Almost There Now!
My Front Garden on a Frosty Winter Morning
After spending almost seven months rewriting A Clear-Cut Case, the end of that journey is in sight. Earlier this week, I completed a major revision. I cut one character, several scenes, and an entire plot strand; added several new scenes; changed the relationships between some of the characters; and rewrote much of the text. In the process, my 73,000-word manuscript shrunk to 61,000 words!
Now I’m revising again. At least one more round before I send it to a colleague for a manuscript evaluation. This time, the task will be easier. Although two or three scenes need to be rewritten, most changes will involve improving the wording and adding more details. My goal is to complete this process by early January. In my December blog, I’ll report on my progress.
In the meantime, other writing-related activities have kept me busy. A few weeks ago, I participated in Word on the Street Saskatoon—an enjoyable day filled with readings by and interviews with Saskatchewan authors. Yesterday, I sold copies of my novel at a Christmas bazaar in Battleford. And coming up at 7:30 CST on Wednesday December 3, I will read from A Clear-Cut Case at an online open mic featuring mystery writers from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. If you would like to hear brief excerpts from new work by prairie members of Crime Writers of Canada (CWC), please join us.
For those of us who enjoy crime novels, the work of Canadian writers provides a vast and underutilized resource. Although some of our novelists—like Louise Penny and Gail Bowen—are already popular, there are hundreds of others whose work deserves to be widely read. I’ve recently been ordering Canadian crime novels through the Saskatchewan Library System. This morning, I finished reading Barbara Fradkin’s The Ancient Dead (Dundurn, 2021), the fourth of her Amanda Doucette mysteries. Fradkin is an award-winning crime writer from Ottawa and the author of two excellent series. I recommend them both. Next on my list is Louise Carson’s The Cat Among Us (Signature Editions, 2017), the first of seven in her Maples mystery series. Louise is a Quebec writer who, until a few weeks ago, was unfamiliar to me. The book sounds good; I look forward to the pleasure of reading it.
Here is the link to the prairie CWC open mic:
Wednesday, December 3, 2025, 6:30PM MT / 7:30PM CST
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83604098809?pwd=9ObefFkWGrcoAm2QLol4YO9C15xulw.1
Meeting ID: 836 0409 8809
Passcode: 574840
Hope to see some of you there!
