Writing Scenes

Like most writers I am always interested in the processes used by other writers. Since I started working on my 1939 historical thriller I've been reading blogs and books and watching podcasts about historical novel writing.

I know how to do historical research. One of my areas of academic research is crime history. I even teach a research course for grad students  But writing a novel set in a historical era is more complex. A series set in the recent past that I lived through (2000-2004 in the Lizzie Stuart mysteries)  or a recent "near future/now alternate history" (in the Hannah McCabe police procedurals) hasn't been difficult. Even the short stories set in the late 1940s (with Jo Radcliffe, my former Army nurse) has gotten easier now that my fictional setting feels familiar. 

But in the 1939 book -- with multiple characters and a year to cover -- I've still trying to decide what to include. I've finally decided to stop struggling to decide what to include. Although I'm a plotter, I'm going to write the scenes that come to mind from the POV of any of the characters. I read that one famous -- unnamed -- author of romantic suspense does this. Then she goes back in the second draft and sorts through the scenes and uses the ones that work together to form a cohesive whole.

This makes sense as I try to deal with the fact that my villain keeps insisting on narrating certain scenes from his point of view. I'm been writing the scenes even though I plan to delete them. But I realized yesterday that one of my other POV characters is up to something I hadn't anticipated. So, instead of the maximum of four POVs that I have been striving for will be five or six, and then I will decide when the first draft is done who has a perspective that provides information or serves some other purpose.

Of course, the other issue is whether I will give into temptation and include cameo appearances by real-life people. I have a scene when my FBI agent is called down to D.C. for a meeting with J. Edgar Hoover. I could have Billie Holiday interact with one of my primary characters, who has a job at Cafe Society. Or, wouldn't it be fun to include Eleanor Roosevelt during one of her visits to the World's Fair. Or, one of my characters who is in Atlanta for the premier of Gone With the Wind could cross paths with Clark Gable while a crucial incident is happening in the background.

I've already tried this in the scene that introduces Jacob Baldwin, my sleeping car porter. He is in the crowd attending Marian Anderson's performance on Easter Sunday. There are students there from Howard University. He hears one of the  young women call one of the men "Ossie."  This works if you think of "Ossie Davis" (actor, civil rights activist, and husband of Ruby Dee). He attended Howard. But do I need to explain this? If Hoover appears, do I need to discuss this in the "Author's Note" that I always include?

I'm tempted to do footnotes. Yes, footnotes -- or end notes (putting all of the additional information at the end of the text). I know this sounds odd when I'm writing a novel. In fact, the only time I can recall reading a book in which this had been done was a novel by African American writer Ishmael Reed. Mumbo Jumbo (1972), his detective novel featuring hoodoo investigator Papa LaBas, includes citations.

I'm thinking of including footnotes because if I were reading my novel, I would be stopping to look for more information about the time period. If, for example, readers could glance at the footnote at the bottom of a page and have the most obvious question that comes to mind answered, this would keep them from leaving the book and maybe not coming back. But, on the other hand, if they are immersed in the world of my book, my intrusion with this information might have the opposite effect and be an annoyance. They might not care what is true or false. Or, if they are interested in that, might prefer to wait until they are done and read the author's note.

But this is fiction even thought I am rooting my story in truth. Maybe I'm overthinking. At any rate, I need to finally get the first draft done. I'd like to be finished by December 31. That would be a great way to begin a new year.

 

In Search of a Title

This post is going to be short because I'm trying to finish my nonfiction book about gangster movies and get it out before Thanksgiving Day. 

But I also have a third Hannah McCabe police procedural simmering on the backburner. It isn't my next book. That's the historical thriller in which McCabe and Baxter will appear as secondary characters. After that I'll work on my 6th Lizzie Stuart book. But the third McCabe book is in the queue. I'm making notes as plot ideas come to me. 

I know who the victim will be -- a former private school teacher who has written a best-selling book about wolves and people. She's back in Albany to make a presentation at a conference about human-animal connections. Urban explorers find her body in a deserted building.

As I've mentioned before, I need to find a title before I can get deep into a writing project. In this case, I need to find a title before I can even do a backburner outline. The first two books have an animal on the cover. The first book -- The Red Queen Dies -- has the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. The second has the fly from "Who Killed Cock Robin?" who sees with his little eye. Although I guess a fly is techically an insect. . .

In the third book I want to use a wolf as the theme animal. The human murder victim is an advocate for reintroducing wolves to the Adirondacks. In addition to her research on wolf packs, she has been studying coywolves  (coyote-wolf hybrids) who have found their way into cities. She argues that wolves have been the victims of negative stereotyping. So the wolves are not "bad" animals in this book. That rules out titles that reference stereotypes of wolves as predators (e.g., "The Wolf's Prey").

