New Release: Winterfield Nights
The Driver is back! Winterfield Nights is a short novel that stands as book four in the Driver series. It's also the second book in what will be a trilogy within the series, starting with Beacon Road Bedlam.
It's a great feeling to finally put the finishing touches on a book and be done with it. Even at 50,000 words, it's a lot of work, and there's always the question in the back of your mind of whether you effectively communicated your vision. A book can always "be better" I suppose, but at some point, you have to let go and call it done. Otherwise, you'll forever be pulling a George Lucas and tweaking things to death.
As usual, Winterfield Nights is a bit experimental in format since this series is sort of my sandbox to do whatever I want. I was going for something really moody and atmospheric and thought I could leverage multiple points of view to accomplish this: third-person for those poetic details and first-person to get the authentic character nuances to come through.
Each chapter begins in third-person to set the scene before shifting to the viewpoint character's first-person narration. Think of it as peeling back the outer narrative in order to get to the inner narrative. Originally, I wanted each chapter to seamlessly shift back and forth between third and first, sort of allowing the characters to provide their own commentary on different parts of the outer narrative. While that worked for some chapters, it didn't for others, and I didn't want to sacrifice readability for sake of the format. So, in the end I went with only one shift per chapter.
What's so cool about this book (for me, anyway) is that it sees two previously unpublished short stories come to life: "For the Taking" and "Vigilante." Since both stories take place in the same universe, it wasn't difficult to repurpose them for use in Winterfield Nights. I also wanted there to be an episodic feel from one chapter to another, which again, made it easy to weave these stories into the greater plot.
"For the Taking" was the story of Will Sparks and his townie friends' hasty plan to rob a bar on Thanksgiving Eve whereas "Vigilante" was the story of Eddie Slocumb, a family man who tracked a serial killer in the eighties. And for those of you paying attention, Sheriff Hildersham makes mention of the latter in The Camaro Murders ("Some folks still talk about the strangulations near the end of ’87.").
Both Will and Eddie round out a cast of desperate characters in Winterfield Nights that features the return of Tad Ozzel from Beacon Road Bedlam. Man, what a turd that Ozzel guy is. His single-minded focus on uncovering what he thinks is the suppression of truth makes him increasingly malevolent as he and the rest of the characters blindly race to their respective points of no return. Sheriff Hildersham comes along for the ride in this one, but while Beacon was more of a Sheriff story, Winterfield is more of an Ozzel story.
Of course, it's just as much a Driver story, as any Driver book always will be. And while the Driver is somewhat one-dimensional even after four books (he was first envisioned primarily as a plot device), he's sufficiently nonspecific to perhaps allow readers to identify with someone stuck in a situation they can't get out of, observing things they can't abide, even if said reader isn't pursued by a ghostly being named Malveinous.
At the end of the day, Winterfield Nights is really a thriller at heart, as you'll see in the last quarter of the book as all the loose threads come together. I think that's what I've been doing all along with this series—writing thrillers—albeit in a roundabout, Gothic, noir-ish, Supernatural way. I'm not sure how else to classify them.
So, what is this story really about? I'll admit the blurb is intentionally vague. It's meant to reflect that episodic quality I mentioned further up where the reader gets to observe the goings-on of a dismal town called Winterfield. There's some crime (inspired by real life events from Youngstown, Ohio), vigilante antics, small-town desperation, and the Driver's ongoing fight for his soul.
Be sure to get your electronic or paperback copy of Winterfield Nights on Amazon, and if you enjoy the book, please leave a rating or review.
Next up, The Reeve Book Two.
It's a great feeling to finally put the finishing touches on a book and be done with it. Even at 50,000 words, it's a lot of work, and there's always the question in the back of your mind of whether you effectively communicated your vision. A book can always "be better" I suppose, but at some point, you have to let go and call it done. Otherwise, you'll forever be pulling a George Lucas and tweaking things to death.
As usual, Winterfield Nights is a bit experimental in format since this series is sort of my sandbox to do whatever I want. I was going for something really moody and atmospheric and thought I could leverage multiple points of view to accomplish this: third-person for those poetic details and first-person to get the authentic character nuances to come through.
Each chapter begins in third-person to set the scene before shifting to the viewpoint character's first-person narration. Think of it as peeling back the outer narrative in order to get to the inner narrative. Originally, I wanted each chapter to seamlessly shift back and forth between third and first, sort of allowing the characters to provide their own commentary on different parts of the outer narrative. While that worked for some chapters, it didn't for others, and I didn't want to sacrifice readability for sake of the format. So, in the end I went with only one shift per chapter.
What's so cool about this book (for me, anyway) is that it sees two previously unpublished short stories come to life: "For the Taking" and "Vigilante." Since both stories take place in the same universe, it wasn't difficult to repurpose them for use in Winterfield Nights. I also wanted there to be an episodic feel from one chapter to another, which again, made it easy to weave these stories into the greater plot.
"For the Taking" was the story of Will Sparks and his townie friends' hasty plan to rob a bar on Thanksgiving Eve whereas "Vigilante" was the story of Eddie Slocumb, a family man who tracked a serial killer in the eighties. And for those of you paying attention, Sheriff Hildersham makes mention of the latter in The Camaro Murders ("Some folks still talk about the strangulations near the end of ’87.").
Both Will and Eddie round out a cast of desperate characters in Winterfield Nights that features the return of Tad Ozzel from Beacon Road Bedlam. Man, what a turd that Ozzel guy is. His single-minded focus on uncovering what he thinks is the suppression of truth makes him increasingly malevolent as he and the rest of the characters blindly race to their respective points of no return. Sheriff Hildersham comes along for the ride in this one, but while Beacon was more of a Sheriff story, Winterfield is more of an Ozzel story.
Of course, it's just as much a Driver story, as any Driver book always will be. And while the Driver is somewhat one-dimensional even after four books (he was first envisioned primarily as a plot device), he's sufficiently nonspecific to perhaps allow readers to identify with someone stuck in a situation they can't get out of, observing things they can't abide, even if said reader isn't pursued by a ghostly being named Malveinous.
At the end of the day, Winterfield Nights is really a thriller at heart, as you'll see in the last quarter of the book as all the loose threads come together. I think that's what I've been doing all along with this series—writing thrillers—albeit in a roundabout, Gothic, noir-ish, Supernatural way. I'm not sure how else to classify them.
So, what is this story really about? I'll admit the blurb is intentionally vague. It's meant to reflect that episodic quality I mentioned further up where the reader gets to observe the goings-on of a dismal town called Winterfield. There's some crime (inspired by real life events from Youngstown, Ohio), vigilante antics, small-town desperation, and the Driver's ongoing fight for his soul.
Be sure to get your electronic or paperback copy of Winterfield Nights on Amazon, and if you enjoy the book, please leave a rating or review.
Next up, The Reeve Book Two.
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