What We're Writing Week--Deborah Crombie, TO DWELL IN DARKNESS, At Last!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm in roughly the same place in the book process as our Jungle  Red Lucy Burdette. Only, her new Haley Snow, Death with All the Trimmings, comes out in December, and Kincaid/James #16, To Dwell in Darkness, comes out September 23rd! What this tells you is that I was very slow and that the book is now in a crunch production schedule. This isn't fun for anyone, writer or publisher. Note to self: WRITE FASTER. Stick copies of note on keyboard and mirrors... BIG NOTE!

This also means I barely drew a breath between turning in the last chapter of the manuscript and starting my own and my editor's revisions, and that I had more editorial revisions sandwiched in with the copy edit.  A terrifying combination!  Much writerly angst!  "Will everyone hate it? What will I do then???"

Fortunately, that didn't turn out to be the case. (Or at least if my copy editor hated it, she didn't say so.) My editor is quite happy with it, I think. WHEW. 

That's my copy-edited manuscript above. The actual edit is done these days in Word Track Changes, but I ask for a printed copy as well. Everybody goes about this differently--would love to hear how REDS and other authors do it--but I do a first read-through of the digital copy, addressing the copy editor's comments that don't require much decision making. Then I curl up somewhere cozy with the printed pages, flags, and a pen, and make notes as I read, because I catch things in print that I never see on screen.  After that, I put my changes, and more changes suggested by my editor, into the digital copy. I am thrilled when I get an editor Smiley, and shudder when I see the dreaded Show, Don't Tell. (And yes, I still get those, after sixteen books...)


And now, tomorrow, just over a week after I turned in the copy edit, I will get page proofs. For non-writers out there, these are the type-set pages. You are only reading for little errors that might have slipped through the copy edit, or errors in type-setting or transcription. It's very expensive to make big changes at this stage and very much frowned upon.

Unlike the terrifying copy edit, I love reading the page proofs. It's the first time that an author gets to experience what they've written as a real BOOK. Not only have all the editing changes been incorporated, but you see the design of the book (font, chapter heads, etc.) for the first time.

The book comes to life!  In a few weeks, the ARCs (Advanced Readers Copies, or what we old fogies still call "galleys") go out, and then, in a little less than two months, TO DWELL IN DARKNESS will be on the shelves (or your e-reader.)

So what's next? I'm plotting Kincaid/James #17. I have a working title, which my editor and my agent both like, but I'm not quite sure I'm ready to share it. I have a start date for writing actual pages written in RED on my calendar. August 4th.

So hold me to it.

Here's a smidgen from TO DWELL IN DARKNESS, Chapter 1:

London was miserably cold for mid-March. There were a few hardy crocuses showing their heads in the parks and private gardens, but hard frost had nipped the daffodils and turned the early blossoms on the fruit trees crystalline.

Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid walked to Southhampton Row from Holborn tube station, his coat collar turned up, neck swaddled in a wool scarf, gloved hands shoved deep in his overcoat pockets. The sky was as dark as gunmetal, and when he turned east into Theobald’s Road, a blast of wind almost pushed him off his feet. Lowering his head, he trudged on. The weather boffins said the wind was blowing from the Siberian steppes—he wondered if he should consider one of those Russian hats with the earflaps. At least he now understood why the Russians wore the silly-looking things.

He quickened his pace as the concrete bulk of Holborn Police Station came into view. Although its architectural design might have come straight from the Gulag, it at least promised warmth.

Holborn station. His home away from home for more than two weeks now, yet he still felt as displaced as he had on his first awkward day. And as angry.

Returning to Scotland Yard from paternity leave in mid-February, he’d found his office empty. He’d been transferred from his longtime job as head of a homicide liaison team at the Yard to an area major-incident team based here in Holborn. It was a demotion, although he had kept his rank. There had been no warning and no explanation.

His immediate superior, Chief Superintendent Denis Childs, had been called out-of-the-country on a family emergency. That had added a second worry atop the first, as Kincaid and his family had been letting Childs’s sister Liz’s home in Notting Hill while her husband worked a five year contract in Singapore.

Kincaid had come to like Liz Davies, although they had only communicated via email. He hoped that the out-of-country emergency didn’t include her.