I'm collecting titles to play with as I ponder. Any ideas would be appreciated. Even if your suggestion doesn't fit "as is" I might be able to make use of it. 

I'm a week early, but have a Happy Thanksgiving!

About the Villain

I intended writing about something else today, but what Donis wrote about villains yesterday got me thinking.

I'm dealing with that issue of the villain right now as I work on my historical thriller. In my five Lizzie Stuart mysteries, only two of the villains die. On the other hand, in my two Hannah McCabe police procedurals, the villains both die. I didn't plan it that way, but that is what happened.

In the standalone I'm working on now, the villain is -- I hope -- a three-dimensional character with what he perceives as good reasons for his dastardly acts. That part works because I always try to understand my villain and give him/her a chance to make the case for what he or she does. But it is disconcerting in this thriller to have the reader know early on who the villain is and something about "why." This requires me to spend so much more time than I usually do inside my villain's head. He is not a serial killer. He is not insane. So I am dealing with someone who can rationalize what he does.  I don't agree with his logic, but I don't want to stack the deck against him by inserting my author's perspective.

I have to admit that I sometimes have empathy for villains. That could have something to do with the fact that I began to really think about villains when I was reading Shakespeare -- three quarters of Shakespeare in college. I found Iago fascinating. I thought Macbeth and his wife deserved what they got -- but they also had some great lines. Richard III had me from his first monologue.

I think the thing about villains is that they have so much energy. In one of my Lizzie Stuart books, the people who were behaving badly threatened to steal the show. Luckily, Lizzie is a first-person narrator. Even so, I had so much fun writing one of the characters that I'm already planning a return appearance.

One of the questions -- one that also comes up in other genres -- is whether the villain can redeem him/herself. If the villain feels justified and then later changes his or her mind and does the right thing, was he or she only a misguided protagonist? I'm playing with this idea. Maybe I will find it easier to stay in the head of the bad guy in my historical thriller if I think of him as both protagonist (from his POV) and antagonist (from my hero's POV).

Although it would certainly be time consuming since I have at least four viewpoint characters in this big book -- I'm thinking of writing the book with each of the main characters as the narrator. That would be four or five novellas. Then I could go back in and put them all together, with alternating narrators. I'm thinking of this because it would make it much easier to keep track of what my characters -- including my "villain" -- are each doing over the course of eight months. I would also be able to settle in and write from one POV from beginning to end.

It seems like a lot of work to take this approach, but I think it will save me time (less revising) and allow me to create characters who are more fully developed than they are when I'm simply shifting viewpoints as I write. For example, I will know what each character has been up to and how character arcs overlap and intertwine. My villain has a life. He doesn't spend 24 hours a day hatching ways to make my hero's life miserable. If I tell the entire story from his point of view, I hope I'll be able to really understand him.

Has anyone else taken this long way around when dealing with multiple viewpoints, including both hero and villain.

How My Characters Will Spend the Holidays

It's 11 days before Christmas,
And not a gift has been bought.
No decorations are hanging,
No tree has gone up,
But the writer is plotting,
Dastardly deeds concocting. . .

Forgive the really bad poem. It came to me as I was waking up this morning. I don't know why I always get my best ideas for the plot I'm working on when I'm in the midst of something else. I made a few notes. Then I went to my faculty meeting. Now, I'm about to start reading research papers. We're at end of semester.

Thinking about the holidays got me wondering how and with whom my characters would be spending the season. It's a no-brainer about Lizzie Stuart, my crime historian. In her world, the year is 2004. She has met her future in-laws at Thanksgiving (although I haven't gotten that book written yet), and she is getting married on New Year's Eve. So, she's spending the holidays with John Quinn, her former-homicide-detective fiance. What she doesn't know is that her mother, Becca, is about to put in another appearance.

Meanwhile, Hannah McCabe, my homicide detective, in my near-future (soon to be parallel universe) novels is spending Christmas in Albany at home with her father, Angus, the former newspaper journalist and editor. The year is 2020. Adam, her brother, will come to dinner and bring his girlfriend, Mai. Their Great Dane puppy, who finally has a name, will be there. He will need to be reminded of his training when he sees the ham on the dining room table. Hannah's best friend and her husband will arrive, bringing dessert from their restaurant, and a surprise visitor will drop by.

