The Copyediting Process

 I was going through some documents I had saved on a thumb drive, searching for a midterm study guide for one of my classes that I thought I might have accidentally copied to the wrong drive. 

As I was scrolling, I came across my responses to the copyeditor's queries about The Red Queen Dies, the first book featuring my Albany, New York homicide detective, Hannah McCabe. 

Since The Wizard of Oz is also mentioned in this book, it occurred to me that you might enjoy a peep behind the (editing) curtain.  

Comments about my revisions and in response to queries from copyeditor

1. I took this last opportunity to do more to establish that this is an “alternate universe” or “parallel world.” I explain the reasons in my Author’s Note. The “real world” happens too fast. A near-future book needs to exist in its own reality. 

[Note: The "the present" has caught up with me and zoomed past. It is still 2019 in my third (plotted but not written ) book and in my 1939 historical where McCabe and Baxter are (probably) going to be appearing in a parallel subplot].

Aside from the UFO that appeared in 2012 

[Note: I mentioned the UFO in a news broadcast at the beginning of the book. The news reader reports the seventh anniversary of an event that had sent NORAD scrambling. The UFO disappeared and has never returned. I give myself a pat on the back for being ahead of the recent (real world) discussion about UFO sightings]:

a. “New France” (this is the name a historian friend of mine suggested if Quebec should break away from the rest of Canada) mentioned during the morning news.

b. The “curse” on the Yankees (which any baseball fan would recognize as being in an alternate universe in which the Yankees, who are a winning team in this world, are now dealing with a version of the curse that plagued the Red Sox)

c. “if Truman had really beat Dewey” [new addition]

(see page 121) – a passing mention by Angus of a book he is planning to read. Of course, a reference to the famous “Dewey beats Truman” newspaper headline. And sets up the political history in the book as not quite the same as this world. Later, in the book (during the discussion about getting access to library records, Baxter now makes a sarcastic comment about how this is what Howard Miller is always talking about (Democrats have now been in control of the White House for 11 years and have stacked the Supreme Court. Civil liberties have been protected – and Howard Miller is the conservative backlash to that. Just a passing comment by Baxter to which McCabe makes a sarcastic response but sets the stage for another mention of neo-Nazis later. I also wanted to use Baxter’s comment to imply that he’s “testing” McCabe to see how she’ll respond.

d. And, as you may have noticed, in a scene driving into work, McCabe is listening to Elvis’s farewell concert in Central Park – a major event in 2000. Presumably, Elvis is now a senior citizen and alive and well.

The technology:

1. Web based on language used by biologists to describe spider web (e.g., node, threader)

2. The technology doesn’t always work – police budget and solar flares – I have a bit more discussion about that now as they are looking at Vivian Jessup’s body on camera. Just another reference to where the money is being spent – downtown, around the convention center, protecting tourists

3. While they are waiting for a table at the barge, Baxter mentions UAlbany and nanotech. Another reason it’s hard to get a table downtown (but also important in describing the city as nanotechnology moves off campus, and sets up offices downtown)

Other changes:

1. Here and there have replaced “old” with “elderly” when referring to women

2. On pages 34-36, tightened up Wizard of Oz discussion and changed location where second victim dies (killed when has flat tire). The change in location is because the perp that McCabe and Baxter arrest has broken into the first victim’s house. This would have to be Bethany’s house (empty since her death).

3. Page 31 – at the Jessup crime scene, the dead animal was a squirrel in early versions. It is now a dead snake. I thought this was a bit grosser as a mental image. Although not said, the implication is that Baxter mistakes the snake for a piece of the victim’s intestines.

4. Page 15 – I corrected a blooper – the bola McCabe fires from her weapon should go around the victim’s legs rather than his feet and use cords rather than a net.

5. pp. 125-126 – The conversation between McCabe and Chelsea changes a bit here. Chelsea is trying to fix McCabe up with a blind date – later will become clear that McCabe has not even told her best friend about her secret lover and will also reinforce McCabe’s exchange with the two detectives in Jessup’s apartment about dying and having someone come and paw through your things. As a character she values privacy.

In this same scene with Chelsea, the set-up for a topic I’d like to explore a little in the next book (designer babies and cloning – Baxter brings up cloning when he mentions his friend who is dying)

6. p. 357 – a bit of editing here with Baxter’s call to his contact about a meeting  

7. As I was looking for typos in the final scenes, I did some general tightening and cleaning up clunky dialogue.

Note the specific use now of a “pharmacologist” (rather than “doctor”) . . . . 

If I Said . . .

I used a balled up piece of aluminum foil to clean a casserole dish after I burned what I was baking. As I was rising my sparking clean dish, I thought of this character who was known for unconventional solutions to problems at hand.

I'll hum while the theme music of this game show plays and you think.

Did you get it?

The character is "MacGyver", and the game show is Jeopardy.

I really did use that ball of Reynolds Wrap to clean my oven-ready casserole dish. As I was cleaning I couldn't remember the magazine that had offered me "10 clever ways to use aluminum foil." What I did remember was MacGyver. I felt really clever when the mess cleaned right up -- clever because I had remembered -- and I thought again about my long list of things I'd like to know how to do.

