WRITERS RITUALS

By Vicki Delany

Next Saturday (March 16) I’ll be at Murderous March, a conference put on by The Upper Hudson Chapter of Sisters in Crime, In Albany, NY.  (For information and registration, click here)

I have been asked to say a few words. I thought I might talk about my writing routine. As I write three books a year, people are interested in how I can manage to do that.

One thing I’ve found over the years, is that no one approaches writing, or anything else, the same as anyone else. We all have our individual way of doing things, and the trick is to find what suits you.

But, here’s a bit of what I plan to say in Albany:

I was once asked if I had any rituals to spark my writing creativity.  Rituals? Pshaw! I don’t need no stinking rituals, thought I.

When I thought again, I realized that I did.  I get up every morning, seven days a week.  I go to my main computer in my office, and read e-mails, read the papers online, spend a bit of time on Facebook or Twitter. 

Then it’s time to start to write.  I walk into the dining room and stand at my Netbook computer which is on the half-wall between the kitchen and the dining room and boot it up.  As I pass through the kitchen, I put one egg on to boil.

I always write, standing up, on the Netbook.  I read over everything I did the previous day, doing a light edit as I go.  I then take my egg into the study and eat it while checking email. 

Then back to the small computer for several writing hours.

Who knew I was so regimented! Not me, until I stopped to think about it.  The problem, you see, is I don’t like writing, particularly not first drafts. So the egg is my reward. If I get started, I can have a treat.  I can be bribed by one medium-boiled egg.

Turns out I am not alone in needing this little routine to get me started.  I am reading a fascinating book titled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. Currey describes the daily routines of hundreds of artists, not just writers but composers and artists too.

Philip Roth said, “Writing isn’t hard work, it’s a nightmare,” as he describes his schedule. Ten to six every day with an hour break for lunch and to read the newspaper.

William Styron said, “Let’s face it, writing it hell.” His routine: sleep until noon, read and think in bed for an hour. Lunch at 1:30, afternoon errands and mail.  And only then “ease into work mode” By 4:00 he would be ready to go to his study and write for four hours.

Before beginning his creative day, Beethoven counted out 60 coffee beans every morning to make his coffee.  

One fellow (whose name I forget) liked working in the morning so much, he had two mornings.  He got up at three to write for a couple of hours, then went back to bed and got up at a reasonable time for another morning of writing. 

Hemmingway was also a morning guy. (And a stand-up writing guy). No matter how much he’d had to drink the night before, Hemmingway was up and starting work at 5:30.

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

By contrast, Thomas Wolfe began his writing day at midnight, and would write until dawn. Then have a drink and go to bed.  According to the book, he also masturbated extensively while writing.

Gertrude Stein confessed that she could never write for more than half-an-hour a day. “All day and every day, she said, you are waiting around to write that half hour a day.”

Jean Paul Sarte kept to a strict schedule.  He also figured his creative mind needed fuel. A lot of fuel. 

According to his biographer, “his diet over a period of twenty-four hours included two packs of cigarettes and several pipes stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol – wine, beer, vodka, whisky, and so on – two hundred milligrams of amphetamines, fifteen grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea, rich meals.”

Makes one medium-boiled egg look mighty tame.

Time to tell me your little secret. What’s your writing ritual?

Book news: SOMETHING READ SOMETHING DEAD, the fifth Lighthouse Library mystery by me as Eva Gates, will be released on Wednesday. 

Searching for Inspiration

By Vicki Delany

THE SPOOK IN THE STACKS, published on June 12 by Crooked Lane Books, is my 30^th published book.  Wow! Seems like a lot.  It is a lot.

What thirty novels means, is that I’m running out of ‘ideas’.  Ah, yes, the proverbial ‘idea’.  At the beginning of my writing career I had SOMETHING TO SAY. My standalones (Burden of Memory, Scare the Light Away) discussed, in broad terms, the changing role of women and effect of events of the past on the present. The first Constable Molly Smith book (In the Shadow of the Glacier) was about forgetting the past, and asks if that is ever desirable or even possible.  The eighth Molly Smith book, Unreasonable Doubt, was about a man who’d spent twenty-five years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and asked how could that happen.

