A new direction...oh boy!

No I don't know what happened to draft 2. And hopefully I will finish the book on Draft 3 so that you will e-read or read Draft 4 or 5 in one sitting soon.

“ANY CONCESSION FOR MURDER…”

An Arthur Dixon Novel

By

Michael D. Jansen van Vuuren

Foreward:

I began writing Any Concession back in 1999 during a Mystery Writing course I took at UT with the Indomitable Dr. Manchip-White. He will go down in my book as the best writing professor I ever had. Sorry Dr. Weir- not that you would ever read this commercial pulp- non-literary garbage (as you were wont to describe it) and thus there is the reason that Dr. M-W took the cake.

I initially wrote about 20 pages and then rewrote and rewrote the same 20 pages. In late 2000, I rewrote the initial draft and added another 20 pages and got stuck. Major writers block.

Why one might ask if they are prone to do? Well I will quote Dr. M-W: “Reading is inhaling and writing is exhaling. If you want to write my boy, you must read and read everything!”

I had fully exhaled and had no more breath.

Since then I have down a lot of breathing.

So now 12 years later, I am going to exhale some more.

I want to thank Tony Hillerman, Dana Stabenow, Robert B. Parker and Elmore Leonard for opening the scope of all that I could write about and where.

This leaves me in Knoxville, Tennessee with a Carl Hiassen high and the need to share a story about this crazy town and some of its colorful denizens. Lastly I must pay homage to Steven Womack who took on Nashville and mostly won with a series of fairly ridiculous mysteries that were lots of fun to read. Oh, and if I left out my Mother I would burn forever in Fantasy Book Hell. She got me to read other books (even some that would have Allen Weir jumping for joy) and talk about them with her. She also led me to Hillerman and Stabenow and now to Henning Mankell.

For the next 40 or so pages I will be reposting (reviewing what I have written) and making changes and offering comments on this or that but I will use a different font and brackets like this ][ to indicate them. Call it an work in progress that I am going to share with all of you.

Interludes and such

Today I found draft 3 of Any Concession and started rereading it. A few things struck me immediately, I can write a mystery better than several of the mystery (published) writers I have read in last few years and why the hell didn't I finish this years ago..... got distracted I guess by that annoyance called life- to bad I cannot blame it on love instead.

So Now I am pleased to share with you Draft 3 of Any Concession and announce that I will in fact be finishing it!

another installment

Apologies for the delay (health issues thankfully resolved)

The lights were on in house six, a crowd of four cops, Darby and the Coroner were standing around a seat in the seventh row. Dixon walked down the aisle to the second row above the seventh and began crossing the house. When he reached the middle, he sat down in a seat and waited for the coroner to finish. Jan came in and walked over to his row. She brought him a cup of coffee and Dixon took it with thanks.

“Sorry about the mix up on the phone.” He whispered.

“It’s okay,” she said, whispering as well. “You are not the only one doing it.”

“I am still sorry about that.”

Darby looked up and spied Dixon and Jan. He frowned, turned back to the coroner and nodded. The coroner shook his hand taking his leave. Darby looked back to Dixon.

“Hey Dixon, what are you doing up there?”

“I didn’t want to go where I was not welcome.”

“Jan, would you tell Weyr that he can bring in the body bag now.”

“Sure Darby.”

She left.

Dixon stood up.

“So who’s the stiff?” he asked.

“You mean you don’t know? No one told you?”

“Nope.”

Darby laughed.

“What? What’s so funny?” Dixon demanded.

Darby stopped and shook his head, holding up his hand.

“This is rich, no one even bothered to tell you. Well this-“ Darby pointed to the barely visible head next to him. “This is an old friend of ours, the guy who got you to quit the force. It’s Paul Murray, Dix.”

Dixon dropped his coffee.

The cup his the seat in front of him, splashing coffee backwards onto Dixon’s abdomen. Dixon danced around, first with whelps of pain then curses until he sat back down.

“Aw shit.” He pronounced. Dixon threw up his hands.

Darby stood there observing the tirade with a puzzled expression on his face. He walked over to the left aisle and came up Dixon’s aisle until he sat down next to him.

They sat there awhile.

            “Dix, I didn’t know that you were friends.”

            “We aren’t, I mean we weren’t.”

            “Then why are you so upset?”

            “Murray had hired me because he was afraid that some one was stalking him.”

            “Why didn’t he just go to the cops?”

            “Because he was sure that his stalker was a cop.”