The Next Novel Cometh

The mysteries of mystery writing.

Utqiaġvik at dawn. The Northernmost human habitation in the United States and located well into the Arctic Circle, the town is now the location for my next mystery. But I first visited it as I walked the town’s streets in October 2016 while researching my non-fiction book Immortality, Inc. for National Geographic.

— (Photo - Chip Walter)

White Out (Working Title)

A Schuster McCoy Mystery

I've been told by more than one smart person that now that I'm writing novels, the next book to hit the shelves should be a sequel to my first novel, Doppelgänger. There’s a lot of sense to this. The idea being that once the first novel is out, sequels could bring legions of fresh followers to a whole sequence of Doppelgänger sci-fi thrillers.

A sequel to Doppelgänger is coming — just not yet. The simple reason? My ideas for novels (and anything else come to think of it) seem to come from a place where I have no control. And so White Out (working title), not Doppelgänger II, is up next in the word wright queue.

The idea for this novel first lodged itself in my cranium after I visited Barrow, Alaska — now known officially as Utqiaġvik. I was there researching my nonfiction book for National Geographic, Immortality Inc. Utqiaġvik is the northern most human habitation in the United States, so deeply inserted into the Arctic Circle that there is nothing between it and the North Pole except the wild waters of the Beaufort Sea. It is simultaneously one of the ugliest and most arresting places that I have ever seen — and for that reason, it insisted I make a mystery out of it.

I already had a protagonist in mind for some sort of mystery, a firecracker of a young woman, inspired largely by my second daughter Hannah (who also happens to be a ferocious lover of mysteries). The name for the protagonist — Schuster McCoy — came to mind after the Pittsburgh Steelers hired a wide receiver by the name of Schuster. It stuck in my mind and so far I’ve found no reason to unstick it.

And even though McCoy is Scottish, our heroine, it’s important to know, is three-quarters Iñupiaq, the native peoples of Alaska’s North Slope. How that Scottish name came to be will be explained in the novel.

Schuster is not your run of the mill detective. She holds a doctorate in evolutionary psychology. But she’s been defrocked and in the novel is forced to return to Utqiaġvik—and to her Iñupiaq roots. If you're wondering what an evolutionary psychologist does in the real world, Schuster herself does a pretty good job explaining it at the Salt Saloon and Restaurant in the novel:

"‘The dictionary definition,’ she explained, is, ‘a theoretical approach in the social and natural sciences that argues that much of modern human behavior is the result of psychological adaptations evolved long ago to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.’”

Schuster pulled her gloves and pilot’s cap off and dropped them on the table. ‘But really, it’s just about what makes us tick; you know, why do we do and think and feel the strange things we do? Like trying to comprehend the conduct of a couple of Neanderthals like you?’”

Schuster’s defrocked status and how she finds herself solving murders in the Alaskan tundra is all part of the novel. She’s got an interesting past.

In the meantime, don’t be too hard on White Out as the next book in the queue because it is, in its way, a Doppelgänger sequel. Like its predecessor, it is loaded with science rolled into mystery and drama, with wit and a few wicked plot twists thrown in to keep you on your toes. It’s just that Doppelgänger happens to be set in the future whereas White Out finds itself amidst the blizzards of the Arctic Circle. Both are unpredictable places where anything can happen — which is just what you want when a murderer or two is on the loose and mystery is in the air.

Anyhow, look for more insights about the novel as I continue to peck away at the keyboard — or scribble in my notebook — each day. I hope to have a draft in my agent’s hands by the time we hit the road again at the end of September, continuing our world-circling Vagabond-Adventure. We will see how the publishing world and the book get along. I may even self-publish it. There are advantages to that, especially as book publishing continues to reinvent (and sometimes upend) itself in the 21st-century — along with nearly everything else.

For now, at least, a solid first draft is in the vault. The next time I’m in front of the keyboard: more research, more filing off of unneeded words and phrases, more layering of the story and more authenticity. After all, we don’t just want a solid plot. We want full-blooded characters that pull you in and keep you plastered to the page.

That, after all, is my only real job.

This post is part of an ongoing series about the creation of my next novel, currently titled White Out. From early inspirations and research travels to character development and plot twists, I’m sharing the journey as it unfolds. Read the entire White Out creative series here. To get future installments delivered straight to your inbox, join my newsletter.