MoHG Looking Spiffy

The Original Edgewater County Novel Approaches Publication

I’d be lying if I suggested I wasn’t tickled to finally bring Mansion of High Ghosts, legendary around these parts, to publication later in what will surely be the go-go summer of 21.

ARC Cover for Mansion of High Ghosts (image courtesy Mind Harvest Press)

Less baroque and offensive than in its earlier iterations, including the version ultimately rejected by Pat Conroy at the now-shuttered University of South Carolina imprint Story River Books, MoHG 2021 features a tighter plot, more fierce and direct character motivations, and offers a trio of Gen X protagonists who wear their neuroses on their sleeves.

The novel’s biggest problem, in my opinion, has always been the relative likability of the characters, though I will admit there is a literary switcheroo going on here, with at least one advance reader getting it (she realized that she suddenly felt sympathy for the ostensible antagonist of the piece, though what becomes clear is that all these people are their own worst enemies).

In any case, the true central protagonist, Devin Rucker, remains still a hard-mouthed, pitiful wretch of an end-stage confabulating alcoholic, but I’m hoping his plight is now less overt shocking and thus more sympathetic. Readers will one day let me know.

Let’s also not forget to mention that MoHG occupies shelf space as a standalone novel while also existing in a state of simultaneity with the epic Dixiana series, which of course features several of the same characters (including the adolescent versions of Devin, Dobbs and Dixiana protagonist Roy Earl, whose part here is much more brief, though in some ways no less crucial).

Roy Earl has long been a favorite character of mine. No surprise that after MoHG, my first completed novel manuscript and in some ways my most personal, that this merchant-class good old boy would rule over the Edgewater County series of novels.

But not really. It’s always been Devin Rucker, my first protagonist, a sad bastard who lived in my head every day for a year and a half as I wrote the first draft in 2004-2005. His presence, while never corporeal except in Dixiana flashbacks, hovers over long stretches of that story. I am thankful to get MoHG out of my system once and for all. And Devin. His character, and this entire story, was my fare-thee-well to a young adulthood spent in dissolute alcoholism. Not on Devin’s scale. But enough to keep me from getting my life’s-work writing done. I couldn’t come up with a greater sin for an aspiring writer than to let an affectation like drinking to get in the way of the work. I did for far too long, and Devin was my response. With ten years of sobriety under my belt now, it’s much easier to work on the book. I have much better authorial, and human, judgement about how these characters should behave within the confines of the story.

And, it’s a story that could be dropped at any time in ebook form. It’s polished; it’s more or less ready. But I’m taking one final spin through the manuscript, mainly to cut scenes. I have quite a few left that have their charms, but don’t move the story forward fast enough. Kill your darlings. You writers and editors know the drill.

And with that, I’ll drill back down on that final polish. Mansion of High Ghosts Part One: A Man in the Grip of A Theory, is ready-ready, however, so brace yourself for a teaser coming your way soon.