Guest Post: Diane Vallere

I'm delighted to welcome Diane Vallere as this weekend's guest. Diane is the current President of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime and my partner-in-crime for our recent "Paint and Polyester" bookstore tour.

After two decades working for a top luxury retailer, Diane Vallere traded fashion accessories for accessories to murder. SUEDE TO REST, the first book in the Material Witness Cozy Mystery Series, has been nominated for the 2015 Lefty Best Humorous Mystery Award. Diane also writes the Mad for Mod Mystery Series, featuring a midcentury modern interior decorator who has modeled her life after Doris Day movies, and the Style & Error Mystery Series, featuring a former fashion buyer. Diane started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since.

Jury Duty

by Diane Vallere

Last week I asked my Facebook friends if I was the only person who got excited about Jury Duty. The replies came fast and furious. Turns out there are two kinds of people in the world: those who dislike Jury Duty, and mystery writers.

Admittedly, I have two reasons for liking Jury Duty:

1) it feels like research, and
2) it gets me out of the house.

Much research can be done on the internet, but I think there’s something to be said for research that is done in person. You can read about what happens in the jury selection process from start to finish, but you won’t fully appreciate the experience unless you catch a subway at 6:30 in the morning, stand in line for half an hour before they scan your belongings, sit in an uncomfortable chair staring at a photograph of a flamingo (occasionally wondering about the significance of said flamingo photo in a Los Angeles courthouse), watch the people who ignore the sign that says “take a packet and sit down” and form an unnecessary line at the front window.

Plus, you’ll miss the blue carpeting that is stained with a previously-spilled cup of coffee and the scent of the popcorn being sold at the concession stand outside of the Juror Room. You will rarely get this kind of chance to see a snapshot of the people who are a cross-section of the town where you live, pretty much a crash course in human nature.

The thing about research is that it fuels two parts of our manuscripts: the facts and the world-building. Facts can be looked up. World building can be made up. But for both facts and world-building to come alive, you need to deliver the complete experience to your reader. It’s not just the words of dialogue that matter. Creating the setting where a dialogue takes place is important. Whether it’s a historic courthouse for a civil trial or a dingy community center for a town hall meeting or a fancy restaurant that has altered their hours to accommodate a club meeting, when a writer pays attention to what it feels like, smells like, and sounds like—in addition to what it looks like—the reader falls that much farther down the rabbit hole. Their surroundings fade away because we gave them a new place to hang. Even if it isn’t paradise, it’s sometimes the place where our characters hang, too.

And don’t underestimate that getting-out-of-the-house thing, either. Works wonders for a stuck manuscript!

Let Me Go

Let me go ye gods of manuscripts. Take this book off my mind. Shoo! Get out of my writing room.

I sent off my non-fiction book this week. It's for University of Oklahoma Press. Right now the working title is Nicodemus: Race and Culture on the Kansas Frontier. The moment I put it in the mail I wanted it back. I instantly thought of things I wish I had said, or shouldn't have said. When I worried that the paper was too cheap or not the right weight or the right degree of brightness, I knew I had passed over the line into a new kind of craziness.

Did I remember everyone I wanted to thank in the acknowledgements? Were all the names spelled correctly. Was I wrong on just about everything? Was there some crucial resource that I left out? Was the epilogue too short? It took a long time to finish this project. Academic books require extensive documentation. I've read so many microfilmed newspaper that I'm lucky I still can see.

Non-fiction books have their own protocol. For one thing, I had so send this manuscript in both print and digital formats, with each chapter in a separate digital file. Poisoned Pen Press wants everything in a single digital file. In fact that's true of most fiction publishers nowadays. Each method has it's own merits.

Single large files are a dream to edit. For that matter I can change a name instantly throughout the whole book. We had to do that in Hidden Heritage when I read two days before I sent in the final manuscript that a family in New Mexico was suing the government over the same issue that was the linchpin of my mystery.

When I got home from FedEx, I realized I had left out the checklist. See? I told myself I would leave out something that was critical. I'll scan it and email it to my editor.

I have a couple of things left to do. This kind of book has a lot of pictures and acquiring permission to print them is quite tedious. The first step is to determine who owns the copyright. The next step is  writing to the owner and getting signed permission to publish. The stipulations are very restrictive. I only have one more picture to collect. I don't want to take a chance on it getting lost in the mail and will go to LaJunta, CO to scan it. It's a priceless picture of Lulu Craig, whom I quote throughout the book.

I have to do my own indexing. The process is quite precise. However, one of the things I appreciate about OU Press is detailed instructions. There are professional indexers, but the price would come out of my own pocket and it would be really hard for someone else to pick out the sub-headings I have in mind.

This is a learning process. Right now, I'm maxed out on integrating new information. And I want the book off my mind while I finish my fourth mystery.

You can bet I'll let everyone know when the academic book is published.

Philip Levine: A (Second) Tribute

Philip Levine died this week. He was my favorite poet, a man whose work not only inspired my novels, but a man who helped me out when the mechanism of the publishing industry got in the way.

I wrote Snap Hook, a novel featuring a dyslexic protagonist, in 2001 just after discovering Mr. Levine's work. When the copy of The Simple Truth arrived, I flipped to the first page, began reading, and did something I had never done before (or since) with a collection of poetry: I read the entire book through, cover to cover.