It’s not so much that I don’t have anything to say any more, but maybe that I don’t want to write about it.  So now I write cozy mysteries, which really don’t have anything much to do with the larger pictures of redemption, justice, revenge, etc etc, although they do have a lot to say about character and friendship.

Which means I am sometimes in search of inspiration. One of the ways I’ve found it is in the world of classic novels.

Case in point: My lighthouse library series, of which The Spook in the Stacks is the latest. One of the premises of that series is that the book the classic novel reading club is reading is reflected in the plot of my book.  In Reading Up A Storm, they’re reading Kidnaped by Robert Louis Stevenson.  

Reading up A Storm opens with a shipwreck during a storm, and ends with an idea to capture the bad guy taken directly from Kidnapped.  The Spook in the Stacks is set over Halloween, but because this is a light, funny mystery I didn’t want to use a true horror novel. So I hit on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Bracebridge Hall by Washington Irving. (Warning for those wanting to read along: Bracebridge is long, and very dull.) Two men vie for the affections of the rich man’s (grand)daughter. An idea straight out of Sleepy Hollow.

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

In the fifth book, Something Read Something Dead (coming in March 2019), cousin Josie is planning her wedding and the club is reading The Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers.

Once I had the idea, or the inspiration, I made it my own. My books are not an attempt to recreate these classic works, but maybe just to pay homage to them.

As well as giving me ideas, they’ve made me re-read some of the world’s great books.  And that’s always an inspiration.

What's your favourite classic novel? Maybe I can use it in the Lighthouse Library series one day.

And a Good Time was Had by All

By Vicki Delany

As Donis posted a picture of me with her and Ann Parker in Scottsdale on Thursday, let me follow up with my .02.

The Vicki Delany shelf at the Poisoned Pen

I was in Arizona last week for CozyCon at the Poisoned Pen bookstore. It was an afternoon of nine authors, not all of whom are cozy writers, but most were. As usual in a PP appearance we talked books, books and more books, with each other, with our moderator Barbara Peters and with those kind enough people to come out and hear us.

In short, it was great.

Kate Carlisle, Paige Shelton, C.S. Harris, Jenn McKinlay, Vicki Delany

The following day, Donis, Ann Parker and I went to the Tempe Public Library, where we did much the same.

Again, a fun appearance.

I do these sort of things now so I can hang out with my friends.  The day before CozyCon I had lunch with Donis, I shared a hotel room for one night with Kate Carlisle. Kate, Jenn McKinlay, Paige Sheldon, C.S. Harris, Ann, and I hung out at the hotel bar (some hanging for longer than others).  On Sunday Ann, Donis and I had brunch before our library visit.

The only reason I know all these people and I consider them to be my friends is because I did the slog of conferences and book signings earlier in my career.  Now, don’t get me wrong. Generally, I like bookstores and conferences, but they are work.  A lot of work. And you’re paying your own way most of the time.

It’s the networking that counts, in my opinion.

And the networking counts in the long run. Maybe not in book sales, but certainly in fun.

Speaking of book sales: THE SPOOK IN THE STACKS, the 4th Lighthouse Library book by me as Eva Gates comes out on June 12. I am particularly pleased about this, because that series was cancelled by Penguin Random House after the third book. It was then picked up by Crooked Lane Books. YEAH! If you know anything about the book biz, you'll know that it's very unusual for a new publisher to continue an existing series, unless the books are in the mega-bestseller range. Mine are not, but I am thrilled to have it back.  A lot of credit goes to the Facebook group SAVE OUR COZIES. 

