At New Year’s I posted my work plan for 2018 and promised a progress report on my manuscript about a murder at a storytelling festival in North Carolina.

My main characters in Caught by a Tale are a freelancer breaking into true crime reporting and her mother, a retired history teacher and aspiring storyteller.

I chose the setting because I love these festivals, but writing about one has presented some tough technical problems, including making each of the tellers and their stories distinctive without slowing the narrative.

I’m rewriting fairly heavily as I go, and I anticipate spending more time than usual on my second draft. Even so, I’m roughly two-thirds of the way through and expect to finish the first draft in about two months. Right on schedule.

The next two drafts may take a little longer than I thought.

—Carolyn Mulford