With Kincaid’s transfer to Holborn, Doug Cullen, Kincaid’s detective sergeant, had been moved into a data-entry job at the Yard, ostensibly to accommodate his recovery from a broken ankle. Now, Kincaid faced adjusting to a new job without Cullen’s capable, nerdy presence. Losing a good detective sergeant—a partner with whom you spent more hours than you did with your spouse—ranked, in his opinion, close to divorce on the scale of life disruptions, and there’d been no compensating honeymoon with his new team.

As if conjured up by his thoughts, he glimpsed his new detective constable, George Sweeney, trotting down the steps of the LA fitness gym across the street from the police station. Fresh from his morning workout, Sweeney wore a three-piece suit that was too expensive for a constable’s salary, and no overcoat. His short hair was still damp and trendily spiked, his cheeks red from his healthy exertion.

 “Morning, Guv’nor,” Sweeney said, overly hearty, as they both reached the station entrance. “You look like death warmed over,” he added, squinting at Kincaid. “A little too much partying?” Sweeney added with a wink and what came much too close to a nudge. By God, the man was irritating.

“Sick child,” Kincaid said shortly. Their three-year-old foster daughter, Charlotte, had a bad cough, and he and Gemma had taken turns to sit up with her.

“Oh, well.” Sweeney shrugged. “That means the day can only get better, right, Guv?” 

Kincaid felt a sting on his cheek, and then another. The lowering sky had begun to spit sleet.

And just for the record, I failed the compound word test. Almost every single decision I made turned out to be wrong. How do my fellow REDS fare on the compound word challenge?

Or should it be "compound-word"?  

 

What We're Writing Week: Christmas in July @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: What do you think of the Christmas in July trend? To be honest, I've always considered it a hokey idea. Shouldn't a normal person get on with enjoying summer and not try to trump up interest in a holiday that's still six months away?

But, for two reasons, Christmas really has arrived in July this year. Last week I had the gift  of rereading DEATH WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS, the fifth Key West food critic mystery coming December 2. And the gift of copy edits. Wanna hear good news or bad first? Bad, of course…

For those of you who don't know, copy edits are--I should put this politely, because it's a public blog and who knows who might be reading--necessary but maddening. These are not the editing notes from my editor, who is smart and laser-eyed and chock full of good ideas for making a story better. This stage consists of nit-picking. 
Don't get me wrong--I'm happy when they find things like misspellings, and missed capitalization, and incorrect geography--mistakes that I would much rather hear about before the book is published. For example, someone noticed that I'd written AZURIASTAN as the name of a country whose flag is flown on the grounds of the Truman Little White House in Key West. There is no such country! The flag in question is from AZERBAIJAN. Where did I even find that made up name? Whew, embarrassment averted. Better still, I managed to turn that error into a blooper made by Hayley's ex--pure fun.

And I learn things during the copyediting stage, too, like "brunet" is the correct spelling for a man with brown hair, "brunette" for a woman. And Bloody Mary has  both words capitalized.

But there are also hundreds of changes in things like dashes, and commas, and hyphens. Which sometimes seem utterly random. And the enemy of individual writing style.

And also queries such as: AU: Repetition OK? (Of course it's not okay, unless I intended it, as in some kind of artistic writing rhythm, which doesn't happen all that often.)

Even the recipes at the back of the book are not immune from the copy editor's eagle eye… AU: Shouldn't it read fold rather than stir since it's easy to over-beat whipped cream?

Sigh. 
My job is to remember that though it may feel like I'm being tormented, the copyeditor's job is to make the book better. 

And that brings me to the second gift--that of rereading DEATH WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS after resting from it for several months. 

This stage is so much more pleasant than the one Hallie described on Tuesday--that awkward beginning, when you have no words on the page and can't imagine where you'll find them.





So Bloody Marys all around--Merry Christmas dear Reds!



 Chapter One: DEATH WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS


My cell phone bleated from the deck outside, where I’d left it to avoid procrastinating via text messages, Facebook updates, or simply lounging in the glorious December sunshine with our resident cats, watching the world go by. The biggest interview of my career as a food critic was scheduled for this afternoon and I wanted—no, needed—to be ready.

Miss Gloria, my senior citizen houseboat mate, hollered from her rocking chair overlooking the water. “It’s your mother. Shall I answer?”

“Mind telling her I’ll call back in an hour?”

