The Lid Blows Off

The transcription of my first case has just hit the 10,000 word and 10 chapter mark.

Simultaneously.

My word processor's heading function has helped this along with ease. The novel started with me attempting to retrieve a newspaper from the next door neighbour's dog. Picture the Rottweiler from The Omen and pile on the fury.

I realised that a story about a private investigator usually starts with a dead body, so I inserted a couple of chapters before this. The computer didn't even blink, for once.

Actually, it did blink. It blinks at me constantly. Makes my eyes water sometimes.

I started doing my story with a separate file for each chapter so I could keep a few open at once for reference. That's one of the joys having a dual monitor setup. My plan was to create a master document and add all these chapters as subdocuments. I looked up some help sites on the net and didn't find very much in the way of help. Why? Everywhere I looked there was one point of advice for master documents: don't use them.

So I won't.

Sometimes I don't know exactly what drives me to do these things. I've put all this time into building skills in investigation and music and after reading five books on writing I just can't help it.

A novel has to come out of me.

*shrug*

In The Beginning

This would be the beginning, in which I tell you who I am and why.

My name is Danny Hawaii, and I'm a private investigator.

From an early age I felt out of sync with the world around me and I often retreated to a world of my own imagination. A world where the beats rolled as freely as the hips on a Hula girl. A world where fast cars were as loud as guitars and caused just as much pollution.

My father, a security guard that worked at The Hub, was obsessed with the hard boiled detectives of old and the ones that followed them in the decades after. He loved a world without even a concept of political correctness; a world where all wounds are healed by three chords played on an electric git-tar.

Growing up with these images and sounds, I couldn't help but be influenced by them. I can't say I ever set out to be a detective, and I even rebelled against the idea by getting a job at the morgue.

I figured it would be more interesting to see the end product.

My father was killed by two kids while on duty. Nothing out of the ordinary, no major world-wide conspiracies. It just happened.

That's when I decided I would follow his dream for him. It became my dream, and now it's my reality. Which is kinda strange, seeing as I'm a fictional character in someone else's book.

Now that I'm a licensed private eye I figured it was time to start telling the world my stories. And the best place to start is at my first case. The case that got me the license.

Keep clicking back to find out more. I'll tell you the truth, whether I know it or not.

Danny Hawaii