The character I'm not sure about is Jo Radcliffe, my World War II Army nurse. She is a new protagonist who I introduced in "The Singapore Sling Affair." This short story (in EQMM's Nov/Dec 2017 issue) is set in 1948. Jo has come back to the village in upstate New York, where she has inherited her aunt's house and her Maine Coon cat. The cat has not warmed up to her yet. But I'm sure several people will invite her to Christmas dinner. I don't know whose invitation she will accept. And then there's New Year's Eve. Will she stay at home with a good book? Or, maybe she'll be invited to go down to the City to celebrate there.  

Right now, I need to start reading papers. Then I'm going to try to get in a couple of hours of shopping. Tonight I'm making fudge. Tomorrow our Upper Hudson chapter of Sisters in Crime has our annual holiday party. And maybe tomorrow, I'll get some decorations up.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Recurring Themes

Barbara's post on Wednesday about the recurring themes in her body of work reminded me of my own endeavor. Over the past several months, I've been re-reading my books. As I've mentioned, my Lizzie Stuart books are being reissued by a publisher. We needed to withdraw the first book after it had been released as an e-book to fix some technical problems. We ended up going back to the manuscript of the book for a better copy. I read the manuscript with printed book in hand.  I've also been re-reading the two Hannah McCabe near-future police procedurals. The plot for the third book have been rattling around in my head. I picked up my pace because the Albany Public Library Foundation informed me that I was a nominee for this year's Albany Literary Legends award. Then I learned I was one of the two recipients.
http://www.albanypubliclibraryfoundation.org/about-us/literary-legends/  Since I'm receiving the honor in part because of my two novels set in Albany, I am digging into the books to remind myself of what I wrote.

Here's what I've learned from my immersion in my books and short stories:
 1.  I agree wholeheartedly with William Faulkner's oft-quoted observation ("The past is never dead. It's not even past."). Whether I'm writing the Lizzie Stuart books/short stories set in the recent past or the Hannah Stuart books set in the near future, the plots draw on the histories of places and characters.

2.  The family relationships of my characters are complex. There are absences, losses, and traumas. The dead are still present in the lives of the living. Relatives, living, dead, present, absent, and unknown have shaped the personalities of my protagonists.
3.  My protagonists have strong moral cores. They engage in internal debates and debates with others about questions of right and wrong. They have ethical lines that they will not cross. But they are not always sure that justice will be served by the punishment of someone who is technically guilty.
4. My characters debate social issues. I spent a lot of my time encouraging my students to debate those issues, so it makes sense that would carry over to my writing. 
5. That is also why literature and popular culture runs like a thread through all of my books and short stories -- from titles inspired by children's books to plots inspired by Shakespeare. I teach crime and mass media/popular. I was a double major in Psychology and English. I wouldn't know how to write fiction without a nod at a book or writer or a favorite movie (Hitchcock turns up frequently).
6. Animals. I started college as a Biology major, intending to be a vet. George, the dog in my Lizzie Stuart series, is still a young adult. Hannah McCabe adopted a Great Dane/Dalmatian/mutt in the second book. My third protagonist, Jo Radcliffe, who made her debut in "The Singapore Sling Affair" (EQMM, Nov/Dec 2017) inherited her great-aunt's Maine Coon.

Animals in my books provide companionship, act as sounding boards, and help the humans to connect with each other.
7. My books have romance. I loved romantic suspense when I was a teenager. I think there is a place in crime fiction for relationships. After four books, Lizzie Stuart and John Quinn got engaged. In the sixth book, she will meet his family. In the seventh book, they will wed. If Hannah McCabe is around as long as Lizzie, she may eventually found a mate as well. I like the possibilities for self-discovery inherent in romantic relationships. I also like couples that have little in common, but recognize in each other something that they can admire or a shared value.
8. I don't write cozies. My books have a dark edge that I hadn't really thought about until I started to re-read. Although most of the violence happens off-stage, some of it doesn't. And even the off-stage violence is discussed and the impact is shown. My protagonists and the other characters are traumatized by violence. But my dark edge is relieved by my protagonists' faith in justice (or at least the necessity to seek, if not achieve).

I've discovered that I really do write the stories that I'd like to read. That gives me more confidence about who I am as a writer and what I want to achieve.

Characters and Seasons

Donis's blog yesterday about summer reading reminded me of what I've always liked about summer. As a child (student) and as an adult (teacher), I have three months of "summer vacation." Of course, now that I'm a grown-up, I do need to use my summer to get some work done. But summer is the time when I can stay up late reading a book or go to a matinee in the middle of the day (Wonder Woman is at the top of my list).

What has changed is that I don't go outside as much as I did when I was a child. Of course, I've never been a fan of summer heat and bug bites. But growing up in the country in Virginia with a big back yard and paths through woods and dogs, I would never have thought of wasting a summer day inside. Nowadays, living in a house in the city, I've been contemplating setting up my empty (until winter) garage as an "outdoor" space. The problem with the grass in my small yard is that it might have ticks. And, besides, even with sunscreen, I could get too much sun. Grilling -- I remember those wonder family barbecues in the front yard under the big old tree. But I could blow myself up trying to start a grill and what about the health risks of hot dogs?

