Dan Decker Books

Writing update on Mitch Turner and a little about Barbara in book six!

Mitch Turner #6 continues to move along. I am somewhere between 84 and 89% done. The story is really coming together. I just had a conversation with one of my primary editors and let him know that I should be getting it to him in the near future for copyediting. 
This week I wanted to talk a little bit about Barbara. She has been Mitch's love interest on and off since the second book. And was even the subject of a full book in The Verdict. She does make an appearance again in this book. One of the things that's very curious to me is just how distinct her personality is in my own mind. I have a very clear mental image of her and her personality, and feel like I know her about as well as I know Mitch. The Barbara storyline has always been fun and interesting because I has never gone how I anticipated. Barbara goes her own way, perhaps this is why Mitch's so attracted to her. Anyhow just thought I would let you know that there will be more of Barbara in this book, not nearly as much as there was in The Verdict, she probably won't ever be the full subject of another book like she was in that one, but she does make an appearance, and I guess I will leave it at that! 
Anyhow, I have lots more I could say, or I could get back to writing on Mitch Turner #6, so I think I will go do that. 
Be on the lookout for The Fixer coming soon!

Mitch Turner will return soon!

Well, here we are in a new month! November 2024. The end of the year is just right around the corner. While things have been very busy, I have been spending a lot of time here at Grim Archer Media headquarters working on Mitch Turner #6. Today I was looking at a note for a potential title for this book, and it struck me that the note that I made might be the actual title. It's still not a final decision, so I won't say anything about it here, but I think I have a title that will fit nicely with the book as a whole. More to come on that in the next few weeks.
Anyhow, it has been another great week of incredible progress on Mitch Turner #6. Just the other day, I added in a few paragraphs at a key place that slightly adjusted the whole story. I’d peg it at about 80 - 85% done. I figured today that I would talk about the victim in Mitch's most recent case to give you an idea about what the story is going to involve. Ainsley Karsten is found dead in the basement of the state's attorney's office building. She’s smart and dedicated and always wanted to be a prosecuting attorney, and she accomplished that dream when she came to work at the state's attorney's office, even after receiving considerable resistance from her parents, who would have preferred that she'd gone in a different direction. In her spare time Ainsley liked to help people who were having legal problems, but were having difficulty getting other officials to pay attention and help meet their needs. So why did she wind up stabbed in the basement of the State’s Attorney’s office building? And why was Frank Ward charged with her murder? 
One of the interesting things about being an author is the emotions you sometimes feel about the things that happen in your book. I really like Ainsley's character, and find myself wishing it would have been somebody else so I could write a story about her one day. So that's a little bit about the victim in this case. 
Last week in talking about The Fixer, I spoke about Kirk Hoffman, telling you about his approach to practicing law. Even though his law practice is based in Salt Lake City, he takes clients from all over, and in future cases, we can expect to see him popping up in interesting places. Kirk Hoffman is an avid outdoorsman, whose favorite vehicle is a Jeep, so unlike Mitch Turner, who likes fast cars and city life, Hoffman enjoys four wheelers, and spending time out on the middle of a trail in the middle of nowhere, getting lost and trying to find his way back. It’s kind of how he lives his life. Anyhow, I'm starting to feel really good about where everything is on Mitch Turner #6, so I will definitely be turning my attention to publishing The Fixer here in the next couple weeks. That's it for this week I hope everybody has a great week!
 

Mitch Turner #6 is right on target!