My father owned a garage, and I had spent time working in it. Levine was writing about people I knew and had known. Of course, he was writing about the men and women "of Flint...the majors of a minor town," as he eloquently describes in "Among Children." But I fell in love with those poems and his work.

This came at a time when I was directing a visiting writer series in northern Maine. (Stephen King had donated funds to launch it.) So I invited Mr. Levine to visit. He lived in Fresno, Calif., a place where he long resided, and said he was too old to travel. But we spent a half-hour on the phone one afternoon -- me trying to convince him to come, he suggesting other feisty poets. I had just had my second daughter, and we talked about fatherhood and children, he told me stories about his grandchildren. And while we were on the phone, I told him of an idea I had, which he was very much in support of.

Not long after that conversation, I was finishing Snap Hook. And I had added a character trait to Jack Austin, my protagonist: He would read a Philip Levine collection in each book. In Snap Hook he was reading The Simple Truth, the title poem to which offers the lines:
          Some things
          you know all your life...
          it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
          you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
          it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
          made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
          in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

These lines appear on the final page of my novel. What better denouement? (Perhaps, now, what better epilogue?) My editor liked the final page and called after reading the manuscript (I had already signed a two-book contract), and asked where the permission form was for those lines.

"Mr. Levine and I spoke over the phone. He knows I'm using them and likes the idea," I said. (Everyone starts out you, so work with me; I was in my 20s.)

"Random House owns those lines. You need to pay for them."

I was writing for a university press at the time. If you don't already know, university presses don't pay a lot. When I called Random House and got the rights people on the phone and heard their fee, I nearly dropped the phone: They wanted three times my advance for the book.

I did the only thing I could think of. I called Mr. Levine again and told him the situation. He dropped several expletives and said to send him $50 so he could take his wife to lunch. He wanted mystery readers to see his work, saying my books could open up his to a new audience.

A short while later, I got an e-mail from Random House with a contract I could afford. And Jack Austin went on reading Philip Levine poetry.

My books were – I sincerely hope – on some level tributes to Mr. Levine. And I will offer one more here. Take a moment today to read "Among Children" in which he concludes with:
          I will be gone into smoke or memory,
          so I bow to them here and whisper
          all I know, all I will never know.

Getting Out in the World

This is a really short post since I’m preparing to go out of town. Next week I’ll be attending the Creative Painting convention in Las Vegas. Every year around this time my sister and I meet up in Vegas for this tole/decorative painting convention. (She lives in Seattle, I live in Los Angeles.) We enjoy painting, seeing the Vegas sights, and doing a little sister bonding. It’s great fun.

It’s also a semi-working vacation for me since the protagonist in my book, Fatal Brushstroke, is a tole/decorative painter. Being around so many people who enjoy the craft always sparks ideas for scenes and stories.

It’ll also be a welcome change of scenery since I’ve been hunkered down over my computer these days, madly writing, rarely even going outside. It’s time for me to re-engage with the world. That’s something that’s important for every writer to do—leave their keyboard behind and go somewhere, do something that sparks your interest and creativity.

Writers who have day jobs and work outside the home do that all the time. But, for those of us who work at home or write full-time, it’s more of a challenge. One day you’re writing, a few days later you look up and realize you’ve not stepped out of the house in a week. (Particularly true near deadlines.) I suspect most writers have experienced that at one time or another.

So, on Saturday, I will put down my keyboard, leave my computer behind and get out there. I’m looking forward to coming back with oodles of new ideas.

Vegas here I come!

More thoughts on “backstory”

If you haven’t read Frankie’s post from this past Friday (Finding the Backstory), I suggest you do so now. It very clearly lays out why this is important when you’re writing any sort of fiction.

I have to admit that I am almost obsessed with who my characters are. To my mind, the greatest compliment I can receive from someone who has read my scribblings is “the characters seem so real”. Readers may not always like all my characters (and I’m not referring only to the bad guys), but often my characters have “bad attributes” because, well, everybody has some of those, don’t they? Bad attributes and weaknesses can also inform readers much more and make characters all the more richer and “true”.

It’s my feeling that in order to really understand a character’s responses to stress and what their motivations for doing things are, you must know where they came from. These details are often not meant to be in the book. The backstory about a character might warrant merely a passing mention, or maybe no mention at all, but knowing the backstory can be of the utmost importance to the storyteller. These details are the building blocks of creating real and believable characters.

Whenever I get stalled in a book and quite often before even beginning it, I think about my main characters and often write out little scenes from their lives outside the parameters of my plot requirement. In some cases this has proven to be the salvation of a novel that’s going south on me.

This was especially true with the character of Victoria Morgan in both the novels I wrote about her, oddly more in the second one than the first. For whatever reason (probably because she’s a redhead), I couldn’t get a handle on why she would do certain things and not others. I was stalled for nearly three weeks in the writing of Cemetery of the Nameless for just this reason. I needed Tory to do something for plot reasons, and no matter how I wrote this critical scene, the results felt uncomfortable, unbelievable and awkward. The problem was, I really needed her to do what I was asking. It was as if she was refusing my requests. (Redheads do tend to have very strong opinions and vast amounts of stubbornness.)