My seasonal preferences have carried over to my characters. My Southern-born protagonist, Lizzie Stuart, loves the South but hates heat and storms. Hannah McCabe, my police detective, lives in Albany, New York, and is dealing with the sizzling summers produced by climate change. I've set some books during the summer, but haven't had to think like a "summer person".

That brings me to my challenge with one of my major characters in my 1939 historical thriller. He lives in Georgia, and summer is his season. The heat and the sun. The smell of his own sweat. He stands out in a field watching the black clouds roll in. Then he sits on his porch with a drink watching the storm erupt.

He loves the land and the smell of the soil. If I don't capture this part of who this character is, then his motivation for the things he does will fall flat. But I need to step into his work boots.

So in answer to Donis's question about summer reading, I'm heading South with books (fiction and non-fiction) written during the 1930s. Books about summer, with heat and sweat and storms. And I'm hoping that the weather here in Albany will not echo what I'm reading.

Does your character have a favorite season? A time of year that he or she loves, but you don't?

A Visual Aid

Yesterday was a snow day here in Albany. My driveway was covered and the streets (according to local news) were treacherous. I slept in and then spent the rest of the day working. Around mid-afternoon, I was deep into what I was reading, completely focused, when I heard a bump in the kitchen. I got up to see what had happened. Harry, my 16 pound cat, had managed to leap from the counter top to the top of the refrigerator. Forty-six perpendicular inches according to my tape measure -- twice his 21 inch length. I was dismayed because (a) he has taken in the past couple of months to prowling across and perching on my kitchen counters. I've been wiping them down with disinfectant cloths before preparing every meal, and (b) the jump he had made was the equivalent of a roof-top leap by a movie action hero. It scared me to think of what would have happened if he hadn't nailed his landing (hampered by an ornamental mug, a bunch of bananas, and the container of oat grass that had motivated his leap). But I sure wished I had seen him do that because when I adopted him two years ago, he was chubby even for a Maine Coon and preferred to stay close to the ground. His diet is working. I would also like to have seen that leap so that I could describe it in a book or short story one day.

I am a visual writer. I need to see the scenes play out in my head like a movie. I also write best when I have seen what it is that I'm describing. Last week I discovered a wonderful new visual aid --
Pinterest.

Last week was not the first time that I'd used Pinterest. I opened an account three years ago when I wanted to do a photo essay of Albany, New York  locations (the setting for my Hannah McCabe police procedurals). Since posting the photographs, I haven't used my account. Until last week.

Last week, a speaker visiting UAlbany mentioned how powerful the use of a vision board had been in staying focused on his goals. I've flirted with vision boards before, but never really completed one. This time, I decided to make it easier by giving myself access on all my devices. Didn't work. Fortunately, the website I had signed up for offered a 60-day-money-back guarantee.

That was when I thought of Pinterest -- except I didn't want to have my vision board on display. It turns out -- I must have skipped the tutorial when I set up my account -- it's possible to make a Pinterest page "secret" and designate people who are allowed access. That solved my problem. But when I was about to start selecting images for my vision board about life and career goals, it occurred to me that Pinterest would be perfect for visualizing my books.

I'm now using it for both the nonfiction book about dress, appearance and criminal justice. It's really helpful to be able to "pin" both images of the clothing (colonial era to present) and the memory joggers about the cultural themes that I want to include. I'm doing it chapter by chapter.

I've also set up a page for my 1939 historical thriller. The images that I'm pinning (searching by keywords) come with page links. I now have 240 items related to that year, people, settings, and events. Some of the pins that I've pulled are linked to YouTube music or videos. I'm really excited about the music because I'd thought of using a song for each chapter and now I can incorporate that into my research and plotting.

I'm sure some of you are already using Pinterest for marketing. You may be way ahead of me when it comes to using Pinterest for your writing. But it you haven't tried this other use, I recommend it.

And Harry just leaped from counter top to refrigerator again, and I missed it. Maybe I need to set up a camera to catch him in motion. Or, move that oat grass in case his feline agility is rusty.

Characters, Ideas, and Settings

The posts by my colleagues this week has been so thought-provoking, I had a hard time deciding what to blog about today. Characters who take over? Where ideas come from? Setting as character?