Speaking of Facebook, with the new book about to come out, I'll be running more contests for ARCs or earlier books in the series, so pop over and like my page. www.facebook.com/evagatesauthor

Approaching the Bottom of the Well

By Vicki Delany

My good friend fantasy writer Violette Malan wrote at the Black Gate blog about the age old question “Where do you get your ideas?” https://www.blackgate.com/2017/07/07/where-do-you-get-yours/

Our own John wrote on Thursday about getting ideas from the headlines.

Both of which started me thinking about that very subject. And I have to conclude that my idea well is running dry.

Let me explain. A book is more than an idea. Sure you have a great idea.  You write it down.

That’s one sentence in a 400 page novel done.  Only 399 more pages to go.

It’s everything else that happens after and around the “idea” that makes a complete novel. All the plot points and character quirks and sub-plots.  The sort of cozy mysteries such as I write are very much puzzle mysteries. I have to have an idea for the general plot. An idea about how the murder is committed. An idea about where the dead body is discovered that involves my protagonist doing the discovering.  Another idea about how the protagonist arrives at the conclusion. Many, many ideas about the red herrings and the secrets everyone is hiding. And last of all an idea as to where the climax will happen and what it will consist of. (A raging gun battle through the streets or the suspects gathered in the library?)

In my cozy mysteries, things get even more complicated when the ideas have to suit a theme. In the Lighthouse Library series by Eva Gates, most of the action takes place in the Lighthouse. That’s the concept. The murder is committed there, the characters make frequent visits, the climax has to happen there.

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Trying to think of a different way to kill someone in a library plus how to solve the crime in the library and confront the baddie in the library is becoming challenging.

In the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop books, I’m trying for a bit of a Sherlock angle to each story.  Also challenging.

So, gentle reader, my idea well is running dry.  Anyone have any suggestions for a murder in a library?

Hey, I’ve just had an idea. I hear water filling the well. 

Thank you.

by Vicki Delany

It has often been said that writers toil in solitude. We then release a book and wait anxiously for reviews to start coming in.  We might meet a few readers at conferences or book signings but generally we then retreat back to our unheated garrets and toil on the next book.

There is some truth to that, but the rise of social media has given us a way of interacting with our readers that previous generations of writers could only dream of.  

This was brought home to me this past week when I announced on Facebook and Twitter that my Lighthouse Library cozy series (written under the pen name of Eva Gates) has been saved. As you may know Penguin Random House did a massive cull of their mass market line, and cozies were particularly hard hit. The Lighthouse Library series included. As the series was a work for hire, the publisher owned the copyright and thus I couldn’t continue to write it.

The people at Crooked Lane Books, who publish the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series, wanted to take it on, so they asked my agent, the marvellous Kim Lionetti of Bookends, if she would ask Penguin if they’d release it.

And they did! I got the copyright and then signed a contract with Crooked Lane for the next three books in the series.

I made the announcement on social media, and the response from readers was overwhelming and heartfelt. I was genuinely touched at what people had to say.

So, thank you to everyone who wrote to me.

We don’t have a publication date yet, but probably spring 2018 for Lighthouse Library #4. And I will be keeping the Eva Gates name.

Write What You Know? Not so fast

By Vicki Delany (Eva Gates)

In her post of last week, Barbara writes about the need for the author to put themselves in another’s shoes.  Essentially, isn’t that what most writing, except for memoirs and biographies, is? You are telling someone else’s story. I suppose you can fictionalize your life story, (and it’s said that most first novels are largely auto-biographical) but anyone who writes more than one book has to start moving out of what they know.

We all have heard the adage “Write what you know.” I’ve never been a big fan of that idea.

What do I know? I know how to write computer code for 20^th century computers; I am highly computer-literate; I do a mean jig-saw puzzle; I can paddle a canoe

, and I am a very good baker.

All of which, let’s face it, is pretty dull.  Writing about my life as a computer programmer would make a mighty boring book.

So, instead I go by the adage, “Write what you want to know.” 

I have no background in law enforcement whatsoever, so when I decided I wanted to write a police procedurals series set in Canada,  I set about learning what I needed (and wanted) to know.

