Blue Moon

It's been a week of steady writing and the occasional foray out into the world, but really not much else to report lately. My novel, Darwin Day, is coming along nicely. It's at 138 pages now, or something like that. Once a novel gets past the 100-page mark, then I feel like it's finally, definitely going to get finished. The characters finally feel real to me now, as if they were real people, just waiting to tell me their story as it happened. I don't like to manipulate my characters by making them do things that I would like them to do. The story will feel more organic and less contrived if I just let them do the talking and the thinking while I just do the typing. Any time I've done it the other way around, it just ends badly. I've tried that with short stories and with some novels I've never finished, and those stories never quite seem genuine or successful to me. They never publish either, not surprisingly.

But I do have a good feeling about Darwin Day. It's about a young man who returns to his hometown for a summer weekend festival and winds up dead. Mostly, it's the story of his girlfriend, Bridget, and his friend and mentor, an old man named Francis Minnow--both of them have seen his ghost, but aren't sure what to do about it, especially since the town is filled with possible suspects, including both the dead boy's father and best friend. Death makes for strange bedfellows, you might say, because nothing will bring people closer together than the death of someone they both loved. But nothing will drive a small town apart more than a suspicious death.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. It'll be fun and funny, but serious and poignant at various times. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl.

But first I have to finish it, which is why I haven't been blogging much lately. I'll try to do better in that regard in the coming days, though.

At least the weather's getting warmer. I think it was seven degrees today. Wind chill factor of minus four.

I love summer in Newfoundland. Oh, and not only is there a full moon tonight, but another one at the end of the month, making that later one a blue moon. So if you're going to do something special that you rarely get the chance to do, that would be the day to do it, just so you can say to someone, "Geez, I only do this once in a blue moon." Or not.

Gerard