I have experienced that phenomenon of a character who refuses to do what he or she was intended to do. In my third Lizzie Stuart book, Old Murders, the character who was to have been the killer refused that assignment and insisted on having a subplot. In the fourth book, You Should Have Died on Monday, Lizzie's mother, Becca, made an appearance that threatened to upstage Lizzie, my first-person protagonist. Becca is still out there and now that I've returned to the series for a new book, I'm sure she will be making another appearance. I hate to have her ruin Lizzie's wedding, but I'm pretty sure she will show up during the honeymoon. And when she reappears, I will be torn. She is the most take-no-prisoners character I have ever created. A femme fatale who disrupts Lizzie's life, but shouldn't overshadow her.

The idea for my historical mystery came to me when I was thinking about 1939 and the events that symbolized the struggle in America between past and present, inequality and justice. In 1939, Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, the New York World's Fair opened that summer, Billie Holiday performed "Strange Fruit," a song about lynching, at Cafe Society in NYC, and that December, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. This idea -- even more than most of my ideas -- has required a lot of thought to get to workable plot.

On the other hand, the idea for my sixth Lizzie Stuart book, now in progress, came to me as an image of a woman running out of her house toward her car. I wanted to try my hand at a flash story for the New England Crime Bake contest. It wasn't a great story -- I needed more words -- but I did discover where that woman was going. She drives up into the mountains to rescue her child, who is being held hostage by an old enemy. The story was pure noir. In my head it played out like a graphic novel. And my protagonist Lizzie Stuart was nowhere in sight.

But that dark, rainy night wouldn't go away. When I was ready to start my new book, the plot changed and the characters changed. But the book begins with Lizzie, driving home on a rainy night in Gallagher and coming upon a car by the side of the road. A woman is trying to change a tire. . .

The book begins there. But the next day, Lizzie and her fiance, John Quinn, fly off to Santa Fe to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

Lizzie has never met his family and wants to make a good impression. But now she is distracted by what is going on back in Gallagher. A woman is missing. Her car was found by the side of the road. . .

Since the murder mystery is back in Gallagher, I might have done some reading about Santa Fe and watched some YouTube videos. But my Thanksgiving gathering -- when Lizzie meets Quinn's family, all of whom have been mentioned in earlier books -- is important to readers who have been following the series. I'm curious about Quinn's family, too, and I want to do those scenes justice. Lizzie and Quinn will soon be on a plane back to Gallagher, Virginia, but I want the family gathering to ring true. So I'm going to Santa Fe for three days in November to find the neighborhood that Quinn's half-sister lives in and the street where her art gallery is located. I'm going to do the tour of the area that Lizzie will have when she goes there. I want the setting to have as much significance in the story as Gallagher.

I have one other idea that I'm playing with, but need to work out. I need to resolve a series arc from my two Hannah McCabe police procedural novels set in Albany. The two books, The Red Queen Dies and What the Fly Saw, are set in 2019 and 2020, respectively. My Lizzie Stuart series is set in the recent past. The year in the sixth book is 2004. But Lizzie is an alum of the University at Albany, School of Criminal Justice. I've been thinking of a cameo appearance by a professor in Gallagher, Virginia, who Detective McCabe contacts to ask a key question about the threat that she is facing in Albany, NY in 2020. Lizzie would be in her 50s, and I wonder what would be going on in her life and how she would be different in McCabe's alternate universe. Just playing with the idea. . .

What I Write About

Last night I did an exercise suggested by Donna Alward and Nancy Cassidy, the authors of an article in Romance Writers Report (RWR)* about "Finding Your Core Story." Alward and Cassidy encouraged writers in search of their brand to look for the elements that appear in their novels over and over again.

I'm fascinated by marketing -- maybe because I'm not that great at doing it. I don't have the time to do it well or consistently. I'm also not sure how to market in a way that feels comfortable and true to who I am. But I do enjoy reading marketing books. I do research on mass media/popular culture in my other job as a criminal justice professor, so I'm always interested in how a good marketing campaign is developed and implemented.

The exercise recommended by Alward and Cassidy is a writer's version of what branding experts recommend for entrepreneurs and business owners. I found a pen and sat down to list the recurring elements in my fiction writing. I had no problem narrowing down to five: brainy and compassionate female protagonist; multicultural cast of characters; impact of past on present; social issues; ethical dilemmas.

When I thought of these elements as my "core story," I discovered something. In both my Lizzie Stuart series (featuring a crime historian and set in the recent past) and my Hannah McCabe books (police procedural novels set in the near future), the core story is about time/place/people. That sounds obvious, but what is important to me is that I show how my characters have been shaped by the time and place in which they live. Lizzie was shaped by her childhood and teen years in a small town in Kentucky in the late 1960s and 70s. Hannah was shaped by growing up in Albany, New York, an old city coping with rapid change.