Happy Halloween! It’s been another week and another draft of Mitch Turner Book 6 is done! I've had a couple more ideas come to me on the title of the novel but still nothing has solidified yet. Things are coming together, and with every passing day, I become more comfortable that I will hit my self-imposed deadline. There is not a lot to say about this part of the process as I fine-tune the story and the writing. 
Book Six introduces a number of new characters that haven't been mentioned in previous books, characters that might show up again in future books. 
A new character I want to highlight today is Cook County State's Attorney Patrick Rebane. He has a huge ego and has had mixed interactions with Mitch Turner in the past, though they haven't ever had a case facing off against one another. The Patrick Rebane character is fun to write because he doesn't see the world in the same way Mitch Turner does, which brings them into inherent conflict. I'm hoping everybody has an entertaining time meeting this character and seeing him has he interacts with Mitch Turner and the rest of the cast in this particular novel. 
I also just wanted to take a moment as well to talk about Kirk Hoffman, the main character in my upcoming novel The Fixer. As I've mentioned in other places, Kirk Hoffman is a brand new character that's never been seen before anywhere else, but I am planning to have him appear in other books in at least one other series. No, it's not Mitch Turner, but another one. I'm not going to reveal anything more about that yet. Hoffman is in his mid forties and has dedicated his life to making sure that he protects innocent people, refusing to take clients that he believes are guilty. His approach to practicing law is all about staying out of the courtroom as much as possible and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt his clients are innocent by finding the actual criminals. 
As I look at my schedule, I'm currently thinking of trying to get The Fixer out in the middle of November, we will have to see how it goes, though. I've been making enough progress with Mitch Turner Book Six, and I've had enough momentum that I think I’ll be able to do that. 
Since it's Halloween, I thought I’d highlight Grizzly Wolf, one of my Halloween short stories that I published several years back. Here is the description:
Jim Cannon and his coworker Melanie have been called in to rescue an injured hiker and his girlfriend. They get out of the car at the trailhead and immediately hear a wolf howling. They don't know what to make of this because wolves disappeared from this section of the forest over a hundred years ago.
Armed with a tranquilizer gun and a pistol, and hoping that these weapons will be sufficient should they run into any trouble, they don't make it far before they find the torn up body of a hiker.
Fearing the worst, but knowing they still have one hiker to rescue, they push forward at considerable personal risk. Minutes later they come face to face with a wolf-like creature.
Jim and Melanie are forced to run for their lives.
This story has many twists and turns while they fight for survival. Fans of monster stories will find this exciting and chilling, while also enjoying the wild ride. Pick up your copy today!
 

Mitch Turner #6 is building momentum!

Mitch Turner #6 is inching forward along with increasing momentum, even though I did have a few days out of the office during the last week. I’m somewhere between 72% to 77% percent done with the manuscript. At this point I’m fine-tuning storylines, fixing problems, looking for continuity errors, and refining the story as a whole.
It’s always interesting how at this stage of the writing process, just a few words in the right place can shift the whole story. It’s always fascinating when that happens.
I have a couple of different titles that I’ve come up with over the last few weeks but, nothing’s stuck out to me as being the right title yet though so I still don’t have anything to announce on that front.
Since I’m gearing up to release The Fixer in November, here’s a little more about it:
Kirk Hoffman is about to have a blast from the past when the son of a former client is charged with murder and comes to Kirk for representation. Kirk initially doesn’t want to take the case for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that he thinks the guy probably did it, but he agrees to take a look at the case over the objections of his team. That’s when things get interesting and he becomes concerned there’s a possibility that this guy who seems likely to have committed the crime could be innocent.

Making great progress on Mitch Turner #6!

I have made great progress this week on Mitch Turner #6! The story is coming together as a whole. At this stage, I’m usually focused on what I can cut out. Many times, when I am writing, I will have various ideas that make their way into the manuscript. Many make it through into the final pass, but a lot of them don’t because they don’t fit, and because of that, I always have to be careful to look at what’s there, decide if it makes sense for it to stay, and if it does, how is it going to work into the overarching plot.
 
Mitch Turner #6 features Frank Ward as the defendant. It starts out with Turner coming out of a meeting at the State’s Attorney’s office in downtown Chicago. He becomes curious when emergency responders pull up to the building, and he sticks around to see what’s happening. He soon sees a woman rushed out on a stretcher and a few minutes after that, Frank Ward is brought out in handcuffs.
 
Ward looks dazed and confused, and when he sees Turner, his eyes light up and Turner knows exactly who Frank Ward is going to call for representation.
 
The problem is Turner still hasn’t forgiven Ward for what he did to Barbara.
 
This story has been on my mind for a while now. I knew Frank Ward would be Mitch’s defendant at some point and that it would be an uphill battle for Turner every step of the way. Things are moving very well on this project. I’m technically at the end of draft four and will start draft five soon. At this point in my process, I am usually trying to do a draft a week for a book that’s this long because I like to work on the book as a cohesive whole, and doing rapid iterations through it allows me to see the pieces that need to be brought together or massaged or edited or deleted.
 