Miss Gloria would relish the opportunity to chat with her anyway, and maybe her intercession would slash my time on the phone with Mom in half when I returned the call. I am crazy about my mother, honest. But it had still been a shock when she announced she’d rented a place in Key West for the winter season. Wouldn’t it be so much fun to spend Christmas in paradise together? And New Year’s . . . and Martin Luther King Day . . . and Valentine’s Day? You get the picture. Mom had followed Diana Nyad’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Key West with rapt attention. When Diana overcame sharks, jellyfish, rough water, and advancing age to complete her 110-mile swim on her fifth try, at age sixty-four, Mom took it personally.

“Diana says we should never give up,” she announced on the phone a couple of months ago. “Why not ‘be bold, be fiercely bold and go out and chase your dreams’?”

My mother had been a little down since the summer because her fledgling catering company had not taken off the way she’d hoped. Although she’s an amazing and inventive cook, the business part of owning a business eluded her. For her first five catering events, cooking with only the highest-quality ingredients, she’d lost money rather than making it. A lot of money. Even her newish boyfriend, Sam, who was supportive beyond any reasonable expectation and categorically opposed to meddling, had suggested she take a few steps back and reconsider her plan.

“Why not? You should go for your dream, too,” I remember saying. “That’s exactly what you told me when I lost my bearings: Keep putting yourself out in the universe, and eventually the wind will fill your sails.” I stopped myself from trotting out more metaphysical tropes. I hadn’t wanted to hear too much advice when I was feeling down; Mom probably didn’t want mine, either. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m thinking of coming to Key West for the winter!”

Whoa. If that was her dream, who was I to stop her? But my big solo adventure on this island was about to turn into How I Met Your Mother.

Susan and an excerpt from THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: So, remember when I was going to copyedit THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT and Random House sent me the wrong manuscript? Well, this time — for the page proofs — they sent the right pages. (Yay!)

"Page proofs" are the first version of the type-set book. They are for editors, copyeditors, and authors to proofread — not for extensive rewriting, but for technical glitches that sometimes happen when a manuscript is converted to type (flipped quotation marks and bad breaks in the text, for example). There's also the opportunity to edit for clarity, etc., although changes at this point are expensive and extensive rewriting is frowned upon by The Powers That Be.

Page proofs are also what professional reviewers and bloggers eventually see. This is the version that bound galleys and advanced readers (ARCs) copies are made from — and why there's always that disclaimer about how it's not the final version and shouldn't. So whatever I see, they're seeing — and any changes that I and the copyeditor make will only be seen in the final book. (I use blue pencil on actual paper because that's what my editor likes, but most authors make changes on e-versions. Personally, I like the old-school blue pencil way.)

Here's the letter that comes from Production:

Page proofs are fun in that you can see all the design elements that have been added. I was thrilled to see this plaid page — perfect for a novel mostly set in Scotland.

Oooh, it looks like a book! (I love seeing all the technical marks showing where the pages will be cut, etc.

And now I'm delighted to share an excerpt from the page proofs of THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT, Maggie Hope #4, which is scheduled for publication this June.

Chapter One

Maggie Hope had thought that summer in Berlin was hell, but it was nothing compared to the inferno of darkness that now raged in her own head, even as she was “safe as houses” in Arisaig, on the western coast of Scotland.

A mixture of shame, anger, guilt, and sadness had become a miasma of depression, which followed her everywhere, not at all helped by the lack of daylight in Scotland in November. She’d once heard Winston Churchill describe his own melancholy as his “black dog,” but didn’t understand it. She’d pictured a large black dog with long silky fur, and dark, sad eyes, silently padding after his master.

But now she knew the truth: the black dog of depression was dirty and scarred, feral and rabid. He lurked in the night, yellow eyes gleaming, waiting for a chink in the armor, a weakness, a vulnerability, a memory. And then, jaws wide and fangs sharp, he would leap.
She had trouble sleeping, and when she did finally fall unconscious, she had nightmares.

         Sometimes, just sometimes, Maggie had a few moments in the morning, when she first woke up, when she didn’t remember her nightmares, or any of what had happened. Those were blessed moments, innocent and sweet. Until her mind started working again, and the sharp ache returned to her heart. She remembered what had transpired in Berlin. Remembered that her contact, Gottlieb Lehrer, was dead—a devout Catholic who’d shot himself rather than be taken by the Gestapo for questioning. Remembered that she herself had killed a man.

