100+ Pages Into The Foundling Wheel

There may be some who’ve been following The Foundling Wheel who think I’ve run out of gas and abandoned it and there may be some readers who hope that’s the case. I assure you, it’s not.

Tim Hallinan gave me the greatest writing boost I’ve ever had by tempting me to take the Dickens Challenge. Writers crazy enough to take him up on his challenge would each start a brand new novel and post a chapter a week. The concept was to use the deadline and the seat of the pants approach to get down the first draft of an entire novel.

Before the Dickens Challenge, I was an obsessive fiddler and I’d never finished an entire first draft. My two prior novel attempts were definitely much more defined in my mind when I started them, but they felt overwritten and contrived to me.

Two days before the other writers planned to post their first chapters, the germ of an idea came to me. This seed got me through the first eleven chapters of the story, but once I exhausted my initial idea, I realized that I couldn’t keep flying by the seat of my pants.

Things I’ve learned from the Dickens Challenge:

- The deadlines boosted my productivity. By looking at the WIP in terms of weekly chapter sized bites, the idea of writing an entire novel felt much less intimidating and I could see real progress quickly.

- It forced me to write more and faster. This helped me to tap into my unconscious much more easily. It kept me from over-thinking, over-describing and over-writing.

- Posting a chapter a week made me much more focused on leaving a hook at the end of each chapter.

- People seem to be in agreement that I hit my stride around the fourth chapter. I think that’s a direct result of writing a lot without stopping to tinker.

- Now that I’ve re-read the work to date, I hate my first chapter and I’m not crazy about the second one. But I have something to revise, so I don’t mind a bit.

- Some of the chapters feel choppy. I’ve got multiple short scenes within a couple of them and I realize I did this in order to keep the chapters under 3,000 words, knowing that was pushing it for blog posts. When I revise, I’ll expand on some things and write better transitions to smooth out the choppiness.

- The earlier chapters need a lot of revision. Since the characters and the story developed over time, it only makes sense that the first couple of chapters probably need to be completely rewritten.

- Pantsing has been a much more creative process for me than writing to an outline. In previous WIPs, when I tried figuring the story out ahead of time, my creativity was stifled because I kept trying to stick to the plan. I’ve got much more confidence now in my ability to “what if” myself to a better and better story.

- Timeline is one of my biggest problems. I introduced the story in the present. Chapters 2-11 take place more than 20 years earlier with a couple of brief stops back in the present. People have referred to that part as being told in flashback, but I’m not too sure that’s what it ought to be. It's too long and too big a part of the story. I’m wondering now if the inciting incident in chapter 1 really belongs in a prologue so that the story can naturally begin in the past and proceed in linear fashion.

Issues I need to figure out before I can go on:

- What is my premise? What does Tracy want or not want, what conflict or challenge is interfering with that desire and where will she end up at the end of her journey? I had some vague concepts at the beginning, but now I need to nail them down. The good news is that I think I’ve got this.

- Plotting is a huge challenge. The problem is not a lack of ideas, it’s too many. There are an infinite number of possibilities I can explore in order to move Tracy forward and there are all kinds of possible sub-plots involving my secondary characters. Which to choose? How will they serve my premise? The more I think about it, the more cool ideas I think of.

- How should the story end? I have several possibilities and they all tie back to how I choose to move the plot forward.

Things I've found helpful:

- Time. With enough solitary time, I can nail this down. Driving, walking, and solitary tasks all open up the floodgates. My challenge is that I am not accustomed to making this time and pushing all the other demands away. Work has been unbelievably busy, which means that even when I’m not actively working, it’s hard to stop thinking about it. I believe the solution is to put walking time on my calendar and just walk even when I’m too busy. I’m not sure it’s going to work during the day, but I’m going to give it a try.

- Going back to the basics. I have a lot of craft books. I read most of them when I got them, but the trouble with books on writing is that you don’t always read the right book at the right time. I spent a few hours this past weekend with a book on plotting and structure. It forced me to go back to the very questions I’m working to answer now.