Not being able to write is an uncomfortable feeling for an ink-stained wretch like me. So, approaching the end of the third week of writing stasis, I began working on a story of her at the age of eight, having one of her weekly violin lessons. To this day, I can’t tell you why I did that, but as this little vignette took shape, I suddenly realized something about Tory’s make-up as an adult, and that had its genesis in this rather turbulent lesson. Because of what transpired between her and her teacher, the first seeds of doubt about her ability on violin were sown and wormed their way down into Tory’s psyche. It forced her to respond certain ways even though I doubted if she would barely remember what had happened so many years earlier.

All I had to do was tap into that doubt some two decades on in her life and Tory (reluctantly) would do what my story needed her to do. It was suddenly right and believable that she would do something like this. The logjam was broken and the words flowed out.

I now go through this process quite regularly, usually with my protagonists and often my antagonists, but sometimes with minor characters. I may or may not write it down, but I at least think it through. The series I am currently (and sporadically) working on has gone through this process quite extensively. If I’m going to turn out a series of novels about these people, I have to understand them as completely as I can.

It also opens up a a huge source of possibilities for further novels. What happened between this character and his wife to cause their separation and eventual divorce? And more importantly, how does my protagonist feel about this now? It will have nothing to do with the first novel, and probably won’t even be mentioned, but I’m sure it will come up eventually and may even form the basis of a story further down the line. Who knows?

And that’s one of the wonderful things about writing fiction. The act of creation is so much more intense than any other kind of writing. We get to play god as it were. But with awesome power comes awesome responsibility, and the fact that our characters are merely figments of our imaginations doesn’t absolve us from the fact that we must nurture and take care of them, look out for their interests. Backstory is one of the best ways to help us in our quest to write natural and believable characters, and to my mind, that’s the most important thing in what we do in our writing.

There’s too much cardboard in this world as it is. We don’t need to add to it!

A Visit to North Carolina and Head Meeting Desk

By Vicki Delany

First, before my rant of the week:

Are you in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina?  If so, why not come out to one of my many events there this week and next.  I’ll be with fellow-TypeM-er Donis Casey, and Canada’s Mystery Maven, Linda Wiken (Erika Chase).  It will be sort of a meeting of the mavens as North Carolina Mystery Maven Molly Weston will be our guide. 

I understand the weather in North Carolina is not looking promising, so I will probably be packing this hat.

The full schedule of events can be found at http://vickidelany.blogspot.comhttp://vickidelany.blogspot.com

How much is one of my books worth to you? How much do you think my time is worth to me?

I’m hoping you’ve answered, more than 0.

But not everyone seems to think so.

I was approached this week by a profit-making corporation that promotes it’s product by doing public events.  And they charge a healthy sum for an evening of… participating in their promotion (food and drink is involved).  They invited me to a book-club type evening and the participants would be discussing one of my books.

Naturally, I said yes. Sounds like a great opportunity.

They replied and said they couldn’t afford to pay me. (Not good, but I will do book clubs without charging a fee. Off topic, but I do not do workshops for free, other than schools).  And, then they said I would be expected to GIVE each participant the book in plenty of time for them to read it before the meeting.

Uh, no. I was being asked to not only give up an evening of my time, appear in public to entertain people who have paid to attend the event, but donate a substantial number of my own books to boot. I would in short, counting my time, be out several hundred dollars.

So I said no. I suggested they contact my publisher to perhaps come up with a deal or a discount, but I am not giving them all the books so they can charge people to come to their event.

I said that as a writer I make my living by SELLING books. 

And what do you suppose the reply was to that? Oh, we didn’t realize you were self-published.

Huh? In case anyone out there doesn’t know, a standard publishing contact gives the author a small number of books to use for promotion, send to reviewers, etc. After that the author pays a slightly discounted rate for each book. So each book they wanted me to give to their participants would have cost me 50-60% of the cover price.

Frankly, I don’t know what we can do to about this sort of thing. Musicians say the same thing: The value of their time and of their product is seen as nothing.

It’s not helped by the number of books that are given away on Amazon etc. for free or for .99c.  A whole lot of people out there now believe that the value of a book is $0.00, certainly no more than $0.99. 

If you come to meet Donis, Linda, and me in North Carolina I can guarantee you will get a lot more than $0.00 worth of entertainment.

Waldeinsamkeit and Winnetou

 Jeanne Matthews is the author of the Dinah Pelerin international mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press, including Bones of Contention, Bet Your Bones, Bonereapers, Her Boyfriend’s Bones, and Where the Bones Are Buried. Originally from Georgia, Jeanne lives with her husband in Renton, Washington. For more information, visit her website at www.jeannematthews.com. Or, follow her on Twitter @JMMystery.

____________

Sometimes one word can convey a mood or a sentiment that requires many words to articulate. It may hold special meaning in the language and culture that coined it, or the feelings that it connotes may have to be experienced to be understood. Vladimir Nabokov, who was fluent in both English and Russian, struggled to translate the Russian word toska. “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning.”

While in Berlin researching my new Dinah Pelerin mystery, Where the Bones Are Buried, I discovered a similarly complex German word – Waldeinsamkeit. The approximate meaning is the feeling of being alone in the woods, of being connected to Nature. During the Romantic period between 1800 and 1850, there was a great longing for a place of tranquility in which to contemplate the loneliness of existence. Poets wrote about the quest for spiritual wholeness in Nature and the aesthetic and healing pleasures of woodland beauty. But as Germany transformed from a rural country to an economic and industrial power, the cities grew and the forests shrank. Two devastating World Wars in the 20th Century reduced the realm of Nature still more.

