I’ve got a crazy idea and it’s this: I have about 22,000 words so far on my fourth novel. I will need about four times that to have a legitimate manuscript. And I’ve got the crazy idea to serialize the novel in draft form. It’s a mystery in two senses. First, it’s a genre mystery, a who-dun-it. I’ve not written a mystery before. Here is how a mystery is described by Professor Wikipedia: “Fiction that follows a crime as it is committed, investigated, and solved, as well as providing clues and revealing information and secrets as the story unfolds.” It’s a mystery in another sense: It’s mostly a mystery to me, too. Of course, I have some solid ideas, but they are not all fleshed out. That’s why I’ve decided to reach out for “crowdsourcing” help. Crowdsourcing is when one turns to the general public for ideas and help.

So here’s how it will work. I’ll post the latest chapter on a regular basis after editing as best as I can, but with all the blemishes and flaws there can be in draft. Normally a thorough rewriting and editing process would tidy things up before publication, but this protocol will have warts and all. You, my dear readers, are welcome to comment, make suggestions or just LOL. If you have a great suggestion and I adopt it, I’ll be sure to credit you.

In addition, I will periodically post background on the process of drafting a novel. Teasers of each chapter will be posted for free, but if you want to encourage me, there are places on the page to subscribe or even be a founding donor, which doesn’t get you anything except my endless love. Of course, if you tire of it, you can always opt out.

I am not the first with a crazy idea. Another writer, S. J. Watson, started his experiment, as he calls it, long before I got the idea.

One last word on this crazy idea: It arrived in the middle of the night, and that shows you just how crazy the idea is. Normally, I make an appointment with my brain for tomorrow morning and go back to sleep. But I am acting on it this time. Crazy, right?

—RJ Stewart