Saturday Guest

 I'm delighted to be able to introduce you today to Alison Joseph, the newly-elected Chair of Britain's Crime Writers' Association.  She started her career as a television researcher and then later directed documentaries for the BBC.  She is now a full-time writer and radio dramatist and her very successful series featuring Sister Agnes, a nun based in contemporary South London, is also a BBC radio drama series.  She's just starting another series, with DI Berenice Killick, which sounds intriguing: it's about particle physics.  Respect!




So, this is how it came about that I, a born-and-bred Londoner, attended a performance of Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap, for the first time in my life.

After an extremely enjoyable Conference in Windermere in the Lake District, I found myself Chair of the Crime Writers' Association.  I have no recollection of ever voicing the ambition, 'One day I'll be Chair of the CWA,' but it somehow happened.It's probably the nearest I'm going to get to having greatness thrust upon me.  And, it's our Diamond Jubilee year - sixty years since John Creasey our founder created the CWA.

So, what happened was, that, in conversation with the Mousetrap producer a couple of months ago, I discovered it was their 60th too, and we hatched a plot for a group of crime writers to attend the play and have a backstage tour too.  Then the Romantic Novelists' Association heard about it, and so in the end we were a jolly party of both groups.

So there I was, at a theatre I've probably walked past hundreds if not thousands of times in all my decades as a Londoner, actually walking through the doors and into the auditorium.

And I loved it.  I didn't even foresee the twist.  Alone among my party, I was the one with my hands up to my face gasping with surprise at the denouement, along with all the American visitors, whereas my fellow-crime writers were nodding sagely, even if they didn't know the story.  (They are obviously more suited to our profession than I am.)

Afterwards we were shown the set.  The sound effects are all manual - the ancient wind machine is older than the play.  There we were, a group of people whose day job is to make things up, cooing over the tricks of the set, 'Ooh look, the wood panels are just painted on, they looked so real...'

It was interesting to see Christie's skill at work.  There is a view that crime fiction has moved on since her time, but the economy of her story-telling and the neatness of her characterisation was striking.  There was nothing lazy, no moment wasted.  It seemed to me that for all the apparent cosiness, she does in The Mousetrap what the best crime writing does today, which is to allow the motive for murder to be believable.  The story may appear to be no more than a crisply-engineered puzzle, but it still has its roots in real human suffering.

We came out into the London drizzle and drifted away to tube station and bus stop.  And I felt somehow more of a Londoner.

Post Malice

This is my first post after attending Malice Domestic in Bethesda. I met some wonderful people. However, there was a whirlwind feeling to this event. I roomed with Type M's own Donis Casey. She, too, publishes with Poisoned Pen Press. We arrived late Friday evening and got in on the tail end of the PPP gathering.

I approach conferences with a spirit of happy expectation. I've been to a number now. Each time there are surprises. I was delighted to meet Ellen Larson, the exuberant new editor of the presses' new young adult mystery line, Poisoned Pencil. I can't think of anything more exciting than to be present at the launch of this new venture. Let your friends know Poisoned Pencil is looking for books. Guidelines are on the Poisoned Pen website. http://www.poisonedpenpress.com

As an example of the need to stay open at these events, my slot on the program was a presentation for Publisher's Alley. Mine was poorly attended! In fact, most of them were. I talked about important steps to publication. However, when I called for questions, a lady in the back of the room asked if she could have a five minute interview with me afterwards. I assumed she wanted information on how to publish her book.

As it turned out, she was filming interviews for different publications. She planned to post ours on YouTube. She had a camera room all set up and prepared me for some of the questions she would ask. She intends to edit the tape, which is blessing. But my point is, it was an unexpected opportunity. A gift! Out of nowhere. That's the joy of conferences. At Left Coast Crime a couple of years ago, I met a number of my beloved Type M'ers--and was made a honorary Canadian and invited to join this blog shortly thereafter. A gift! Out of nowhere.

Another gift was making the acquaintance of Clea Simon. Our conversations had the feel of a lasting friendship.

Now to the disappointments. I saw Frankie Bailey in passing, waved to Sandra Parshall. Met Hannah Dennison long enough to say hello before Carolyn Hart whisked her and Donis off to dinner. Barbara Frandkin, and Vicki Delany, and I managed to say a breathless "hello, how are you?" I would have loved to spend more time with them all.

Malice was great. But, then, so many conferences are.

A writer's best friend

Last week, I drove to Penns Creek, Pa., to get a dog.

It was an experience: I left at 2:30 a.m., armed with an audio copy of a Don Delillo story collection, drove six hours down, stayed 40 minutes to get the dog, and drove six hours back to northeast Conn. all in hopes of having her at the bus stop when my youngest daughter walked off the pre-K bus. Mission accomplished. Now Edith (that was ner name on the Amish farm -- a little too formal for me: she's Edie now) has been with us for a week, and, as I've watched my three daughters with their newest sister, I've glimpsed many raw emotions: two-way unconditional love, joy, and even fear of loss.


