Thrillerfest Pitchfest is over. I have sent off the manuscript for FIREBOMB, as nearly perfect as I can make it, to the agents who wanted to see it. Now the thing to do is keep my mind off it for as long as it takes to hear back from them, months, most likely, and get busy writing the next one.
A woman came into the Marshall House, the museum where I’m a docent on Saturdays and Sundays, and in the course of chatting revealed that she had a master’s degree in history. “Credentials!” I said, fainting with envy. “If I had credentials I could write history.” As it is I am happiest and, I guess, most successful writing historical fiction, where one can interlard the facts of history with all kinds of interesting lies and get away with it.
Although if I had a whole lot of readers I would probably get mail. “The Black Tom explosion took place in 1916, not 1915, you pathetic ignoramus.” Stuff like that. Yes, I know when Black Tom happened, but I moved it up a year for the purposes of drama. Really. If you needed a special effect, and you had the most monstrous explosion on the East Coast of the United States to work with—seriously, it dinged holes in the Statue of Liberty—would you pass it up simply because it didn’t take place until a year after the action you were writing about? I think not.
Anyway it’s time to write another one. This time I think I’ll go for multiple points of view, rather than restricting myself to two. And of course it will be World War I again, and Freddie, my plucky movie stunt girl, will be battling the forces of evil. Beyond that I don’t have a plot yet. But I’m working on it.
Here goes.
Kate Gallison, Writer 