Since I have a deadline in mid February for Murder on the Mountain, I’ve had to temporarily put aside the YA novel I was working on (Martian Born) to focus on this one again. It was nearly finished at the end of November, but frankly I was so sick of it, I just needed a break. Why was I sick of it? Because trying to cram an entire novel into one month really didn’t work well for me. Sure, I got most of it done, but I burnt out twice as fast.
Rushing things (for NaNoWriMo) also meant that I didn’t have time to straighten out problems with the plot as they came up. So now I’m going back through the manuscript and doing a lot of tweaking, before I move on to wrap things up.
None of this means that I don’t like the novel. I think it’s good, and definitely successful as a murder mystery. But I’ve learned some things since I began writing it about proper police procedure when it comes to criminal investigations on the mountain, and of course my husband and I spent a weekend at the Mt. Washington resort hotel where the bulk of the story takes place. So now I’m going back and restructuring to take all of this into account.
I’ve also decided to slow the romance down a bit. Not a lot—the entire novel takes place over less than a week—but just a bit more, to make it more obvious that the bisexual police detective, Kyle, is on uncertain ground. He’s never dated a man before, so I wanted him to come across a bit more hesitant. This is not a “gay for you” story—Kyle knows he’s interested in men—but until recently he’s been married to a woman (she passed away a few years before the story begins), and he never thought he’d act on his attraction to men. Then along comes a confident, openly gay young man named Jesse….
In the meantime, I’ve also entered edits for two stories: my contemporary romance, Screwups, and a steampunk novella called Watchworks, which is part of an anthology called Gothika. The anthology includes stories by me, Eli Easton, Sue Brown, and Kim Fielding, and should be out this May!
Jamie Fessenden's Blog 
I feel your pain when it comes to the woes of NaNoWriMo…I’ve had to essentially scrap a lot of my materials because there were so many problems arising from having rushed to meet the word count. Murder on the Mountain sounds very enticing though!
I found it to be effective in getting started, but I’ve generally failed to reach the 50k word mark in favor of writing the story well. This year, I pushed to “win,” and the writing suffered. Not irreparably, but enough to be annoying.
Exactly. The first year I wrote, I only made it to 30,000 words, but it was good. The second year, I made the 50,000 and it was just awful near the end. Looking back at it now, well, let’s just say that editing is a mess.
I do nano every year with varying results, some great, some just like you described. I love mysteries. It’s my favorite genre. This sounds like something I would love to read.
This is my first actual murder mystery (as opposed to stories with mystery elements). It’s been a lot of fun to write. Hopefully it will keep readers guessing!