As I really thought about this -- about how important the impact of  time and place on my characters is to my stories -- I realized this was what I was missing in my 1939 historical thriller. As I've written in other posts, I've been struggling with the structure of that novel. I have to move the characters from Easter morning 1939 in Washington, D.C. to the New York World's Fair that summer and finally to the premier of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta in December. I've been focusing on that and making minimal progress. This "core story" exercise reminded me that I have been putting the plot before the elements that matter most to me when I'm writing a book.

To make my thriller work, I need to stop what I've been trying to do. I need to go back to those character bios that I did and then put aside. Plot matters in a thriller, but -- for me -- the only thriller I'll ever be able to write needs to be rooted in how my characters are shaped by time and place.I need to allow my characters to think about and comment on their world in 1939. I have to let them respond to what is happening rather than try to move them through the plot.

That is my core story -- people in a time and place responding to extraordinary events in their lives. They are dealing with social issues, responding to ethical dilemmas, and fumbling their way through the relationships in their lives.

Now I understand why I am drawn to stories set in the past or future rather than the present. I need to be able to look back or look forward. It makes perfect sense that my new protagonist is living through the disruptions of post-World War II America.

*RWR is published by Romance Writers of America. This article appears in the September 2016 issue.

Growing as a Writer

I've been thinking about the question my colleagues have been discussing about what is required to become a competent writer -- innate talent, hard work, acquiring craft-related skills? As I was thinking about that I read Donis's post yesterday about the challenges of a long-running series.

My Lizzie Stuart series is only up to the fifth book. In fact, after the fifth book was published back in 2011, I wrote two Hannah McCabe books. In July 2014, a Lizzie Stuart short story (inspired by some research I was doing) was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. But the short story did not move the characters forward. They have been in limbo for five years.

And now it's a few months later in series times, and I'm at work on Lizzie Stuart mystery Number 6. I'm writing this book because I have a story that I really want to tell. I'm also writing it because I hear from readers who they love the series and when am I going to do another book? Was that the last? What writer can resist when readers care about her or his characters and are waiting to find out what's happening in their lives?

Donis raised the issue of the character-arc. If the characters' lives are changing over the course of the series, how does one make each book in a series a stand-alone? I have always struggled with that. I can truthfully tell a potential reader that she can pick up any book in my Lizzie Stuart series and read a murder mystery that is complete in itself. No, one need not read the first Hannah McCabe novel before reading the second. But if a reader says that she likes to read a series in order because of the evolving relationships, I don't try to talk her out of that approach. As a reader, I have often picked up a book mid-series and then gone back to "catch-up" before moving on. I like relationships and back stories. That's one of the reasons I read any book, including a mystery.

But even though I struggle with the character arc dilemma, I have gotten better at dealing with it. I can now slip in back story here and there, without having Lizzie stop to say, "Two years ago when I was in Cornwall, I was involved in a murder case and that's when . . ." I'm a bit more subtle these days.

That brings me to the discussion we've been having about innate talent vs. hard work to acquire craft. I know I started out with imagination. From the time I was a small child, I told myself bedtime stories with recurring characters. When I was older, I started to write those stories down. But the process of becoming a functioning writer required that I discipline my imagination and hone any innate talent I may have possessed.

Aside from the basics of grammar and story structure, I had to learn the discipline of getting out of my comfortable chair (where I was thinking about my book) and going to my desk to get it down on paper. I had to learn the discipline of revising and revising and revising. I had to learn the discipline -- and develop a thick enough skin -- to sit quietly and listen and then ask lots of questions when someone I had asked to critique what I had written gave me an honest opinion. I had to learn the discipline not to rush the story, to let it evolve, and take wrong turns, to wait for all the pieces to fall into place.

I think that may be the difference between talented amateurs and professional writers. Having talent and imagination means nothing until one learns discipline. It's hard and frustrating, especially when working hard doesn't mean that one rises to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. But, on the other hand, discipline is good for the soul. And writing may be the one area in my life where I manage to consistently do what I should do.

Changing Directions

Ever been in the midst of one writing project when another grabbed you by the arm, said, "Me! Me!" and wouldn't let go?

In a post last year, I described my new strategy for staying organized and being more productive. I had been reading books and articles and based on the research findings and expert advice on the subject, I intended to:

a. Stop multitasking and focus on one project (at least for that day)
b. Do "the next logical thing" (the most important task with the most urgent deadline)

Sounded good. Been trying to do it. Hasn't worked. Here's why:

a. I always have more than one writing project going on at the same time -- a nonfiction project and a mystery. I can alternate back and forth between the two, but I can't simple press "pause" and come back to one or the other in a few months or even a week or two. I need to keep both moving along. I like dividing my day between the two and seeing progress on both. The shift in focus is energizing.
b. Doing the next logical thing according to importance and urgency seemed to have promise. Must finish my crime and clothing book this summer. Working on that. Really want to finish my standalone 1939 historical thriller. Agent wants me to finish. I want to get it done. Could be important to my career. Working on that, too.