“It was self-defense,” the analyst she’d been ordered to see by Peter Frain had told her. “It’s war. You don’t need to torture yourself.” And yet, even though he’d shot first, and she’d killed in self-defense, his eyes —sad and reproachful—haunted her.

As did the sweet high-pitched voice of the little Jewish girl being pushed into a cattle car in Berlin, destined for Poland. “I’m thirsty, Mama,” she’d cried, “so thirsty.” What had happened to her? Maggie often wondered. Had she died on the train, or later in the camp? Could she still be alive? Because now that Maggie—and most of the rest of the world—knew that the Nazis were capable of killing their own children, calling it “Operation Compassionate Death,” she didn’t hold any hope at all for the children of Jews.

And, as if that weren’t enough burden, her mother, Clara Hess, a Nazi Abwehr agent was imprisoned in the Tower of London—and asking to talk with her. She was also scheduled to be executed soon, if she didn’t share some of the top-secret information she possessed as a senior Abwehr officer.

Maggie turned over beneath the scratchy grey wool blankets, reflexively reaching for the hard outline of the German boy’s bullet, which had just managed to miss her heart. Dumb luck was what had saved her—and allowed her to kill him, instead. The doctors in Switzerland, and then in London—even one of her best friends, Chuck, a nurse—had wanted her to have it removed, but she wouldn’t. She called it her “Berlin souvenir.”

I’m dead inside, she thought, not for the first time since she’d made it to Arisaig. Worse than dead—if I were dead at least I wouldn’t have to remember everything anymore.

On her nightstand, the black Bakelite clock ticked, and she reached over to turn it off before the alarm rang. Maggie concentrated on breathing—in and out, in and out. Even that caused pain, almost as though he shad a shard of ice in heart.

Maggie had heard the expression heartache before, of course, but never thought it would be so literal. So much pain, literal physical pain in her heart. But the heart was just a muscle, an organ, made to pump blood—not to feel things. So was it strain? Adrenaline? What made it hurt so much? Of course, the brain wasn’t much better—the brain could be a hellish prison of despair and pain and emptiness. Who knew that the brain could be such a traitor?

It didn’t help that it was coming up on Thanksgiving—and even though she’d lived in Britain since 1938, Maggie still missed her Aunt Edith, a chemistry professor at Wellesley college. She missed the United States sometimes too, truth be told. She missed the U.S.—its innocence—or was it ignorance?—of war, its clear skies, and untouched cities. Not to mention unlimited hot water and unrationed food. Although she was British by birth, she’d been raised in the U.S., and even though she’d made a choice to throw her lot in with the Brits when war started, she missed her Aunt and her friends and their broad, flat, nasal accents. She missed Thanksgiving. She missed turkey and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. She missed Boston and Cambridge. She missed America.

            Maggie sighed and then rose, washed up with the rust-tinged water in the enamel sink, and changed into her clothes, the brown twill jumpsuit all the instructors wore over layers of thermal underwear and wool socks, plus standard-issue thick-soled boots. She twisted and then pinned up her long red hair with her tortoiseshell clip. If she’d been doing office work, as she had been doing at Number 10 Downing Street, she would have put on the pearl earrings that her Aunt Edith had given to her when she’d graduated from Wellesley in ’37—but not only were they inappropriate for her job as an instructor at an SOE camp, she’d lost them somewhere in London after returning from Berlin. Not that anyone cares about anything as silly as earrings anymore. But they were another symbol of everything she’d lost.

Sallow and pinched, with shadows under her eyes and a chafed red nose, Maggie shrugged into her thick wool coat, and pulled on a scarf and stocking cap. She left the upstairs flat of the gardener’s cottage, where she’d been assigned to live, and headed to Arisaig House, the large home that loomed above.

Although her body ached and felt as if it were made from spun glass, she jogged to warm up her muscles before breaking into a run up the path of the rockery, taking the steep lichen-covered flagstone steps up to the manor house at a brisk jog in the darkness. It was November and so it was light only from eight-thirty in the morning to four-thirty in the afternoon. But to Maggie it always seemed dark, not Henry Vaugh’s “deep but dazzling darkness” but a sinister absence of light.

