What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing Fire and Rain in early 2017 and it was finished in mid-2019. This is primarily because I had some other writing projects going on and would let this particular book sit a little, then go back to it. I think hibernation periods are really good with long-form projects because they allow you to see and feel a book-in-progress more clearly.
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 like to mix it up. I have an office, a cool Lincoln desk in my foyer that I can work from, and sometimes I like to hang out on my couch by the fireplace and work from there. My favorite place to work, though, is on my back deck. I live in the country and have no neighbors. I am surrounded by woods on all sides and the forest environment is my happy place. I can work out there most of the year since I like the cold and own about a dozen lap blankets. My sister gave me a recliner in thanks for taking care of her after knee replacement surgery and I keep it on the back deck under an overhand (tacky, I know, but that’s the advantage of not having neighbors). The deck is big enough for my dogs to join me and my littlest dog jumps up and snuggles next to me while I work. It’s especially grand whenever it rains as I love the sound it makes. I feed a colony of feral cats in the woods nearby (all neutered now after a 2-year effort) and the semi-domesticated ones sometimes join me on the back deck and bathe in the sun as I write. It’s a great sanctuary—even if I do have to feed ten animals each morning before I can sit down and write.
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? When I first started writing, many moons ago, I always wrote early in the morning, ideally as soon as I woke up when I was still half in a dream state. This allowed me to step into my fictional world and live in it for a little while before the real world came crashing in around me. Then I became a mother and it was clear that I would need to learn to write whenever I could. I discovered that I could write anytime of day, even late at night, so long as I had an extensive outline I could refer back to. An outline allows me to know where I am at any one point without having to write myself into the scene I need to complete that day.
I don’t listen to music or any other distractions as I write, though it probably would not matter if I did. My ex-husband was a rock musician and I wrote an entire book in our one-room New York City apartment while his band at the time practiced behind me! Thank God I have the ability to really, really focus on what I am doing and turn out everything else. The one drawback of this trait is that any coffee or hot tea I start with goes to waste because I forget that it’s there. When I write, two and a half hours can go by in what literally feels like ten minutes to me.
I do all of my writing on my laptop, which is ideal for me since I revise endlessly before I call a book done. However, I find that writing out ideas, and even sketching out schematic diagrams of the plot really helps me get a birds-eye view of a book’s structure and fine-tune its plot arc. I am a huge fan of real fountain pens and big fat pads of paper backed by heavy cardboard. I have also recently discovered a great way to make progress on a book by using my phone. If I’m half asleep or relaxing somewhere and either a scene or an idea for one comes to me, I just reach for my phone and use talk-to-text to send myself an email with that content in it. I would caution any writer to limit using the dictation app solely when writing a book, however. If you’ve been raised on television and motion pictures, you’re going to end up describing the fictional film taking place in your head as you write and that means you’ll be including every single action the characters take and using way too many adjectives. That’s a waste of word count. You have to cut out all of the irrelevant actions and descriptions to make the most of the written word format. If anyone out there is using dictation to write their books, I would urge them to look at it like the first level of paint on a canvas: it’s just a start. You need to add layers and layers of your work on top of it and edit ruthlessly to make the most of the written medium.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. I chose this excerpt from Chapter 9 of Fire and Rain in part because it does not contain any spoilers. It has been very lightly edited to avoid ruining any surprises readers may find. To set the stage, my protagonist PI Casey Jones is visiting the younger brother of two of her clients in a mental health facility. She has managed to sneak in without being seen:
I stuck my head inside the dimly lit room. It smelled like rubbing alcohol and coffee. A break or supply room, or both. I shimmied inside and dropped to the floor, landing in the middle of a small space surrounded by shelves on three sides. The shelves were stacked high with staff uniforms, adult diapers, cleaning supplies, and all the other accoutrements of a long-term care facility. I doubted I could conceal my identity for long, but it would be stupid not to take advantage of the long row of nicely folded scrubs that greeted me at eye level. I selected a pair with green and purple elephants dancing across the fabric, slipped the pants and shirt on over my jeans and T-shirt, then smoothed out my ponytail until it vaguely resembled one that a medical professional might actually wear, at least on a bad hair day.