Never having been a Girl Scout, I have a small collection of those hardcover books for children with the instructions on how to do things like start a fire without matches or find your way in the woods. I also have a go-to book for adults -- The US Army Survival Manual. In fact, my protagonist, Lizzie Stuart, has read the Army's guide to surviving in challenging situations. She is engaged to a man who was an Army Ranger, a military police officer, and a homicide detective. He also has a master's degree in criminal justice and FBI training. Lizzie likes people who know how to do things. She finally learned how to swim because he does and she thought it was time she overcame her fear of the water. And wouldn't you know that at some point that knowledge would come in handy. Two books later, after mentioning in that book in the next that she was taking swimming classes, she found herself in danger of a watery death. She wasn't ready for the Olympics, but she was able to do what she needed to do..

But I started this post intending to write about iconic characters like MacGyver or Sherlock Holmes or Adrian Monk. Characters who are so unique or groundbreaking that if you mention their name that's sufficient to explain what you mean. For example, I can say to a friend of mine that I had a "Monk moment" when I dropped something on my kitchen floor and she knows exactly why I threw out my expensive steak instead of rinsing it off and cooking it.

I don't know about you, but I would love to have a character like the one whose name comes to mind when someone says, "I went down the rabbit hole." I still go down that rabbit hole with Alice. That book was one of the inspirations for my near-future police procedural, The Red Queen Dies.

Who makes your list of iconic characters? Alice was the only female character I mentioned, but there are others. However, I have to get to work. My notifications are popping up.

Take care, everyone.

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?

How Much of an Escape

Last year in Albany, New York, we had days when there was nothing to do – nothing one could have been expected to do – but stay inside and look out. Last year, we stocked up on cocoa, made huge pots of soup, and anticipated our TV or movie-watching binges, and the books we would read when even adults had "snow days". This year, we have so little snow that I'm embarrassed to mention it when I talk to my relatives in Virginia.

Snow seen through screened window
this morning.

Harry's bored reaction to weather
in Albany this February.

Believe me, I complained along with almost everyone else in the Northeast when we had major snowstorms in mind-boggling succession last year. When I was reduced to tunneling a narrow path from front door to steps out onto the street, I would have been happy to see all the snow disappear. But this year, this lack of snow is spooking me. I know it has gone some place else, but that doesn't make me feel better. This is February in upstate New York. We should have snow – measurable, boots required, weather alert, go-home-before-it-starts snow. I should be complaining about the hard, icy chunks shoved across my driveway by the snowplow clearing my street.

I shouldn't be thinking about my Hannah McCabe books because it hasn't snowed. McCabe, a homicide detective, inhabits an Albany in the near future. I set The Red Queen Dies in 2019 with temperatures in the 90s in late October. A few months later, in What the Fly Saw, a massive January blizzard is headed up the East Coast toward Albany. The murderer strikes during this storm. The weather in McCabe's world is erratic and troubling. Now, the weather in my world is, too.

The thing about writing is that sometimes what one writes as fiction becomes reality. Or, at least close enough to reality to be reason for concern. My two McCabe police procedurals take place as a presidential election is looming. McCabe's father is a retired journalist/newspaper editor. They have several occasion to discuss the candidacy of a third party candidate named Howard Miller who is appealing to people's fears because his campaign begins to intrude into their lives.

Yes, freakish weather has happened in the past. Yes, politicians have often used fear- and anger-laden messages to ride into office. But having spent some time thinking about the future, it feels as if it is coming faster than I expected. My fiction may soon reflect reality.

Not that my fictional world is a dystopia nightmare. I'm not writing science fiction. But I thought by moving a few years ahead and creating an alternate universe Albany, I would be setting my stories in a world that was different from our own.

The lack of February snow in Albany and the 2016 presidential race have gotten me thinking about what I do as a writer. Or, I should say, thinking more deeply about what I do. I am at that point when I need to update my bio, take new author photos, and do some work on my website. I also should have a look at my neglected Facebook page. I know I should send out a newsletter, do the blogs I was going to do on my website about my research, and send out related tweets. I've been thinking about how to present a consistent image as a writer – not just because I read a book about how this is a useful marketing strategy. I have reached a point in my career when having a clear perception of who I am as writer will make my choices easier. I have a list of writing projects that I would love to do – ideas for books and short stories with my current protagonists, a proposal out there for a new series, a historical thriller in progress. And, of course, there is my nonfiction book about dress, appearance, and criminal justice. And a couple of other nonfiction books ideas that I've thought of while writing that one. I have enough potential projects to keep me busy for years. So the question of what to do next – decided in part by discussions with my agent and my editor.

Actually, the larger question is how to write. What do I want to put out there in the world? Do I want my books and short stories to be an escape for readers? Of course, I do. That is why I began reading as a child and one of the reasons I love curling up with a book as an adult. I went through a period as a teenager when I gobbled up romance novels. I still enjoy a good romance. I belong to Romance Writers of America. In my Lizzie Stuart series, there is an overarching love story. But the few times I've thought of writing a romance, the plot morphed into a hybrid romance/mystery. I'm a criminal justice professor. That is reflected in what I write.

I provide escape and entertainment. But I also need – want – to deal with social issues. I provide historical context. My books offer fictional springboards for discussions. That's what I do best.

But if I could write books with happy endings, I might be less concerned when there is so little snow this Albany winter and a presidential campaign season that would make Howard Miller smile.