Kate Flora: It’s serendipity, given the way our monthly blog post schedule works, that I get to blog today. The timing is perfect, though, because tomorrow my eighth Joe Burgess police procedural, Such a Good Man, debuts. It’s kind of amazing to me that the series has reached Book 8, with another one in the plotting stage.

My original plan for the series was a quartet with one book set in each of the four seasons. Playing God begins on an icy February night. The Angel of Knowlton Park opens on a hot July morning. Redemption begins on Columbus Day weekend, and And Grant You Peace takes place in the spring. While I was planning to move on to something new, my readers had other plans. They wanted more Joe Burgess. I said, “But the four seasons,” and was told that Maine had lots of seasons: black fly season, tourist season, hunting season, mud season. I didn’t need to stop.

The truth was that I wasn’t ready to move on. For many of us who write series books, our characters become part of our lives. Sometimes we spend so much time with them we feel bereft when the book is done. I believe it was for The Angel, that I had had two different plots in mind–one for a Thea Kozak mystery and the other for a Burgess. Since I couldn’t decide which one to write, I decided I would sit down at the keyboard on January 1st and see which book demanded to be written first. The Angel won. Spurred on by a frequent remark by patrons at library events that “I’ve always wanted to write a book, and sometime, when I have a free weekend, I’ll write one,” I decided to see how fast I could write a book.

I spent four months doing little besides writing. I’d write eight to ten hours a day. I used up so many words that when I was done, I was useless for conversation because my store of words was depleted. And then, when I was done, it was as though my characters, who had become my closest friends,  suddenly abandoned me. I missed them so much I had to start the next book to bring them back again.

Knowing where to begin a book is a perpetual challenge for writers. I often tell my students “begin as close to the action as possible.” Don’t waste time on the set-up unless you can do it fast. The goal is to pull the reader into the story with a mystery, a situation that piques their curiosity, a character who intrigues them, and then hold them there. Such a Good Man begins:

For once, the call hadn’t come in the middle of the night or in foul weather. It had come in on a sunny, end of September morning at a civilized hour when Burgess had already had his coffee. A homicide detective learned to be grateful for small things. As he stepped through the door into the neat and airy condo, he had something else to be grateful for: the place didn’t reek of decomposition, and the air wasn’t buzzing with flies. 

We know what’s not there and now need to discover what is that has called out a homicide detective.

From the back of the book:

When Dr. Eliot Spence is found dead in his pristine condo, Detective Joe Burgess and his team must delve behind his glossy facade to reveal the doctor’s insatiable desires, his wife’s mysterious death, and a cache of revealing photos.

As Burgess and his colleagues strive to uncover the truth about the man whose colleagues described as a dedicated and compassionate doctor, they unearth a web of intrigue, shocking family secrets, and hidden agendas, testing their ability to separate fact from fiction.

While the detectives try to unravel the enigmatic world surrounding Dr. Spence, their own personal lives are under pressure as demands from their families threaten to derail the investigation, testing their determination–and ability–to bring justice to a man who seemed “Such a Good Man.”

Such a Good Man 

ISBN: 978-1-64457-254-2

A reminder: Each holiday season, I write a holiday story and post it on my website. This year’s isn’t up yet, but you can read the others at http://www.kateclarkflora.com 

I hope you enjoy them.