Stranger Than Fiction: The Evolution of a Novel

The journey of writing a novel is much like traveling through life, a strange tour, with many unexpected twists and turns, often having to take the road less traveled. Help comes from surprising places. The first novel in my mystery series, “The Hurting Game,” was a pretty wild ride.

The impetus to write the book came from a column I read in Newsday by a boxing writer. His father had been a well-known fighter and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. The son had his mind set on being a writer, but was hesitant to disappoint. He agreed to give it a try.

The first time he stepped into the ring with his father to take lessons, he freaked. He felt incredibly overwhelmed. In the column he would write many years later, he told of feeling like his father was ten feet tall, and how diminished he was by his powerful presence. His arms and legs felt frozen with angst. After the lesson, the son knew he was not cut out to be a fighter, let alone follow in the huge footsteps of his father. He told his dad so. It was, he recalled, a very emotionally-charged moment, hard on both of them.

After I read the column, an idea possessed me. I was intrigued about writing a book where the son of a famous boxing father deals with living in his prodigious shadow. Me being me, I couldn’t write a straight novel, there had to be dead bodies, lots of blood and intrigue. I also wanted to finally find a way to write about my very strange, close friend, who is a former DEA agent, turned private investigator working on high-profile felony cases.

Fred’s stories about his days in the DEA and bizarre exploits as an investigator were amazing. So was he. A man of mass contradictions, Fred lived in the suburbs with his lovely wife of twenty years and two kids. He was a great father and husband, an ordinary Joe at home who barbecued on the deck, watched sitcoms and ate the God-awful worst fast food. In his work life, he was on a first name basis with mobsters, drug dealers, snitches and every other kind of unsavory person.

I spent many hours debating with him, trying to get Fred to see that defending the felons he took on – most of whom were guilty as sin -- was amoral, and totally at odds with his family life. Nobody wins arguments with Fred. He’s infuriatingly clever, and can parry every thrust you take at him. Finally I gave up, accepted him for what he was, and came away determined to one day immortalize him in fiction, warts and all.

So when the idea came for The Hurting Game, I used Fred as the model for my PI, Frank Boff. The son of the boxer I called Danny Cullen. He was an adult now in his mid-twenties.  Cullen’s dialogue with Boff is based loosely on my many hours of debate with Fred. In the book, Cullen’s best friend, a middleweight champion, has been murdered and the case has gone cold. Boff is hired by a mystery person to find the killer. Meanwhile, Cullen has been doing an investigation of his own. I eventually force them to team up, and what an odd couple they make! Always in conflict. Boff disdainful of Cullen’s amateur investigative powers; Cullen repulsed by Boff’s lack of morality and indifference to following the rules.

I wrote the book. It took twenty-one drafts. I submitted it to an agent who worked out of La Jolla, CA. She liked my writing and characters, but was having personal problems at the time and said she couldn’t take me on. She did offer me some great insight. She said the book would be more effective if written in a standard mystery style. That’s when it hit me. I had created a hybrid, part character study, part mystery. I had to make it a pure mystery, and Cullen’s back story about his famous boxing father should be just a small part of it. Nineteen drafts later, the new version was done. Again, I had to find an agent. I decided to enlist an HBO broadcaster/friend.

I write for HBO’s boxing website, and over the years first as a reporter and then HBO writer, I had come to know the dean of all boxing TV analysts, Larry Merchant. Larry had published non-fiction. So on a whim, I wrote him and asked if he knew any agents. As fate would have it, his son-in-law was a book agent for the high-powered ICM. Larry put me in touch with son-in-law. He asked if I would like to submit my novel for “coverage,” meaning an agency “reader” would go through the book and either recommend ICM get involved, or pass, giving reasons why.

The reader wasn’t all that kind, but then wouldn’t be a reader if he/she was. Among the reader’s criticisms was that I had created this intriguing odd couple, then had dropped the ball, keeping them apart for a good half of the book.

The reader was right! Back to the drawing board. I did an extreme makeover, putting the two of them together much earlier and keeping them that way for most of the book. Another sixteen drafts! Finally I had gotten it right, some fifty-six drafts later. Then I made the awful rounds of agents, most of whom either rejected with form letters (emails) or just didn’t bother to answer. Some took months to get back to me, if at all. I hated sitting around waiting, so I wrote the sequel. Still no bites on the first novel, so I wrote the third book in the series.

Finally Dawn Dowdle, a former freelance mystery editor, agreed to represent me. She had a one-woman firm, The Blue Ridge Literary Agency, which had been in existence only since January of 2009. I went onto writer’s forums to learn all I could about her before accepting. I had serious reservations about her lack of agent experience and track record of selling many books to publishers. But the writers who knew of her on the forums said wonderful things, primarily how great she was to work with, how much time she spent marketing and hustling for her clients. I realized I would be better off with a hungry agent, than some fat cat in a big New York agency. I signed on board. But the journey was not over.

Dawn made more suggestions about how to make the book better, and sent me her editing rules, which she gives to all her clients. She did a sample editing run on the first twenty pages of my book. I saw immediately how I could make the novel read so much better following those rules. I did (gulp) 16 more drafts, cut 11 pages and over 7,000 words. She has it now for her final edit. In the meantime I have begun to apply her brilliant editing rules to my second novel in the series, “Punish By Death,” which of the three finished books, moved a bit too slowly. It was overwritten. After just three drafts of Book 2, I have eliminated a total of 19 pages, chopped out nearly 12,000 words. Yikes! Still not done, but it reads so much better now.

So as I continue on the journey, I am reminded of the Grateful Dead song, “What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.” It certainly has.