I got the gumption, started writing, and even set tentative deadlines and a plan to meet them. I intend to write a page a day through October (while I'm learning who the characters are and making notes on the rest of the novel) and two pages a day through November. So by December, I'll have 90 pages that no doubt will turn into 100 or more once I fill in some of the blanks I'm leaving until after I visit the setting and read more about the era.
Maybe some of my gumption came from reading about Aimee Semple McPherson. I'm astonished by her charisma, ambition, and fervent devotion to her ministry in conflict with an apparently desperate need to be adored.
My novel isn't about Sister Aimee, but I see her and her Angeles Temple functioning as a sort of backdrop. The murderer and the victim, as well as some informants Tom Hickey finds, have belonged to the congregation. I'm inclined to place the action during the 1927 inquest into Sister Aimee's 1926 disappearance, which she called a kidnapping, but which news hounds and investigators thought more likely a romantic fling.
Although Sister Aimee is tangential to the story, I'm hoping to discover enough about her to allow Tom or his mentor Leo insights into the source of her astonishing power to draw and hold followers and to build a worldwide church out of nothing.
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