Arisaig House was the administrative heart of the War Office for Special Operations Executive—or SOE, as it was better known—in Scotland. SOE was neither MI-5 nor MI-6, but a black ops operation, training agents to be dropped into places such as France and Germany, and helping local resistance groups “set Europe ablaze,” as Winston Churchill had admonished. The SOE used great houses all over Britain to train their would-be spies, earning the joke that SOE really stood for “Stately ’omes of England.” While training camps were preliminary schools, or specifically dedicated to parachute jumping or radio transmission, Arisaig was the place where trainees received intense training in demolition, weapons, reconnaissance, and clandestine intelligence work.

Isolated on the far Western coast of Scotland, closed off by military roadblocks, the rocky mountains and stony beaches of Arisaig were perfect for pushing trainees to their physical and mental limits. Arisaig House was the administrative hub, with its own generator, water supply, laundry sent to nuns in Glasgow. Other great houses in the area were used for training—Traigh House, Inverailort, Camusdarrach, and Garramor, just to name a few. Maggie’s lips twisted in a smile as she recalled how groups of Czech, Slovak and Norwegian trainees had stumbled over the Scottish and Gallic names.

But it was the perfect place for Maggie, still recovering from her wounds.

As an instructor, she trained her charges harder than Olympians—running over stones, swimming in the freezing Loch, navigating obstacle courses in the cold mud, and mastering rope work.  With the other instructors, the trainees also learned field craft, demolition, Morse code, weapons training, and the Sykes and Fairbairn methods of silent killing. Anything and everything they might need to know sent to France, or Germany, or wherever a local resistance group might need aid.

            Maggie hadn’t always been a draconian instructor; in fact, the very idea would have made her former bookish and dreamy self laugh in disbelief. She’d wanted to earn her Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT, but had instead found herself in London when war had broken out. Maggie had been offered a job in Winston Churchill’s secretarial pool, and, after discovering secret code in an innocuous advertisement, and then foiling an IRA bomb plot, had been tapped for MI-5. She’d been sent to one of the preliminary training camps in Scotland as a trainee in the fall of 1940. While she was excellent at Morse code and navigating by stars, she’d flamed out spectacularly at anything that required the least bit of physical fitness.

Maggie remembered how angry she’d been when she’d washed out of the SOE program and Peter Frain of MI-5 had placed her at Windsor Castle to look after the young Princesses. But, in retrospect, it had done her good. She’d grown stronger both mentally and physically, and was able to help save the Princess Elizabeth from a kidnapping plot.

After her assignment at Windsor with the Royals, she’d returned to SOE training in the spring of 1941. She made it through all the various schools, and, as a newly minted agent, was sent on a secret mission to Berlin. Now, she had returned once more to Arisaig House—but this time as an instructor. As she opened the thick oak door, the bells in the clock tower chimed eight times.

The vestibule of the large stone manor house led into the great hall, which SOE had turned into a lobby of sorts, with a desk for a telephone and a receptionist. Sheets protected the grand house’s wooden paneling from the government workers, while Arisaig and Traigh Houses’ owner, a Miss Astley Nicholson, had been relocated to a smaller cottage up the road for the duration of the war. However, the spacious high-ceilinged entrance hall with its mullioned windows, staircase elaborately carved with birds and thistles, and views over the fields dotted with white sheep leading down to the jagged coastline made it clear this was no ordinary office.

In the vestibule, Maggie heard an ongoing discussion by her some of her current charges: this time around, mostly young women bound for France. She stopped to listen, without them seeing her.

“Yes, miss,” said the girl on receptionist duty said into the black telephone receiver, twisting the metal cord around her fingers. She was short, sturdy, and a bit stout, with a wide grin and eyes that crinkled when she smiled, which was often. Her name was Gwen Glyn-Jones and she was from Cardiff, Wales, but her mother was French, and she had a perfect accent from summers spent just outside Paris. She was training to become a radio operator—if she survived the physical training at Arisaig.

In the light of an Army-issued lamp, Gwen scribbled something down on a scrap of paper, and finished with a number. “Yes, miss—I’ll make sure Miss Hope receives the message as soon as possible. Thank you, miss.” She hung up.

“Message for ‘Lady MacBeth’?” one of the other girls asked. Yvonne had been born and raised in Brixton, London, but her grandfather was French—from Normandy—and, like Gwen, she was bilingual.

            “The one and only.” The girls giggled. Maggie was strict. She was hard on her students. She never smiled. None of the women at Arisaig House liked her. None of the men liked her much either, for that matter. “I loathe being in her section.”

