Writing Projects & Plans for 2022

Any suggestions?  

This early in the New Year we may still be taking time to look back on the past year or two and plan ahead for 2022. Given the pandemic that has affected so much of the past two years, you may want to look further back at what we used to consider normal in our lives and plan for the changes necessary to thrive in the new normal that exists now.

That’s what I’m doing now. As a writer I’ve looked back at what I’ve written, what I’ve read, and what I plan to work on next. There is always value in reviewing the work and the advice of other writers too.  What I’m reading now includes How to Write a Mystery, a collection of essays by Mystery Writers of America. All my reading helps to give purpose and direction to my future writing plans.

You may know me best as a writer of novels, but I have also written for business and published two books of advice for entrepreneurs. Sorting through my bookshelves I was reminded that I used to be a mining engineer and a management consultant specializing in information systems and materials management. My first published work was in 1981, an article on Inventory Management in the Process Industries for the Proceedings of the Canadian Association for Production and Inventory Control. Next was a 40-page chapter on Materials Management in the Mine Management textbook published in 1983 by Coopers & Lybrand. (Sounds fascinating, eh? No wonder I found fiction more appealing.)

After three decades of business and career changes as an executive, entrepreneur, and advisor to entrepreneurs, I published The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide to Business Plans and DON’T DO IT THE HARD WAY in 2014. In those books, revised and expanded in the 2020 Editions, and in my consulting with entrepreneurs, I used real-life stories to reinforce the lessons learned and make them more memorable. In 2015, I decided to share the stories with a larger audience and make them more interesting and entertaining in my Dale Hunter Series of crime fiction novels about an entrepreneur fighting crime and corruption in the international computer business of the 1980s. My objective with the novels remains to share ideas, information and inspiration through storytelling while also promoting a better understanding and appreciation of enlightened entrepreneurship.

The first three novels in the series, NO EASY MONEY, SIMPLY THE BEST, and MERGER MANIAC were published in 2018 – 2019 and the next two, BAD BOYS IN BOSTON and CRASH LANDING, are in the process of editing and review for publishing soon.

In my continuing development as a writer of fiction, I am inspired and informed by the writers I admire and whose books I would recommend to you, including Linwood Barclay, Louise Penny, Kathy Reichs, Ian Hamilton, Robert Crais, Ian Rankin and Canada’s original international best-selling author, writing novels around business themes like me, Arthur Hailey.

Now the question is what next? More fiction or more real-life stories? Another business book or another novel. What do you think? Maybe you also have some advice for me. Any suggestions or recommendations?

Thank you for joining me on my writing adventures.

Del Chatterson