The Story

One morning in December, the writer, John Passfield, leaves his home, buys a coffee and drives down to Lake Erie to perform a Christmas ritual that he has developed over the years. Suddenly, he finds himself in the writing-room of Charles Dickens, who explains his new idea for a Christmas tale. Dickens invites John to watch rehearsals for the writing of the story, but as Dickens struggles through contentious negotiations with his amazingly independent characters, John wonders whether A Christmas Carol will ever be written.

The Making of A Christmas Mystery

This journal records the author’s reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning A Christmas Mystery

During the writing of the novel, the author kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the thirty-first installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download.