If you’ve been around the last few weeks, you’ll know I’m doing NaNoWriMo as motivation to get a good solid start on “Of Wolves & Men”. And I’m bringing you along for the ride.
- Each Friday in November, I’m posting a sample of what I’ve written that week.
- All the samples will be in unedited form, so you’re getting a deep insight into my writing process…
Click the button below, and bookmark the page, so you can keep track of my progress throughout the month.
{BEGINNING OF SAMPLE}
I set the file aside so that I could pull a notepad toward me. I scribbled down every fact I could remember about the crime scene in which I’d watched Jimmy die. I had to be missing something. Nothing could walk through walls, except for ghosts, and even the most malevolent of manifestations that I’d encountered didn’t possess the kind of strength required to inflict significant physical harm.
Someone once said something along the lines of“when you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable,must be the truth”. It was one of the Chief’s favorite lines, but whoever had said it couldn’t have been taking the STF’s line of work into account.
So, I thought about what kinds of creature couldn’t inflict the damage I’d seen on the two bodies. The list was huge, so I wrote down the list that could…
By the time I’d finished assembling the list, I’d crossed out several of the options, and what I was left with wasn’t very useful. Angels, Demons, Vampires, Fae, Wizards, a drug enhanced mortal, or even something I’d never come across before.
Of them all, I wasn’t sure if I believed the stories about angels and demons, because of the connection to religions I had a hard time accepting. However, the next three options left me with species that couldn’t teleport, as far as I knew. Unfortunately, the last of the choices only left me with the improbable, so I wrote a list of the things that had made no sense about the crime scene.
Jimmy and his lover had died from massive trauma,but I’d seen nothing that indicate that any weapons had been used. The door had been locked, the ventilation remained undisturbed, and was too narrow for a person to fit through. The windows didn’t open, and even if they had opened, it was still a drop of several floors to street level.
I found myself thinking about some of the classic locked room mysteries I’d read growing up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember how the detectives had solved those problems or think of any that had accounted for the existence of the supernatural.
I needed another perspective on the problem, and so I decided to try give myself a visual reminder of the crime scene. It was with tears, and a pain in my heart that I sat down and sketched out the layout of Jimmy’s office. That much at least I didn’t need to think about too much.
But then I had to dig deep, and allow myself to see the devastation, as I tried to mark in the bodies, the locations of the furniture, and all the other things that turned the office into a crime scene.Unfortunately, I was unable to get past the sight of Jimmy as I felt him die.Cooperfield might have been right when she’d told me I was too close to the case.
I sat there for some time, before giving up on my efforts to establish the peculiarities of the crime scene. Maybe all I needed was a shower to wake me up after a very long, and traumatic day.
{END OF SAMPLE}
Drop a note in the comments below, and let me know what you think of this insight into my writing process…
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