I would like to talk a bit about the process of writing, but more importantly, the process of editing. The first finished manuscript of Raven, my science fiction novel, was 150,000 words. Then came the process of lopping off the first 30,000 words that were unnecessary backstory. I will explain why that backstory was important to write, but not so important to include in the story itself. Other edits included reworking areas that relied too much on telling the reader what to think as opposed to showing a scene and letting the reader experience the story on their own terms. The final published novel came in around 70,000 words. My return to college to finish a long-postponed degree also helped me understand how better to hone a story.

Home Front was a totally different process as it was based on my mother’s diaries and the letters she’d saved from WWII. Writing this as historical non-fiction required a different approach from pure fiction. I had to stay true to the events and true to my mother’s voice. Much of the novel includes her words used as description or as dialogue, and the diaries provide an outline—something I normally do not use. Home Front is also different in that I wrote it first in past tense and then changed it into present tense, hoping to involve the reader more directly in the action.

Behind the Mask was a different experience from either of the other books in that I combined pure fiction with actual experience and dialogue gleaned from eavesdropping on those around me. The first part of the book was published as a stand-alone novella. Several people pushed for a sequel, and I managed to convince that publisher to combine them into one longer novel. And where Raven is dialogue-heavy, Behind the Mask relies much more on description.

I will sample a reading from each of the books including the sequel to Raven now in the works to illustrate some of the differences in approach.