#309 INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION “NEVER COMING HOME” by Hannah Mary McKinnon

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I started writing Never Coming Home in August of 2020 and handed the manuscript to my editor (Emily Ohanjanians) in January 2021. We then went through a  couple of rounds of edits before it went through proofreading and copy edits, during which time I worked on another manuscript.

LEFT: Hannah Mary McKinnon inn 2020. RIGHT: Hannah Mary McKinnon in 2021. Copyright by Hannah Mary McKinnon.
Emily Ohanjanians

Click on the below link to visit Emily Ohanjanians’s website

https://www.emilyohanjanians.com/

Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work?  And please describe in detail.  And can you please include a photo? I write in different places depending on the stages of the novel. The rough plot is at my dining table, where I thrash things out by hand on a notepad. The detailed plot and initial draft is in our spare bedroom, with its tiny desk and dodgy internet connection. I leave my phone downstairs to minimize distractions. Edits and research take place at my desk in the office. The final review is either in front of my fireplace or in the back garden (depending on the season). I like switching places because it changes my frame of mind.

Credit and Copyright by Hannah Mary McKinnon

What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I need silence, so no music. I write the manuscript directly on my laptop or desktop. There’s always a huge jug of water on my desk and it’s my mission to finish it before dinner time. No specific time – but I have a wordcount or editing goal I must reach daily before I can call it a night.

Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference.  This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.

Never Coming Home, pages 30/31

“So, the pandemic was when my patience wore less than razor-thin. Honestly, you spend months on end cooped up in a house with someone you’ve pretended to love, and it makes you imagine things, lots of things, including the music you’d play at their funeral. Not that we’d had one for Michelle yet. There was no body to bury and we still had (insert forlorn, shiny puppy-dog eyes) hope. As a side note, hell’s bells, funerals are expensive, and when we got around to having one whenever she was officially declared dead, I’d have to go all out. Probably get an expensive-yet-empty coffin to give the service some sense of normalcy. There would have to be flowers, and no doubt an elaborately catered wake for her chichi art gallery brigade. It would all be for show, but I could hardly fashion a symbolic container from aluminum foil and plonk flowers from the petrol station on top. Well, I would if I thought I could get away with it.”

Click on the below link to purchase NEVER COMING HOME from Amazon

Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write?  And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? Never Coming Home was my pandemic book in the sense that I wrote and edited it entirely during Covid. It was an otherwise miserable time. My mum had just passed, and I couldn’t get to Europe to say goodbye. I needed something to make me laugh when everything appeared so hopeless. Lucas was that something, and I remember thinking I’d uncovered his voice as I wrote the above excerpt.

Hannah Mary McKinnon’s mother. Copyright by Hannah Mary McKinnon

When I got up in the morning, I always had a smile on my face as I knew I’d be figuring out how much more outrageous I could make him. Lucas may be a crook, a liar, a thief, and a murderer, but he has a fabulous sense of humor.

Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Oddly enough, there weren’t any!

Click on the below link to visit Hannah Mary McKinnon’s website

Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature:

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html

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