My First Novel
| In 1956, while sitting in a teen hangout during high school lunch breaks in Fort Branch, Indiana, I read the most incredible frontier novel one could imagine. I still remember it, more than fifty years later. I recall the teenage hero’s forced hay-cutting contest to free a girl from her abusive father, and their flight upriver in a homemade canoe. I was in that canoe with them. I decided right then, back in my innocent youth, that I'd someday write a frontier book just as compelling. Thoughts of that fictional trip upriver returned many times during my writing and editing career. I grew up, went to college, and wrote and placed hundreds of articles for clients. I also drew a comic strip, wrote three commercially published non-fiction books and won several awards for my public relations programs. But in my silent times I yearned to again share that young boy's canoe trip. Finally, I started my own book of fiction, a western novel. After five- chapters, I quit. I realized I'd thrown in every cowboy cliché I knew. I'd gotten so confused I buried the poor thing in a file drawer. Every time I open that drawer now I think about what a great book I’d read back in high school. I got serious about fiction. I took fiction-writing classes at night, read numerous writing books and magazines on airplanes and in hotels as I traveled to write articles for my clients, and delighted in the worlds I invented. One day, while researching a 1770s short story for a writing class assignment, I again recalled that high school frontier novel. And suddenly, I knew it. It was time to write that book. I realized I'd waited that long because I wanted my frontier story to be as real to others as that one was to me. I needed that time to develop both the skills and a soul-satisfying, true-to-life story about my young hero’s frontier-life struggles. The story finally in mind, I drove to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and physically followed much of my young hero's fictional 1770’s path. I visited a bend in the James River, for example, where mean Mr. Struthers' Inn and kindly Noah Dandridge’s little cabin would have been located. I spent time in nearby Fincastle, where the court would award my book's orphaned young hero--by now I’d named him Matt McLaren--to Dandridge’s care. By reading library materials collected by local Fincastle historians, I got an accurate mental picture of the town’s 1770s appearance. I even knew what that courthouse looked like. While in Fincastle I also bought a primitive "froe" (a wrought-iron shingle-making tool) at local antiques store, and now consider it Matt's froe. I kept it next to me as I wrote the book, as a reminder to be true to detail. This touch-and-feel approach to writing helped, but I knew book- based research would also be vital. Over several months I filled a four-drawer filing cabinet with research, much of it published in the 1800s. Most of what happened to and around my young hero had actually happened to someone in history. Even the little things, such as many of the neighbors' names and activities, are true to life. I tried to write Matt into the real fabric of our great country’s early exploration, to make him an icon of the times. Apparently, I was successful. When I sent the completed manuscript to a freelance fiction editor for evaluation, she wrote: "I want to tell you how impressed I am with your ability to handle with a great sense of immediacy the layering of characterization, setting, plot, and action into scene. And with your writing style. You have voice, which is something that simply can't be taught. It is either a gift or must be forged through practice by the writer. I think, without a doubt, you can write salable, even powerful fiction." Those comments mean more to me than any of the awards I've received over my career. But the highest award of all came after I sent the manuscript to a publisher, and the company’s president called to praise it and to offer a contract. "This isn’t just another book," she said. "Don, your book is going to have a life.” Since then, I've had five more novels published. But along the way I've learned that,while I love writing fiction, I also love editing it. When I retired from editing in the corporate rat race I launched McNairEdits.com, to use my years of editing experience to help other writers achieve their dreams. Nothing pleases me more than to help massage a manuscript into a powerhouse that may let another writer live the thrill of being published. I think Matt McLaren and that boy in the canoe would have been proud. |
| My Writing Journey |
"I want to tell you how impressed I am with your ability to handle with a great sense of immediacy the layering of characterization, setting, plot, and action into scene. And with your writing style. You have voice, which is something that simply can't be taught. It is either a gift or must be forged through practice by the writer. I think, without a doubt, you can write salable, even powerful fiction." Leslie Kellas Payne Freelance Editor |
"THE LONG HUNTER is a fabulous insightful historical thriller that showcases some of abuses of colonial society. The story line focuses on the adventures of Matt as he tries to survive under laws that offer no protection towards the young similar to Charles Dickens’s complaints about Victorian living conditions for the poor and disenfranchised. The support cast augment the enlightening look back in time. The final twist seems so plausible that it enhances the entire novel adding to the realism of a well written late eighteenth century American tale." Harriet Klausner, Reviewer |
| by Don McNair |
| Don McNair |
Matt's froe