Rewriting History (AKA Updating Fiction)

I have decided to update mystery novels I wrote years ago that were never published. As I recall, two different book agents represented these novels without any results.

Yet thanks to self publishing (and especially Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing) I can now make these novels available for mystery readers who like cozy mysteries.

Here is the tricky thing though:

I want these novels to take place now rather than 30 years ago. But my protagonist – Rebecca Stone — is a business reporter for a fictitious Los Angeles daily print newspaper.

At this moment there still is a Los Angeles daily print newspaper, although Newsweek just announced it is jettisoning its print format. Thus for now my protagonist’s job is okay.

But in the past 20 to 30 years the Internet has changed many things that touch on a reporter’s professional life. Thus I have to check on the current online way to access the information for which in the past she would have needed contacts in order to access.

Now sometimes there is a good reason NOT to update a book you are about to self publish. For example, I just read Dorothy Gilman’s novel A NUN IN THE CLOSET.

That novel about two cloistered nuns having to venture out into the world is very much a novel of that time period. If that novel were being published now for the first time, it should remain set in the original time period.

But a business reporter at a Los Angeles daily print newspaper 20-30 years ago would seem outdated if not brought up to date in a mystery published now.

At the same time as I am revising the Rebecca Stone cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE, I am getting ready for the military novel triad’s three free Kindle ebooks on Sunday, November 11, for Veterans Day. Click here to read about the free ebooks on Veterans Day.

P.S. In a more recently written Dorothy Gilman novel — THALE’S FOLLY — the protagonist has very clear symptoms of PTSD following a plane crash although neither he nor his father is aware of this. Click here to read my blog post “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Not Only From Combat”

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Her newest nonfiction ebook is book publishing and marketing ebook TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and her newest fiction ebook is the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.

Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com