Finances!

 by Charlotte Hinger

One of the best writers I know is Johnny D. Boggs. He actually earns a living from his writing. Of course, he qualifies that by adding "it depends on how you define a living." 

I admire him tremendously for the quality of his writing. He and board member Natalie Bright gave a great panel presentation at the recent Western Writers of America convention in Tulsa.They talked about being alert for opportunities to publish articles. 

Conferences are really expensive. The price of registrations, hotels, and transportation, is daunting. Yet Johnny said on the way to Oklahoma he came up with ideas for articles related to the trip that he could submit to five different magazines. 

 He's very, very good at recognizing opportunities. 

How good is he? Once when he was at a conference he got "altitude sickness" and ended up in the emergency room. He didn't miss a trick and interviewed the ER doctor about the pending signs of this sickness, the inherent dangers, and the best treatment. Another published article! 

Johnny thinks articles. I think short stories. There's no question which "think" is more profitable. 

And speaking of altitude sickness, next spring Left Coast Crime will be held in Denver. For those of you who live at sea level, the Mile High City might require some adjustment. Here's what various internet sites have to say about coping with changes in altitude:

Basically your body is deprived of the amount of oxygen you need. The symptoms usually go away in a day or two for most people. But until the adjustment occurs there can be dizziness, headaches, nausea, and vomiting. 

When I moved from Western Kansas to Colorado, I didn't have any of these problems. Yet, walking any distance was exhausting. That's no longer true.

I've arrived!

Missed Opportuniies

 We are slowly emerging from the Great Ordeal. Human groundhogs are finally poking their heads above ground and beginning to peer around. Restaurants are loosening restrictions. Masks are "suggested" rather than required in my favorite branch of the Fort Collins library. 

I have four Zoom presentations scheduled for June. Additionally, the Western Writers of America conference will be held in Loveland which is just sixteen miles from Fort Collins. For me, the highlight of the event will be when Kathleen O' Neal Gear and Michael Gear receive the Wister Award.

The Gears have been my friends for years and have inspired countless other writers. Their spectacular rise to the ranks of best-selling authors has come from innate talent and incredible persistence. They are both dedicated archeologists. Kathleen has produced over two academic articles and has been awarded medals from the Department of the Interior for her work in conservation.

A number of friends will attend this conference. Some I have known many years. Others are relatively new. 

There are a number of conferences I will skip. In fact, since I write both historical novels and mysteries, I could attend a conference every single week. 

Yet, I'm struck by the missed opportunities by organizers of in-person conferences. Women Writing the West had a spectacular Zoom conference last fall. It was dazzling. I'm still amazed at the organizational work done by Pamela Nowak, the conference chair. 

Every single event, panel, and presentation that would have been included in a live conference was scheduled for the Zoom event. Keynotes speeches, breakout rooms, everything. The formatting depended  on logistical training, clear instructions to participants, dedicated moderators, and most of all Nowak's inspirational flexibility. 

The registration fee was lowered. There were no expensive hotel fees. The end result was a surge of  registrations by people who normally could not attend. Membership increased. Best of all, this convention resulted in a profit rather than the usual projected loss. 

Sadly, too many organizations are rejoicing over "returning to normal" without integrating the new approaches that worked during the shutdown. Conferences are very expensive. Hotel and travel fees alone are prohibitive to the bulk of the membership. 

We should not ignore the opportunity to integrate the lessons learned during the Great Ordeal. Try combining a Zoom approach to events with in-person participation. 

Conference Envy

My fellow Type M'er, Thomas Kies, posted a report on Thrillerfest, a writer's conference held in New York this month and I confess I was seized by more than a touch of envy. I always learn something and meet new people at any conference and this one was full of terrific panels and workshops.

Thrillerfest sounds especially exciting. The line-up of speakers was spectacular. It was like a gathering of all the rich and famous in the mystery field. Conferences are also a chance to meet the not so rich and famous. I can honestly say some of my best friends are writers that I met at conferences.

Above is a photo from this year's Western Writers of America convention. It was taken at the Five Star party. In the middle is our brilliant editor, Tiffany Schofield, who is one of the most friendly persons in publishing. Her frontier series featuring historical novels about the American West has been a great hit both with librarians and readers.

