Higgins and I

After just over two years since the publication of my first novel, a friend called me today to say she had recently read it, starting it the day she got it about a month ago, and reading on into the night and into the next day till she finished it, for she could not put it down. (Writers love to hear that.) She eagerly awaits the next one, which I’m working on now. What is so amazing about that, is not that a reader enjoyed it so enthusiastically (several have), but that some other friends have remained silent. In a few cases it is jealousy. Jealousy among writers is such a foolish and ugly thing, as if there isn’t room for all. But there is room. My guess is that this jealousy also shows up among artists and composers, and among all creative groups.

I do not think Death in Time is an especially well-written work, but it is a great story (which the characters created, not I). Before it came out, I knew it had been a profitable learning experience, and therefore, the next one would be better.

I am currently reading my first book by Jack Higgins, and so I looked him up on the Internet. He says writing those first volumes of his was a learning process for him. He turned them out too fast, of course, using more than one pseudonym. (Jack Higgins is also a pen name.) This one, The Wolf at the Door, exposes a great deficiency in character analysis. I’m halfway through and so far, not a single character has come alive with any personality. The character who comes closest to having personality is a female, in a story with few such creatures. I cannot keep the “good” guys separate from the bad guys without this character depth, and am about to decide, I think, they are all bad. At least, and so far, Higgins’s language is cleaner than that in most stories involved with international intrigue. That I appreciate.

Higgins wrote his practicing books early on and now appears on the best-seller list frequently. I write much more slowly and don’t anticipate making any such list. But we have that in common: we learned to write while writing our first book(s).

♥