The Fregoli Delusion, Progress Report #5

As promised, here's another update on the manuscript of the third novel in the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series, The Fregoli Delusion.

When I last checked in, I had just finished Chapter Six, which was a difficult one because the suspect pool was at its widest and I was trying to contain the scope of the story so that readers wouldn't get swamped.

I'm happy to say that I'm now halfway through Chapter Ten, and should (knock on wood!) be able to finish it tomorrow, which (knock on wood again) should be an uninterrupted writing day. Today having been a family-related day, as referred to in an earlier post. (By the way, when it comes to Alzheimer's, God has a lot of 'splainin' to do. Just saying. I look forward to hearing it down the road.)

Fregoli will have a subplot. Perhaps you think I'm insane. I understand, after having previously described the lengths to which I was going to contain the scope of the central murder investigation. However, the narrative arc of the series includes Hank Donaghue's relationship with Peter Mah and the local Triad brotherhood, introduced in Blood Passage, and after a brief vacation in Marcie's Murder (coming in April) Donaghue will find himself back in the mix in Chinatown, like it or not. This Chinatown subplot has been followed in the free short stories available from Smashwords, if you care to check them out. Now it will be picked up again in Fregoli. It will be front and center in book five of this series, which is still only a tiny little worm living in the back of my brain. But yeah, I have a plan!

So to get back on point, I should be able to wrap up Chapter Ten of Fregoli tomorrow. At the moment the word count is 26,400ish. At this point the manuscript may run a little long, but I'm not going to worry right now, hip-deep in the first draft. I'm telling a good story and I'm going to let it flow. Writing is writing, and revision is something else again. This book centers on Hank Donaghue himself, and there's a lot I haven't shown of Hank to this point in the series that I want to show here and now, in this story. This is the book that's going to get it out there.( The next one will be Karen's.) Yes, I have a plan!

I wish I could spend more hours writing Fregoli than I am, but I keep reminding myself that guys like Mofina and Forrest write on the bus and in airports. I've got it good in comparison, so no complaints. What matters is that the story is living in me and is coming out, chapter by chapter.