Also, don’t forget that The Fixer is on the horizon and will be coming out in November! I am super excited about this book. It features Kirk Hoffman. This is the first novel in which Kirk Hoffman appears. He’s an attorney who works with a dedicated team that he has collected together over the years. His express goal is to find justice, and he’s usually interested in making it happen outside the courtroom rather than within. So be on the lookout for The Fixer! Just a reminder, The Killers Club is now out as an audiobook. Anyhow, that’s how everything is going over here. Have a great week everybody!

Writing Update and All about Mitch Turner Book 6!

Hello and welcome back to the Dan Decker Books podcast. I hope everybody out there is having a great week this week. Over here at Grim Archer Media, things couldn't be going any better. Things have been going very well. As you probably know, I released the Killers Club audiobook last week and that has been off to a
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fantastic start. Thank you for all of you out there who are supporting that particular book. I know that there's a substantial portion of my readers that prefer audiobooks, and so I'm glad that I'm able to get that out there for them. I'm hoping to get more audio books out soon within the next six months or so.
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For me, it's always kind of a bit of a decision to if I'm going to do an audio book or not, because even though it takes, I'm not the one doing the narration or anything like that, it does take a substantial chunk of my time to review the audio book and make sure
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that I'm happy with how everything's been done. That usually takes somewhere between a couple days to almost a full week, depending on the length of the audiobook. The Killer's Club was a much longer book, so that took a lot more of my time. And it left me a little bit drained,
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but I'm hoping to do some other audio books here in the near future. One of the audio books that I'd like to see done is Only the Guilty. And then I also want to start working on the Jason Maxfield books and getting those all turned to audio. So we'll see how that goes.
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At some point, I am definitely planning to do those books. Anyhow, the big thing I've been working on now that the Killers Club audio book is out is Mitch Turner No. 6.
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I've been thinking about it today, just wondering how long it is that I've actively been working on this project. And I started doing it clear back in June. It looks like the first day I narrated a file was June 12th. If you don't know, I actually do narration. I've found that narration works really well for me.
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And I kind of have a little bit of an unusual process, I think. Well, a lot of authors don't use narration, but for me, what I do is I actually pull out a voice recorder and I pace around my office while I dictate a chapter, usually about 10 minutes or so. Sometimes that's a full chapter.
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Sometimes it's part of a chapter. I will dictate that. And then I will run that audio through Dragon Dictation. I have the most recent Dragon Dictation software, and then it will transcribe that for me. And then what I will do after that is then I will do a couple passes. Usually I can't remember. Sometimes I won't.
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Sometimes I'll just move on to the next chapter and we'll see how it goes. So back in June, I was still working full time on Jason Maxfield number four. I was hoping to get it done before I needed to start working full time on Mitch Turner number six, but I didn't,
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it didn't quite work out the way I wanted. Uh, Anyhow, so I started working on it on June 12th, and that's when I would start just doing a 10-minute, maybe 15 or 20-minute amount of narration every day, and then going and working full-time on Jason Maxfield. Well, somewhere in August,
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I think that first or second week in August, I finished with the present draft I was working on with Jason Maxfield, number four. I'm not sure if that was draft three or four, something like that. After I was done with that, setting it aside,
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then I went and I have started working full time on Mitch Turner number six. There was some of the narration that I needed to finish. I was probably at least 50 or 60,000 words into it by that time.
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And so I went and I finished narrating the rest of the book before I started going back and revising it. Usually for me, it works better to have kind of the whole book finished. or a whole outline in place. I say I'm a discovery writer,
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but really what I am doing that first draft is making an outline of the book. And it's always surprising to me that there are sometimes things I put in that I'm like, oh, I think I'm probably gonna delete this later, where I actually come back and I find a way to make it work.
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It's always kind of interesting how that works out. But anyhow, so back in August, I started working full time on Mitch Turner. Number six, I got to the end of draft one or the outline as you want. It could also be referred to. And,
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About that time, it was just over 100,000 words, which was what I was shooting for. Most of the Mitch Turner books are all about 100,000 words. The Good Client's a little shorter, the Presumption is a little bit longer, but they usually fall within that general range.
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And then I go through and then I flesh out a lot of the things that haven't been fleshed out or or what have you. So by the time I was done with that process, really draft two, I was up in the 140,000 word range, which is a lot more than I wanted the book to be.
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Luckily though, as I was working here and I'd actually just finished draft four, Ray. So draft four is done and I'm now starting, just started today on draft five. But now that I have that But during the middle of draft four, it swelled up almost up to 145,000 words.