When will chapter 12 be done?

I don’t know. I do know that once I have answered the questions I’m working on now, I’ll be able to pick up at chapter 12 and keep writing until “The End”. I hope that those of you who have been following the story will still want to come back by then.

A big motivator:

A very good friend of mine emailed me at 11:23 MST this morning to tell me she’d just typed “The End” on the first draft of her first novel. She set a goal, she stuck to it and she did it. Tonight I read it and I really loved it. Naturally, she has some work ahead of her in order to polish it to a high shine, but she did it. Her characters are strong, her writing is elegant and clean, her descriptions are wonderful, her story is compelling and when I got to the end of the story, there was a lump in my throat.

I am very proud of her. She makes me believe I can do it too.

All comments and suggestions are welcome -- particularly with regard to the time line.

The Perils of "Pantsing"

Eleven chapters and 28,520 words into my first draft of The Foundling Wheel I have to pause for a moment and share a secret with you.

Sssshhh. Don’t let anyone read over your shoulder.

Okay – are we alone? No, really?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENS IN CHAPTER TWELVE!!!

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. I’m taking deep breaths. Om. Seriously, it’s not like I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had a premise and a fairly good idea of how to create what might be an interesting situation. Surely, there is an infinite number of possibilities for where I might transition from the past to the present. I’m just not sure what they are or which to choose.

I opened up a new file and I named it: Chapter Twelve. I typed 52 words and then I stopped.

Something tells me it’s time to step away from the story and find some time to take some long walks or paint a room or go outside and pull some weeds.

Muse, are you there? Muuuuuuuuuse? MUSE!

I know you would never find yourself in this situation. You either outline the whole story, or the story reveals itself bit by bit, getting better and better as you go along. I just know it.

But in case you’ve ever heard of anyone who’s gotten herself into a predicament like this, I’d love to hear how that poor lost soul found her way.

Uncle

Uncle.

Chapter Nine of The Foundling Wheel, my Dickens Challenge experiment in progress is not going to be ready this week. I’ve had too much going on this week to let Tracy and Aaron and Natalie back in to show me what happens and how. The interesting thing is that I have had just as much time to squeeze in the work as I always do. The chapters have been averaging around 2,800 words – but the time isn’t the issue, it’s my inability to shift mental gears. I’ve got part of a rough draft, but not a first draft. I wrote the last chapter I posted on the flight coming back from DC a couple of weeks ago, so I may find the time to do this sooner than I think, but as of right now I’m planning to be back on schedule next week.

Tonight, Scott and I attended a fundraiser for The Pendulum Foundation and an airing of the Frontline Special, “When Kids Get Life”. On January 21^st, I started a new blog called Compassion in Juvenile Sentencing and I’ve been Googling my fingers to the bone, trying to research the issues – if you’re interested, please check it out and email me your thoughts on the blog. There are so many parts and pieces to this issue that trying to address it at all is like trying to boil the ocean.

It was a sobering, but was also a nice experience that gave me a sense of community and brought home the reality that what these families are going through, could happen to anyone. I met several of the parents and family members of people who were convicted of crimes as teenagers and sent to adult prison for life without the possibility of parole. People don’t talk about it much, but most of the parents know that not only will their children die in prison, but they will die while their children are in prison. These mothers and fathers come from all walks of life and they are a group that most people don’t think much about, but they are us. I met a retired Colorado State Representative, the columnist who write a piece in the Denver post in January about Erik Jensen, and a number of young people who heard about the event and who believe that what we’re doing with children in this country is wrong.

Tomorrow, I fly out to Washington, DC and go immediately to meet with a young man who I hope to hire to work with me on my sales team. Tuesday, I’ve got a meeting with a government agency to work out how they’ll purchase the product I sell – and I need to finalize my PowerPoint presentation and email it out to them tonight because I can’t take a laptop into their facility.

