Released from prison for one murder, only to be arrested for a second, Sheila Hampton has no one to turn to save Sam Quinton, local private eye, who sets out to prove her innocence and uncover the knot of corruption that entangled its victim for over two decades.
Welcome to one of the September 16th stops on the blog tour for Heel Turn by Kevin R. Doyle with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to check out other stops on this blitz for alternate excerpts, reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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Author Guest Post
A note about process:
There are probably as many ways to go about preparing and writing a novel manuscript as there are fiction writers. My high-school students often seem to think that all I do is sit down and write something through first draft and have it come out perfect. While it’s true that my writing process has evolved quite a bit over the last decade, it was never quite that simple.
It’s true that in earlier times I sat down and basically wrote a first draft straight through, then revised a second time, and usually on third draft tightened and proofed. But I found that I ended up spending so much time going back and forth trying to remember things, or make sure I wasn’t contradicting myself, that I was often stopped dead in the water. It worked in that I did get manuscripts finished, but in many ways it was an inefficient way to operate.
About three years ago, I ended up in a situation where, at the start of the school year, I had committed myself to producing two complete books by the end of May. All were mysteries, meaning for sure everything had to make sense in the end. Over that period of time, I worked out a more efficient way of writing.
Not to say that this is my final process and will never ever be tweaked, but for now it seems to work.
Usually, I start out with a vague idea for a premise, and almost never do I have anything close to an ending, or even a middle, in mind. Thus, the first draft is entirely invention on the fly as I go about figuring out, not so much where I’m heading, but what the path even looks like.
Somewhere around halfway through, I begin to see the broad picture, and at that point I usually stop and produce two or three pages of an outline. I then go through and finish the first draft, periodically stopping and either revising or adding to the outline as necessary. Thus, I usually finish outline concurrent with first draft.
With a first draft and outline completed (though in a lot of cases the final product looks nothing like either), I begin the second draft. Knowing now where the story is heading, I can add scenes, ideas, and characters, move things around, flesh out sparse places, etc. As I’m working on second draft, I’m also doing several other things including:
1. Sketching a small outline, a paragraph or so, for each chapter
2. Writing up and fleshing out the biographies of the various characters
3. Making a note of things I need to research or clarify that for whatever reason I don’t want to stop and do at that moment
4. Crafting a timeline of the entire narrative so that I don’t lose track of days of the week, seasons of the year, or even whether something takes place in night or day
All of this is done in separate files and collected in a single folder. I thus end up with a folder for the book itself and files for manuscript, outline, chapter outline, character bios, timeline and include (things I need to check or fix at some point).
If I’m lucky, by end of second draft the story is essentially complete, at which point I can start a third draft and tighten things up, patch up any holes in the plot, and generally make sure that the whole thing hangs together. Then it’s time to work at the sentence level to make sure the darned thing reads well, and finally comes the proofreading phase.
It sounds like a lot of work, but I’ve found that, among other things, employing this system allows me to work on multiple manuscripts at the same time, with each in a different level of development.
The bad news is that all of the above is before a publisher likes and accepts the book, at which point come content edits, line edits, proof edits, final copy review, galleys, etc.
And while for the last few years this system has worked pretty well for me, naturally if anyone has a way to do the same amount of work in half, or even a third, of the time I’d love to hear about it.
About the Book
Heel Turn
The Sam Quinton Book Two
by Kevin R. Doyle
Published 9 March 2021
Camel Press
Genre: Mystery
Page Count: 202
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Released from prison for one murder, only to be arrested for a second, Sheila Hampton has no one to turn to save Sam Quinton, local private eye, who sets out to prove her innocence and uncover the knot of corruption that entangled its victim for over two decades.
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Excerpt
After a short time of hushed talking, Bernie and Sheila leaned back in their chairs.
“Who’s he?” Sheila Hampton said, pointing at me.
“This is Sam Quinton, my investigator. I’ve employed him to help us in this matter.”
“You mean like a detective?”
“Yes,” Bernie replied.
Sheila squinted at me for a minute. “He looks like a bouncer who had a rough night.”
“Wrestler, actually,” I put in. “Long ago. But I’ve also done some nightclub bouncing in my time as well.”
“A wrestler? Jesus Christ, Mr. Lyman. What kind of freak show are you putting on here?”
I shifted a bit against the wall and thought about whether to respond.
“Sheila, Mr. Quinton’s been a professional investigator for several years. Believe me, he’s as effective a man as we could have.”
She looked me over for a second, then turned back to Bernie. “You actually think you’re going to need some muscle on this thing?”
“It’s possible,” Bernie replied. “After all, if you didn’t kill Harris —”
“I didn’t, goddammit!”
“Then there’s some reason someone wants to frame you. They have the gun they believe killed him, and they already have your prints on it. If you’re telling me the truth, there’s no way to avoid it. Someone wants to put you away again.”
About the Author
A high-school teacher, former college instructor and fiction writer, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of numerous short horror stories. He’s also written three crime thrillers, The Group, When You Have to Go There, and And the Devil Walks Away and one horror novel, The Litter. Recently, he’s begun working on the Sam Quinton private eye series. The first Quinton book, Squatter’s Rights, was nominated for the 2021 Shamus award as Best First PI Novel. The second book, Heel Turn, was released in March of 2021, while the third in the series, Double Frame, is due out March of 2022.
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Giveaway Alert!
Kevin R. Doyle will be awarding one physical copy of the book, U.S. only to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
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