When I was asked to write the Lighthouse Library series set in the Outer Banks, I didn’t proclaim, "But I’ve never been to the Outer Banks,” instead I said, “Sure.”  I then read up on the Outer Banks and on lighthouses, and I went down there for a visit.

Not only did I learn many things I wanted to know, I got the chance to visit a wonderful place, and to learn a lot about the fascinating history of lighthouses.

As eating is important to any good cozy mystery, I immersed myself in North Carolina cooking (It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it).  Fried green tomatoes, shrimp po’boy, shrimp and grits, hush puppies. Yum. 

Here’s a bit from the third book in the series, Reading Up A Storm:

I practically know Jake’s menu by heart. I didn’t have to think hard about what to order. “Shrimp and grits please.”

“You’re becoming a true Southern woman,” Connor said.

“If Southern means shrimp and grits, then I’m in.  And a couple of hush puppies too, please.”

These days you can do a lot of research on the Internet, but I maintain that particularly when it comes to setting nothing can replace actually being there.  Google Earth can show you the layout of the streets compared to the ocean or lakes and rivers, and Streetview can give you a snap shot of streets and buildings at a moment in time, but nothing replaces actually seeing the light at dusk, or the sky when storm clouds move in. Even the best computer program can’t give you the scent of salt on the air, or the feel of the hot sun on your arms.

And only by being there, can you experience those unexpected moments that add real color and texture to your book.

Case in point, on my last visit to the Outer Banks, I went to the Bodie Island Lighthouse at dusk to see the light when it’s on.  Coming back I saw a deer at the side of the road.  Coming from heavily wooded Ontario, I wouldn’t have expected to see deer where the vegetation so space and poor. 

So, now Lucy Richardson, my protagonist, watches out for deer when she drives back to the lighthouse at night.

There really is nothing like being there.

It never gets old

By Vicki Delany

Having a new book out, that is.

When it does start getting old, I’ll quit writing.  Because if it’s not fun, why do it? It sure ain’t for the money.

The second book in my Lighthouse Library series is titled Booked for Trouble and it was released on Sept. 1. (It’s written under my pen name of Eva Gates)

View from my hotel room

I drove down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the books are set, on a short book tour.  I visited five marvellous independent bookstores in three days (Ducks Cottage and Island Bookstores on the Outer Banks, and Bethany Beach Books in Delaware), and stopped in for stock signing at the cute, crowded, and cozy Buxton Village books near Hatteras. The Outer Banks are a huge tourist destination and all the bookstore owners tell me that tourists love to find books set in the Outer Banks.

I also stopped in at some Barnes and Noble stores when driving by to do stock signings as well. It’s just so great to walk into a store and know without looking that my book will be there!

(P.S. Booked for Trouble made #19 on the Barnes and Noble paperback fiction list!) 

It was a lot of fun, although the trip was pretty rushed.  I am quite a heat freak and while I was driving the two days down to North Carolina, and the tow days back, and spending my time there in my car or air-conditioned bookstores, I gather we were having the hottest week of the summer at home.

This trip I had almost no time for relaxation. I got about two hours one day on the beach and in the pool, but I managed a couple of nice dinners out.  Gotta keep trying that North Carolina cooking you know.  All in the name of research. How we suffer for our art. 

Booked for Trouble is now available at all your favourite bookstores,independent and chains, in paper and ebook formats.  here's but one link: Amazon.com 

 

Dinner night 2 was jambalaya 

Relaxing after a hard day on the road with shrimp and grits
 

Dinner 3 was a disappointing sea food platter. And why it was served with a bowl of beans I do not know

Retreating!

By Vicki Delany

As Barbara told you last week, I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days at her lovely cottage on Sharbot Lake last week, along with other writer friends for a writers retreat.

