Double Exposure

For the past five weeks, I’ve asked the bloggers at WWK about their works in progress. In this last installment, KB Inglee and I expose our WIPs. Please look at the previous four Mondays to read about all of our WWK’s WIPs.    E. B. Davis

KB Inglee

What is the title of your WIP?

DEATH ON THE DELAWARE

Do you have a jacket blurb?

It is too soon to have one. It is set in a fictional town in Delaware in 1750s. A stranger is found dead in a Tavern. My protagonist, Hannah Pleasant helps her next door neighbor, Silas Cobb, solve a case including Colonial politics and slavery.

In what stage of progress is your WIP?

I have the first two chapters written and a lot of set up: maps, family histories, local and world history, pages of notes and the beginning of a plot. Someone killed him, but I don’t think I have even met the murderer yet.

How many hours per week are you able to devote to writing?

Daily: Minimum of one, maximum of four hours. Between four and eight a week of putting words on paper. I do a lot of work away from the computer, while cleaning the barn, rebuilding fences, and lugging sheep feed.

What is your aspiration for this work?

It is too early to tell if I will even finish the novel. My true love is writing short stories.

In what stage do you hope to be by the end of this year?

Finish the first draft.

SHORT STORY

What’s the title of your WIP?

THE MAGIC BULLET

Do you have a blurb about your WIP?

None since it will be in an anthology if it is accepted. It is a pre-police procedural set in the late 1880s when a French scientist discovered that the rifle marks on bullets are consistent with the weapon that fired it, not with the object it hit. Washington DC police have no established procedures, lab, or chain of evidence. A cop takes evidence to his friend whose wife is my protagonist.

At the same time I am doing a rewrite on a short story set in the early 1800s in Massachusetts.

In what stage of progress is your WIP?

I am doing my last read through of the Magic Bullet now.

 What are your expectations for this work?

To be accepted into the anthology for which I am writing it.

What stage do you hope to be in by the end of this year?

Submissions open in April, so I should have it ready to go by then. I’d like to have at least six more short stories by the end of the year. And finished the novel, too.

E. B. Davis

I’ve titled my WIP  TOASTING FEAR, after taking a course with Sally J. Walker. She also gave me a bit more insight into the genres in which I’m working. The manuscript has taken about two years to write, but while I’ve worked on it, I’ve written several short stories that have been published.

This is the third manuscript I’ve written. Those manuscripts took me about one year to write each, but then, although a few agents bit, they didn’t offer to represent me. I hadn’t intended to take as much time with this one, but then I’m learning more, layering and editing as I go. Another reason is that I started working with other writers.

As of a year and a half ago, three writers and I formed a critique group, The Mayhem Gang. The first year was turbulent because our membership changed. Two of us have survived and welcomed two more into our group, which has been stable now for about eight months. We are about to finish critiquing our first drafts and start revising.

Here’s my blurb (so far) for TOASTING FEAR: Abby Jenkins supplies champagnes for Outer Banks, N.C. weddings. But she hides a secret past. As a sexually abused twelve-year-old, she protected her little sister from their father’s molestation by luring him into a death by drowning. Twenty years later, her father reappears in demon form to seek revenge with the help of his fiendish teacher, the pirate Blackbeard.

Abby thinks she’s lost her mind when Demon Dad starts tormenting her. But when her high school sweetheart, undercover DEA agent Jerry McFadden, dies by a drug dealer’s shotgun blast and one of her customers keels over after a tasting, poisoned by wine in her shop, Abby knows that Demon Dad’s threat is real and her survival depends on solving the murders.

Heartbroken by Jerry’s death, Abby investigates while butting heads with Detective Thomas Bateman, who suspected her role in her father’s death. When Jerry returns as an angel to help her, he intertwines their souls in a loving sensual intimacy that Abby never anticipated. With a flute full of trouble, Abby must deal with heaven, hell and the authorities to save herself, overcome her father’s revenge and solve the murders. 

I’m a sporadic in my writing. I try to write everyday and usually succeed working about four hours per day. When I have a spare day, I’ll write for eight hours. But thinking out the plot, breaking it into scenes and then focusing on what I want that scene to accomplish takes most of my time. Once I have that down, I write as a pantser, which then needs a lot of revision.

I hope to find an agent to sell this story, but I also realize that since it is a cross genre, something I’ve invented that I call a supernatural romantic mystery, finding someone to sell it in this adverse market may be hard. It’s a traditional mystery, which I present in multiple POVs, but it has supernatural and romantic elements. Abby, Detective Bateman and Blackbeard tell the story. I’m continuing to develop their voices.

By the end of this year, I hope to have a polished script that I will query. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll be torn in two ways. Write the second book or turn to a more marketable traditional mystery?