Please Welcome Back Novelist David Grace

by David Grace

We are delighted to welcome back novelist David Grace as our guest. (He was most recently here in March, discussing his book Doll's Eyes.)

David's new novel is The Concrete Kiss (Wildside Press, August 2012 trade paperback and ebook formats), which he is making available to our readers to download for just 99 cents! Details below.

We asked David to tell us how he comes up with the storylines for his books … and he responded with today's guest post.

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I always have story ideas and book titles floating around my head. Unfortunately, the story ideas and the book titles arise from different sources and almost never match up. I keep a written list of the titles just in case someday a new book and an old title will be a good fit. I heard a phrase the other day that has stuck in my head, "Suicide By Murder" and I figure that has to be a good title for a book. Well, maybe someday.

Photo provided courtesy of
David Grace

I often have a little internal war between stories that I find intellectually interesting and ones that provide opportunities for emotional scenes. I love writing emotional scenes so I usually want to design a plot that will give me a chance to include them. On the other hand, I think most crime-novel readers prefer what I will call "puzzle stories." It is always a conflict for me between writing a puzzle story that others may like reading and writing an emotional story that I think I will enjoy writing. The best solution, of course, is to figure out one that has both. That is a very difficult thing to do.

I have a great crime-novel puzzle story in the back of my mind but I have been resisting writing it because I don't yet see the emotional aspects of the story that will make my pulse beat faster when I'm writing it and, I hope, make the reader's stomach go hollow when they read it.

Where does that emotional component come from? The first answer I have is: From the character, usually the Hero. I have to figure out who the Hero is and what makes the reader really, really root for the Hero and care about his/her success.

The second answer is: From the chance for triumph or failure that the story offers the Hero. Will there be a scene where, battered and bloody, the Hero struggles on and defeats the Villain? We can no longer rely on the Hero merely pulling Little Nell from the railroad tracks seconds before the train arrives, but that doesn't mean that the reader and the writer don't enjoy suspenseful and emotional scenes. If my book doesn't have some scenes like that, something that makes my own heart beat faster or cause me to get a catch in my throat then I won't enjoy writing it.

Let me give you an example. In my latest novel, The Concrete Kiss, a thirteen-year-old girl, Amy, is grabbed by a serial killer. She manages to escape by jumping out of his van at about forty miles per hour. She is severely injured and winds up as a coma-bound Jane Doe. Here are two sections from The Concrete Kiss, the first when Amy has been put into long-term care in the hospital and the second, much later in the book and five years later in time. For me, together, these are emotional scenes.

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 Back at St. Vincent's Hospital Amy was still listed as "Jane Doe 16." Her body held no surgical pins or implants that could be traced. Her fingerprints and DNA were not in any database. No missing person's report had been filed for anyone who matched her description. There was no public database for dental records and if there had been one, there was no reason why Amy's teeth would have been in it.
 Her scrapes and cuts slowly began to heal, though her face was still bruised and raw and would remain unrecognizable for weeks to come. Her bones knit as well, but her coma showed no signs of fading. She no longer needed an intubation tube and could breathe on her own but that was the extent that her body was able to function. After a month she was transferred to the Old Wing for long-term care where she was fed intravenously, bathed and cleaned, turned and exercised to keep her muscles in some semblance of workable condition. Beyond that there was nothing that could be done. She would either wake up or she wouldn't.
 Over the succeeding weeks and months Amy's nurses became attached to her and treated her with smiles and an occasional gentle caress. And they gave her a name.
 They called her "Sleeping Beauty."

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 Harvey loved birds, or more accurately, he loved watching birds. Early on a Saturday morning every two or three months, even in the winter if the snow wasn't too deep, he'd kiss a sleepy Shirley goodbye and head for the woods. He never went very far from home. Luckily for him Upstate New York was full of birds. He'd spend most of the day tramping through one state park or another then check in to the closest Motel 6, catch some cop shows on cable TV, then the next morning hurry back into the trees to watch the birds some more but taking care to be home by six for one of Shirley's patented Sunday dinners. Usually it was a beef or pork roast or a whole chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. Shirley was a whiz in the kitchen. Sure, she didn't cook anything fancy, no little radishes carved into the shape of a rose and none of those high-class deserts like tiramisu but she made a cornbread that would knock your socks off. If they had had a daughter, Harvey thought, then stopped himself. God answers all questions, he reminded himself, and sometimes the answer is no.
 Harvey gave his head a little shake as if to drive those thoughts away and instead chose to concentrate on the good things in his life. He had a great wife, a good job, friends, good health, nobody was suing him or was even mad at him and tomorrow morning he was leaving for two glorious days in the forest. True, he thought, as he passed the hallway mirror, I'm no movie star. He paused and gave himself a critical stare. At five feet nine, well, actually five eight and a quarter, a size thirty-seven waist and a hairline that had receded halfway to the back of his head he wasn't going to be sweeping any women off their feet, but then he didn't need to. Shirley seemed to still like him just fine even though he wasn't quite the man she had married twenty years before. He gave his image one last look and concluded that no one was ever going to call him Prince Charming.
 But he was wrong.