Today, Germany is one of the most densely wooded countries in Europe, but its forests are not primeval. Most are planted and maintained for the production of timber. It’s hard to be alone in the forest and there’s no longer the danger – or the thrill – that one might fall into the clutches of witches or wolves. The enchanted forests found in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm have disappeared. The hero or heroine can no longer enter into the dark unknown and encounter magic. In his novel Rat, the writer Günter Grass expressed that sense of loss:

“Because men are killing the forests the fairy tales are running away… [they] have trotted off to the cities and end badly.”

The idea of the forest occupies a profound place in the German psyche, which may explain their fascination with the American frontier and the untamed tribes who once roamed there. This fascination began with the adventure novels of Karl May, who created a fictional Apache chief named Winnetou, a “wise and noble savage.” Without ever seeing the landscape he wrote about, May pictured the scenery and characters so vividly that he lost track of reality. He came to believe that he was the living embodiment of Old Shatterhand, the white blood brother of Winnetou. May died in 1912, but his tales of Winnetou and the “Wild West” continue to have a grip on the German imagination. Over two hundred million copies of his books have been sold and they have inspired numerous festivals and theme parks. One such park, Pullman City in southern Germany, is special. A recreated frontier town straight out of a Clint Eastwood western, it encourages visitors to regard themselves as actual cowboys and Indians rather than as spectators. Like Karl May, they mingle reality with fantasy and join in the saloon gunfights and Indian rain dances.

The inspiration for Where the Bones Are Buried occurred when I learned about der Indianer clubs, in which aficionados dress as Indians, adopt Indian names, collect Indian artifacts, and gather for drumming ceremonies and powwows. Some go so far as to live in teepees in their back gardens, sew their own deerskin clothes, and eschew all technology. At first, I thought this Indian obsession bizarre, even laughable. But when these people speak of their affinity and nostalgia for the Comanches and Apaches of long ago, they are touchingly earnest. It’s an astonishing subculture that defies both time and geography. Since Dinah is a cultural anthropologist and also part Seminole, the phenomenon seemed a perfect motif for another of her foreign exploits.

I don’t know if the German desire to play Indian reflects something as psychologically abstruse as toska – a vague yearning for wilderness and for a romanticized past that never really existed. I don’t know if the concept of Waldeinsamkeit blends into the mythology of Winnetou. Maybe wearing feathered headdresses and buffalo horns is a way to hold onto a semblance of magic, a way to keep the fairy tales from trotting off to the cities forever. Understanding the mystery requires a journey across cultures, which is the kind of journey Dinah loves best.

Finding the Backstory

As I read the posts from Rick and Barbara this week, I was breathing much easier. I had finally finished that short story I mentioned I was working on. The short story for an anthology with all of the contributors writing about the hero of three "B" westerns. According to the guidelines we were given, genre-blending was permitted. As you might expect, my story involved a murder. But it took me forever and a day to get to that murder. Halfway through, I had to change directions and rethink the plot.

I know I've written before about sagging middles and endings that won't gel, and the agony of getting through a first draft. But I'm not a pantser. I usually know more or less where I'm headed. I'm that hybrid that Barbara discussed. But with this short story, knowing where I wanted to go and getting there was not happening.

One of the problems was that I was writing about a character that I had not created. He stood there before me, an adult, fully formed. He had done things and had cowpoke buddies that I needed to take into account. In addition, the publisher had provided some guidelines about this character's behavior (i.e., good guy hero). I started writing with those guidelines in mind. I wrote and wrote and the character never came to life. It was only when I took the working title that the publisher had provided seriously that I begin to see how much room I had to write the story I wanted to write. The title was "the birth of" -- as in origins, roots, what is this character's backstory?  Why did Batman become a vigilante superhero? Why had my cowboy from Texas become a man who would do the right thing, who would be on the side of law and justice? That was my entry point into my story.

Realizing this stopped me dead in my rewrite. I needed to think about not only where this character had been born but the family he had been born into. I needed to think about why he would understand the reaction of another character to the murder of a family member. I needed to dig deeper and think about what "my" protagonist felt and cared about -- not just how he looked and rode his horse.

This was my mini version of what Reed Farrel Coleman talked about in his weekend guest post a couple of weeks ago. Coleman needed to figure out how to write about Robert B.Parker's protagonist in a way that was true to Parker's vision but drew on Coleman's own strengths as a writer. I needed to do that for my short story. But that wasn't the end of the process. Once I had a grip on my character, I need to claim my setting. I needed to stop playing western movies in my head and draw on the research I had done.

I'm not sure what the editor of the anthology is going to say about the story that I ended up writing. It's true to the spirit of the character, but I turned at least one convention on its head. Within the context of my story, it makes sense and had to happen that way. And contributors were given some leeway to write grittier than movie-version stories.

Meanwhile, I am now back to the countdown to pub date for my March mystery (What the Fly Saw). I'm on a virtual book tour and writing guest posts. The challenge is to make each one unique and targeted to the audience of the website. I have a list of book-related ideas, and I'm telling myself that if I could write that short story, guests posts should be easy. They're not. But I'm getting them done.

Will let you know what happens with the short story and how the virtual book tours goes.

