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Writing Lady Luck's Smile |
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Mark Neuman-Scott and I have been friends since 1979. We’ve worked together,
played poker together and have gone on some spectacular vacations together.
Now we’ve written a novel together.
Mark approached me in 1992 and said, “Let’s write a book.” I thought writing a
book together sounded like more fun than the one I was currently writing alone
(no clue what that was) so I readily agreed. I wrote the first chapter, he wrote
the next, and so on. I had my character, Jake, while he had his character, Hank.
We both wrote in first person. The original working title was “Two Guys.”
When we started, we had no real idea where we were going to go with the book. I
have a friend, Don Carter, who is a professional treasure hunter and he had been
telling me stories about the millions of dollars of stolen gold coins still
buried in the American southwest. Since I love New Mexico and Arizona, I thought
maybe our two guys should get involved in a treasure hunt. From there, the story
took shape – and took off.
I had written a scene about Jake “speeding a hundred miles per hour” down a road
that lead out of Santa Fe. In my research, I looked up Santa Fe on an area map,
got the number of the highway (#590) and verified that it connected to the
freeway. Later, when we vacationed in New Mexico, we drove out to see Highway
590. I was shocked to see that it was actually a twisting, turning, curving road
where driving more than 30 miles per hour would be crazy.
About a year later, we finished “The Last Hand” (the new title) and tried
desperately to get it published. Nothing. We re-wrote and resubmitted. Nothing.
We had a Canadian firm that had agreed to publish our book but they went out of
business. “The Last Hand” sat in the proverbial desk drawer (actually on
numerous sets of discs) until 2005 when Mark found PublishAmerica.
Since we liked our characters, we decided to keep writing more books about them
and their adventures. We have already written the second book in the Jake and
Hank series (“The Devil’s Smile” is currently being updated), have a rough draft
of a third book and have outlined a fourth.
Terry W. Lovaas
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