There was no one in the hallway and I knew from the lack of activity that either no patients lived on this wing or everyone was asleep. I walked quickly toward the opposite wing of the building, ducking into a doorway when I heard a stairwell door open. But it was only a man with a mop who stuck his head in, surveyed the hallway floor, and apparently deemed it clean enough for his standards. He left without entering the hallway any further. I waited for my heart rate to settle, then followed him out into the stairwell. I could hear him clattering down the steps below. I needed to find a way onto the other wing. That’s where Robert Jr. would be.
Several dark hallways later, I found the resident’s wing. I could hear the noise as I grew closer. Someone was laughing. Someone else was crying. I understood both impulses all too well at the moment. As I slipped quietly down the hall, reading the name tags on each door, I passed by room after room, hearing two male voices arguing. Right after that, a few doors down, I passed a man with a remarkably sturdy pair of lungs shouting, “I want hot chocolate!” over and over without stopping. I knew I’d go crazy living with that kind of noise day after day, night after night. Finally, realizing that skulking was no way to blend in, I began walking briskly down the hall, trying to project an air of having somewhere important to go.
I peered into each room as I passed. Apparently, there was a rule at Haven House that everyone had to leave their door at least half open at all times. I saw many people already asleep, while others read or wrote in journals or stared aimlessly out their windows. All of the patients on this hall were men, though I was certain I also heard female voices as I passed some of the rooms. I wondered if the staff allowed in-room visits from other patients or just looked the other way.
A door opened at the far end of the hallway and I stepped quickly into the nearest room, praying it would belong to one of the early-to-bed patients. The room was dark and I could hear rhythmic snores rising and falling behind me. God bless tranquilizers. Efficient footsteps tap-tapped past and I risked peeking out to see the rear view of a woman in a white uniform walking toward a metal door at the opposite end of the hallway. She pushed through it and disappeared. Probably the entrance to the area where the female patients lived. I had about ten more rooms to check in my search for Robert Jr. and knew I needed to move fast, before the nurse returned.
I found Robert Jr. in the next-to-last room. He was sitting on his bed talking to someone nearby, or at least I hoped he was. Who knew how far gone he might be?
I poked my head inside the room and discovered an emaciated brunette who could not have been more than 15 years old sitting on the chair by Robert’s bed. She was unbuttoning her blouse.
“Hold it right there,” I said sternly. The girl looked up, startled, her hands reflexively crossing over her white bra.
“I didn’t ask her to do that,” Robert Jr. said quickly. His voice had an odd, almost metallic tone to it, as if he were forcing it out with an effort the rest of us don’t have to make. And he probably was. He was probably doped to the gills with god knows how many mood elevators and antipsychotic drugs.
The girl had an unfocused look in her eyes, though she did not keep them on me for long. She returned to staring at Robert with adoration. And, honestly, I could not blame her. Robert Jr. was a younger version of his father. I stared at him, acutely aware of his handsome face and flawless body, fractured on the inside in ways I could not fathom and yet striking on the outside: strong jaw, wide mouth, aquiline nose, chiseled muscles, thick black hair that fell across his forehead in an unintentionally dashing swoop. No wonder the young lady was enamored of him. He could have been a Roman god with a face and body like that.
It is odd to me how some people can be so perfect on the outside, yet so broken on the inside, beset by missing chemicals and synapses that fail to fire, their reasoning impaired in ways I could not begin to understand. Why is it so hard to believe that beautiful people suffered from mental illness just like the rest of us? Why do we expect so much from them simply because their exterior matches our idea of the ideal?
“What do you want?” the young woman demanded of me and I realized I had been standing there, staring, for a creepily long period of time. Perhaps I had fallen asleep on my feet. It felt like days since I’d been able to truly rest.
“You’re supposed to be in your room,” I told her sternly. “You know the rules.”
