'the story behind the stories'
Fueled by the relative success of NO SIGN OF MURDER, my publisher offered me a contract (and a $1500 raise) to write another book in the Stuart Winter series.
I liked my protagonist. Reviewers and readers said Winter reminded them of John MacDonald’s Travis McGee. Winter was more of a wise-guy than McGee, but like McGee he often voiced his views (and sermons) on a world changing not for the better.
Like me, Winter was a birder (though better at it than I). Being interested in conservation, I decided to involve him in an environmental mystery. At the time I wrote the book Redwood Summer was going on. Environmentalists were angry about the clearcutting of old growth forests, and “taking to the trees.” I thought that would be a good background for the book.
For my plot line I decided to take a Johnny Appleseed type character and have him found dead in the middle of a contested redwood forest. I took a vacation from work and went up to redwood country, researching towns, lore, controversies, and current events. I talked to a wide variety of people. For me, doing research is one of the joys of writing. While going to college at UC San Diego, I worked for three years on the student newspaper (the Peter Principal being in effect, I ended up being editor-in-chief my senior year). I always enjoyed interviewing people, and sometimes when you do groundwork for a novel is much like doing a long newspaper article or magazine piece.
Deadlines are usually a necessary evil in writing. While writing FOREST, I was locked into one of those deadlines. At the time I was general manager of a resort hotel. My days were devoted to overseeing a hotel and restaurant. At night I would come home, load up on caffeine, and work on the book. It was a bit of a grim cycle. I would often write until one in the morning, and then have trouble getting to sleep because I was wired. When the alarm would go off in the morning I had to fight my way out of bed. Somehow the book got written. When I turned it into my agent and editor though, I wasn’t happy. They’d had the book in their hands for a week when I had a talk with my editor. By then she had read it, and was generally pleased.
“I would like to do a rewrite on the book,” I told my editor. Janet was puzzled as to why I was making that request. As far as she could see, the copy was clean and the book was a good one.
“I need to do the rewrite,” I confessed, “because the murderer couldn’t have done it.”
“What do you mean he couldn’t have done it?” my editor said. “You just spent 330 pages showing who did it and why.”
“No,” I said. “I have come to know the characters very well. That person couldn’t have done it. He just isn’t capable or murder. But I know who is.”
Janet thought I was crazy, but she gave me the three weeks. It was generous of her, because publishers need the finished product I basically went without sleep, but I made the changes I thought were necessary. When your name goes on a book’s cover, you better be happy with the product.
I don’t think I have ever been so spent as I was after the rewrite, but I know if I hadn’t done it I would never have felt right about the book.
Those people who are not writers probably don’t understand the extent to which characters become “real” to the authors. I think that in order to imbue these characters with “life” they have to seem real to the author. And because of that I was committing authorial sacrilege by painting a character as a murderer that in my heart I believed incapable of such an act. At any rate, I got it right in mind and heart, and besides almost suffering a nervous breakdown everything came out fine in the end.
The book received generous reviews, and managed to fall into some interesting hands, even though I contend that the jacket on the hardcover is one of the least inspiring covers that I have ever seen. It is green and lusterless, and virtually commands people not to pick up the book. Ah well, I’m glad some people didn’t just judge the book by the cover. One person wrote me to say that she always thought environmentalists were “deranged yahoos,” but after reading my book she was able to better understand why they thought their struggle so important.
I also heard from Dave Foreman, one of the founders of Earth First! He liked the book, and even placed it in his book catalog as one of his recommended picks. I was relieved that Foreman and other environmentalists didn’t mind the way I had painted some members of the movement, as some of my Sequoia Summer characters were rather extreme. I guess they were able to discern my underlying sympathy for the cause between the lines. Truth be told, I have been a card carrying member of the Sierra Club, Audubon, National Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Cousteau Society et. al, for a long time. When you write a story though, you can’t preach. The plot has to come first. And from my old newspaper days I have always tried to remember that there are at least two sides to every story.
It’s a true whodunit, and I challenge you to pick out the murderer. Hell, the author couldn’t even do that until after the book was finished.
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