The past week was a tough writing one. Two days of writing that wrapped up a complex plot better than I could ever have hoped. This left me in an almost celebratory state, because I finished Quarry’s Reunion, the 50th anniversary Quarry novel (the first book in the series, Quarry – originally titled The Broker – was published in 1976).

Art (copyright 2025) by Paul Mann for the cover of QUARRY’S REUNION, to be published in late 2026.

I had wrestled with the plot, which is an unusual one for Quarry as it’s a more traditional murder mystery than a crime novel, and has lots of moving parts, more Christie than Spillane. Right now I don’t know how my editor and agent will react to a change of pace like this; but I can really only write the novel that wants to be written. This one, appropriately given the 50th anniversary aspect, delves into Quarry’s past in a way I never have before.

The story that presented itself to me was almost something out of Grace Metalious. If that reference doesn’t mean anything to you, or even if it does, I’ll just say she was the underrated author of Peyton Place, one of the best-selling (and most scandalous) novels of the ‘50s and early ‘60s. I had to develop a whole cast, even generations thereof, the residents of a town in Ohio about the same size of my own smallish Muscatine, Iowa. I literally (not figuratively) wrote half a dozen breakdowns of the characters and their relationships, both familial and romantic, detailing a trust fund that would be the engine of the mystery, i.e., who would/could benefit financially from the death of a character or two.

These cast breakdowns and plot notions were very complicated, and my writer wife Barb suffered through each of them, telling me what worked and didn’t.

Further complicating matters, I began the book – did several chapters – before going into the hospital for an ablation procedure to deal with my a-fib. This turned into a nightmarish month of emergency room visits, ambulance rides, and three hospital stays, the middle one of which found me hallucinating about where I was and whether or not I was investigating a murder.

I wrote about this here before.

I bring it up, because it’s not normal for me to return to a book I began and plotted before having surgery and hallucinations. Kind of hard to just get back in.

But pretty much that’s what I did, although the intricacies of this plot with its Peyton Place-type sexual and criminal shenanigans found me having to re-plot every chapter or two. I often say that fiction writing consists of solving problems of your own creation.

So after I finished the book, having read it and made my revisions (minor as usual), I was pleased that it seemed, as Larry David would say, pretty, pretty good.

I work in WordPerfect and have to convert a manuscript to Word for submission to my editor. This inevitably has some hick-ups, some glitchy travails for Barb – who enters my corrections and the more minor revisions – and me. That makes this inevitable day of getting the book in shape to send always a stressful one.

But we got it out that door, sent to both my editor and my agent.

Whew!

Great to have that over!

I slept soundly and well that night, content that all was right in the world, except for our political situation of course, and then, at 4:44 a.m., I sat up in bed, horribly wide awake.

Somewhere in my brain, while I slumbered, the realization formed that I’d made a mistake in the novel, a really, really big one, with ramifications that would echo through the entire novel.

I got up and tried to solve the problem, resolve the issues it created. I sat in my recliner downstairs with a notebook in my lap and wrote down ideas, timeline shifts, anything I could come up with that wouldn’t damage a book I really liked as it was…but definitely required fixing. How to do that without a page one rewrite?

Barb noticed some lights were on downstairs and came down from the master bedroom to see what was up – had they been left on? Certainly her husband couldn’t be up at 5:45 a.m.!

But he was.

And never gladder to see my lovely bride.

I told her of my massive screw-up, and Barb – who reads my books in progress, chapter by chapter – admitted she hadn’t noticed the goof either. (By the way, I have no intention of sharing with you what that goof was. This piece is as close to an admission as you’ll get.)

We batted ideas around. We each came up with solutions, but none of them were easy or even practical fixes. As you might imagine, this went on for a while. I can only say I was grateful – felt blessed – to have a writer for a wife who could help me in a situation like this.

Finally we came up with something, something that would be manuscript-wide but mostly cosmetic, not disrupting the narrative and its flow.

I did not go back to bed. (I had already, by the way, sent my editor and agent e-mails telling them to dump the previous version of the book I’d sent them. A new version would be along soon.) I went back to the keyboard.

I’m not sure, but I think I worked up till about 4 p.m., with a short lunch break, and sent to my editor and agent the revised version. Then I took a long, long nap.

The next day I was worthless, as you might imagine, tired as hell and unsteady; but relieved. So very relieved.

Thank you, Barbie.

This good interview with me by the great Andrew Sumner of Titan, at the San Diego Comic Con, is right here:

M.A.C.

Tags: Quarry, Quarry's Reunion