Yesterday, I enjoyed that oh-so satisfying sense of accomplishment when I finished the first draft of my next book, The Unforgiving Town. I printed the manuscript, and will let it percolate for a few days before I take it up again with a fresh mind and a red flare pen in hand. When I am satisfied, I will send it to my publisher for their consideration.
The Unforgiving Town has an ominous but fitting title that popped into my head before I began writing it last October. I had reached the halfway point in January before I had to set the book aside while I was involved in finishing and publishing other books of mine. After it is published, The Unforgiving Town will be my nineteenth book.
I returned to The Unforgiving Town in April.
This book is a sequel to The Sacred Dog, one of my hilltown books. Many of its characters appear in The Unforgiving Town. A few don’t. And there are new ones. And unlike the first book, the sequel is a mystery, a rather dark one.
Al Kitchen is done serving time for killing a well-liked man in his town, Frank Hooker, owner of the bar called the Sacred Dog. He was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, which meant he wasn’t locked away forever like people wanted. Nobody is willing to forgive him when he returns, hence the book’s title.
Al moves back into the house he once shared with his crotchety grandmother, one of my all-time favorite characters. She tried to hold on until Al was released, but that didn’t happen. Al’s cousin Bernie, short for Bernice, now lives there. An outcast herself, she used to help Al’s grandmother and drive her to visit him in prison, and after the woman died, she came to see him although not as frequently.
Among the returning characters are regulars at the bar — now under new ownership and a new name — such as Early Stevens, Jerry Smith, and Monk Stevens. Of course, there is Vernona Hooker and her daughter, Crystal.
Bernie is one of the new characters I created. So, is Jared, Verona’s teenaged son, and a couple of his friends. Another is Scott Stevens, the town’s police chief who has a difficult task facing him in this book.
I was inspired to create a shocker of an opener, which I am keeping to myself for now. It came to me after I resumed writing the book. And I believe it sets the tone for The Unforgiving Town. Stay tuned.