The Dead Week

This is the Dead Week.

I don’t mean the Annual Zombie Fest (something I wrote in jest but, turns out, there actually is one in Long Beach every year).

This is the week nothing gets done. Nothing. No contracts are signed, no new business gets transacted, no jury trials commence. Nothing.

I am a lawyer by trade (but not, alas, by temperament). It is axiomatic in my profession that you do NOT want to start a jury trial after Christmas but before New Year. The jurors you get for such trials are surly, disinterested, and ready to convict as quickly as they can so they can get home to the Dead Week festivities.

In fact, I once used Dead Week to my advantage. A family hired me to represent a young woman (with kids) who failed to bring back a rental car within the allotted time. She told me she had called the agency and told them she ran into trouble on the road, but the rental company adamantly refused to agree to have her released from jail.

The trial was set during Dead Week. I sat down in court at the initial pretrial proceedings with a full “trial notebook” and ready to go forward. The DA relented and let my client plead to a misdemeanor and time served. While not full justice, the deal got my girl popped out of jail in time to enjoy part of the Christmas season with her kids. Victory.

I am in my law office right now–I’m solo so no one cares what I do during the day so long as the work gets done–because it’s warmer here than at home. I have about 8 things to do before the year begins, only 2 of them substantial. I hope to have all done by Wednesday so that I can start the year with a fresh plate.

As for writing, this is the perfect time to revise and reconsider. I worked on an older novel, A Song for the Dead, which I hadn’t looked at since finishing the rough draft in 2016. It is the sequel to A Coin for the Dead with my avatar Deputy Public Defender Martin Berry. I went through it this last weekend and removed the references to the earlier novel. I thought it was good enough to enter into the Tony Hillerman Prize which MacMillan Publishers gives yearly to a novel set in the American Southwest. My novel is set right here in Victorville, the start of legendary Route 66. I’ve entered the contest before with the first Martin Berry novel, but evidently MacMillan does not consider Victorville to be part of the American Southwest. Either that, or they thought the novel sucked.

So once more unto the breach, dear friends.

Will it win? I’m not betting a nickel on its chances. But it keeps me in the game. And it lets me look over older novels to see if they can be salvaged.

One thing I noticed while revising: when I wrote it, my tendency was to use the word “had” a lot. I mean, a lot. Thing is, you can eliminate “had” completely and not harm the flow of the book at all. Once or twice it was necessary. Most times, not.

Another thing I’ve learned since writing that novel in 2016, I needed to limit my use of the verb “to be,” which we use a lot when we talk and write. Unfortunately, to completely overhaul the novel to remove as many “to be” verbs as I could would take about two weeks. No time.

So A Song for the Dead is out there now. You’ve been warned.

As for the rest of this week, I am working on finishing Minerva James and the God of War. It is the first novel featuring my attorney character, set in Sacramento in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ten thousand words left in the novel. I want to finish it by the end of 2020 so that I can say I wrote 4 book-length manuscripts during this year of Covid and Trump. I doubt I’ll get it done but a man can dream.

Anyway, we’re in Dead Week. After I finish my 8 work tasks, there’s no telling what I’ll be able to do.