            Yvonne leaned in. “Why does everyone call her ‘Lady MacBeth’?”

“Because she’s a monster.” Gwen lowered her plumy Welsh-inflected voice. “Rumor is, she has blood on her hands.”

Yvonne’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

“I heard she killed a man in France.”

Two other trainees walking down the staircase, a man and a woman, also overhead their conversation. “I heard she killed three men in Munich,” the woman offered.

One of the men said, “I heard she was interrogated by the Gestapo and never talked—”

“She’s always nice to the gardener’s dog…” Yvette ventured.

“Well, Hitler loves dogs, too.”

All right, that’s enough. Maggie swept in, giving them what she’d come to call her “best Aunt Edith look”—cold and withering.

 “Two, Five, and Eight—aren’t you supposed to be out running?” Maggie had given her trainees numbers instead of names.

There was a lengthy silence, punctured only by the ticking of a great mahogany long case clock. Then, “I’m on desk duty….” sputtered Gwen.

“And I was waiting…”

Yvonne tried, but Maggie held up one hand. “Stop making excuses.”

“I’m—I’m sorry, Miss Hope,” Gwen stuttered.

“Stop apologizing. In fact, stop speaking.” Maggie looked them all up and down. “You—Twelve—stay here and do your job. You three—go run on the beach. Relay races on the stony part of the shore—they’re good for your ankles and knees and will help your parachute jumps. I’ll be there shortly.”

They stared, frozen in place.

Maggie glared. “I said, go! Go! Gae own wi’ it, as they say around here!”

Yvonne nearly fell over themselves in their haste to get away from her and Gwen became very busy at the reception desk.

Mr. Harold Burns, another instructor, a fit man in his mid-fifties with smile lines etched around his eyes and rough skin dotted with liver spots, walked in from one of the other huge rooms of the house, now used as administrative offices. He favored her with a wintry grin from around the billiard pipe clenched between his teeth. The tobacco smoke smelled sweet in the chill air.

 He removed the pipe to speak. “Impressive, Miss Hope. I remember a time when you could barely run a mile without passing out. Or twisting your ankle. Or dropping your fellow trainees in the mud.”

Maggie put a finger to her lips, as she walked into what used to be the great house’s dining room. “Shhhhh, Mr. Burns. That’s our little secret.”

Burns fell in step beside her. “When you first came here, you were terrible. One of the worst trainees I ever had. But you persevered. And you came back. You worked hard. I’ve heard of some of the things you’ve accomplished, Miss Hope, and I must say I’m proud.” Mr. Burns was a survivor of the Great War. Maggie could see in his eyes that, like her, he had seen things. Things he wished he hadn’t.

The grandfather clock chimed, sending out a loud metallic gong. Maggie started, breathing fast, pupils dilated.

“It’s all right,” Mr. Burns murmured as if to a lost lamb, nearly putting a hand on her arm—and then withdrawing it. “You’re safe here, Miss Hope.”

            Safe. Who’s safe, really? Certainly not children with any sort of illness in Germany. Certainly not the Jews. Certainly not young men who just happen to be on the wrong side of a gun.  But Maggie liked Mr. Burns, she did, even though he’d been hard on her when she’d been in his section. In fact, much of what he taught her had helped keep her alive in Berlin.

            She looked out the window, to the sheep grazing in the neighboring fields, in the shadow of mountains. Maggie watched them until she felt calmer.

“Thank you, Mr. Burns.” She reached for the letter in her marked mail cubby and opened it. She frowned as she read the contents.

            “Everything all right, Miss Hope?”

            She didn’t receive that many letters. Occasionally a postcard from David, Mr. Churchill’s chief private secretary at Number Ten—with funny pen and ink cartoons illustrating his favorite expressions: “Merciful Minerva” and “Jumping Jupiter.” Sarah sent letters in loopy scrawl on hotel stationery from around Britain, on tour with the Vic Wells Ballet. And Chuck wrote less now that her husband Nigel was stationed in the Mideast and she was taking care of their baby, Griffin, almost three months old.

