It would be an excellent time for NaNoWriMo.
What I've done, then, is take the novel I was going to write this November and start it early. I intended to write a cozy (a gentle mystery with a likable, amateur sleuth and a bloodless murder) involving a favourite character from the first book I sent out to agents. A writing exercise from The 4am Breakthrough inspired me to start a prologue in which Henri finds a letter opened, addressed to him and never delivered. And my drive to write something fun inspired me to continue. Maybe it means this novel will be a large introduction to this year's NaNoWriMo, or maybe it means I'll have to think of something different by then. Either way, my brain is all afuzz with happy writing thoughts.
Here's a snippet from the writing exercise where it all begins.
Prologue — The Letter
Privately, Henri thought that Gerard Clark had the office of a better man, propped up here between his superiors. If it weren’t for the few well placed whispers from his father-in-law he’d have been at Henri’s level: independent gallery, rare funding. As it was he was two minutes from telling Henri that his gallery, the heart of his life, would be closed. Just like that. Henri knew it was true. Felt it stabbed into his chest like the cruel thrust of a bureaucrat’s pen.
The two minutes was up. Two more minutes stamped on over Henri’s struggling heart. He tried to breathe, smelled only the stale potpourri sprinkled into the unused fireplace at the end of the office. Above, three ancient books chosen for their pretty soft leather spines and not their titles — Henri was sure of this, given that each was in German, and Gerard Clark was the type of man who knew Ein Bier bitte and nothing else — and a small glass globe. Cute.
Five minutes late. It wasn’t enough to torture him, he had to be tortured at length, drowning in the lilac stench of coloured pencil shavings. Henri walked to the desk opposite the fireplace and sat down in the chair, which swung him around to face the right-side drawers. He threw a hand out and pulled at a drawer, petulant.
On the top, obscuring everything else, was a letter. The envelope was addressed:
Henri Fitzgerald
c/o Burke & Clark
Old Bond Street, London
etc
The envelope had been opened. He stared at the cream-coloured paper, thick and important, and the torn line that almost intersected his own name. Whoever had opened this had not been careful.
Henri picked it up and read the address again. “Son of a—,” he said. Then he brought out the letter, handwritten on the same heavy paper, and read that. He read it again. He glanced back at the envelope and saw that the letter was postmarked a month previous. And he had never heard about it.
Well. “Son of a—,” he said again, with something like wonder in his voice. In the hall outside he heard Gerard Clark approaching, barking an order to his secretary and bashing into his own umbrella stand, which held Henri’s duck-handled umbrella, soaking wet. Henri smiled and stood up, letter slipped into his pocket.
And when Gerard Clark opened the door, his office was empty. He blinked and glanced around.
Henri would miss the umbrella, but he had other things on his mind.
