Dan Decker Books

By: DanDecker
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • The podcast of thriller author Dan Decker.
    Copyright 2016-2024. All rights reserved.
    Show more Show less
Art Drama & Plays Literary History & Criticism
Show more Show less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
Episodes
  • Making great progress on Mitch Turner #6!

    Making great progress on Mitch Turner #6!
    Oct 17 2024

    I have made great progress this week on Mitch Turner #6! The story is coming together as a whole. At this stage, I’m usually focused on what I can cut out. Many times, when I am writing, I will have various ideas that make their way into the manuscript. Many make it through into the final pass, but a lot of them don’t because they don’t fit, and because of that, I always have to be careful to look at what’s there, decide if it makes sense for it to stay, and if it does, how is it going to work into the overarching plot.

    Mitch Turner #6 features Frank Ward as the defendant. It starts out with Turner coming out of a meeting at the State’s Attorney’s office in downtown Chicago. He becomes curious when emergency responders pull up to the building, and he sticks around to see what’s happening. He soon sees a woman rushed out on a stretcher and a few minutes after that, Frank Ward is brought out in handcuffs.

    Ward looks dazed and confused, and when he sees Turner, his eyes light up and Turner knows exactly who Frank Ward is going to call for representation.

    The problem is Turner still hasn’t forgiven Ward for what he did to Barbara.

    This story has been on my mind for a while now. I knew Frank Ward would be Mitch’s defendant at some point and that it would be an uphill battle for Turner every step of the way. Things are moving very well on this project. I’m technically at the end of draft four and will start draft five soon. At this point in my process, I am usually trying to do a draft a week for a book that’s this long because I like to work on the book as a cohesive whole, and doing rapid iterations through it allows me to see the pieces that need to be brought together or massaged or edited or deleted.

    Also, don’t forget that The Fixer is on the horizon and will be coming out in November! I am super excited about this book. It features Kirk Hoffman. This is the first novel in which Kirk Hoffman appears. He’s an attorney who works with a dedicated team that he has collected together over the years. His express goal is to find justice, and he’s usually interested in making it happen outside the courtroom rather than within. So be on the lookout for The Fixer! Just a reminder, The Killers Club is now out as an audiobook. Anyhow, that’s how everything is going over here. Have a great week everybody!
    Show more Show less
    3 mins
  • Writing Update and All about Mitch Turner Book 6!

    Writing Update and All about Mitch Turner Book 6!
    Oct 10 2024
    Hello and welcome back to the Dan Decker Books podcast. I hope everybody out there is having a great week this week. Over here at Grim Archer Media, things couldn't be going any better. Things have been going very well. As you probably know, I released the Killers Club audiobook last week and that has been off to a 0:25 fantastic start. Thank you for all of you out there who are supporting that particular book. I know that there's a substantial portion of my readers that prefer audiobooks, and so I'm glad that I'm able to get that out there for them. I'm hoping to get more audio books out soon within the next six months or so. 0:45 For me, it's always kind of a bit of a decision to if I'm going to do an audio book or not, because even though it takes, I'm not the one doing the narration or anything like that, it does take a substantial chunk of my time to review the audio book and make sure 1:02 that I'm happy with how everything's been done. That usually takes somewhere between a couple days to almost a full week, depending on the length of the audiobook. The Killer's Club was a much longer book, so that took a lot more of my time. And it left me a little bit drained, 1:20 but I'm hoping to do some other audio books here in the near future. One of the audio books that I'd like to see done is Only the Guilty. And then I also want to start working on the Jason Maxfield books and getting those all turned to audio. So we'll see how that goes. 1:36 At some point, I am definitely planning to do those books. Anyhow, the big thing I've been working on now that the Killers Club audio book is out is Mitch Turner No. 6. 1:47 I've been thinking about it today, just wondering how long it is that I've actively been working on this project. And I started doing it clear back in June. It looks like the first day I narrated a file was June 12th. If you don't know, I actually do narration. I've found that narration works really well for me. 2:08 And I kind of have a little bit of an unusual process, I think. Well, a lot of authors don't use narration, but for me, what I do is I actually pull out a voice recorder and I pace around my office while I dictate a chapter, usually about 10 minutes or so. Sometimes that's a full chapter. 2:26 Sometimes it's part of a chapter. I will dictate that. And then I will run that audio through Dragon Dictation. I have the most recent Dragon Dictation software, and then it will transcribe that for me. And then what I will do after that is then I will do a couple passes. Usually I can't remember. Sometimes I won't. 2:46 Sometimes I'll just move on to the next chapter and we'll see how it goes. So back in June, I was still working full time on Jason Maxfield number four. I was hoping to get it done before I needed to start working full time on Mitch Turner number six, but I didn't, 3:02 it didn't quite work out the way I wanted. Uh, Anyhow, so I started working on it on June 12th, and that's when I would start just doing a 10-minute, maybe 15 or 20-minute amount of narration every day, and then going and working full-time on Jason Maxfield. Well, somewhere in August, 3:20 I think that first or second week in August, I finished with the present draft I was working on with Jason Maxfield, number four. I'm not sure if that was draft three or four, something like that. After I was done with that, setting it aside, 3:36 then I went and I have started working full time on Mitch Turner number six. There was some of the narration that I needed to finish. I was probably at least 50 or 60,000 words into it by that time. 3:48 And so I went and I finished narrating the rest of the book before I started going back and revising it. Usually for me, it works better to have kind of the whole book finished. or a whole outline in place. I say I'm a discovery writer, 4:03 but really what I am doing that first draft is making an outline of the book. And it's always surprising to me that there are sometimes things I put in that I'm like, oh, I think I'm probably gonna delete this later, where I actually come back and I find a way to make it work. 4:18 It's always kind of interesting how that works out. But anyhow, so back in August, I started working full time on Mitch Turner. Number six, I got to the end of draft one or the outline as you want. It could also be referred to. And, 4:35 About that time, it was just over 100,000 words, which was what I was shooting for. Most of the Mitch Turner books are all about 100,000 words. The Good Client's a little shorter, the Presumption is a little bit longer, but they usually fall within that general range. 4:49 And then I go through and then I flesh out a lot of the things that haven't been fleshed out or or what have you. So by the time I was done with that process, really draft two, I was up in the 140,000 word range, which is a lot more than I wanted the book to be. 5:08 Luckily though, as I was working here and I'd actually just finished draft four, Ray. So draft ...
    Show more Show less
    12 mins
  • My Legal Thriller Influences