Friday we take off for four days in Estes Park with Wes and Nicole Hyde, two of our artist friends and then the following week, I’m flying down to my corporate headquarters for our annual sales meeting. Bonus: It’s in San Antonio and I also have plans to meet Patti from The Patti-O while I’m down there.

I was honored with the Excellent Blog award by Liz Fenwick and there are so many excellent blogs out there that this it’s awfully tough to choose, but I’m going to name five of them that I find excellent: Kristen Spina, Charles Gramlich, Carleen Brice, and Iyan and Egusi Soup. Each of these bloggers has posted about something recently that I especially needed to hear.

My friend Yogamum tagged me with an interesting book-related meme:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)

I Killed Hemingway, by William MCranor Henderson. I just finished it last night and had naturally not shelved it yet. Bill Henderson has a great writing blog and is a participant in the Dickens Challenge.

Find Page 123.

Find the first 5 sentences.
The main character is having a conversation with a young woman about a friend of hers and her odd fear that extraterrestrials are eventually going to come and take her.

Post the next 3 sentences.
Okay – I’m going to cheat here and post an excerpt further down the page because the next three sentences were very short. Call me a cheater if you want.

“Smiling, Valerie sits back and pulls in her legs. All of a sudden I’m noticing a cuddly self-awareness in her movements that I wasn’t picking up on before. I think she’s about to come on to me. But what could possibly be the aphrodisiac? My ineluctable sexual modality?”

Okay, I can’t count either.

I’ll go ahead and tag five more people to do this (probably the only part of the directions I can follow). How about Larramie, Patti, Shauna, Rebecca and Karen. Let’s see if you can follow directions any better than I can.

And although I’ll be out of town for the big day, Tuesday (I believe) is a very big day for Carleen Brice with the release of Orange Mint and Honey and Therese Fowler with the release of Souvenir. Support your fellow blogger authors and tell everyone you know to buy these books!

It’s kind of weird that I’ll only be “off the grid” for a couple of days, but it’s amazing that it feels like I’m getting ready to go on a safari to some no-man’s land and I’m going to miss something terribly important! I’ve thought about our constant connectedness quite a bit and how it impacts what we write. For example, in a story told in the present day, it’s nearly impossible to write a realistic scenario where a character can’t contact someone or be contacted almost immediately. Conversely, when I joined the Air Force in 1980, went through basic training, then technical training and on to my first assignment in England, I was virtually unreachable except by letter. Even when I lived in Germany from 1985 to 1989, I didn’t have a telephone. There was no reason to take on the expense because it was too expensive to call the States or for them to call me (answering machines were also not in common use yet).

So my question is, how do modern means of communicating find their way into your writing – or not? Or, if your writing takes place in the past or in another world, how do the available means of communication factor in? Sometimes I think that the instant communication that’s so prevalent in movies and books provides an unwelcome deus ex machina that makes it harder to stress the characters out and makes things a little too convenient. What do you think?

A Patry Francis Blog Day Winner Checks In

Cyndi Mueller, on of my fellow Dickens Challengers has received her copy of The Liar's Diary and sent a picture to prove it. Her note to me said, "I got my new book today! Thank you very much! See how happy I am (sometimes when I'm happy, I look terribly startled and kinda green - I guess)." Cyndi is our comic relief in the Dickens Challenge and in addition to her great Dickens piece, she's got some really funny posts at her place.

Have you gotten your copy of The Liar's Diary yet?

Cyndi's Dickens Challenge novel is called Casual Duty and her character and setting have some spooky similarities to my own. We're starting to believe we may have been separated at birth, two women, the same age, who entered the military in 1981 and are (gasp) step-grandmothers! Coincidence? Perhaps, but then again... Check out this work in progress at Cyndi's place!

Cynthia Mueller is a US Army veteran living in Las Vegas, Nevada. After more than 15 years as a technical writer, she’s working on her first novel, Casual Duty, a mystery/thriller set at a remote Army post in the southeastern Arizona mountains. When the bodies of young women start turning up on the training range, Private Bridie Traynor must overcome her fear and lack of experience to help stop a killer before he kills again.

