My Novel

Below, you'll find an excerpt from the novel that I started writing as part of the 2011
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  


You can read the full novel as it gets written at
The Grinning Oyster: Writing.  

Disclaimer:
There's no rhyme or reason to how often or how much I'll write for this novel, except that I have to have 50,000 words by November 1, 2012, and the novel has to be complete by January 25, 2013.  These are self-imposed goals and completely inflexible.  If I fail to meet them, that's just it.  I failed.  Don't worry, I'll rationalize and make up excuses if it comes down to it, but let's hope it doesn't.

Please know that I'm certainly not shooting for best seller status.  The idea is to engage in writing for the sake of writing and to see what it takes to produce a novel.  So, please forgive any errors as this is nearly raw text, with very minor editing before it gets published.  That being said, please feel free to share feedback and thoughts, especially if you have novel-writing or blogging experience/advice, or if you've caught a speling or Grammatical. error.  Those really irk me and I'll want to correct them straight away!

Most of all, enjoy.  This is a purely creative process, and I'm happy to be able to share it with others who appreciate such things.  And, really who doesn't love a juicy murder mystery based in a mostly wholesome Midwest city with a culinary twist?  Let's have fun with this!

Excerpt:

“The smoky scent of cardamom permeated the darkness as I crossed the threshold and was transported into Victorian India,” Marian said aloud, letting the words work their way across her lips as she had done when tasting chole, or spicy chickpeas, for the first time at Tea in Dubai, the latest ethnic restaurant to open in Milwaukee.  Portia the Cat rested contentedly on top of the printer as was her custom while Marian wrote her reviews.  She winked her acquiescence and then turned her attention to a leaf fluttering by the window.

            “Glad you approve, Porsh,” said Marian.  “I’d hate to lose your queenly favor due to poor verbiage.” 

Portia the Cat, who was in fact a short-haired American tabby, operated under the assumption that she was descended from Persian royalty, with perhaps a drop of Egyptian heritage for good measure.  Marian wasn’t about to be the one to correct her.  After all, why shouldn’t an American tabby be treated like a god as the pharaohs had done millennia before? 

Marian considered her next sentence, glancing at the picture frame on her desk for inspiration.  In the frame, she kept a clipping of her favorite review by Marq Germaine, the leading food critic in Milwaukee, who could make or break a restaurant’s reputation with a single slant of the pen.  Marian aspired to follow in Marq’s footsteps, and had left her day job as an auditor at Middle Mutual, a major insurance agency, so that she may try her hand at writing full time. 

Four and a half months into her endeavor, she had 126 followers on her blog, MiSS Milwaukee, and she had managed to review seven of the nine most recent restaurants featured in Marq’s weekly column.  Even better, she’d posted hers online before his had gone to print.  Their opinions had differed for three of the locations, which Marian took as a good sign.  As much as she adored Marq, she wanted to be recognized on her own merit, and to be seen as a discerning critic who was nobody’s copy cat. 

As of yet, she was still writing anonymously; the only clue to her identity being the capital letters in her blog’s title.  MiSS stood for her full name, Marian Sophia Sinclair.  She also had a signature green dino that she put at the end of each of her reviews, a throw back to the old Sinclair gas stations she remembered from when she used to take summer road trips with her father, a semi driver.  Her favorite trips has been to Georgia, though she always worried they’d have to make use of the steep dirt roads carved into the sides of the Great Smokey Mountains for runaway semi trailers.  Her father was a competent mechanic in addition to being an alert driver, though, so she needn’t have worried.

Supposedly, there were still three Sinclair stations left in Wisconsin, and Marian had added “road trip to Dickeyville” to her bucket list when she found out that’s where one of them was.  All she remembered about Dickeyville was the old grotto made from bazillions of stones that she and her family had visited on summer camping trips.  Somewhere, she was positive she still had that old pencil she’d bought as a souvenir at the grotto when she was thirteen.  The whole top half was filled with tiny colorful pebbles, and she was pretty sure she’d never sharpened the pencil.  The eraser had probably hardened a decade ago.

Marian chewed thoughtfully on the eraser of the pencil she now held in her hand.  She’d never outgrown this habit, which she’d picked up in grade school, just as she’d never outgrown the habit of hand-writing a rough draft of her reviews before typing up the final and posting it on her blog.  She preferred wooden pencils to the mechanical ones.  There was just something so organic about writing with a wooden pencil on a yellow legal pad, scratching out mistakes, or erasing them altogether and blowing the eraser dust off the paper.

As Marian jotted down her next thought, the Katy Perry song on the radio was replaced by the DJ reading the latest headlines.  She raised her eyes from the legal pad as she heard one about Peking Duck, the Chinese restaurant she’d reviewed last Thursday. 

“Three more people were hospitalized with food poisoning overnight after eating at Peking Duck.  The restaurant has temporarily closed until it can identify the source of the illness.  It had only been open for three weeks.”

Marian thought back to the meal she’d had when she ate there.  She hadn’t been very generous in her description of the food.  In fact, she’d written that the Four Happiness Pork Balls had caused disappointment when they crumbled before she even touched her fork to them, and that the flavor of the plum sauce that was drizzled over the meal was plum rotten.  Her final sentence asserted that the limp service warranted a name change from Peking Duck to Lame Duck.

“I feel sorry for those sick people, Portia, but I have to admit I won’t mind if that place stays closed forever,” Marian said.  Her sentiments about Tea in Dubai were quite the opposite.  She had been surprised at how thoroughly she had enjoyed her dining experience last night, which she’d shared with her friend and former co-worker, another auditor named Rex.  It was probably the best meal that she’d reviewed yet.

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