She stood up slowly then intentionally bumped me as she passed by, her jealousy kicking in. She had noticed me staring at Robert Jr. and was declaring war.
Boy, was she lucky. If I had not been masquerading as a nurse’s aid, I would have clocked her one for that sullen maneuver.
“I get to stay up until midnight,” Robert Jr. told me, either not noticing or not caring that the girl had left. “I followed every single rule for a week, so I get to stay up until midnight.”
“That’s cool,” I said. I sat down in the chair the young girl had vacated. “Knock yourself out.”
He stared at me suspiciously. “Knock myself out?” he asked.
“That’s an expression. It means you get to stay up until midnight.”
“Excellent!” He sat up straighter, grinning at me with a smile hauntingly familiar. It was just like his father’s and it pierced my heart to know that such a smile had to be confined to such a tiny corner of the world as this room.
Without warning, his eyes narrowed and he stared at me with a coldness I could feel in my veins.
It was a good sign he had followed the rules for a week, I told myself. That meant he was in control of himself. He followed the rules.
Robert Jr. stared at me with his suddenly cold eyes, silent, waiting for me to speak. He showed no curiosity or suspicion. I guess a complete stranger barging into your bedroom was nothing unusual when you led an institutionalized life.
“Listen,” I told him. “I’ll be straight with you. I’m not really a nurse’s aid.”
“I know,” he interrupted. “No one wears those stupid dancing elephant uniforms. And no wonder. You look terrible in them.”
I looked down at my borrowed scrubs and couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny or not. I let it go in favor of clarity. “I’m a friend of Candy and Roxy’s,” I explained. “I need to talk to you about them.”
He did not react. I wondered just how much medication he was on. Too much, I decided. I’d need to be very clear about what I wanted.
“Did you know that Candy was missing?” I asked him.
…. At that moment, I realized that we were sitting toe-to-toe, so close that we could have kissed. And I had a sudden feeling that this was exactly what Robert Jr. and his underage girlfriend had been doing a few minutes before. Until I had taken her place. It was a strange feeling, as if I had suddenly been ripped out of my life and transplanted into his world of relentless monotony and mandated order punctuated by the outbursts of strangers. Panic flared in me as I imagined being seized and admitted as a patient and not allowed to go home.
I took a deep breath. I needed to get a grip.
“Who are you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“I know your sisters,” I repeated. “We’re friends. Like I said, Candy told me that she needed me to come pick her up. I forget the name of the place. But I remember she said that it was the camp where the two of you had gone when you were kids.”
He just stared at me blankly.
I had an idea. “Give me your cell phone,” I said.
He fumbled in his pocket and handed it over. It was a simple phone-and-text model with no browser installed and, from his messaging history, it had been programmed to confine his contact with the outside world to family members only.
I opened his text messages from Candy. “See?” I told him, scrolling down to the part where he could read what Candy had said about their attending a camp as children. “Do you know the camp she was talking about?”
He smelled like Ax, that aftershave teenage boys everywhere shower themselves in these days. Another disconcertingly normal thing about him that made me all the sadder his life was confined to Haven House.
“What does this part mean?” he asked, ignoring my question. He pointed to the gibberish. “I have been reading it over and over, looking for the code. I think maybe she found something valuable. A treasure maybe. These are clues, see?” He pointed to some of the nonsensical phrases the dictation app had picked up. “I’ve been looking and looking at it, but I can’t crack the code. I think it’s an alphanumeric code. Did you know that most ciphers are based on…”
I interrupted him before he went off on a tangent. “I think maybe this stuff is just people talking in the background,” I explained. “You know how you can press that little microphone and it writes down what you say into it? I think there were people standing near your sister and the phone picked up their conversation.”
I could feel his disappointment. It was a very ordinary explanation for a situation that had seemed exciting and happily out of the ordinary for him. He looked doubtful. I had to try again. “Listen, Robbie, I don’t want to make you worry, but I think [your sister] might be in trouble. Can you tell me where she might be? Do you know? Do you even remember the name of the camp where you went as a child?”
