Over the past eight years, I’ve posted over 600 entries to this blog. That’s a little more than one entry each week for that period of time. The majority of them fall in two areas – recounting information about my genealogy interests and the many ancestors I’ve investigated, or about my personal life. The latter includes stories about my grandchildren, or, increasingly as I’ve gotten older, the various medical issues that I’m dealing with. Rarely have I ventured off the path of these categories of reality. Thus, it was as much a surprise to me as to anyone when I got drawn into writing fictional stories. This is the back story about how that happened.
The Start – A Contest
It was nine months ago, in June 2022, that there was
an editorial in our local newspaper by Bill White that was asking for entries
into a “bad writing” contest that he was running. The contest was based on the
fictional words that Snoopy (of Charlie Brown fame) would always start his writing
– “It was a dark and stormy night…”. I thought to myself, this might be
interesting. So, I spent just a few minutes composing my own entry – a 77-word long
sentence that could be the opening paragraph to a fictional book. It read:
“It was an overly-warm, sultry day in late May – which forebode a summer
which would have many more such days – when struggling attorney Frederick
Flintstone Forchelli, who was convinced that his parents must have named him
after drinking something much stronger than the diet Pepsi that he preferred,
opened the door of the small non-airconditioned office on the upper floor in
the converted factory/office building which was all he could afford at this
stage of his career.”
I sent it off, then went about the rest of my day. To
be honest, I really didn’t think about it all that much. It was just a few minutes
of my day at the time.
The Challenge – and the First Book
About four months later, after Bill had posted the
winners of his contest (I wasn’t one of them!), I decided to post the above
sentence on my Facebook account. I got some good responses to it, such as “Love
it!” and “You’re talented”, and one that said, “Definitely bad writing!” But
then my cousin Tom said, “You have the traits of becoming a great writer. GO
FOR IT!”
The latter I took as a challenge and thought, “Why
not? Could I write ‘the rest of the story’?” And so it began…
That evening, I opened up a document, copied the above
as the first paragraph and began writing the next paragraph – simply expanding on
a description of what Fred Forchelli’s office might have looked like. I didn’t
have a title for my book, I didn’t have a title for the chapter except calling
it “Chapter 1 – The Office”. I had no idea what the plot was going to be. And I
didn’t even know what chapter 2 was going to be about.
I just wrote in a stream of consciousness style –
letting the words flow as I typed – and hoping that my creativity wouldn’t
simply dry up after a few paragraphs. I’m a fairly good typist, so each night I
would write 1-2 chapters of about 3-4 pages (6x9 paperback size). I also made
the decision to post each chapter to my blog as I finished – so that I could
remove any temptation from going back and making changes.
I do my best thinking either in the
middle-of-the-night awake time I have about 2-3am, or in the early morning. It
wasn’t until a few days later, around chapter 7, that I was far enough into the
book that I had an idea of where it was going – and where I also felt good
about giving names to the other characters in the book. I also finally gave the
book a title. Then, in a flurry of activity, I finished the remaining 4
chapters in just two days.
The last sentence in the book, harking back to that
initial long sentence, was “Welcome, Mr. Forchelli,” she said, “I’m your new
assistant, Wilma.” Thus, I completed the Flintstone connection by introducing
Wilma to Fred.
I’ve published a number of books for others – initially
using CreateSpace, a product of Amazon at the time, then more recently with
KindleDirect, the replacement for CreateSpace. Thus, it was a fairly easy
process to do the necessary formatting, create and register a title, design a
cover, etc., then send the book off for publication – both in paperback and Kindle
e-book format. Here is the result of that effort.
[Fred Forchelli – Book 1 – The Piece of Paper]
I thought I was done with my fictional writing efforts
– but that turned out not to be the case.
