John Sandel
All the writers in the Robson Writers Club have published novels now and are all beginning second novels. During most of my adult life I’ve been declaring that I was going to write a novel, and people I met again after being separated for 10 or 20 years would often ask, “Well, did you ever write that novel you used to talk about?” And my answer was always, “Nope, not yet. But I’ll start any day now.”
Well I finally began after moving to Robson Ranch. Part of the motivation is keeping up with the other members of the club as we meet every two weeks to listen to and critique each other’s work. And part is how easy computers and high technology make the job of writing something and sending it to others.
I enjoy reading thrillers and murder mysteries, so that was the genre I chose. We have people in the club writing science fiction, fantasy and various kinds of adventure books—about everything you can find in a library, except non-fiction. I decided on a strong female protagonist (leading character) because the plot I chose has my character stumbling onto a smuggling operation in her airline run by violent Russian criminals. I chose a woman because I wanted to show the conflict between my 5’1” heroine and a gang of big, murderous Russian criminals and how my heroine wins by being smarter than the thugs.
She actually first ran into the vicious leader of the smugglers in a Turkish bath in Istanbul where he dropped some diamonds into her purse in the changing room instead of his confederate’s purse. Then he tries to kill her several times in Istanbul, Moscow and Zurich as she frantically tries to locate him for the police to arrest. The conflict continues as the heroine tries to help her crew fly their 777 on the round trip back to DFW Airport and ends very badly for the bad guys.
Oh, I neglected to mention, another reason writing my novel was possible at Robson was that we have such a large number of well-trained, knowledgeable ex-airline captains and flight attendants living here. I found an experienced professional around to answer every question I had, and it really made a difference!
You are invited to look for my novel Deadly Contraband in Amazon’s book department on the internet for $12.99 in paperback or $3.99 in ebook form. It’s 70,000 words and took me a year and two months to turn out. It was a real challenge to complete, but I now have a much better answer for those old buddies who ask me what I ever did about that novel I used to talk about!