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.