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But I found some chapters that weren't really adding anything into it. So I've been able now to get it down 10,000 words to about 135,000 words. which is a lot more comfortable for me for this particular book. The Mitch Turner books usually move along at a pretty good rate.
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There isn't a lot of filler or fluff to them. And so I'm happy where that's at right now. And I'm thinking that by the time I'm done, I'll probably get it down to about 130,000 words. We'll have to see. But I'm feeling really good at the end of draft four.
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The story is pretty much solidified and the book is all the main points are there. Now it's just going back and reworking the details, making sure transitions are working, making sure I have appropriate foreshadowing, making sure I have all sorts of little details like that. So that's where I'm at, feeling really good about it.
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I have had some projects in the past that took me a lot more effort to get to that point. There was one project I was working on where I would go home and I'd tell my wife, not quite sure who did it yet. And I would tell her that for a month or two even on that project.
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That project took me a lot longer to kind of figure out the details. Since that time, I've been a lot more detailed about the way I kind of approach a particular project. And what I will often do is I will make notes actually in the document as I go.
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Word has a comment feature that allows me to just make a comment and then I'll go back and revise it. So when I was done with draft three of Mitch Turner, number six, and still don't have a title yet. have a couple of things I'm still mulling over, probably will be for a few more weeks here,
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if not another month or so. But I had like about 150 comments and I went through and I got most of them removed and I think I got it down to about 40. So at the end of draft for today, I was looking and I had just over 200 comments of little kind of task list items I
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needed to go back and rework and revise and edit and kind of look at. Anyhow, so, uh, draft four is off to a great start and it's just going really well. Uh, I haven't yet said when I am targeting to release this, uh, primarily cause I like to give myself some wiggle room,
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but I am hoping to release this in the December, January timeframe. We'll have to see a lot of the Mitch Turner books have come out, uh, about that time. The good client, if I remember correctly, was released in January. Then the victim's wife was released in December of that same year. The presumption,
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I actually think I got out in August, but then I know the verdict came out in November and then the last mile came out last year in December. And so I'm starting, I'm targeting that same general timeframe. And I'm feeling really comfortable that I'm going to be able to hit that. So that's really good.
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So everything is on track with Mitch Turner, number six. And yeah, I think that's pretty much all I have to say about that. Been very happy with how it's going. I was hoping, and initially I was planning to stop at this point and take kind of a break and work on the fixer to get that done.
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And like I said, the fixer is pretty much ready to go. I just have a couple... Edits from a couple different people I need to go through and revise and see if I'm going to put them in or not.
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And then I need to print it out and read it through myself, which is something I always do now. I always print out the book and read it through one final time on paper just to make sure I'm happy with how the final product, how the final art piece has turned out.
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Anyhow, so I was hoping to do that with the fixer, but I just have enough momentum going right now. on this particular Mitch Turner book and I'm feeling really good about it that I think at this point I'm planning to just power through all the way until I am done
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completely with Mitch Turner number six to the point that I turn it over to my editors and copy editors and start that process, and then get the fixer out. So unless something changes, which it always could, but unless something changes, that means that I am targeting to release the fixer in November.
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originally I was planning to release it much earlier than that, but time just had a way of slipping away from me this year. Uh, I hope not that everybody doesn't start to expect two legal thrillers from me every November and December, because that's what I did last year is I released only the guilty in November and
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then last mile in December, but that's what I'm doing again this year. So hooray, it'll be, it should be a fun time. Anyhow, that's pretty much all I have along the lines of updates and, uh, Thoughts for this week.
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I kind of wanted to go over my process on Mitch Turner number six and talk a little bit about that. I feel like I've covered that pretty well. Haven't given away a lot of spoilers other than that it's about Frank Ward. I will say, though, that I...
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I've been planning to do a book where Frank Ward was the defendant for a while now. I think I knew going into it, and I think it's pretty obvious from the first chapter I was just looking at, the first dictated chapter that I did clear back in June,
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that I was definitely planning that this was going to be Frank Ward's book for a while. And I couldn't be more pleased with how it's coming along. Anyhow, have a great week. And, oh, just a reminder, if there's anybody listening to this who has not yet signed up for my email newsletter, if you do that,
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you get a free e-book and a free audio book copy of the short story, The Arraignment, which features Mitch Turner and is read by Eric G. Dove. Have a great week, everybody. The text, audio, and music for this show are all copyrighted by Dan Decker. All rights reserved.

