Do you like reading fiction? Over the next year or so, as I write my new novel, I'm going to be sharing it episode by episode here in the blog.
I'm really excited about this experiment — seeing how many of you choose to read along and seeing what effect writing it as a serial will have on the story. It's scary to write a long piece so publicly but exhiliarating too.
The big 19th century novelists – Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle and of course, the great Mr Dickens – did it this way. Which is why so many of their novels are so long. The more chapters they wrote, the longer the serial continued, the more money they got for each story.
My own story is all about money, that's one of the few things I know about it so far. Money and love. I also know that it's a family murder mystery again, this time set in New York City and State.
The McIntyre family consists of father Mack, a Manhattan building contractor; mother Zelda, a professional beauty, and their three children: twins Mel and Jamie and baby Tara who died, aged four months, in questionable circumstances.
As Mel has grown, she has become ever more determined to solve the mysteries around Tara's death, investigations that have landed her now in a deluxe psychiatric care home in upstate New York.
Mel urgently needs to get out of hospital and find the closure she craves. But who can she trust to help her?
The working title I'm giving the book is Skin Diving and the first episode will kick off here next Friday, June 17th 2011.