Bill Henderson Joins the Dickens Challenge

The Dickens Challenge continues to spark interest and we have yet another writer on board. Chapters 1 and 2 are and up and posted and I'm excited about this new novel. Please welcome Bill Henderson as our newest Dickens Challenger!

Bill Henderson is a professional novelist, screenwriter, documentarian, and all-around media maven who worked with the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He’s written and had published a memoir and two novels, one of which, “I Killed Hemingway,” was a NYT Notable Book of the Year in 1993. He now teaches writing in North Carolina and runs a writing website at http://billhendersononline.com. His DICKENS CHALLENGE novel, Regenerating Jeff, began life as an obsession (sound familiar, anyone?) and can be read at http://regeneratingjeff.blogspot.com

Dickens in Dubai

It's infectious, I tell you -- and I'm so glad! One of my favorite writing bloggers has jumped into the Dickensian pool and I will be anxiously awaiting her first installment.

Liz Fenwick is her mid forties and is a perennial expat currently living in Dubai. It was living in Dubai the first time that she embraced again her first love, writing fiction. Since then she has written three women’s fiction novels and is about to begin the fourth. For the Dickens Challenge she will be stepping out of her comfort zone and writing Explosive Dreams, a thriller told in the first person, for the sheer hell of it to stretch those writing muscles – at least that’s the plan! You’ll find it (soon) on http://lizfenwick.blogspot.com/

The Dickens Challenge Finally Makes it to the UK

It's only fitting that the Dickens Challenge ought to have at least one English writer and as of today, we do.

Rachel Green is a forty-something writer from the hills of Derbyshire in England. She lives with her two female partners, their two kids and their two dogs, and only occasionally gets them all mixed up. She was the regional winner of the Undiscovered Authors 2007 competition and her book ‘An Ungodly Child’ will be published sometime this year. Her Dickens Challenge book is Another Bloody Love Story, a satirical tale of a romance that continues beyond the grave. You can read it at http://leatherdykeuk.wordpress.com/

I've just gone to check it out and it's great stuff! Please stop by and check it out. Rachel has been added to my sidebar for Dickens Challengers.

Anybody else?

New Challengers Welcome

When Timothy Hallinan first proposed the Dickens Challenge, a number of you were tempted – come on, you know you were – but you held back. The timing was bad for some people and it was a scary proposition. We’re close to six chapters in, all of the writers have reported that it’s been a great experience, so for those of you who had initial reservations or prior commitments, now might be a good time to jump into the pool.

Several people have asked me questions about the rules of the Dickens Challenge and there really aren’t any. One of the most frequent questions is, “when does it end”? It ends when you’re finished or you decide you’ve had enough. Not everybody manages to post every week and we still love them and encourage them. There’s no winner and there’s no competition, just the kind of support and motivation that I’ve learned to love so much in our online writing community.

Bill Henderson, novelist, teacher and writing coach is thinking about joining us and posted about it today at his blog, TrueVoice.

In Bill’s post he talks about the Dickens Challenge as being a great way to follow up NaNoWriMo. I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo, but every writer I know who has, said it was a great experience. They also said that post-NaNoWriMo, it was difficult to maintain that regular writing routine.

So if you’ve been following my progress on this interesting exercise and you’ve wondered whether it might give your writing a shot in the arm – give it a try. As Tim wisely told those of us who were especially neurotic about diving in, you’re not going to be banned from the internet if you start and decide not to go on.

Any takers?

Blackbird

Since this is one of the songs that plays a small part in the most recent excerpt of my Dickens Challenge piece, I thought I'd post it.

What is it about the Beatles that endures? They recorded music together for less than a decade and announced their break-up 37 years ago; yet, they're an indelible part of our cultural consciousness. When I was three or four years old, my mother bought "Meet the Beatles" and I can remember her playing it on our KLH portable turntable, turning the volume up loud and dancing with my little sister and me in our tiny living room. My parents had a lot of records, but until The Beatles, they were all classical and jazz. I'd almost go so far as to say that The Beatles mark the beginning of my awareness of the world around me.