Another Question – And the Second Book
When I had written the first book, I had put the
following on the title page:
[Fred Forchelli Title]
I had intended this to show that Fred was not
world-renowned, that he was not well-known, but that he was simply an
investigator and attorney. However, someone who read my first book didn’t get
my point and asked me what it meant. Taking another look at it, I realized that
I had set myself up for a second, and a third, book in the series – simply by removing
the crossed-out words in the title one line at a time. So, it was back to the
writing cycle.
I began the second book much as I had the first –
writing one chapter at a time in stream of consciousness style, with little
idea on what the next chapter would bring. Chapter one was simply titled “The
New Office”, describing Fred’s new two-room office with his new secretary/receptionist,
Wilma, in the outer office. However, Wilma quickly become Fred’s assistant in
this latest investigation.
Like the first book, it took roughly a week to write
the eleven chapters. I published it on Amazon after it was finished.
[Fred Forchelli – Book 2 – The D.A.’s Dilemma]
[Spoiler alert]
As
one might have expected, on the last page Fred proposes to Wilma and she
accepts.
Becoming International – the Third Book
Having already decided to complete the series by
making Fred world-renowned, I wasted no time in starting the next book. This
time I at least had decided on an international setting/location before I started.
But I still did not know what the case would be about or how Fred and Wilma
would solve it. So, I just started writing and hoping that those issues would be
resolved before too long.
As before, the answers were not long in coming. But
the case that Fred and Wilma had to work on was presented to them in the form
of a puzzle – one that had defied being solved for several decades. This was a
very different kind of case. But, of course, they were ultimately successful.
Only nine days after publishing the second book, I
published the third book.
[Fred Forchelli – Book 3 – The Priest’s Puzzle]
It was now mid-December, my series was complete, and I
thought my career of writing fiction had ended. Little did I know!
Following the Hints – the Fourth Book
The next several weeks were ones that were not
conducive to any further writing. I was dealing with a number of physical
issues – including going to the ER on Christmas Day and spending a few days in
the hospital for sepsis. By mid-January, I was once again back home, being even
more diligent at spending my days in my recliner with my feet up so that the
ulcer on the bottom of my foot could heal. But in such a position, my creative
juices began flowing again!
I had drawn the Fred Forchelli series to a nice
conclusion. So, what was I thinking about? Fred’s client in book one was
Elizabeth Olshevski, who wrote detective stories under the name Betty Rubble
(there’s that Flintstone connection again!) In book two, Elizabeth has started
writing books which are based on her friendship with Fred and she sometimes
models the character in her book after Fred. This was just the hook I needed.
Thus, in mid-January, I wrote one of Betty’s Rubble’s
books – one where Fred is not the investigator, but one where the investigator
is modeled on him. My writing was not quite so ferocious in speed as before,
but within two weeks I had complete yet another book.
[Betty Rubble – The Case of the Purloined DNA]
I suppose I modeled the hero in this book somewhat on
myself as well – using my knowledge of building family trees and using the
power of DNA to find missing relatives. So, it was fun in a way that was
different than the Fred Forchelli books.
Going On – Are There More Books in the
Future?
I did not know whether this Betty Rubble book was
merely the first in a series or whether it was the end of my fiction writing (at
least for a while). But it’s now approaching two months since the last one and
at this point I do not sense the “creative juices” flowing for right now. Will
they again? Who knows. For now I’m content with what I’ve done over the last
several months.
You can find all the above books on Amazon.com – just search
for the title as shown (don’t search for my name, as there is a very prolific
writer in Australia by the same name and you’ll mostly just see his work.) My
books are $4.95 for the paperback version (each is 40-45 pages), or $.99 for
the Kindle e-book version. I’ll never get rich selling them. The KindleDirect/Amazon
pricing model has me getting a royalty
of $.82 for each paperback sale and $.35 for each e-book sale. But I hope that whoever
reads them will enjoy my efforts.
I should also mention that I’ve written a few other
short stories over the years. They are not long enough to put into book format,
so they can only be found on my blog. These are obviously free of charge for
anyone who wants to read them.
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