names and blatantly contradictory arguments being presented from one fragment to the next. Spitballing stuff around a sequence of events and character interactions I know need to happen, and seeing what, in the end, will work best. Because trying to write something that complex in a formal controlled fashion from start to finish was making my brain explode. This way I can delay the explosion, maybe even find a way to defuse the narrative bomb as I go. This is the hope. A lot will be thrown away, and that is okay as I get to be creative in the moment and produce things that will be useful to my thought and I think help to inform (indirectly) what gets left in the final cut, so to speak.

I’m writing each day, but choosing a random point to start from, or a new point of view, a new place in the narrative. Basically I imagine a line of dialogue or a needed character input and go from there, wherever there may turn out to be. I’m giving myself the freedom to overlap sections if I want, write over the same terrain, the same time period, and leave it until later to see which ‘take’ fits better.

I’m doing this because the linear approach, following an outline, wasn’t working; and the outlining technique I used last time out does not marry well to the structure of the story I’m creating. So I’m forced to improvise. Which, now I’ve embraced it (and that took the last month), is becoming more and more fun. It is freeing to write what I want, play with character emotions and perspectives, have little revelations as I go, and then find an ending to each little piece. Two thousand words generally. Fifteen hundred at the least and I feel I’ve cheated myself a little there, not gone deep enough into the scene.

I do still have structure: none of my collage pieces have occurred after a certain point, because when I get there, linear progression snaps back in, or at least I currently expect it to. We’ll see. I am not going to go crazy experimental and leave it as disjointed pieces, a camera fading in and out of a conversation with unknown gaps in time between the filmed episodes, though that has a certain appeal. (Editorial note: Hey buddy – it’s called a new chapter – you’ve described something almost as new as the wheel.)

In the end I will have the mental headache of dealing with all my freewheeling writing, gluing my written collage together, editing it to make the seams smooth, the continuity perfect, remove all traces of its origin. Easier said than done, no doubt, but it will give me the material to fashion the opening third (to half) that has challenged me so.

My second experiment? I’m writing a conversation between five people. Thankfully one of them doesn’t say much. (In one version.) A negotiation, an argument, a settling of scores after an opening of wounds, some generations in the making, the forging of a truce, the shattering of alliances, the congratulation of peers, the companionship of enemies forced to a table after respect, however grudging, has been earned.

And so far I’ve done it mostly without any speech identifiers at all. Just line after line of dialogue, nothing but the words spoken to identify who is speaking and to whom.

Part of me wants to leave it this way. The dumb up his own arse “I’m an aaaarrrrrtisstah!” part. The sensible be nice to your readers version of me says this is a good experiment in technique for me now, and it will be interesting in my piecing together of the collage if I correctly identify who is saying what when to myself. But couldn’t that be the point, man? (asks the aaaarrrrrtisstah! God let me keep him under control.)

I love my readers. I don’t want to kick them in the delicates with endless unidentified dialogue. That can be the special aaaarrrrrtisstah! approved edition. It’s going to be hard enough to sell this book to readers in its current proposed form of a LOT of dialogue and intrigue and character study in a relatively static setting. A fantasy drawing room play, if you will. I had an idea for no description of any kind until the sound of footsteps echoing off marble interrupts the chit-chat, but just cannot sustain that level of literary douchery. I want you to know I did think about it though. The artistah guy again.

The other thing going down the collage road has freed me from – total length. If this ends up being a novel, great, novella, awesome, extended short story? Not what I wanted, but if that is the shape that works best, I’ll accept it. I think I was trying to stretch it out too far: now, though I have a nominal structure, with phases mapped out etc., I may find through collaging that it inhabits a different shape, some phases telescoped or omitted, new ones inserted. That’ll be cool. I say now. In a few months read my blog of collage regret.

Once I feel I’ve covered the main bases (and I’ll know it), I can then look at the volume produced and see what that gets chopped down to as it gets blended together, and then I’ll know what it’s going to be, short story, novella, or novel.

This is pantsing baby. I’ve just been an artsy fartsy guy describing it. Hey ho.

As it happens – these are the droids you’re looking for! “CUT!”

Until next week my friends – occasionally let the aaaarrrrrtisstah! out to play, but remember to keep them on a leash, as they have a tendency to wander all over the place, and pee in inconvenient spots. God love ’em!