Neither a pantser nor a plotter be

Barbara here. I really enjoy following Rick on this blog's rotation schedule, because he always gets me thinking, which inspires me with blog topics when I am down to the wire. He and I have walked a similar writing path and hence share many experiences and insights. I too have a stack of full-length novels on my resume as well as three novellas. Rick and I have the same publishers for both. Thankfully, I don't write advertizing copy but I do write short stories and indeed have just finished one entitled The Lighthouse for a cross-genre, Poe-inspired anthology put together by horror/ dark fantasy writer Nancy Kilpatrick and eclectic, "anything goes", mystery writer Caro Soles. Look for nEvermore! from Edge Publishers later this year.

Short stories share with ad copy the same economy of words and powerful punch. Each word has to count, and there is no space or time to waste. Like poetry, short stories have to make every word and action the most perfect choice it can be. They are rigorous training for any serious writer.

Like Rick, I have confronted the issue of outlining at various times over the past 20 years. Or its variant, synopsis writing. Generally, publishers love them and writers hate them. Publishers want evidence that you know what you're doing and will produce a credible story at the end of the day. Some writers – the sort who outline fanatically – do know what they're doing, but some of us are straitjacketed by outlines, have little idea where we are going, and prefer to just let ourselves loose on the page. It's always terrifying, but after ten published novels (and numerous "practice novels") I've learned to trust that it works. No doubt it is not the easiest or most comfortable way to write a novel, but for some of us, it's the most creative way. I've often joked to incredulous readers that if I don't know where I'm going, how can the reader possibly know?

However, as Rick mentioned, the publisher of our novellas wants a detailed chapter outline before the contract is signed, so I have learned to do those. It helps that these novellas have a single point of view and a simple, linear plot. And they are short. No back story or flashbacks, no interwoven subplots, multiple story lines or three hundred pages of unwieldy plot. I start at the beginning of the story and brainstorm to the end before I write the actual prose. Things may change in the writing and characters may surprise me, but the bones of the story are there to act as guideposts throughout the writing process.

I have just today finished the first draft of a brand new, full-length novel in a new series. In this project, everything was an unknown. The characters were all strangers to me, the setting was unfamiliar, and for the first time I was writing an amateur sleuth adventure thriller instead of a police procedural, so I had none of my usual signposts to follow. Although I normally write multiple point of view, in this novel I was writing scenes not only from three points of view but also with three simultaneous story lines coverging towards the final climax.

It was terrifying. Incredibly hard work. I found I couldn't simply let myself loose on the page, because I was weaving a story involving multiple threads, so not only did I have to ask myself what would this character be doing next, but what are the other characters doing at the same time? I've never been one for lists or charts or coloured index cards, but I found myself keeping a file of notes on my ideas as the plot progressed. Notes on what I thought might come next and on problems I had to fix in the story I'd already written.

And I found myself doing mini-outlines. Not of the novel from beginning to end, but at pivotal points in the story, I would take stock, brainstorm forward three or four scenes, and jot the scene ideas down. When I'd written those, I'd imagine the next few. In fits and starts, I made my way to the end of the novel. Part free form, part outline. Now that it's done, I feel it was creative but still controlled, and I am ready with my file of notes for the rewrites.

Perhaps this will be the new style for me, one of the truly diehard pantsers. Neither a panther nor a plotter be, but a manageable hybrid of the two. We shall see.

Writing is writing

I’ve been doing a lot of writing over the past week. Unfortunately, it’s not been for the novella I have due on June 1st nor for my new full-length novel. It’s copywriting for an important client and it’s got a much earlier due date, so write I must!

However, last night, completely fried after a work day in the salt mines that didn’t end until after nine (starting at 8 a.m., too!), I still had a spark of creative energy left, so I opened up the novella file and did some work.

And a curious thing happened.

Before continuing, I have a small confession to make. You see, for some reason, the first draft of nearly everything I’ve ever written contains what my good friend, editor Cheryl Freedman, calls “weasel words”. What she means by that term is that the way my characters speak and the way I describe things prevaricates. I don’t come right out and confidently state things. The evidence of this going on is when I use phrases like “it seemed”, “I think”, “it appeared as if” and too many others to list here. Occasionally, some of my weasel words are there for a very good reason, but more often than not, it’s an indicator that I’m not completely sure of what I’m trying to say. That may be because I haven’t completely worked something out in my story, or I’m not clear about who the character is, but the end result is that my writing comes across as if I’m waffling — which I guess I am. (See? I just weaseled in that last sentence.) Cheryl, a dear and generous thing for sure, always reads my mss as soon as I think I’m done. I phrase it that way because she always finds that I’m not as done as I believe I am. Her experienced eye picks up wherever I’m (still) “weaseling” and calls me on it. While it often frustrates me, I am certainly more than grateful for her eagle eye.

So there’s the back story.

Now the thing with advertising copy is that you always want to project confidence and knowledge in equal proportions. Readers must feel that you know what you’re talking about or you’ll lose them (and their money). You also can’t use a lot of words. Every single one has to have impact but appear artless at the same time. You can never reveal the “man behind the curtain” and make people feel as if they’re being manipulated — even though they are.