My Legal Thriller Influences

Here is a partial transcript of the show, for a full transcript, go to DanDeckerBooks.com!
Welcome to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. I'm Dan Decker, the author of The Good Client, Max Damage, and a bunch of other thrillers and legal thrillers, as well as a little bit of science fiction and fantasy. Thank you for joining me today.
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On this podcast, I give a writing update and usually share a thought or two about something else. This week's thought is about my legal thriller influences. Hello and welcome back. I hope everybody is having a great week out there. It's been a great week for me over here at Grim Archer Media.
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I've been accomplishing a lot of things. The first thing is I finally submitted the Killers Club over to ACX for review. Part of the reason why I'm late at getting to do that is because I have been heads down working on Mitch Turner number six.
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It's really important for me to be able to have momentum and this is why I have not been able to get the killer's club audio book submitted until now, but good news. I finally submitted it. It's in review. I saw earlier that it was done with the first step of the review.
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Hopefully it will be done here pretty quickly and I will be able to get it out for everybody to check out. Anyhow, Mitch Turner six is going really well. I finished with the third draft and now I'm starting on the fourth draft and At this stage, I usually do a number of quick drafts. For me,
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it's really helpful to get into the story and see the whole story at once or as close to as once as possible. When you're working on a novel, oftentimes you'll write a piece and then you won't come back to it for days or maybe even weeks. Not for months for me usually in my circumstances,
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but there are some authors who won't return to a piece of writing for months. And so it can be difficult to Make sure that you're keeping all of that in your mind. And for me, I like to try to work on the story cohesively as a whole.
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And by doing that, I hope that it turns out to a better story. So Mitch Turner's number six is just coming along great. I still don't have a title. I've been thinking about it. I've written down a couple of potential titles. I'm not crazy about any of them, but certainly my juices are flowing there.
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It's funny to me that sometimes the titles will just come to me and I'll know them right away. And other times I won't know the title for a long time. So just kind of interesting how that works. The other project that I'm working on, and this is just a side project,
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is I have a little fantasy project I work on every day, usually in the morning, right as I get in. And sometimes throughout and I try to work on it as a break throughout the rest of the day. But basically, I just work on that to keep me writing in general,
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because a lot of times I'll get stuck in revisions and revisions can go on for a very long time. And I like to be writing something new every day. And so writing on a side project really helps me do that. And I've mentioned that before on this podcast that I have some of these other side
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projects that I've put out that I've put down to paper that are probably never going to be seen anywhere just because I don't have the time to go back and work on them and make them any more polished than they already are.

Updates on The Killer's Club Audiobook, Mitch Turner #6, and more!