And then something happened. My last Lizzie Stuart book came out in 2011. I started to write my Hannah McCabe police procedural books set in Albany in the near-future. But I wrote a Lizzie short story that was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in July 2014 (podcast of "In Her Fashion") . I knew I would come back to Lizzie sooner or later.

But I didn't have a book idea in mind. I knew that in the next book, she would go with John Quinn, her fiance to meet his family. I knew that would happen Thanksgiving week 2004, and they would go to Santa Fe. That's it. I assumed the mystery would happen there. . .until a few months ago when the first scene in the book came to me. That was when I knew Lizzie would be distracted during her visit with her future in-laws by something that had happened the night before she and Quinn left Gallagher, Virginia.

Okay, I made a note or two and tried to go back to what I was doing. A scene -- even a vivid scene -- was no reason to let this book step out of the queue. I wanted to work on my 1939 thriller.

But that scene kept nagging at me, and I found myself telling a friend about it over dinner. As it happens this friend is the person with whom I always talk out sticky plot points. She knows my characters, and she's a lawyer with a logical mind. (Notice that I have great respect for logic because I sometimes run to intuition and need to refocus). So, I told her about this scene and that I wasn't sure what it was about. She threw out an idea or two. I listened. And went home and made a few notes. Still a back-burner project.

Until earlier this week when I was reading a criminal justice report that had nothing to do with the Lizzie book and suddenly another character walked on stage. A character with a problem that would pull Lizzie into the investigation. And bring back one of my favorite characters. A subplot that should get me through that sagging middle and give Lizzie even more motivation than she originally had for getting involved.

So now, I'm working on the clothing and crime book. That is moving along. But my 1939 thriller has been pushed aside by Lizzie. The characters in the 1939 book are not protesting. They seem to be fine with my promise that I will continue to make notes and tinker with my complex plot outline. I suspect that's because there is something about the Lizzie book that is going to be relevant to the 1939 thriller. As I may have mentioned, all of my research and writing seems to occupy the same universe. Lizzie is a crime historian, maybe while I'm doing research for whatever she's working on in the past. . .

So I'm kicking logic to the curb. I'm going to go in the direction that I'm being pulled and trust that it's my subconscious at work and not my way of avoiding the challenge of my standalone. I'm trusting that my 1939 book needs something that I'll find while writing a book set in in 2004. We'll see what happens. I just hope I'm not halfway through the Lizzie book when suddenly I need to head back to 1939 and start writing.

Have you ever changed directions? Switched your focus from one book to another?

Real People and Fiction

I can't resist joining this week's discussion about the use of real people's stories in fiction. I have done it, too. Because my character, Lizzie Stuart, is a crime historian, she is often concerned with cases from the past. I draw on real life cases, most of them involving ordinary people who would have passed their lives in obscurity if not for their involvement in a crime. 

I use the stories of these real people as inspiration and starting point, spinning form fact (or what is believed to be fact) into fiction. For example, in A Dead Man's Honor, the book began with a real-life lynching. I changed the victim and the crime that served as the catalyst for the lynching. I made the man who was lynched innocent of the crime. I inserted Lizzie's grandmother into the story as a child who had witnessed what happened.

A teenager girl's life and death was the starting point for another book. She had killed a woman and she was executed by the state of Virginia. The true story was sad and frustrating. The girl, whose name was Virginia Christian, was a member of a sharecropping family. She worked in the home of the widow who owned the land. During an argument and a physical confrontation, she killed her employer. I went to the Library of Virginia to go through the documents related to the case. A page from the 1912 record of Christian's appearance in court and the discussion of the charges against her appears to the left. Christian's story and that of her victim became the starting point for Old Murders. In my version, Lizzie encounters Christian's lawyer decades after he had failed to save his client's life.

In the same way, real people have found their way into my Hannah McCabe books. In the McCabe books, these people have been better known. John Wilkes Booth (long dead, but not forgotten) plays a pivotal role in The Red Queen Dies.  But there is another story involving ordinary people and an abandoned school that I would love to tell. In my mind that story has become interwoven with a newspaper article that I read about an investigation of a boys' school in another state. I have a victim and a case I would love to have McCabe investigate.