    My Legal Thriller Influences
    Oct 3 2024

    Here is a partial transcript of the show, for a full transcript, go to DanDeckerBooks.com!

    Welcome to the Dan Decker Books Podcast. I'm Dan Decker, the author of The Good Client, Max Damage, and a bunch of other thrillers and legal thrillers, as well as a little bit of science fiction and fantasy. Thank you for joining me today. 0:24 On this podcast, I give a writing update and usually share a thought or two about something else. This week's thought is about my legal thriller influences. Hello and welcome back. I hope everybody is having a great week out there. It's been a great week for me over here at Grim Archer Media. 0:46 I've been accomplishing a lot of things. The first thing is I finally submitted the Killers Club over to ACX for review. Part of the reason why I'm late at getting to do that is because I have been heads down working on Mitch Turner number six. 1:01 It's really important for me to be able to have momentum and this is why I have not been able to get the killer's club audio book submitted until now, but good news. I finally submitted it. It's in review. I saw earlier that it was done with the first step of the review. 1:17 Hopefully it will be done here pretty quickly and I will be able to get it out for everybody to check out. Anyhow, Mitch Turner six is going really well. I finished with the third draft and now I'm starting on the fourth draft and At this stage, I usually do a number of quick drafts. For me, 1:37 it's really helpful to get into the story and see the whole story at once or as close to as once as possible. When you're working on a novel, oftentimes you'll write a piece and then you won't come back to it for days or maybe even weeks. Not for months for me usually in my circumstances, 1:56 but there are some authors who won't return to a piece of writing for months. And so it can be difficult to Make sure that you're keeping all of that in your mind. And for me, I like to try to work on the story cohesively as a whole. 2:09 And by doing that, I hope that it turns out to a better story. So Mitch Turner's number six is just coming along great. I still don't have a title. I've been thinking about it. I've written down a couple of potential titles. I'm not crazy about any of them, but certainly my juices are flowing there. 2:28 It's funny to me that sometimes the titles will just come to me and I'll know them right away. And other times I won't know the title for a long time. So just kind of interesting how that works. The other project that I'm working on, and this is just a side project, 2:44 is I have a little fantasy project I work on every day, usually in the morning, right as I get in. And sometimes throughout and I try to work on it as a break throughout the rest of the day. But basically, I just work on that to keep me writing in general, 3:00 because a lot of times I'll get stuck in revisions and revisions can go on for a very long time. And I like to be writing something new every day. And so writing on a side project really helps me do that. And I've mentioned that before on this podcast that I have some of these other side 3:16 projects that I've put out that I've put down to paper that are probably never going to be seen anywhere just because I don't have the time to go back and work on them and make them any more polished than they already are.
    Show more Show less
    13 mins

What listeners say about Dan Decker Books

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available