Were the Beatles a big part of your life?

One Hundred Paintings, One Million Words

I often discuss problems, discoveries and emotions related to writing with Scott. I learn a lot from his experiences as a painter and from what he’s observed as a teacher.

It's not uncommon for beginning painters to become frustrated at their limitations. He always tells them the same thing: Talk to me when you’ve done a hundred paintings. I’ve noticed that novelists will often say they’ve written a million words by the time they’re published.

I was sharing with Scott that I’ve been surprised at what’s come out of my participation in the Dickens Challenge, and that contrary to what I used to think, a little pressure in the form of a weekly deadline seems to actually help, not hinder creativity.

Writing to a deadline has also helped me to get over my frustration at not being Joyce Carol Oates. If you saw my reading list from 2007 you’ll know that I’m a big fan of literary fiction. Reading great prose shouldn’t be a bad thing, except that it leaves a beginning writer, like me in the horrible position of knowing good writing when I see it, and consequently, feeling entirely inadequate because I can’t create it. The Dickens Challenge eliminates that stumbling block because it demands simply that I produce a chapter a week to the best of my ability. That doesn't leave me time to tweak and fiddle and polish, but it also doesn't allow me to fall into the trap of trying too hard either.

When I explained this problem to Scott, he nodded and said perfectionism breeds paralysis. Yes, yes, yes I agreed. How foolish it all seems when I consider the millions of words that the authors I admire probably wrote before I was able to read their work.

My reluctance to put pen to paper because I have such high expectations of myself would be like a beginning painter finishing two or three paintings and then being unwilling to start on a third unless it was certain to be as good as a Vermeer or a Renoir.

Scott gave me a further bit of insight. A well known painter once said that each time he begins to work, his goal is to create a mediocre painting. This allows him to paint good and sometimes great paintings, but the key is that it allows him to begin.

The time constraints of the Dickens Challenge have had, I think, a similar effect on me. In my mind, I’ve defined this as an experiment to complete a chapter each week and eventually finish the first draft of a novel. Not a great novel or even a good novel, just a completed novel. Timothy Hallinan has a great series of posts on finishing that really gave me the inspiration to focus on this simple, but critical goal. Since the time constraints for the Dickens Challenge force me to work by the seat of my pants and there is no time to edit and polish, I’ve freed myself of nearly all expectations. Lo and behold, this has made the writing far more pleasurable than it’s been with either of my previous attempts at writing novels. By publicly posting the work in progress, I have truly gotten over myself and I've given myself permission to write whatever wants to be written.

Although I know good writing when I see it and I prefer to read literary fiction, I’m well aware that I don’t write that way. I don’t know what my style is. To my surprise, Scott said that he wouldn’t expect me to have developed one yet. Painters learn through a process of conscious and unconscious imitation and after many paintings, an artist eventually discovers his own style.

I think writing tends to be a little less imitative than painting is, but I don’t think we can avoid being influenced in our writing by what we read. Since I read pretty widely, I have no idea what that might mean for me. I'll have to keep writing and find out.

I’ve struggled with the knowledge that nearly every published writer I know wrote one, two or three novels before finally publishing. I believe that knowledge has indirectly hindered my ability to finish either of my two unfinished novels (DC makes three). How could I put everything into something that is very likely never going anywhere?

And then it came to me. I have to finish one or two or ten so that I can learn how, so I can find my style and so I can prove to myself that I can do it. How did I not see that before? This doesn’t make me want to take it any less seriously. To the contrary, I understand that no matter what I end up with at the end, I’ll have learned a lot. Maybe it will be something worth taking further, but more likely it will be something to put aside so that the next one will be that much better.

Certainly, it will take me that much closer to a million words.

The Dickens Challenge writers are posting every Monday at their own blogs and on the Dickens Challenge site. The links are listed on my sidebar so if you have the time, please to try to check them out. We have an interesting mix of styles and stories and some incredible writers.