A writers retreat is usually thought of as someplace the author can go to get away from their daily bustle (husband (or wife) children, job, household chores) to get some serious work done on their work-in-progress. Aside from the chores (always the chores) I don’t really have anything I need to get away from. And as you know if you know my writing schedule, I don’t seem to have trouble getting work done.

Writer Writing

But a retreat, I found, can perform another valuable role, and that’s simply to put you in the mind-space to come up with something new.

Mornings were set aside for our writing time. Barbara always writes her first draft in long hand (unbelievable!) so she goes down to the sunny dock. As I need a computer, I also need a table and chair or, as I use at home, a stand-up surface, and a lot of shade, so I stayed on the upper deck.

The afternoons were set aside for reading, swimming, and talking. The first afternoon, we settled down at the dock in our bathing suits with towels, hats, sunglasses, sunscreen, and of course books.

First topic of conversation was what everyone was reading.

Robin Harlick was reading The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brien, part of the Master and Commander series. Not a series I’ve ever had any interest in.

But, as it happened, my work for the retreat was the proposal for the fourth Lighthouse Library series by Eva Gates. The book is set at Halloween and it opens when they are decorating the library suitably. You know the stuff: cobwebs, tombstones that say RIP, plastic spiders. And a ghost story to go along with it all.


As Robin talked about the book, I knew exactly what I needed to make the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library Halloween exhibit something special.

The Flying Dutchman. A ghostly ship, doomed to wander the seas forever. In the form of a model ship for the display, and a ghost story to recount.

Perfect! It seems like a small thing, but in writing it’s often the small things that cause a book to rise above the ordinary. And I never would have thought about it if not for being at Barbara’s retreat with time to think and talk with bookie friends and write.

The Perils of Technology

By Vicki Delany

I enjoyed Barbara’s post on the complications of crafting a plot around modern technology, cell phones in particular. In the Constable Molly Smith series, I have to always be thinking of DNA results, fingerprint analysis, cell phone records, bank warrants, and on and on, when what I really want my characters to concentrate on is what the suspect says, and how they react, what the witnesses saw, and what they only think they saw.

But now that I’m writing cozies for Obsidian and Berkley Prime Crime, I am delighting in not having to worry about most of that stuff. Because the so-called-sleuth isn’t a detective or police officer, she doesn’t have access to any forensic methods, or computer data bases. She can’t order suspects to talk to her or obtain a warrant to check bank or phone records.  

Cozy mysteries are often called traditional mysteries. Somewhat of a misnomer, I think, but in this one aspect the name fits. The sleuth has none of modern policing and forensics at her disposal. All she has to go on is her observation of human beings, what she knows about people, what she can detect from what’s happening immediately around her. And gossip, of course, where would the amateur sleuth be without gossip?

Usually obtained at the bakery or coffee shop over a latte and blueberry scone.

I am enjoying writing these books a lot, and part of the reason is that I can forget about all that techo stuff, and just concentrate on the people. It’s all about the people. Sometimes people lie, or they forget, or they misrepresent, and it’s up to the amateur sleuth to parse her way through lies and misdirections. Sometimes she’s not so good at it. And that’s the fun of the writing too.

However, there’s still the sticky problem of cell phones and calling for help. Even an amateur sleuth has a cell phone. In the second book in the series, Booked for Trouble, I had to tie myself into knots when someone is kidnapped and spirited away in a car and Lucy Richardson chases them in her mother’s Mercedes SLK (and was that a fun scene to write!) Why the heck, the reader might ask, does Lucy not just phone the cops and tell them what’s going on?

You’ll have to read the book to find out how I got around that one.

What am I working on?

By Vicki Delany

A heck of a lot.

I am juggling a lot of writing balls these days, so I thought this would be a good time to let you know what I’m up to.

Other than a couple of day trips over the spring and summer, I have no book tours planned until the Suffolk Mystery Festival in August.  I am hoping to squeeze in a vacation to London in the fall. I love to travel, both for book events and for holiday, but I have to stay at home sometime and work!