This coincided with an assignment I asked my fiction-writing students to undertake. Select a situation, subject, or person from your real life, one that you think about often or even obsess about, and use it as part of a story; as Hemingway said, "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." Far from a groundbreaking assignment. Simple. Straightforward. Essentially, I'm asking them to write a story based on their lives. But these are high school writers. Turning real life into fiction is not easy. Many don't have a lot of expereinces from which to draw upon.

Coming up with a situation was hard for them. I understand that. (After all, I'm not sure how many things I obsessed over at age 16.) But, I told them, emotion shouldn't be. Everyone wants something and fears many things. In my explanation, I found myself talking, in a roundabout way, about the girls' new puppy, about the emotions that dog had instilled. How it felt for them when they first saw the puppy. The fear each girls has expereinced when letting it run loose for the first time. And we all know how it would feel to lose that dog.

These are raw, bone-scraping emptions we try to instill in our characters (or inflict them with) and even explore in our own psyches as we write. These emotion are a writer's best friend.

That Tricky First Paragraph

A young unpublished writer wrote me an email yesterday asking if the following were true:

 "I heard that both editors and agents judge a manuscript based off the first few paragraphs and determine whether or not it would be a good use of their time. Is this true?”

Well … yes and no.

According to Lisa Cron’s must-read book “Wired for Story” she believes these three elements must appear on page one:

1. Something needs to be happening.
2. Who is it happening to? Whose skin are we going to be in?
3. Something needs to be at stake—something we can see that’s hanging in the balance.

In other words ... All is not what it seems!

Lisa believes we should include all of this on the first page—better still ... in the first sentence.

How about these:

Elizabeth George What Came Before He Shot Her

“Joel Campbell, eleven years old at the time, began his descent towards murder with a bus ride.” 

Louise Penny: The Cruelest Month

“Kneeling in the fragrant grass of the village green Clara Morrow carefully hid the Easter egg and thought about raising the dead, which she planned to do right after supper.”

Both brilliant!

I’m tortured over my first paragraph in my latest book. I must have rewritten it at least fifty times. My editor is currently reading the latest draft of my manuscript but I can’t stop fiddling with it. It doesn’t sing. 

With my first series – The Vicky Hill Mysteries—I remember spending a whole week noodling with that first paragraph. In the end … this is what I settled on: “The brown envelope addressed to Annabel Lake sat on her empty chair. Of course, it was marked confidential, but given that Annabel was home, suffering from a severe case of food poisoning, I thought it prudent to open it. After all, it could be urgent and what was in a name anyway? Weren’t we journalists all seeking truth and justice?”

Here are a couple more to muse over. 

Sue Grafton: A Is for Alibi

“My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind. I’m a nice person and I have a lot of friends. My apartment is small but I like living in a cramped space. I’ve lived in trailers most of my life, but lately they’ve been getting too elaborate for my taste, so now I live in one room, a “bachelorette.” I don’t have pets. I don’t have houseplants …”

Joanna Hines: The Murder Bird

“Five weeks before Kirsten Waller’s body was found in a cliff top cottage in Cornwall, Grace Hobden cleared away the lunch, checked to make sure her three children were playing on the climbing frame at the bottom of the garden, then went indoors to murder her husband.”

I have a many more in my collection but alas, those books are still packed in boxes from our move (yes, I know it was months ago).

Anyone care to share their favorites?

A little something for your viewing pleasure

I am molto swamped by work this week. But not wanting to let you all down, I offer this little video for your viewing edification. For all of you Type M fans thinking of taking a vacation, I offer this...

See you all next week.

Conference Economics

Judging by recent posts, the conference season is getting into full swing. We arrive, across countries, across continents, even, by train or plane or after long, long car journeys, at hotels and conference centres of varying degrees of comfort. We collect our goody bags and head upstairs to see if we've got the room with the sofa and the extra table and the view of the lake or the one with the view of the car park, above the kitchens. The seasoned conference-goer then checks to see if the bedlight is working and if it's possible to get the shower to operate without a qualification in advanced mechanics.

The next thing, of course, is to scan the list of delegates – checking for friends, famous names, useful contacts, before heading down to see who's going to form the bar crowd, unless we decide to eat the fudge from a local supplier that came in the goody-bag first...

The conference opens. There are speakers, panels, signings. Contacts are made over breakfast, a drinks reception, even outside with the wicked smokers, in the hope that the social relationship may transform into a useful professional one. Everyone has a good time, meets a few keen readers, sells a few books – usually very few, unless the name on the cover also features on the best-sellers list. It's all great fun, and as we tell ourselves, totally tax-allowable.

Then there's the grand finale – the final ritual known as 'paying the bill.' It's always a lot more than we thought it was going to be. It was just a few sociable drinks, for goodness sake, but of course the craic was good and we couldn't be  party-poopers and head off to bed. But we go home with very bruised, if not actually bleeding, credit cards.

There are all sorts of good reasons for going to conferences. If you're on the best-seller list, you have to go so as not to disappoint your fans – and your publisher.  If you're a new writer, they're a great way to make writer friends; it's a lonely job and being in the company of others who understand can make it feel like a holiday and you go back to your desk refreshed.

