NEws Letter

Dear Reader,

I write to you from my desk in Portland, where I've been trying to finish the first draft of the novel for 2026 — which seems an absurdly long way off, though not in publishing terms. Editors get a little antsy if a manuscript hasn't been delivered a year in advance, and grow more and more anxious with each manuscript-free month that follows. For a while, I got away with delivering six or seven months in advance, but I witnessed the dreadful toll this took on previously happy, well-balanced editorial staff. Reader, it aged them, and I bear responsibility for those grey hairs.

Anyway, I've grown into the habit of sequestering at some point during the writing of a first draft, either to get over the hump of the middle section or push the draft to its conclusion. For this book, it's the latter. I divide the day into two or three parts, with a target of a thousand words for each, and work until my eyes start to cross. I converse solely with bartenders, and even they know enough just to nod and ask if it'll be the same as last time. I can only manage this for eight or nine days straight, but it achieves its purpose, if by annihilating any romantic notions I may once have entertained about being a writer. The resulting prose may not be very good, but it's prose that didn't exist before, prose that can then be made better.

And when I return home, the proof pages of THE CHILDREN OF EVE, the Parker novel for 2025, will be waiting for me. For me, the present is the future, or vice versa.

You know, I think it may be time for my wine . . .