Thank you to all of you who continue to return to read my weekly excerpts. I sincerely appreciate the time that you take to read and comment.

Everything I've described is my experience. Everyone has a different path, so I am curious as to how my recent experiences and discoveries compare to yours.

Dickens Challenge Progress Report

On December 9^th, I posted about Timothy Hallinan’s Dickens Challenge. The idea was to post a chapter a week of a brand new novel as an experiment to knock the creative cobwebs loose. When I posted the announcement about the challenge I had no intention of participating. I don’t write very quickly, I’d only recently started writing every day and I like to edit and revise compulsively.

Within a few days I was swept up in the excitement and less than a week before the Dickens Challenge writers planned to post their first chapters, I decided to join them.

Some interesting things happened to my process once I committed. I didn’t have any ready made story ideas, but I had the basic germ of something I thought I could work with and for two or three days, I brainstormed possibilities. About three days before the first chapter was “due” I started writing it.

The idea of winging it was terrifying. I was self-conscious about posting early draft work on my site. After all, I’d never shared any of my fiction on line and this wasn’t going to be my “A” material. One of the wonderful things about being part of this great online community is that I knew that all of you who stop here regularly would be supportive and that there was probably no better place to take chances.

It was a race to get the first chapter up. I worked pretty hard on the second chapter and really hated it when I posted it, but I didn’t want to miss my “deadline”. Once it was out there I decided it wasn’t nearly as bad as I first thought. And now, I’m actually finished with the third chapter early and will have it up Monday morning.

Some of the loose rules of engagement we’ve been following have been that we’re not going back to revise or rework chapters we’ve posted, and we’re not posting more than one chapter a week.

Having a deadline and committing to it has had a significant impact on my writing process. I suppose I could have given myself deadlines before, but it never occurred to me, even though I’ve always worked well under pressure.

Establishing a unique chapter as the weekly writing goal has been interesting. It has made the weekly goal much more fun to work toward than a word count ever was because it keeps me focused. Posting only once a week makes the need to leave each chapter with some kind of a hook or question even more important than it normally would be.

I literally don’t know what will happen from one chapter to the next, so I can’t say whether or not I’ll really be able to sustain this for the length of an entire book, but no matter what the results, this is proving to be a great experience.

We now have nine Dickens Challengers and you can check out their work at their own sites and also on the Dickens Forum. I’ve got chapters one and two on my sidebar and will continue to post links to each chapter there as we progress.

My fellow Dickens Challengers are:

John Dishon, newly married and newly out of college, is a beginning novelist with special interests in Asian culture and literature, who sees the Challenge as a way of getting one of his ideas for a novel out of his head and into written form. His book is called Country Snow and it can be found at www.johndishon.com

Nadja (NL Gassert) is working on the second book in her gay romantic suspense series set on lush, tropical Guam: When a vengeful STALKER seeks to punish Mason Ward for the sins of his past—and present—the security specialist needs to fight to save himself and those closest to him. You can read her at http://write-experience.blogspot.com/

Timothy Hallinan is a novelist who lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok, Thailand. The Fourth Watcher, which is the next novel in his Bangkok series, will be published in June 2008 by William Morrow. (The first, A Nail Through the Heart, is out now.) His Challenge book, Counterclockwise, can be found at http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/

Steve Wylder is an Amtrak ticket agent and freelance writer living in Elkhart, Indiana and Bloomington, Illinois. His most recent published work is “Time Passages: Reflections on the Last Train Home,” in Remember the Rock Magazine. His contribution to the Dickens Challenge is tentatively titled “Things Done and Left Undone” and can be found at : http://ontheslowtrain.blogspot.com/

Wendy Ledger has an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and has taught there as a lecturer of introductory writing. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The East Bay Express, and Music for the Love of It. She has two blogs, http://crookedtune.blogspot.com and http://weledger.typepad.com/pomegranate. Her contribution to the Dickens Challenge, is called “The Untitled Leap,” and can be found at http://weledger.typepad.com/pomegranate.