I'm on the left. Having just discovered a western hat that fits I longer have to worry about my hair. What a relief. On the right is Irene Bennett Brown. I look forward to seeing her and her husband, Bob, every year. Irene and I have known each other forever. She and Bob started attending in 1978. Her book, Miss Royal's Mules, is a finalist for a Will Rogers Medallion Award. Her new book, Tangled Times will be published Summer, 2020.

Old friendships can be dangerous at conventions because of the temptation to spend all my time with people I already know and like.

I would love to go to Thrillerfest next year. I have a number of friends who attend. Plus this year a number of person's from Sourcebook were there. Sourcebook acquired Poisoned Pen last year and the conference would have been a great opportunity to meet representatives from our new publisher.

I don't like posting on the day mine is due. I like to schedule it at 12:01 am so our early morning readers will have fresh content. This has been a very harried summer full of disruptions. Most of them were good. But still, my writing has been interrupted a lot. Then everything else lags too.

Better performance next time!

Writers Gotta' Write

Hello and welcome to my first blog. I’m extremely excited and honored to be joining the Type M for Murder family.  If you have any thoughts or suggestions about what you’d like me to write, please let me know!

Since the beginning is the best place to start, let’s do that. I’m going to make an admission, it took me 20 years to get published. When Cindy, my wife, and I were dating, and I was a single dad, she said, “Okay, your life is a do-over. What is it you want to be more than anything else?”

My reply was immediate. “I want to be a novelist.”

She quickly wrote it down on a cocktail napkin (we were at a holiday reception) and handed it to me. “Never lose this. This is who you are.”

Well, I lost it. Who keeps old cocktail napkins?

But I kept the dream.

Because I was still at the newspaper in Norwalk, Connecticut and raising my daughter, I could only write part-time. But write I did. My first attempt at a novel was entitled Crossbones. It was a historical novel about pirates and the destruction of Port Royal in Jamaica by an earthquake and tidal wave. I quickly discovered that historical novels are not my genre. It was awful.


By the way, NBC aired a television series by the same name in 2014. Not their genre either.

My second attempt at a novel was a mystery/thriller set in Connecticut called Pieces of Jake. I managed to land an agent from New York and I thought I was ready for the bestseller list. However, I discovered that this agent had little patience if one of the major publishing houses in Manhattan didn’t buy the manuscript. When we didn’t get a contract, he dropped me like a bad habit.

I had a chance to review the rejection comments from the editors and they primarily talked about the lack of character development. That’s when I started work on Providence and Random Road. Initially, the book was in two first-person voices. Two protagonists, one a male, the other a female. Then I discovered that the most interesting of the two was the female and opted to write the entire novel in the voice of Geneva Chase. I still couldn’t manage to get an agent interested. But I thought the character development was miles ahead of anything else I’d written.

Moving on, I tried my hand at horror. Also, not my genre.

Then a straight-out thriller. So bad my own wife wouldn’t read it.

Back to Providence and Random Road. I had a good feeling about it, I liked the main character, Geneva Chase, and felt the story had good bones. I shortened the title to Random Road and rewrote the hell out of it. Then, rather than take the shotgun approach, I painstakingly researched agents. I started by Googling and using the criteria: literary agents, debut authors, mysteries.

About thirty agents popped up. I learned about each one, who they represented, what they were looking for, and tailor-made the query letter to each. I made certain that if they were looking for 50 sample pages, I sent 50 sample pages. If they were looking for a synopsis (which I hate doing), I sent a synopsis.

I got four requests for the entire manuscript! To make a long story short, I signed with the incredible agent, Kimberley Cameron, and I’m working on my third Geneva Chase mystery for Poisoned Pen Press. In September, I’ll be on a panel at a Mystery Conference in Scottsdale honoring Ian Rankin and then at Bouchercon, I'm on a panel entitled “In the Papers—Journalists in Fiction.”

Recently, I gave a talk to about 50 people and I told the story about how it took 20 years to finally get published.  Someone in the audience asked, “Wasn’t it hard to write all those books over all those years and not get published? Didn’t you ever feel like giving up?”

My answer was, “A writer’s gotta’ write.” And my wife, Cindy, wouldn’t let me give up.

I might not have physical possession of that cocktail napkin, but I have what was written on it tattooed on my memory. I want to be a novelist.

Double Binds

A couple of weeks ago my oldest daughter participated in a dressage event. She and her horse, Roslyn, are a really elegant combination. A number of family members attended, the weather was perfect. It was delightful day, and doubly enjoyable because attending this show rather than something else was an easy choice.

