Prof. Jay Valentine, PhD - Our “hero”, Dr. Valentine is a full-time private eye and a part-time college professor, in the employ of tiny Lester College, in Hoboken, NJ. Through an accident of fate, Valentine has ended up with a clientèle almost exclusively academic in nature, and has developed a system of accepting as partial payment for his services writing credits on major journal articles and research studies, giving him a mostly unearned reputation in the scholastic and research communities as a polymath of unrivaled proportions. At any given moment, he’d probably rather be playing chess…and when actually happens to be in his office, he usually is.

Ruby Tilden, M.S., PhD Candidate - Valentine’s grad student and gal Friday, Ruby is a classic hardass who somehow manages to successfully pursue a career in academics while simultaneously serving as both an invaluable assistant and a guardian angel to our hero. It doesn’t matter what Valentine needs, “train tickets, a late-night telegram to a connection at some far-flung archaeological dig, a fresh fifth of bourbon, bail money…”, Ruby somehow has it before him before he’s even finished asking. And although he’d die before he ever admitted it, “the dame could beat [him] at chess a solid four times out of five.”

Janice Davies, PhD - Valentine’s client, a research fellow working under the missing Dr. Archibald Hannity of Yale. She’s on the cusp of publishing a very important paper on the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, and it’s unclear whether she cares more about recovering Hannity or his research materials. A highly confusing mix of intellect, ambition, and the sort of curves that would “cast a real pleasing shadow on a fella’s window shade”, Dr. Davies (or “Legs”, as Valentine calls her in his mind) is a question mark where Valentine just wants a period.

Mildred “Millie” Dobbs, PhD - A slightly ridiculous, semi-retired professor at NYU, Millie serves many vital roles for Valentine, establishing connections with both institutions and academics, as well as bringing him up to speed on current research in whatever field his client happens to be in. Although she “insists on delivering every single, solitary word like she’s Lady Macbeth and it’s opening night”, Valentine loves Millie “like a spinster aunt”, and appreciates her vital role in his work, as well as her unwavering loyalty.

Archibald Hannity, PhD - A professor and researcher at Yale, Hannity came into possession of a mysterious folio–alleged by Dr. Davies to have contained Shakespeare’s lost plays Cardenio and Love’s Labour’s Won–shortly before disappearing…leaving nothing behind but two shell casings, a small pool of blood, a missing folio, and a storm of doubts and suspicion.

That’s right, folks: Somewhere in Hoboken, New Jersey, circa 1935, at fictional Lester College, a private dick and occasional college professor sits in his office, planning moves for his play-by-mail chess games. Pulp Novel BETA 0.1 is underway, under the working title Hard Lesson. And that means that I’ve got excerpts for you.

The opening sentence (which will probably change tonight, since I’ve built up enough steam to edit a bit):
I sat in my tiny office at tinier Lester College, my attention divided equally between the cherrywood board in front of me and the worn nickel flask in my right trouser pocket.

Our protagonist describes his chess games and his job:
I came by most of my opponents the same way I came by clients, mainly word of mouth by people who should know better than to talk. Almost all of them–clients and opponents both–were professors of some sort, complete with fancy titles and letters after their names. Didn’t make them any better at chess, but it sure made me enjoy sticking it to them each week.

So I sat, caught between pressing the attack with my queen’s bishop or taking another pull of bourbon. This particular academic crumpled under pressure. Most do. I guess that’s why I’ve got a job.

What people say about our protagonist:
Some call me a professor. Some call me a private detective. Some call me a fraud. I’m not in the habit of arguing with any of them.

Our protagonist meets his client:
She wasn’t lying. She was trouble, five and a half feet of it. Her close-cropped black hair framed an austere face, pretty despite the paleness and freckles. She wore a navy pantsuit, which somehow managed to make her look feminine and commanding at the same time. I imagine that was on account of her curves, the type that would probably cast a real pleasing shadow on a fella’s window shade. I knew at a glance that she was the sort of dame a man makes mistakes for. Big ones, and without asking why.

Or so I thought.

Today, I came up with a character that would allow me to retain a great deal of the plot and setting, despite the major changes to characters and characterization. My concept, you ask? Well, it’s a pretty simple. It needs to be honed a bit, obviously, since it’s a little cheesy/gimmicky as it exists now, but I think it’s got potential.

My protagonist is by all appearances a slightly daffy fellow, working as a research professor at a somewhat mediocre private college in Hoboken, New Jersey. He has a decent reputation as an academic, however, due to his research often contributing to major studies and journal articles for colleagues at larger, better respected universities; he is often listed as a secondary or tertiary author on important works by important men. The catch, though, is that he isn’t actually an academic at all. He’s more of a private dick, who works as a bit of a “cleaner” for these august institutions and men, protecting them from scandal, academic sabotage, and the like. His payment often includes authorship credits on upcoming works by the individuals employing him. Because it’s obviously in the best interest of both the universities and researchers in question, only a select few academic elites are even aware that this “mystery professor” doesn’t collaborate on these projects…at least not in the respect most folks assume he does.

When one of the more eminent of these recent “collaborators” disappears, along with an important document he is studying (and virtually all his research notes), the protagonist is brought in to investigate. The story revolves around this investigation. Got it?

Like I said, I think this is a decent–though obviously rough–concept, which shows some promise once I buff it a bit.

Still haven’t named the son of a bitch, though.

Actually, no. Strike that. It’s an astonishingly clear night, made quite bright by the full moon. Tonight does mark something however, and that is the rollout of this blog, dedicated to my 2007 NaNoWrimo project, which I have been preparing for over the last month and change.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo is the none-too-clever shorthand for “National Novel Writing Month”. More specifically, NaNoWriMo is the name given to a 30-day collective delusion of mediocrity, shared by several thousand fantastically untalented wannabe writers. The goal? To spit up 50,000 words of novel-shaped, embarrassingly amateurish prose entirely within the confines of the calendar month of November. The prize? Absolutely nothing at all, except perhaps an unwarranted feeling of accomplishment.

Coming off a “successful” NaNoWriMo ‘06, which saw me write the most overambitious, pretentious pile of verbiage conceivable by man, I am committed to reining in my delusions of quality, and ramping up my fun quotient. After virtually twenty minutes’ deliberation, I have decided to craft a pulp novel, in the style of Hammett or Chandler. Actually, that short period of consideration was only applied to the genre as a whole; I knew that I wanted to write pulp, but wasn’t sure what kind. In fact, I’ve spent the better part of October outlining a work more in the fashion of Doc Savage than the Continental Op…but after reading a fair amount of pulp over the last few weeks, I have decided that I enjoy reading pithy, first person narrative more than paeans to overblown, superhuman invinc-o-men and their similarly mighty cohorts.

Anyhow, as the welcome message says, this blog is going to be the place where I post my plot and character ideas, my outlines, and if God smiles on it, plenty of excerpts. Tune in regularly, dear readers, for the adventures of…

Well, shit…I haven’t even named him yet.