Insulting him worked. “I guess she’s at Camp Tikkinaka. That’s what she says right here. That they’re going there. But they aren’t going to let her stay. They make you leave after eighth grade. Someone should tell her.”
My pulse quickened. “So Tikkinaki is the name of the camp you both went to when you were kids?”
He was quiet for a moment, and I had an uneasy feeling that I had, inadvertently, evoked some bad memories.
“[My sister] went there,” he explained. “I only got to go one summer. They said I could not come back because there was this boy who went there with me and his parents said that if they let me come back they would sue the camp. So the camp told me to stay home. But [she] got to go back. It wasn’t fair. I liked it there, too.”
Oh, god. What had he done to the other boy? Tied him up with lanyards and beat him with popsicle sticks or, worse, canoe paddles? Did I really want to know?
“What happened?” I said, despite myself. “What did you do to the other boy?” Please don’t let it be something like he attacked the boy for sitting by his bed and asking annoying questions.
“I pushed him off the dock,” Robert Jr. explained calmly. “Then I wouldn’t let him back on it because he was being mean to my sister. Everyone made a big deal out of it just because he couldn’t swim. Who goes to camp without knowing how to swim?”
“Why exactly did you push him off the dock?” I asked.
“He said she should be in Munchkinland instead of at camp. It made her cry. So I pushed him in. Nobody cared but the counselors and his stupid parents. Nobody else liked him. I was doing everyone a favor.”
He explained this so matter-of-factly I was forced to rearrange my view of him as a benign and unlucky young man.
“Did you have to stand up for your sisters often?” I said.
He nodded. “I’m their brother. That’s what brothers do.”
I wondered how much of his behavioral troubles stemmed from an overzealous sense of brotherhood. Had his father said that to him once, out of concern for his daughters, only to see his advice backfire horribly? If Robert Jr. was going to attack everyone who made snide comments about [his sisters], he would be a danger to the world indeed.
“You’re a good brother,” I told him. I took his hands in mine and they lay there, lifeless and clammy. His reactions had been drowned in chemicals.
“That doesn’t seem fair to me,” I agreed. “You being sent home like that. Was that the only camp you ever went to?”
Robert Jr was not impressed by my compliment. He was starting at a small shelf in the corner that held comic books I got the hint and hurried up.
“So you never went back to Camp Tikkinaka?” I asked.
He grinned suddenly. “We used to call it ‘Camp Tittyknockers,’” he said proudly. “Me and the other boys.”
“Do you remember where it was?”
He shook his head. “I only got to go one summer. After that, I went to live in a special place all the time. A place like this, but everyone was younger than here. When I got older, mom and dad said I had to leave there and come here instead. That this was a school for people my age. I know it’s not really a school but if I tell them that, they’ll feel bad, so I pretend I think it’s a school.”
That broke my heart, though I can not explain why.
“I have to go,” I told Robert Jr. “I don’t want you to get in trouble for talking to me.”
He shrugged. “I don’t think there’s a rule that says I can’t let a friend of my sisters come in my room.”
“Just the same, don’t tell anyone I was here. Okay? Not even your girlfriend.”
Robert shifted uncomfortably. “She’s not my girlfriend. I do not want to be her boyfriend. She is nice to me one moment and the next thing I know, she hits me. I don’t think she can decide how she feels.”
“Trust me, it’s not that she doesn’t know how she feels about you,” I told him. “She probably doesn’t know how she feels about life. Don’t take it personally.”
“I think I want a nicer girlfriend anyway.”
“I don’t blame you,” I assured him.
… There was nothing else I could do but go.
I stuck my head out of his door. The coast was clear. “Your sisters send their love, and your mother, too,” I said. “They all said to tell you that they are proud of you for staying here and doing well. They can’t wait to see you again.”
Robert Jr. smiled. It was a beautiful sight. “They love me,” he said.