On this week’s show: The Killers Club audiobook is now done and other updates!
Show Transcript:
Welcome to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. I'm Dan Decker, the author of The Good Client, Max Damage, and a bunch of other thrillers and legal thrillers, as well as a little bit of science fiction and fantasy. Thank you for joining me today.
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On this podcast, I pretty much just give a writing update and maybe share a The Killers Club audiobook is now done. I just need to get it submitted to Audible. After I have submitted it to Audible, they take a day or two, sometimes a week or two,
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to review an audiobook before they go ahead and publish it and get it all put out there. So that is coming forward here pretty quickly. I will make sure to notify everybody once the audiobook is finally available. For anybody out there who's been waiting for... The audiobook now is your opportunity.
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I'm so glad that it's turned out so well. Eric G. Dove has done a great job with the narration, and I really couldn't be happier with how the whole thing has gone and how the project has come to fruition here. Eric G. Dove is just a great narrator, and it's a pleasure to work with him.
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Once the audio book is officially published, I will make sure to get it out there and get word out there so everybody can go ahead and download it. It did make me think this last couple of weeks going through the Killer Club, a little bit about Audrey Spencer and how she came to be.
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I came up with her as a character after I'd done a number of legal thrillers with Mitch Turner because I wanted to write another legal thriller, but I wanted a break. I like to take breaks in my writing and work on other different projects.
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So that way I feel like I'm staying fresh and trying new things and trying to keep it fun, et cetera, things like that. Anyhow, I knew for sure I'd be writing from the prosecution's perspective. And I just sat down and I started writing it.
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I am generally speaking a pantser, which means I just write my story as I go, making it up as I go. The times I've tried to do outlines, it usually doesn't work very well for me because I never follow the outline.
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And so what I try to do is I try to make an outline as I go or after the fact and then try to look at it and then analyze the story from there. So The Killer's Club is one of the longest books that I've actually written and published.
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I've probably written longer books, but I never ended up publishing them. The first book I ever wrote was War of the Fathers and The first draft of that was almost 200,000 words. Put that in perspective, Audrey Spencer's novel is 145,000 words finished, out the door and ready to go.
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And most Mitch Turner books are somewhere between 90 to 120,000 words. The Audrey Spencer novel ended up being a little bit longer than some of my other novels. But I really had a good time writing that one. It was fun writing that from the prosecution's perspective and to just get in there
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and look at it from that side of things. The other great character in that book is Gregory Pope. And I feel like it's his daughter who's killed and starts the story off. And so... It gives him a lot of interesting scenes where he is trying to come to terms with
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his grief as well as trying to let Audrey Spencer handle the prosecution. And it's not an easy thing for him to do by any stretch. And Audrey is coming from a perspective of having really not had a full-time regular job. She's been working full-time hours, but she's also been trying to maintain and balance her family.
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And she's finally getting back into the workforce. And it's been her dream to be a prosecuting attorney for many years. And now it's finally her opportunity. And she feels like Gregory Pope has selected her to do this because he probably thinks that she's going to bow to his will and let him backseat drive the case, which,
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of course, she has to set him straight on himself. numerous times. So yeah, The Killers Club is one of my favorite books. Of course, all my books are my favorite books, but I had a really good time writing that. The other big character in The Killers Club is Barry Michaels, and I really like Barry Michaels.
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He definitely is OCD. I think you get that sense as you read through the book. I think that's going to be a theme for him as he tries to deal with that and how to figure out how to live his life with obsessive compulsive disorder. I think he recognizes it on some conscious level,
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but he isn't yet willing to fully acknowledge it and deal with. So those are the three main characters. We also have Mary Ramirez. We don't see a lot from her in this book. I do have plans to develop and further flush her character out in other books. So we'll see how that goes. But yeah,
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the story just starts off with in the middle of what she thinks is plea negotiation with a very unsavory defendant and an attorney who's just an attorney who is hassled and just trying to do his job and doesn't know exactly where things are going to go and things like that.
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So yeah, The Killers Club, it's going to be out soon as an audio book. You can obviously get it as an e-book or I believe a paperback or even a hardback at this point. But yeah, go ahead and check that out. Mitch Turner No. 6 is moving forward. It's going pretty dang well.
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I've been pretty pleased with the story. At this point, the manuscript is a little bit longer than my other Mitch Turner manuscripts tend to be. I usually turn those in at about 100,000 words. The fixer... Not, sorry, not The Fixer. That's a different book. The Last Smile, the most recent Mitch Turner book,
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I believe was about 105,000 words, something like that. It wasn't 120 or 130. I believe the longest book in the Mitch Turner series was The Presumption, which was 120,000 words. Anyhow, Mitch Turner is going along very well. I've been very pleased with the story. As I've mentioned in other places,