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To me, those are emotional scenes. But maybe that's just me.

I have three stories in my head right now and I'm giving my brain some time to sort them out. Starting a novel is like beginning to climb a mountain. You think you know where you're going. You think you know what challenges you will encounter and how to meet them. You think you can do a good, clean, and efficient job of getting to the top. You think that in spite of the work and sweat and time involved that you will enjoy the journey and that, when you reach the summit, you will appreciate the view. You hope that when you get to the top you can say, "Wow! What a fantastic view. This was totally worth it." But sometimes you can't. Sometimes you realize about a quarter of the way up that it's all going to be a bust and then you have to turn around and climb back down.

A few years ago I had an idea for a book set in a fictitious city in southern L.A. County. The Hero would be a uniformed cop. I drew maps of the town. I figured out how many cops were in the police department and where each of the precinct houses were located. I laid out street maps and named the streets. I named the gangs and figured out their territories. I set out the entire plot and even did a beat outline of the book's chapters. Then I started writing. I think I quit somewhere around chapter three or four. Why? Because I couldn't do it? No, I could have finished the book. Because it was a boring or pedestrian story? No, it was a story that lots of people who read crime novels would have liked well enough.

Suppose you think you're a good painter and then, for some reason, you begin a paint-by-the-numbers picture. How excited, how fulfilled are you going to feel doing that? Not very. I quit because I felt as if I was creating a paint-by-the-numbers book. I quit because nothing about the story excited me. It was work. I may as well have been digging a ditch. Yes, I could do it. Yes, it would have been a perfectly workman-like ditch. But if you don't need the money, why dig a ditch? So I stopped digging.

The three ideas I have now are all different. One is a puzzler, a crime novel where the Hero finds clues that something unusual and menacing has happened but he isn't sure what. He is drawn into the puzzle, sucked into an investigation that becomes more complicated and more dangerous the deeper he goes. To make this one work for me I will have to make the Hero someone special and he will need more than just an intellectual motive. There will have to be an emotional reason why he becomes obsessed with this puzzle. If I can do that, I can write a novel that will, I hope be worth my effort.

The second story idea involves a Hero forced into a situation with a varied group of people, some of whom are quite interesting. He needs to be challenged to deal with these people in way that will let him achieve the purpose that put him there in the first place. Again, I will have to figure out the emotional component that drives the hero and the other principal characters.

The third story idea is more risky. It involves a unique character who accidently stumbles into a dangerous situation. He is faced with the choice of avoiding the problem or making a dangerous commitment to take it on and solve it. I have to figure out what his personality is and, emotionally, why he would be willing to stand and fight rather than turn away.

I envy writers who enjoy writing puzzle stories. If I could enjoy writing a complicated whodunit instead of needing an emotional fix to keep me going, my life as a writer would be a whole lot easier.

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David Grace is the pen name for David M. Alexander. He graduated from Stanford University in 1967 with a major in history and a minor in economics and received a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of California Law School in 1970. He was licensed to practice law by the Supreme Court of the State of California in 1971 and before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1977.

To learn more about David and his books, visit his website at DavidGraceAuthor.com.

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The Concrete Kiss
David Grace
Publisher: Wildside Press

Homicide Detective Ned Danes discovers that an ambitious Deputy D.A. has concealed evidence of an accused murderer's innocence in order to secure a headline-grabbing conviction. Danes is warned that a smart guy would keep his mouth shut. More interested in being a good guy than a smart one, Danes torpedoes the corrupt Deputy D.A.'s case, and for his honesty, Danes is exiled to the tiny basement office of the Cold Case Squad.

Working in his forgotten outpost Danes becomes obsessed with finding the real killer who the Deputy D.A.'s scheme has allowed to run free. But just as he seems to be closing in Danes receives a plea for help from an old friend. FBI agent Phillip Abbott has been put on leave for his last sixty days before his forced retirement. He has that long to catch a drug-cartel hit man whose specialty is murdering entire families. Completely alone, Abbott needs a courageous cop like Ned Danes to back him up.

While Danes knows that Abbott has a seventeen-year-old adopted daughter named Jessica, it is only after Danes agrees to help catch the killer that he discovers that the hit man murdered Jessica's entire family. When he adopted Jessica Abbott promised her that he would get the monster who killed her family no matter what it took and Danes soon learns that Abbott is willing to do anything, including break the law and possibly go to prison, to keep that promise.

And after Danes and Abbott do all that, Ned still has a killer of his own to catch.

      

Here is how you can get an ebook copy of David Grace's police-procedural novel, The Concrete Kiss, courtesy of the author, for just 99 cents:

• Go to: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/175650.
• Click "Add To Cart".
• Enter the Coupon Code GJ59Z in the coupon code box. (Note: This coupon code is only valid until October 20th, 2012.)
• Click "Checkout".
• Scroll down to the "Download" choices and then download the ebook in the file format appropriate to your ereader/device.