“Yes they do,” I agreed. I hesitated, not sure I wanted to know the answer, but finally had to ask. “Is there a secret way out? I don’t want anyone to see me.”
“Sure. Follow me,” he said, delighted at assuming the role of protector. He walked quietly down the hallway, then checked it in both directions to make sure no one was watching. “If you go out that door at the end of the hall, and down the steps to the very bottom, there’s a door that takes you into the basement. There’s a way out there. I use it sometimes.” He stopped and stared at me with alarm, suddenly aware that he had divulged his secret.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “Thanks again.”
I walked quickly toward the stairwell door. As I pulled it open, I looked back over my shoulder. Robert Jr. was staring after me placidly, neither surprised at having seen me nor sad to see me go. I wondered if I had just starred in yet another strange moment in a life that did not make sense to him, but that he was willing to accept because he had no other choice.
Click on the below link to purchase FIRE AND RAIN 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? To begin with, a lot of the scenes I write affect me emotionally on a personal level. I make myself put them in any way because I think it adds heart to my genre (crime fiction) and allows me to use my books as a way to feel connected to other human beings and maybe even make some of them realize they’re not alone in this world.
This particular scene hit me hard because it raises issues about mental health, especially in very young people, and how they become the unseen people in our society. The boy in this scene is only 19 or 20 years old. He should have his whole life ahead of him. Instead, his world is been confined to a long-term mental health hospital and will likely live there for the rest of his life.
I grew up in a family with mental health issues and, while I’m very comfortable with and understanding of people living with these challenges, it also breaks my heart that these kinds of issues almost always overshadow the beautiful and unique traits in a person with them. Some astonishing bits of wisdom come from the mouths of people that we consider “mentally ill” and I hate the way that the world reacts with alarm and suspicion whenever someone acts a little bit different. So often, people will react with fear and immediately attribute strange behavior to the worst of intentions without understanding that these people do not have the same kind of cognitive processes that the rest of the so-called normal world does. The character in this scene is a beautiful, loving boy but there are things happening in his brain that cause him to erupt in violent behavior without any rhyme or reason to it. Because of that, he’ll never even a fraction of the joys that life offers. Did I mention that breaks my heart?
I think this scene affected me more than it would have in the past because, thanks to the constant onslaught of media and social media, young people today have atrocities coming at them 24/7. I don’t know how anyone can grow up today without suffering anxiety and fear. It takes age, wisdom, and perspective to understand that you can’t save the entire world and that you can only control the small world you’ve built around you. I hate to see so many beautiful young people trying to find their way through all of the endless fears they are being fed in the name of clicks, ratings, and going viral. My heart goes out to them. They care about the world and yet it’s that exact same wonderful trait of theirs that is hurting them. We need to find a better way to both accept and treat our fellow human beings who are coping with mental health challenges.
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. I don’t actually keep any all drafts so I cannot share any prior versions with you. However, I can say that when originally writing this, if I recall correctly, I had the young boy character enamored with my protagonist’s breasts and I think there were a few more (PG-13 level) sexual elements in the scene as well. While this behavior might have been appropriate for a 19-year-old boy, I realized that it was also really creepy given that my protagonist is around 40 years old. Plus, those original interactions were chosen in part for their comedic value and, in the end, I decided it was an inappropriate tone. While I still use humor here and there to break up the sadness, it’s still essentially a heartbreaking scenario.
As you can see, I am always walking a fine line in my books between the humorous and what I like to think is heartfelt. Come to think of it, that’s kind of my entire approach to life. A friend once said to me (thanks, Kevin!) that other people wore their hearts on their sleeves but I wore all of my emotions on mine. That’s pretty accurate and I would not have it any other way. What’s the point of being here if you’re not going to feel it?
Katy Munger is a North Carolina-based writer who has published sixteen crime fiction novels to date, including the Hubbert & Lil, Casey Jones, and Dead Detective mystery series. She has also been a book reviewer for the Washington Post and served as North Carolina’s 2016 Piedmont Laureate. Learn more about her at https://www.katymunger.com/
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