The weather here in Southern Ontario has been nothing but gloomy for the past week. Which is a pretty good thing for the productivity.

As I write this, I have just finished four days of solid writing and managed to do 14,000 words. Which is pretty mind-boggling, as most authors will tell you. That’s about 14,000 good words. Very few of it will be discarded when I do edits.

A lot of people have written to ask me if there will be another Molly Smith, and I am happy to say 

I’m working on the eighth book in that series now. The nice people at Poisoned Pen also asked me for another. How can I say no?

Here’s what on my plate:

Constable Molly Smith #8 – half finished first draft.

Lighthouse Library. #2 – Booked for Trouble.  Completely finished and waiting for copy edits back. Publication date September 2015.

Lighthouse Library #3 – Reading up a Storm. Finished and now with my editor. She may, or may not, want changes major or minor.

Lighthouse Library #4. No contract as of yet. That will depend on how books 1 and 2 do. It’s all up to the readers now (Hint, Hint).

Christmas Town #1 – Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen. Completely finished, edited and waiting for copy edits back. Publication date November 2015.

Christmas Town #2 – We Wish You a Murderous Christmas.  Ready for me to give it one last polish before going to the editor.

Christmas Town #3. Nothing done yet. (But heck, it’s not due until April. That’s April 2016)

Ray Robertson #2 (A Rapid Reads Novella) – Haitian Graves. Completely finished and in production. Publication date August 2015

Ray Robertson #3 – outline and opening chapters sent to editor for her approval.

Oh, and one last thing.  Proposal for a new cozy series. Three chapters and series outline are now with my agent.  No hints until (if) I have a contract! So stay tuned. 

Switching Gears

I once tried writing a very dark crime novel. My original premise had been about these two tough cops in B.C., a young woman and an older man, up against drug and motorcycle gangs, sex traffickers and really bad killers (as opposed to really nice killers??).

At the end of the first book in the series, the older male would be killed in a bomb explosion and the woman would go on to seek revenge.

Believe it or not, that book didn’t come out very dark and ended up being In the Shadow of the Glacier, the first Constable Molly Smith book.

Which, if you haven’t read the books, is a realistic police procedural about the lives and jobs of cops in small town British Columbia. Some reviews have called the series cozy, but they definitely are not.

In one book, Molly Smith kills a man, in them all the fall out of the murder or crime is wide-spread and devastating. I’ve dealt with the murder of a mother, the disappearance of a father, the suspected betrayal of a spouse, the death of adult children (not touching little kids), and even a soldier with PTSD and a gun on his lap.

So, not cozy. But nowhere near as dark as intended originally. Which is no doubt all for the better.

My standalone suspense novels have a modern gothic touch, and all deal with betrayals past and present.

My Klondike Gold Rush books are lighter, but they still have an edge. The main character is a woman with a past and she knows there are people out there looking for her. She runs a saloon and dance hall, and the occasional shady character drops in.

So, all in all, I think I’m a varied writer. I can write in different sub-genres and use different styles and tones in my writing.

Except, it seems, the dark stuff.

My newest style is very light. Under the pen name Eva Gates, I’m writing true cozies.

And having a lot of fun with it. Maybe I was burning out with the stuff I was writing, but the cozies have given me a giant boost. Then again, maybe I’m just enjoying not worrying about grief, and loss, and the tragedy of human existence.

Cozies are intended to be nothing more than an entertaining read. You won’t learn many lessons about the human condition, there is no one suffering from angst or threatening to kill themselves because of depression. No PTSD. No terrorist attacks or serial killers. Just people with friends and lovers and community. And the occasional enemy. And a murder of course.

Some cozies are humourous, some are not. I have tried to be.

Even if you’ve never read a cozy before, I invite you to give it a try. By Book or By Crook will be out on February 3rd. I'll be travelling extensively in the US on book tour, and meeting up with some great authors to share events along the way. The detailed schedule can be found at www.vickidelany.blogspot.com.