Cynthia Mueller is a US Army veteran living in Las Vegas, Nevada. After more than 15 years as a technical writer, she’s working on her first novel, Casual Duty, a mystery/thriller set at a remote Army post in the southeastern Arizona mountains. When the bodies of young women start turning up on the training range, Private Bridie Traynor must overcome her fear and lack of experience to help stop a killer before he kills again. Read it at http://anuncappedpen.blogspot.com/

Jennifer Duncan has been writing her first novel for eons. In faith and fear, she accepts this challenge as the search for freedom in the writing process. The two installments of “Waiting for Gauguin” have been posted at her blog ( http://quidite.blogspot.com/ ). Is it a long short story? A novelette? A novella? She doesn’t know. She must write to find out.

Usman is a businessman and writer who lives in Pakistan and has recently completed a book, which is now in revision. His work for the Challenge is a mystery/thriller called Capital Risks. http://reality967.livejournal.com

New chapters will be posted soon and it’s never too late to jump on board. For those of you who’ve taken the time to read the DC chapters, thanks for your encouragement and support!

How do you respond to deadlines? How much “pantsing” are you comfortable with? Are you comfortable with starting to write and trusting that the story will reveal itself, or do you outline and plot it all out first? For the DC writers, what are your thoughts on this experience?

Dickens Challenge Writers

I've copied this from Tim's blog, but wanted to come back to list the writers, with links to their stories. As soon as I have a minute, I'm going to link all of these to a new Dickens Challenge category on a sidebar here, so you'll be able to follow our progress.

John Dishon, newly married and newly out of college, is a beginning novelist with special interests in Asian culture and literature, who sees the Challenge as a way of getting one of his ideas for a novel out of his head and into written form. His book will begin Monday, December 17. It’s called Country Snow and it can be found at www.johndishon.com

Nadja (NL Gassert) is working on the second book in her gay romantic suspense series set on lush, tropical Guam: When a vengeful STALKER seeks to punish Mason Ward for the sins of his past—and present—the security specialist needs to fight to save himself and those closest to him. Nadja will begin to post on Monday, December 17 and you can read her at http://write-experience.blogspot.com/

Timothy Hallinan is a novelist who lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok, Thailand. The Fourth Watcher, which is the next novel in his Bangkok series, will be published in June 2008 by William Morrow. (The first, A Nail Through the Heart, is out now.) His Challenge book, Counterclockwise, will start Monday, December 17 at http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/

Steve Wylder is an Amtrak ticket agent and freelance writer living in Elkhart, Indiana and Bloomington, Illinois. His most recent published work is “Time Passages: Reflections on the Last Train Home,” in Remember the Rock Magazine. His contribution to the Dickens Challenge is tentatively titled “Things Done and Left Undone” and will begin Monday, December 17 at : http://ontheslowtrain.blogspot.com/

Lisa Kenney is a telecommunications industry account executive and beginning novelist who lives in Denver. She’s tackling the Challenge with a Dickensian themed story with the working title Foundling Wheel and will begin posting excerpts Monday at Eudaemonia. Lisa, bless her brave soul, will begin to post on Monday, December 17.

Wendy Ledger has an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and has taught there as a lecturer of introductory writing. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The East Bay Express, and Music for the Love of It. She has two blogs, http://crookedtune.blogspot.com and http://weledger.typepad.com/pomegranate. Her contribution to the Dickens Challenge, “The Untitled Leap,” will be posted at http://weledger.typepad.com/pomegranate, starting Monday, December 17th.

Usman is a businessman and writer who lives in Pakistan and has recently completed a book, which is now in revision. His work for the Challenge will be a mystery/thriller for which he’s still gathering ideas. (Welcome to the club.) It’s not titled yet but when he publishes, beginning around January 1, 2008, it’ll be at http://reality967.livejournal.com

The Dickens Challenge Is On

Please check out Tim Hallinan's post here to find out more...