I'm a big proponent of my letting my new fiction manuscript just sit. It has to have a chance to age and cure like a cord of split oak left inside the shed. I'm not saying all writers should do this, but I am saying that I have to do it. That's just the way it is, whether I like it or not. And I don't like it, let me tell you.

I admire the other authors who can get it right on the first draft. That's a terrific gift. But my first drafts are wrecks. LAKE CHARLES, for instance, took me ten l-o-n-g years to write, from the initial short story through the various stages to emerge as a full-length novel.

That involves a lot of scope and effort. On the other hand, readers, bloggers, and reviewers familiar with my previous work tell me LAKE CHARLES is my best novel to date. That's satisfying to hear. The good news, though, is I have several manuscripts being "woodshedded." That way, I can pull one out to do the last rounds of revisions and get it ready for publication.

Happy reading to you and yours!

By Ed Lynskey
Twitter: @edlynskey
Author of Ask the Dice , a hit man crime novel set in Washington, D.C.