Time to Write (Rewrite, Revise)

By Chester Campbell

Now that we're still perched up here on the fiscal cliff, at least for the next couple of months, I suppose we should get back to writing. Actually, for the past six months or so I've been involved in rewriting, or revising, as I prefer to call it. When I started my fiction writing career back in 1989 (my non-fiction career started in 1947), I turned out eight novels before getting into print. After having seven series books published, I decided to dig back into that pile of old manuscripts that had graced my office floor lo these many years.

Having been a fan for many years of the Cold War spy story, I was well versed in the three-digit organizations like the OSS, CIA, KGB, and MI6. I had written a spy story back in the sixties that spent six months with an editor at Avon before he gave up trying to sell his contemporaries. So when I turned to novel-writing after retirement, I scouted around for a good spy plot. With peristroica and glasnost in full sway, the Soviet Union was falling apart. I visualized what might happen in the aftermath. The demise of the Cold War would give Congress a great reason to slash military and intelligence spending. I came up with a plot involving rogue elements of both the KGB and CIA intent on keeping things in their favor.

For a protagonist, I had just the man, a former FBI agent I had known back in the late sixties when I served as editor of Nashville Magazine. He had an intriguing tale to tell of how he was left out in the cold by J. Edgar Hoover after failing to infiltrate the Mafia, an operation dreamed up by Hoover and his assistant director, Bill Sullivan. I did a wealth of research and turned out a story several editors liked but didn't buy.

Following the lead of authors like Joe Konrath and Rob Walker, I decided to revise the book, Beware the Jabberwock, and put it up for the Kindle. After lengthy revision, including the elimination of several thousand words, I had it edited and then published as an ebook. Since it is double the length of my series mysteries, I raised the price to $3.99 compared to $2.99 for the others.

Jabberwock was the first book of a thriller trilogy, so I tackled the second book next. I thought I had copies of the original manuscript computer files but couldn't find The Poksu Conspiracy anywhere. Fortunately I had a clean copy of the paper manuscript, which ran around 600 pages. I had recently read where MWA members could get a deal on transferring paper to digital by Blueleaf Book Scanning. I packed up all that paper, shipped it off, and soon had a PDF file ready for editing

With Poksu added to my Kindle inventory, I got to work on Overture to Disaster. This one had an interesting background. It started out the longest of the trilogy. I sent it to the Jay Garon-Brooke Agency and got a five-year contract after cutting a few hundred words. This was the agency that put John Grisham on the map, and it was in the zenith of his popularity, before he sued the agency after Garon's death. Unfortunately, they failed to get me a movie deal...or a publisher.

I have finally finished revising the manuscript and am ready for the final edit. It should be turned into an ebook in the next couple of months. All of which means it's time for me to get back to writing something original, like the sixth Greg McKenzie mystery.

Of course I still have a couple of more old manuscripts lying around that need to be revised and put out as ebooks. Seems like there's no end to this.

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My Field of View Is Narrowing

I've realized that the focus of my writing has narrowed over the years. My first three novels written in 1990-93, but never published, have a decided international flavor. The first ranges from the U.S. to Austria, Cyprus, Hong Kong, and Israel, winding up in Toronto. Book two takes us from the U.S. to Korea and China, while the third wanders among Ukraine, Iran, Belarus, Mexico and the U.S.

This trilogy of post-Cold War spy stories grew out of my love of the espionage genre, which I had followed for years with authors like Helen Macinnes, John le Carre, Graham Greene, and Robert Ludlum. The international scene was fresh in my mind from travels across Europe and around the Far East in the eighties.

While revising the books with an eye toward publication, I was reminded of how much additional research I had done in preparation for writing them. I make folders for each of my books and place all of the research material in them. Besides notes they include call slips for various books I checked out of the library. I also have a supply of maps and travel books covering the areas. The shelves in my office include books on the CIA, the KGB, and such famous spies as Harold Adrian "Kim" Philby.

By the end of the nineties, my settings had narrowed down to mostly U.S. locations. After a trip to the Holy Land in late 1998, however, I set my first Greg McKenzie mystery half in the U.S. and half in Israel. My second McKenzie book wandered off to Perdido Key, Florida where we vacationed often in my brother's condo, but since them the mysteries have all taken place around my hometown of Nashville.

I suppose this is part of the aging process, since my wife and I have cut back on our personal wanderings over the years. There's probably a bit of laziness involved, also, as it's much easier to write about an area you are intimately familiar with. I enjoy venturing out to re-check locations I haven't visited in a while, and I'll occasionally include a place I've never been before.

I still enjoy the high-octane machinations of the spy story, though I haven't read a good one lately. Who knows, I might just stumble into a dead drop  or pick up a one-time pad and get motivated to turn out another espionage tome. Meanwhile, look for the Burke Hill trilogy in the near future.

Chester Campbell
http://chesterdcampbell.com
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