We have a close and supportive extended family. It's one of my biggest blessings. However, I've noticed over the years the time I spend choosing between conflicting events keeps growing. There's hardly ever just one thing going on.

On June 2, Colorado Humanities Council will announce the winners of the various categories for the categories for the Colorado Book Award. I'm a finalist (Fractured Families) and am in awe of the abilities of the other two finalists in the mystery category. I know them both--Barbara Nickless (Dead Stop) and Margaret Mizushima (Hunting Hour)--through my local Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America chapter.

But I have a conflict. There's a wonderful birthday party planned for one of my best friends. I can't possibly go to both. The choice is clear--I'm going to the awards ceremony--but still, I really regret not having the ability to be in two places at once.

Writing double-binds keep multiplying. All the conferences are so attractive. I want to go to Western Writers of America this summer, but my granddaughter's graduation party is on the last day. I'll leave the conference early (Billings, MT) and drive non-stop to get back to Aurora.

If I go to Western Writers can I afford to go to Colorado Gold? I hear it's a wonderful conference and it's sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. It's close, too. Driving is preferable to flying because of all the stuff I end up taking. Books are the pits to manage and some events require several different kinds of clothes.

And talk about multiplication, how did I end up joining so many organizations?

Everything sounds so appealing. I want to do everything and go everywhere.

On Not Plunging In

Generally, when we write about attending mystery conferences, we mention opportunities to catch up with writer friends, meet and mingle with readers, see editors and agents, and appear on panels. We write about what we learn by attending workshops and interviews with bestselling authors. We write about how we soak up all that energy, and come home ready to sit down and write.

These are all excellent reasons for attending conferences. In fact, when I signed up for Sleuthfest this year, I thought of what fun it would be to hang out with friends, be on a panel, and do a pre-publication debut of my new book, What the Fly Saw. I have to admit – no offense to Floridians – that the chance to get out of snowbound, frigid Albany, New York and spend a few days in a balmy clime was not one of the reasons I wanted to attend. I'm not a warm weather person. But, I arrived this afternoon, and so far it hasn't been bad. I've gone from air-conditioned airport to shuttle to hotel room. There is no humidity. Much better than my last visit to Florida.

But I haven't gone to the conference yet. I'm in an overflow hotel across the street (busy boulevard) and – more important – I got up at five a.m. to make my 8:15 a.m flight. That wouldn't have been bad, but I got to bed at around 2 and had about three hours sleep. So I decided to pass on the last of the afternoon workshops and the Thursday evening kickoff events. Tomorrow, I'll go over fresh and wide awake.

Being in an overflow hotel does offer one advantage – the opportunity to hide out. This is also possible in the conference hotel if you dodge people you know and/or are willing to nod briskly and keep moving when you do encounter friends. It is much easier to hide out when you are in the overflow hotel because most people in your hotel will be heading to the conference hotel. In the overflow hotel, you have an excuse for not attending an evening event – you don't want to walk back to your hotel alone in the dark. This excuse only works if you purposely don't look for people you know who might be in your hotel and with whom you could walk. Of course, you also don't bother to consider the possibility that you would be safe walking across the street from one hotel to the other.

Obviously when you have gone to the effort and expense of attending the conference, hiding out in your room should not be something you do every night. Especially when you are attending a great conference like Sleuthfest. But I would argue that taking one evening for decompression before plunging in is acceptable.

The other opportunity that should not be missed when attending a conference is the chance to take an airport shuttle to your hotel. I say this without sarcasm. Yes, if you are rushing to plunge into conference activities, then waiting for your shuttle to leave and then going on a rambling journey while other passengers are delivered to their destinations can be tedious. On the other hand, if you decide to think of the shuttle ride as a tour of the area, it becomes much more interesting. Much can be learned about an area while a passenger on an airport shuttle.

The other first-evening pleasure you should consider – in-room dining. Room service or delivery. Tonight, I ordered a wonderful meal – including coconut flan – that was delivered to my hotel. And I ate it wearing old tee shirt, shorts, and flip flops.

I also got a little work done. Some reading I needed to do. Some notes I needed to make about a project. Bright and early Friday, I will plunge into Sleuthfest, and I'm sure I'll have fun. But Thursday was my transition day…and that is why I have no photos for this post.