I am always interested in the ethics that we bring to bear in writing about real people. In my Author's Note, I acknowledge the inspiration/starting point of real cases and the people I include (if they might be recognized). I explain that I did research to learn more about what happened. But then I turned down another path, spiraled off into make-believe, and what was true was now blurred into fiction.

In my 1939 book, I do have real people appear in cameos. But I'm trying to stay close to what they might have said or done. I want to make sure that J. Edgar Hoover wasn't in Florida when I have him meeting with my FBI agent in Washington, D. C. I also want what he says to reflect his attitude about the looming likelihood of war and the real-life people being investigated.

This topic sometimes comes up when I'm doing an event. Someone from the audience will come up after it's over and tell me about someone they know who has been involved in a crime as victim or offender or an old family story about an uncle or a grandfather. This person often wants to write a book about what happened and is wondering whether to try a novel or true crime. I tell him or her that if there are gaps in the story and people still alive who were involved, I personally would write a novel and change the facts. But that's because I write mysteries.

Anyone else have these chats with people about stories they'd like to tell?

The Name's the Thing

I've been thinking about names -- character names. My strategy for finding names when I first started to write was to go to the telephone book (the old days when we received a printed directory). Often, when I was feeling creative, I would compile a list of first names from several alphabets, and a list of last names from other alphabets and mix and match. Often this strategy didn't work. I would start to write and find the name didn't fit. That's why when I look back at the notebook that I kept in the early days of my writing career, I'm amazed to see how often names -- even those of my protagonist and other ensemble characters -- changed. My crime historian Lizzie Stuart was "Sarah" at one point. John Quinn, the cop in that series, was once "Nicholas". He is definitely not a "Nicholas" or a "Nick". And the former "Sarah Adams" has fared much better as "Lizabeth ('Lizzie') Stuart".

Luckily before I stuck my characters with names they would have to live with, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to think about who they were. Maybe that was why I struggled with names in the beginning -- because I hadn't figured out who my characters were or would be. Interesting how much easier the naming of the characters came with my second series. But by then -- fifteen years later -- I had learned to think first, then write. Yes, I'm a plotter, not a pantser. I need to plan, not plunge in. Or, rather, I'm a hybrid. I need to plan enough so that I have a rough road map. That now includes knowing enough about my main characters to give each a name that conjures up an image in their head. "Hannah McCabe," the police detective in my second series, is the daughter of "Angus". Once I knew her father's name, I knew much more about her and who she would be.

The Bad Seed (1956), a movie that I'm using for some academic research, provides a textbook example of how to get maximum mileage out of names. In a riveting performance, Eileen Heckart portrays the mother of a small boy who has drowned under mysterious circumstances at a school picnic. His penmanship medal -- pinned to his shirt by his mother -- is missing. Drunk and grieving, she comes to visit the mother of another student, wanting to know if the woman's daughter can tell her what happened. In a raw, painful scene, she compares her name -- "Hortense" -- to that of the other mother -- "Christine". Christine is a "gentle name," she says. "Hortense" is "fat" and awkward. She recites the limerick that her own schoolmates made up to tease her. The two characters are a study in contrast. As Hortense Daigle points out, Christine Penmark is wealthy (the daughter of a famous reporter and the wife of a colonel). Christine knows how to wear simple clothes. When Hortense buys simple clothes, they never fit right. The irony of this scene is that Christine, of the gentle name and good breeding, is about to discover that her birth mother was a serial killer and that her pig-tailed, curtseying daughter "Rhoda" has her grandmother's homicidal tendencies. Rhoda kills "LeRoy," the janitor and contemplates the murder of their landlady, "Monica Breedlove," a large, nurturing woman, whose married name once became a topic for discussion with her analyst. Monica is a Freudian.

Some of the lessons I've learned about naming characters:

1. Consider character's size, shape, and other physical characteristics
2. Consider the time period and region of the country in which character was born
3. Consider the naming traditions of the racial/ethnic/religious/cultural group into which character was born
4. Consider the name customs of the family into which the character was born
5. Consider the special circumstances that might have affected the choice of character's name
6. Consider decisions that might have been made by others after character was named
7. Consider decisions the character might have made about his/her given name

For example, do you want to give a character a name that "fits" or that will surprise others and/or make the character uncomfortable or resigned to the reaction. If you're naming a female character born in colonial New York into a Dutch family, it might be a good idea to do some research. Do you want to challenge stereotypes and assumptions your readers might have about certain names and the people who have them? Do you want to use the character's name to reveal something important about the character's history? What does the character prefer to be called and by whom?

The more I think about names, the more I realize how names choices by a writer can open up a story and invite the reader in. Names matter. Just ask "Sherlock Holmes" or "Jane Eyre".