Last night, in bed with my journal on my lap, I began working on a new chapter. Because my publisher requires a written chapter summary beforehand, I knew what I needed to say. After glancing at the previous chapter written nearly a week earlier, I started in. An hour and a bit later, I was finished. (They’re short chapters in this format.) Before closing up for the night, I read through it, and I was astounded to see not one example of weaseling, even though I had only the barest of ideas about what I wanted to say. Every word of dialogue projected confidence on the part of each character which was especially surprising because one of them just “wandered” into the chapter unexpectedly — usually a place where weaseling is rampant.

Did I suddenly learn how to avoid my perennial problem? I don’t think so. I have to put it down to a week of hard work writing ad copy (and believe me that is very hard work).

Now I’m not suggesting every novelist take up writing advertising copy, but I am beginning to see the value of staring out the window or at the ceiling (or whatever you do when you’re concentrating) and working things out in greater detail before you pick up your writing implement or lay a finger on your computer keyboard. In other words, more reflection is needed. Normally, I just jump in and throw words around with abandon until I run out of gas, at which time I read through what I’ve created so haphazardly and am appalled at the sloppiness — even though the basic ideas are good.

You’re probably laughing at my coming to this conclusion at such a late date, but that’s the way these things work. The best way to learn is by working things out yourself — at least, that’s the best way for me.

The other thing that struck me was, “Dear Lord! You’re becoming one of those writers who outlines before writing!” That’s something I never thought I would espouse, but I seem to be heading down that path. I’m currently comforting myself by saying that I won’t actually write my thoughts down, but even if I only do them in my head, it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?

It also appears that you can teach an old dog new tricks…

Can't Live With It, Can't Live Without It

I am in the terrible position of having to get a new computer. My PC is ten years old, having far outlasted all the fancy laptops and i-Pads my technology-addicted family have bought in between.

It’s been kept going by Brian, who comes in when something goes wrong, shakes his head and says that what I need is a new hard-drive, but then fixes it so that it works all right for a while and I put off having to face the dread of losing really important stuff in the transfer – like that email in the Family folder that my daughter sent me about a visit they made seven years ago and all the similar emails lingering in all the other folders too.

My more technically-minded husband has been helping to nurse it along but it has been a severe strain. I realised the time had come for drastic action when I found him standing looking blankly at a shelf in the supermarket. ‘I think I’ve caught a virus from your computer,’ he said. ‘My brain is Not Responding.’

So even I have realised that The Time Has Come and I have to get rid of it before it has whatever PCs have when they take a fatal seizure and die and all my files die with it.

Under the direction of my long-suffering and more technically-minded husband I have been saving all my files and email folders to a USP stick while he has been putting everything into a Drop Box so we’ve done a sort of belt-and-braces job. The new hard drive is sitting on the floor, waiting for Brian to come and install Word 8.1 - and why, pray, do computers not come with the programmes installed? I don’t expect to have to pay extra and spend hours on making my new washing-machine ready to wash clothes. But I digress.

I have a bad habit of anthropomorphising the machines that serve me and feeling guilty when their natural life is at an end: my loyal Kenwood mixer - forty years of glorious service, now old and tired and consigned to landfill; Henry, our vacuum cleaner, with the cheerful face on his cylinder, superseded by a new and - shh! more effective model.

I feel no such affection and guilt for my PC. We have squabbled constantly over the years, when it performed unprompted some unhelpful and spiteful act that caused no end of trouble and angst. Loyalty had no part in our long relationship.

But having grown used over the years to its little quirks, I’ll now have to adapt to new systems and layouts. I have the dreadful feeling that it will all have become much cleverer and more sophisticated. The trouble is, I haven’t. Oh dear.

Weekend Guest Poster: K.A. Laity

I'm delighted to welcome K.A. Laity, a fellow member of the Upper Hudson (Mavens of Mayhem) chapter of Sisters in Crime as our welcome guest.

K. A. Laity is the award-winning author of White Rabbit, A Cut-Throat Business, Lush Situation, Owl Stretching, Unquiet Dreams, À la Mort Subite, The Claddagh Icon, Chastity Flame, Pelzmantel and Other Medieval Tales of Magic and Unikirja, as well as editor of Weird Noir, Noir Carnival and Drag Noir. Her bibliography is chock full of short stories, humor pieces, plays and essays, both scholarly and popular. She spent the 2011-2012 academic year in Galway, Ireland where she was a Fulbright Fellow in digital humanities at NUIG. Dr. Laity teaches medieval literature, film, gender studies, New Media and popular culture at the College of Saint Rose. She divides her time between upstate New York and Dundee.

Simplify

by K. A. Laity

I used to have Thoreau’s mantra posted on the wall of my Cambridge apartment. I had illusions that somehow my huge piles of books and papers would magically disappear or tidy or somehow look less cluttered. Living in three countries in the last three years, I have managed to unload a good deal of belongings, but I’m a writer. There’s only so many books you can manage to pry from your hands.

I’ve been more successful in trying to employ it in my writing. The reminders keep coming at me lately. The other day Bish’s Beat posted a reflection on a conversation with a best selling writer who went on about simplifying everything: “Cut exposition to an absolute minimum.” Maybe you don’t want to write a bestseller, but as my pal Saranna DeWylde posted, classic authors also tend to write more simply than you think.

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” ― Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

I’m in the midst of teaching a noir fiction course and re-reading Hammett, Chandler, Sanxay-Holding and Hughes has reminded me how lean their prose is. As usual I teach to learn and I am excited by the re-discovery of why I love these books so much. There are so few wasted words. So much is left to the reader to fill in.

Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York: they assume you know the cities or will take their word for it about how they are. Specific locations we need to know practical things about get just the important details: Sam Spade’s apartment, the Sternwood family estate, the Holley’s boathouse. We know Effie Perine’s boyish face—and we know that no romance will happen between her and Sam because of that description. She’s able and attractive, but no femme fatale. Carmen Sternwood doesn’t just suck her thumb, her thumb is weirdly formed, another finger, so the image becomes an indelible part of her character and her wrongness. And after our introduction to Dix Steele imagining himself flying in the midst of the fog then following the girl even though he “didn’t intend” to do so, there are no more direct words than “She was afraid.” You learn all you need to know about him from his pleasure at that knowledge.

“Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.” ― George Sand

I’m changing my own writing. In the midst of a new novel, I am taking the unusual step of backtracking. I like to burn through a first draft without looking back and then edit afterward. But I feel bloat creeping in and I want to snuff it out at the start and go on the same way. It’s the same way with teaching. You can see on their faces when you lose them. I stop and go back, try other words, find out where we parted company. You can do that in a class room. In a novel, a reader’s patience only lasts so long. As a reader, I’m rather ruthless when it comes to giving up on a book. There are so many books to read after all.

So I cut the words that are unnecessary. I cut the passages where my joy in describing a scene goes beyond what the reader needs to know into my pleasure at throwing words on the page. I cut to the best words, the specific ones, because the right word is more indelible than a whole paragraph of prose. I cut until it bleeds.

The Built-in Topic

Everyone's mystery is about some particular setting or topic that can be exploited for talks. That little something in the background is much more likely to hold a readers' attention than trying to persuade people to buy your mystery book. Why is your book different from everyone else's book?

I've always known this, but with the advent of social media, I'm just now beginning to realize how much can be done. Recently I received a request to speak at Nicodemus, Kansas on the topic of my new history book. The book is about 19th century Kansas African American politicians. There were hints that I might receive a stipend. We'll see. Considering the state's draconian budget cuts, I'm not counting on it.

To me, it was terrific to have to an unsolicited invitation to speak to people on a topic that they are interested in. I accepted happily with the usual warning, however, that I don't do weather. Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas are famous for savage last minute storms and I often have to cancel plans.

Because the book won't be out until 2016, I'll take my mysteries along and do a little mini-pitch for the Lottie Albright series. I'll talk about the differences between fiction and non-fiction writing.

Between now and time University of Oklahoma Press's catalog comes out, I need to take the time to sit down and think.

For some reason planning marketing comes hard for me. It's not that I can't think. It's just that I don't like to. Oddly enough I love to solve problems. That helps me a lot with my wretched computer wrecks. An ability to solve problems would seem to carry over to futuristic planning, but it doesn't.

To stay afloat in this noisy overcrowded word of mystery writing, we simply have to learn to plan campaigns. Oddly enough, there has been very little written on this subject.

Care to share how you do it. Do you simply respond to whatever falls in your lap? Or plan ahead.?

Eating Dostoyevsky

Shoveling gives me time to think. And unlike my Type M colleagues who are smart enough to live in Arizona, I've had plenty of time to think lately – western Massachusetts was pounded with two feet of snow last week and got a dusting of eighteen inches Monday.

One thing I've been musing of late has been Crime and Punishment, which I've read three times since June. (Yes, I'm teaching it.) If I read it in high school, I don't remember doing so. And if I read it in college, I was too busy majoring in the college newspaper, working evenings at the local daily paper, and chasing pucks and members of the opposite sex to remember it. But now, I'm devouring the novel.

The late poet Mark Strand understood this. In his wonderful ode "Eating Poetry," he describes the sensation:
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

Maybe we all have that book we've been waiting to devour, written by that author we've been waiting to meet, waiting fall in love with. These works speak to us for many reasons, some unknown. However, as a writer of crime novels and a fan of any work in any genre that deals with the individual struggling with internal conflict and delves into utilitarian themes, questions of religion and moral and societal corruption – Crime and Punishment doesn't just speak to me; it shouts.

The book opens with our protagonist (anti hero) Raskolnikov leaving his terrible dwelling to walk to a pawnbroker – a terrible, nasty woman – whom he plans to murder in the coming days. His rationale: she won't live long, and he (and others) can benefit from the money. He even meets a police officer along the way who, theoretically, agrees with his thinking, but reminds him of the absurdity of the world, which, in a society dominated by a czar, has left Raskolnikov penniless and his sister facing what amounts to prostitution to save the family. In my Crime Literature course, we speak often about issues like socio-economics and class in the criminal justice system. Dostoyevsky was only a couple hundred years ahead of me. The universality of this crime novel? Anyone who reads the book and followed recent events in Ferguson, MO, will make the connection.

Interestingly, I figured I was the lone crime writer on planet earth to not have read Crime and Punishment. Yet I've come to realize many of my friends have not (or, like me, might have but not for many, many years). I'd urge members of the Type M community, writers and readers alike, to put a copy on your nightstand. And, once finished, tell me what you think.

The End of Cursive?

Every time I hear about another school system deciding to remove cursive writing from their curriculum, I get a little sadder. Learning cursive used to be a rite of passage in grade school along with learning how to tie one’s shoes. One of those skills that comes in handy throughout your life.