            But, in fact, everything was not all right. The letter was regarding Maggie’s house—the house on Portland Place in Marylebone that she’d inherited from her Grandmother Hope and moved to in ’38. The house she’d lived in with flat mates Paige, Sarah, Chuck, and the twins. The house that, after everything that had happened with the attempted assassination of Mr. Churchill, the planned bombing of St. Paul’s, and Paige’s death, she’d wanted nothing to do with. She’d let out to a lovely couple—he a high-level muckety-muck at the Treasury and she a young wife with the Wrens.

            However, according to the letter, the house had sustained significant bomb damage. Her tenants—who had survived—had moved.

            “Fine, fine,” Mr. Burns,” Maggie said. “Everything’s just fine.”

But her face said otherwise. She hadn’t been to the house in over a year, yes—but it was still a part of her, part of her family, part of her past, that had grown ever-more complicated and confusing the more she learned about it. And now it had been bombed. Was she sad? Angry at the Luftwaffe? Maybe even just a little bit relieved to be free of the responsibility of it and forced to move on? It doesn’t matter anyway, she thought. Probably all for the best. She crumpled the letter and threw it into the waste bin.

            Burns shifted his weight from side to side. “You know, Miss Hope, I served, too—over in France, in the trenches. I was a soldier then. Oh, you wouldn’t know it now, but once I was young—almost handsome, too. We all were, back then. Saw a lot of my friends killed, better men than I ever was, and killed any number myself.”

            “Mr. Burns—no one died. Truly. It’s just a house—my house—that was bombed. But no one was hurt. And houses can—perhaps someday—be rebuilt.”

Mr. Burns didn’t seem to hear her, lost in his own memories. “I don’t remember their faces, but I still think of them. What I try to remember is the Christmas truce—Christmas of fourteen, we had a ceasefire over in France. We even sang songs, if you can believe—us with Silent Night, and them with Stille Nacht. Same melody, though. We even had a game of football, that afternoon, the ‘Huns’ versus the ‘Island Apes.’ Then, the next day, back to the killing business….”

He shook his head. “I’ll leave you to read your message, Miss Hope.” He turned back to the mail cubbies and extracted a packet of letters from his slot, and began to go through them, pipe back between his teeth. 

            “Thank you, Mr. Burns.” Maggie turned her attention to the telephone message the girl had written out:

Sarah Sanderson called to say that the Vic-Wells Ballet is performing La Sylphide at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. She may be going on as the Sylph (and she specified, “the lead sylph, not one of the idiot fairies fluttering uselessly in the background.”)  She’ll put house seats on hold for you for tomorrow night and hopes you’ll make it.

Long-legged and high-cheekboned, Sarah was one of Maggie’s closest friends in London. At first Maggie had found Sarah intimidating—she was so worldly, after all, so beautiful and glamorous, with the slim figure of a fashion model, dark sparkling eyes and long dark hair. But she had a droll sense of humor and was given to witty retorts in a decidedly Liverpudlian accent.

            Maggie had only seen Sarah a few times since they’d parted ways in London the summer of the attempted bombing of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and missed her. If it were at all possible, she’d make it to Edinburgh for the performance, and also to spend time with her friend. The trouble was the black dog. Would the black dog let her? Sometimes it was hard to know. He was always ready to strike, but would he go for her throat? She walked back to the entrance hall, Mr. Burns not far behind.

            “Miss Hope?” Gwen asked, from her seat at the reception desk.

            Maggie blinked. “Yes, Twelve.”

            “Are you—are you going to go to Edinburgh to see your friend dance in the ballet? Because that sounds so very exciting and glamorous—and, quite frankly, quite fun.”

            Fun. What was fun anymore?  The black dog growled low in his throat and bared his teeth. But he didn’t strike. 

“Miss Hope?” Mr. Burns said. “I’ll arrange for the time off, if you’d like to go.”

            Maggie crumpled the message and threw it into the trash bin. “Thank you, but I won’t be needing it, Mr. Burns.”

She turned back to the girl. “Carry on, Twelve!”

Then she pivoted on her heel to make her way to the back garden and down to her trainees, whom she’d sent to run on the beach.

            I can’t, Sarah, I just can’t do it, Maggie thought. I’m sorry, so very sorry.

Take it up with the Black Dog.

So, Reds, how do you feel about this part of the production process? Do you approach your typeset page proofs with anticipation or dread? (I feel both, quite frankly.) Readers, are you surprised by how long the production process is?

Excerpted from The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent by Susan Elia MacNeal. Copyright © 2014 by Susan Elia MacNeal. Excerpted by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.