With my third Thomas O'Shea mystery, The Face on the Other Side, about to be launched early next month (YES!), I am now turning to other writing, and something new for me. I'm well into O'Shea #4, but I have an idea for a different, stand-alone kind of story. I mentioned in an earlier blog that the idea came to me when I was out walking down the winding roads in our semi-rural neighborhood. Pleased to report that it's going well, and I'm enjoying experimenting with this different, for me, approach.
Ernest Hemingway called it his "theory of omission." Simply put, it means the writing is minimalist, allowing the reader to bring his or her own background to fill in the gaps. For example, I might write, "Whit lived in a cabin down a country road." The reader would fill in from their own experiences and imagination what that would look like instead of me offering details about what kind of road, were there fields or forests, or specifics about the cabin. I tend to offer plenty of details in my O'Shea novels, which I will continue to do. But writing this other book that I'm calling Keeping to Himself, is a new challenge.
Wish me luck.
