It’s been several years since I first penned The Samogon Affair, a megaloscript of 156,000 words—a bit long for a gangland thriller. And like any first draft, it was shitty! But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

Coming up with a storyline

Having worked as a paralegal with hundreds of convicted felons, I replayed in my mind every criminal case I knew. That same night the popular reality show, Moonshiners, was airing. That’s when I remembered McCormick’s Distillery here in Missouri and their legal entanglement. The feds busted McCormick’s and a few other distilleries selling whiskey out their back door to the Russian mob, who were exporting it back to Russia to sell on the black market. The Russian mob were making millions with their tax-aversion scheme.

And there was my storyline: true crime with a reality-show twist. The word samogon is Russian slang for homemade vodka, or moonshine. Thus, the title of the book.

I had the movie Heat (Deniro and Paccino) in mind when I was plotting my book. Heat had several point of views and subplots that came together at the end, and I wanted something similar for my story.

I love fast action. Conflict isn’t enough for me. I have to keep the action rolling. Russian mob and international smuggling means FBI. Alcohol and moonshine means ATF. Off the jump I had four important characters and three plotlines, but none of these characters were my protagonist. My first wrinkle.

My solution

Keep what I had, and inject my protagonist into the middle of my plotlines as a link to connect them. Now the wheels were spinning. I added a couple more elements and plotlines, and before I knew it I had plenty of conflict surrounding my protagonist. This allowed everything to drop on her head.

It also allowed the story to touch on several subgenres: noir, police procedure, legal thriller, new adult. Very little of The Samogon Affair is about solving crime. Rather, it’s about the characters and how they behave as people.

A real benefit of these subplots was the birth of DEA Special Agent Kelly Reed, who plays just a supporting character in this novel, but breaks out into her own series in my subsequent books: Playing for Blood, Whispers that Kill, and Tainted Justice.

Revising the manuscript

After completing the first draft, the first thing I did was hook up with my editor to begin the daunting task of paragraph restructuring and line editing. 156,000 words were chiseled down to 106,000. Characters died. Great scenes not germane to the story vanished. After a fourth revision, I gave the manuscript to my betas, The Wayside Readers. The couple of sessions I had with them were enlightening. A few revisions later, I was finished and sent the manuscript to another group of early readers.

I was relieved to have had such great feedback from them because after writing my novel, I went into that mental place where I doubted anyone would enjoy my story. Their feedback put my fears to rest and instilled the confidence I needed to forge on.

Hopefully, when The Samogon Affair becomes available you’ll enjoy my hard-boiled crime story. For now, you can sample sneak peeks and excerpts of all my books here on my website.