Once Upon a time

Hi there.

I wrote a mystery novel.

It’s called Tucson ’93.

It involves a mystery and takes place in Tucson during the summer of 1993.

And I’m excited for everyone to get a chance to read it.

This is the Origin Story

You know that quote ascribed to Fitzgerald or Hemmingway about going bankrupt? Something like “it happens slow at first and then all at once”?

Writing this novel was the complete opposite.

Tucson ’93 was written with both irresponsible quickness and disrespectful slowness. I also wouldn’t have gotten this far without two groups of writers to push me along.

Let me explain.

The origins of this novel began when I was living in Switzerland back in 2016. The prior year, I joined a Swiss writing group for NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month, which doesn’t exist anymore in a centralized form, but at that time was still kicking). The conceit of NaNoWriMo was/is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I had done it a few times before and appreciated the discipline required to both hit the word count goal (roughly 1,667 words per day) and not overthink what you are writing (no time for edits).

During November, this particular NaNoWriMo group would get together every weekend in the basement of an ad agency to write together. That might seem like a strange activity if you have never participated in something like that before. Writing is a very solitary pursuit that requires limited distraction and unlimited concentration. It’s not a really a group activity. Yet, writing together in that room is one of my favorite memories from Switzerland. The leaders of the group would challenge us with time word sprints, during which we tried to write as many words as possible during a designated amount of time. There was a great sense of camaraderie and accountability. I loved learning what genres and subjects the others in the group were writing about and informing them that I was ahead of my word count target.

I can’t remember exactly how I came up with the story behind Tucson ‘93. It’s possible I was reading a lof of Raymond Chandler. It is also possible I was feeling homesick or nostalgic or both. Wherever the story came from, it pierced its ways into my consciousness and like a pesky sliver, I couldn’t stop picking at it, until I scraped it out.

By the end of November, the first draft of Tucson’ 93 was completed. I felt like it was the best thing I’d ever written, but also still needed a ton of work.

The next summer we moved back to Minnesota and, well, life happened.

 I kept working on Tucson ‘93 sporadically. During the pandemic I even wrote the first 20,000 of its sequel. Still, with everything else going on in my life, I wasn’t sure that Tucson ’93 would ever really be finished.

 Once again, it was the power of a writing group shifted me out of cruise control and put my foot back on the gas.

 In the fall of 2023, my neighbor, who is also an inspiring writer, invited me to join her writing group. Every few weeks, we’d submit chapters to be critiqued by the group and get together for apps and drinks and talk through what was working and what needed help. This was much different than my group in Switzerland and I was both nervous and excited to get more feedback on my writing, especially from a group of people who didn’t know me. I decided to get serious about Tucson ’93 again and started by submitting the first chapter.

 I don’t know if they were just being nice, but their initial reaction to what I had written was very positive and it gave me the confidence boost I needed to keep going. Over the course of the next year, they provided me with critiques that made a huge difference in my writing. They even convinced me to change the tense of the book (from past to present) which I believe made it much better. Near the end of 2024, they generously agreed to read the entire novel. And while they pointed out some elements that needed improvement, they once again provided me with the belief that this story could work.

After another year of getting even more feedback from beta readers and working with a professional editor, Tucson ’93 is finally ready to go. How that will happen is the subject of a future post, but I’m determined to make it happen before the tenth (10!) anniversary of writing that first draft.

If you are interested in reading this book, which to be fair, I’ve told you very little about, please join my mailing list. You’ll get notified on future blog posts and as a special reward I will immediately send you the Spotify playlist for Tucson ’93. This isn’t just music that I listened to while writing the book, this is music that is in the book (more on that later as well). If you like early 90s music, from Alice in Chain to A Tribe Called Quest, you’ll dig this.

Click here to sign up

See you on the flip side.

 -BV