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Frank Ward is the defendant and he has a situation where he loses consciousness. He wakes up, he's on the floor of the file room at the state's attorney's office where he works. and there's a dead body several rows down, and everybody thinks he did it because he's there. And so he goes to Mitch Turner,
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and of course Mitch isn't happy about taking the case, considering his ill will from other things Frank Ward has done in the past, but eventually Mitch overcomes it and takes him on as a client. It's really turning out to be a very fun and thrilling story.
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I can't wait to get it all out there for everybody to read. I just think it's going pretty well. I'm pretty comfortable with how it's going. I think it's going to be worthy of the predecessors and the other Mitch Turner thrillers in the series. I want to be very careful to not say too much more about it.
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I feel like I've already looked the lid a little bit on what the story's about and how it's going to go. I like for people to be surprised and it's always a dance. There was part of me that didn't want to even say what the story was about just
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because it's shocking that Frank Ward is going to be Mitch Turner's client for this next book. but I obviously have to tell people what it's about to some degree. So anybody that's listening to the podcast is getting the inside scoop on what's
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going to be coming down here as I get that story ready and get it out to get it published. So the fixer is grinding away towards publication. And it's getting really close. I've been letting this story move a little slower. The process for this story move a little slower for a variety of reasons.
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One, I wanted to get the Last Mile audiobook out. Two, I wanted to get the Killers Club audiobook out. And also... Releasing new books in the fall is a thing, and last year I released Only the Guilty and The Last Mile within a month of each other, even though they were written further apart than that for sure.
7:58
But anyhow, the fixture is getting very close towards publication. The last step for me is to go through a few revisions, get those revisions put into the the story, and then I actually print it out and I read it through one final time myself just to make sure I'm happy with it,
8:15
try to catch any of the last typos and things like that. So that will be coming out here hopefully within the next month or so. We'll have to see. The other big issue is the fact that it's a presidential election and people's attention are turned more towards politics than reading books at this point. But
8:34
I think I'm just going to publish it regardless of what's going on with the presidential election and just get it out there so it's available for anybody who wants a distraction from politics. Okay. So that's pretty much the big writing updates. We have The Killers Club. I mentioned that. We have Mitch Turner. I talked about that.
8:52
I have The Fixer and I talked about that. I do have the Jason Maxfield book four kind of sitting on the floor at the moment. I was working on that over the summer and then hit pause on that to go work on Mitch Turner.
9:05
I'd set myself a deadline for, regardless of where the book was at, I was going to make sure that I Went and started working on Mitch Turner because I like to get him out towards the end of the year. We'll see how it goes.
9:18
The fact the story is going long might mean that I have to take an extra couple months on this. We'll see how it goes. My instincts tell me I can probably get it out in the timeframe I want, but we'll have to see. But I was reminded this week about... Kind of how I started writing.
9:34
I've been writing now for many years. But when I started writing, it was just me sitting at my parents' computer. It was in the kitchen at the desk, in the kitchen. And I was just trying to write, pound out stories. And I remember that ever since, as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a writer.
9:53
And so I was always sitting down and pounding out these stories. Most of them obviously didn't go anywhere. I do remember a story I had to write for an English class. I believe it was in junior high. I think that was when I was at Taylorview Junior High, actually, in Idaho Falls.
10:09
And yeah, I'm from Idaho, grew up in Idaho. That's why the Only the Guilty story is based in Idaho Falls. I wanted to base something in my hometown. It's fun doing that, by the way. I'll have to talk about Only the Guilty some other time. But anyhow,
10:21
I remember writing the story for an English class where I was talking about, or the story was basically, the city that was on a mountain and there was a dragon that lived underneath it that was keeping them safe or something. I don't remember much more about the story other than I think there was an
10:37
altercation with another dragon or something cheesy like that. It's fun to look back and think about that story. And I was thinking also about another story that I was writing. I think it was in high school, my first year of college. And I have pages for this somewhere. It's out there.
10:51
I'm never going to see the light of day, and I probably never would turn it into a story. Probably just too derivative, more fan fiction kind of writing at that time. But yeah, another story back from the day. for me to stop and think about where I started and how it's come and where I'm at today.
11:09
It's fun to be a professional author publishing legal thrillers and thrillers. And I do have science fiction and fantasy, other stories I will try to be putting out at some point as well. Anyhow, I think that's all for this week. That's the writing update. I hope you all have a great week.
11:26
One last thing I want to mention, if you are new to me or new to my work, and even if you aren't, you can go to my website and sign up for my newsletter where you can get a free ebook short story of The Arraignment or get a free audio book of The Arraignment narrated by Eric G.
11:46
Dove. This is something provided to everybody who signs up for my email news list. So go ahead and go over there, go sign up. It's dandeckerbooks.com. And if you go right there, you'll see it right there, or you can go to dandeckerbooks.com slash newsletter.
12:01
The text, audio, and music for this show are all copyrighted by Dan Decker, all rights reserved.