I am proud to announce that I have at last completed the first draft of the  novel I have been toiling away on for the past two years. The novel is tentatively titled “The NJA Club” and not surprisingly is set in Bangkok, where I’ve been living during that time. The protagonist is a former criminal defense lawyer named Glenn Murray Cohen from San Francisco, California, who stumbles upon a cache of ill-gotten cash and with the help of a crooked colleague, starts a new life in Thailand. Glenn is somewhat self-righteous, abhorring Bangkok’s fabled nightlife, lives by his own code, and is basically a decent fellow.  For seven years he lives a mostly idyllic existence, aside from his inability to form a lasting relationship.  He owns a high-end condo, and whiles away the hours at the NJA Club, where he is part of a circle of friends including his aging hippie weed dealer, a blue-collar former beer truck driver from Rhode Island, a wily retired Thai General, and a beautiful and mysterious Thai woman who is the object of  Glenn’s unrequited love. His pleasant life is turned upside down when circumstances compel his involvement in the underside of Bangkok, culminating in his most reluctant participation in a dangerous and seemingly harebrained CIA kidnapping plot. As the novel progresses, Glenn changes, becoming more street smart and capable, while never losing his essential naiveté and self-righteousness.

That’s about all I’m willing to reveal now. If I gave away too much,  there’d be less incentive to buy the book.

So why do I say it is completed with the caveat “sort of”?

That’s because as I have learned the hard way, that while completing a first draft of a work of fiction is an accomplishment in itself, in many ways it is the beginning, not the end.  Most authors agree that much of the art of writing is in the rewriting. Many ideas that seemed brilliant when written make no sense when editing, and the author must excise words, paragraphs, characters, scenes, perhaps even a chapter or two.  Some will have to be replaced. Just when you think the difficult and draining creative process has ended, it rears its ugly head with a force equal to that experienced in writing the first draft. I have been editing and re-editing as I wrote, which is a necessary part of the process, as characters are constantly developing, the plot is constantly being tweaked, and ideas I thought would work well turn out to be not quite what I hoped.  Authors are perpetually fixing typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistencies. Despite this ongoing rewriting, the end of the first draft means back to page one to start rewriting all over again.That’s where I am at right now.

I don’t work with an outline. I know many excellent authors who do, and I envy them, because it seems like it would make it easier to know where you are going. Some authors summarize characters and scenes before they start chapter one, and it works wonders for them.  I find I just cannot stick with any outline and while I may give a great deal of thought to what I am going to say, until I sit down and start writing, it’s never really clear exactly what is going to wind up on the page.

I expect to spend considerable time rewriting and editing. Then the “final” draft will be shown to a handful of “beta” readers who will provide what I hope is sincere feedback. I have no doubt that this will lead to more revisions. By the end of the year I hope to send the manuscript to agents and hopefully that will lead to a publishing deal. I’m fine with self-publishing on Amazon, but I want to first test the waters and see what the publishing world thinks of this work. The relationship between self publishing e books and publishing hard copies is in flux; some agents and publishing houses will not touch a work if it ever appeared anywhere, even on a blog.   Others don’t care and some actually find it helpful as they can get some sense of what readers think. So I’ve decided to try the traditional way first and then look at Amazon.. No doubt self publishing e books affords authors opportunities not available in the past. The author must also be a marketer. I’ll be fine with that if it is the only realistic option.

So when will you be able to see this novel or at least excerpts? The answer depends on what I think potential agents and publisher feel about I when I say “finished”. My preliminary research tells me that putting an excerpt of a novel  on a blog is no problem at all, but the excerpt has to be from the “final” version the author is presenting to agents or publishers. So in a month or two  I’ll revisit this issue. In the meantime I will be posting more short stories which I hope you will enjoy reading.

Does it feel good to have gotten this far, to have reached that part of a novel where you can type “The End”? Yes it feels great, but it also means a lot more work lies ahead. It’s just the start of a new phase.