There are often publishers and agents attending, and you could strike it lucky and find someone who is looking for exactly what you have to offer. You may get valuable advice about which publishers are good and which are to be avoided at all costs. If there are lectures, one of them may suggest the plot for your next book.  Sometimes you even have the lovely experience of someone – someone who isn't your mother – actually telling you that she loves your books and you are very possibly the best writer in the world. The whole thing can feel like a shot in the arm.

But there are so many conferences, and the number seems to increase every year. I've been to a few when there were far, far more authors than readers. The trade in books was basically us all taking in each other's washing, and sooner or later most of us have to do the math. When you realise that even if every single person at the conference bought one of your books, and another to give to a friend because they were so impressed, your royalties probably wouldn't even cover the bar bill.

Is it value for money? I don't know, except that I've got a bit pickier over the years. I go if I'm invited to speak, I go if I particularly like the place it's being held, I go if I know I'll see a lot of my friends. But pay to be put on a panel with another couple of mid-list authors, speaking to an audience of perhaps fifty people, to sign half a dozen books?  I'm not so sure.

My Journey to Publication

One of the most exciting things about modern technology is that our blog reaches authors and readers all over the world.        
It gives me great pleasure to welcome this weekend's guest Beate Boeker who hails from Germany!

Her name in itself, is rather apt ... she tells me that while "Boeker" means "books" in a German dialect, her first name "Beate" can be translated as "happy." I love that.

Beate's work has been short-listed for the Golden Quill Contest, the National Readers' Choice Award and the Best Indie Books of 2012. As well as being a prolific writer, Beate holds a degree in International Business Administration. She is a marketing manager by day which—she says–gives her plenty of fodder for her novels—be they hilarious or cynical.

Beate speaks German (her mother language) and is fluent in English, French and Italian. She lives in the North of Germany with her husband and daughter.
Please extend a hearty hello to Beate Boeker.

Hannah asked me to share my journey to publication with you, and as it is a bit unusual, I'm happy to write about that topic.

I was in my mid-thirties when I decided to pen my first novel, and when I had finished it,  tried to sell it right away.  You have to know that I'm German and live in Germany, so this was in the German market.

As you can guess, I got plenty of rejections, and while re-reading  my precious manuscript one day, I realized that some places sounded kind of stilted or plain wrong. I cringed when I imagined how others would react to my writing if even I, the loving author, could see so much room for improvement! Clearly, I needed to learn more about the craft of writing because I had no idea how to fix those mistakes. So I started my research and tried to find courses that would teach me how to write well.

Soon, I realized that there is a fundamental difference between Germany and the U.S. when it comes to dealing with dreams. Tell any German that you're planning to write a book, and they'll pat you on the arm and will tell you kindly that it'll go away soon, much as if you had hay fever! If you tell an American, they will tell you that that's a cool idea and to go for it.

Due to that fundamental difference in attitude, I found plenty of online workshops for the beginning writer in English, but none in German. Finally, I shrugged, put the German novel into a drawer and wrote a new one in English. When it was done, I invested some money and found a book doctor in the US (Elizabeth Lyon) who kindly set me right on a zillion details. She then pointed me to Avalon Books, who (after much waiting), bought that novel—and two others in the following years. I was over the moon with joy. Over the time, I built up friendships and ties in the industry and learmed more than I ever dreamed I would.

With the change in the publishing industry and the sale of Avalon Books to Amazon, I decided to go indie.  Ten novels and short stories are already available online now, and I love to be in charge of my destiny! The best thing is that I don't have to wait for anybody anymore. When I'm done with my novels and all the edits, I upload them right away. In the past, I had to submit them and wait for nine months or a year to hear back, if all went well.  Besides, traditional publishing is just a small step away—if you're successful as an indie author, they will come knocking on your door anyway—so I can only recommend it.

After many years of learning and publishing in English, I have now decided to go back to my roots as well and have just translated my short story Chic in France into German. I'll soon upload it and others will follow.

Having started with romances, I have now also expanded to cozy mysteries. The first series "Temptation in Florence" is called "Delayed Death" and I can't tell you how much fun I had while creating this eccentric family.  Below, you can find more information about it, but as we chat, make sure you tell me about your journey to publication too.

What do you do when you find your grandfather dead half an hour before your cousin's wedding? You hide him in his bed and tell everyone he didn't feel like coming.
Delayed Death is an entertaining mystery set in Florence, Italy. When Carlina finds her grandfather dead on the day of her cousin's wedding, she decides to hide the corpse until after the ceremony. However, her grandfather was poisoned, and she becomes the attractive Inspector's prime suspect. On top of that, she has to manage her boisterous family and her luxurious lingerie store called Temptation, a juggling act that creates many hilarious situations.

Find Beate on:
Facebook – Beate Boeker Author
Twitter - @BeateBoeker

Homepage (you can sign up for her newsletter here) - www.happybooks.de

And if you want to buy the book ... here is her associate link to Amazon:

http://amzn.to/VMeCUz

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