Apparently, this isn’t just an issue here in the U.S. Our neighbors to the north have also been removing cursive from the curriculum for a while now. http://www.todaysparent.com/family/education/cursive-writing-in-schools/

(Interesting side note: according to the above article, the form of cursive taught in the U.S. and Canada is particular to North America. Developed by a Canadian, H.B. MacLean, the MacLean Method was taught widely throughout both countries. Looking at the letters for the MacLean method, I'm not totally convinced it's what I learned. My handwriting certainly doesn't look as fancy as those letters. But, still, it's an interesting side note.)

I’m definitely in the pro-cursive camp. I still believe this “ancient skill” has a use today. I’ve always felt that I remember things better if I write them down. Something about putting pen to paper ingrains whatever I’m writing into my brain that typing (sorry, keyboarding) does not. And there’s just something comforting about writing in a flowing script. (Don’t tell me I can print. It’s just not the same thing and so much more painful.) Plus I also find I write better drafts of a chapter for a WIP if I write the initial version in longhand.

There are a number of different studies that seem to support the idea that learning cursive is good for the brain. According to this article in Psychology Today, “scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development” and that cursive “activates areas of the brain that do not participate in keyboarding."

Then there are some articles here on the Campaign for Cursive blog that support the idea that students who take notes in longhand in class retain more than those who take notes using a keyboard.

But, what really got to me recently was this Huffington Post blog post that points out what people who can’t read cursive could be missing out on: a recipe written out in cursive by a grandparent, a letter written by an ancestor.

I know there are more pressing problems in the world, but this one still bugs me. What do you all think?

Standing on your own two feet

Regardless of what people think the life of an author is like, the truth is that it’s a lot of work, much of it not much fun. The reality of the current marketplace is that most of the grunt work is done by the author, not by the publisher, the media or publicists — unless said author hires the publicist him/herself.

Has it always been like this? I really don’t know, but I would expect things were more dependent on other people rather than the author.

But we now live in an age of “downsizing”, “rationalization”, “outsourcing”, all nicely manufactured terms for corporations telling us we must “do more with less” (except for the people at the top). Sure, we can complain, gnash our teeth, protest, but the truth is, there’s very little that can be done about it.

Publishers have long known that writers are desperate to see their books in print – even high-profile authors when it comes down to it. There is far more truth in in the words “Publish or Perish” than most would believe. Desperate people can be talked into a lot of things simply because they’re desperate. Some (certainly not all) publishers will take advantage of this. It’s not because they’re inherently nasty people working for nasty corporations. Most often, they’re moved by simple economics: there’s less money to go around and the money that’s available must be put to work in the places where it will have maximum return.

Being at the bottom of the food change in publishing (as they always have been), writers who then become authors upon publication of their deathless prose (my designation of the difference between these two jobs), will take on a lot of the promotional work simply because they want to get ahead. They will pay for publicists, arrange their own book events, send out press releases, design publicity materials. When the publisher is also doing some of this work, too, you can get a lot of bang for your buck, but far too often, authors are out on their own.

For me, sure, I don’t like having to do it, truth be told. I have obligations beyond my writing that must be attended to – like making enough money so I and my family can survive, and there are only so many hours in the day. But I also love writing. I want to share my work with as wide an audience as I can reach. If I get really lucky, I might even make enough money so that my writing habit would actually generate enough income to support us – and allow me to write full-time. There are very few authors who don’t wish for this, though only a lucky few achieve this lofty goal. Those are usually the ones who embrace the paradigm of the author being prepared to do anything and work hard at it in order to maximize their chances for grabbing the brass ring.

Make no mistake: success in publishing has as much to do with luck as skill. You have to be in the right place at the right time. However, if you don’t maximize your chances, you’ll likely remain on the fringes. Let me put it this way: you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.

So the next time you ask yourself, “Why, oh why, am I having to do all this?” answer yourself this way. Look in the mirror and say, “You brought this situation on yourself. You wanted to be published, you want to be successful at it. So dig in and get to work!” For me, being in control of these sorts of things means that I don’t have to rely on other people to do it. Sure, that would be nice and all, but how much of the needed work would get done promptly, and more importantly, correctly?

Faced with that reality, I’ll do it myself, thank you!

Release day for By Book or By Crook

By Vicki Delany

Hi, from an airport somewhere.

I am on my way to Phoenix right now, and tomorrow is release day for the first book in my cozy series from Penguin/Obsidian. The book is titled By Book or By Crook, and is the first in the Lighthouse Library series.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m appearing at the Cave Creek Library with TWO New York Times bestselling cozy writers, Kate Carlisle and Jenn McKinley.  I am really honored to have been included!

And then in the evening we're launching the book along with Kate’s newest in the Fixer-Upper Series, This Old Homicide at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale.

Kate and I will be doing other events around Phoenix in the next couple of days, and I will be travelling to North Carolina and Florida later in February, and to Oregon, Michigan and Pennsylvania in March.

For those closer to home, the Canadian launch of By Book or By Crook will be at the Picton Library, Tuesday Feb. 10th at 7:00. Snow date is the 12th.  (I note that we weren’t given a snow date in Scottsdale.)

My detailed list of events can be found at www.vickidelany.blogspot.com. 

By Book or By Crook got a starred review from Library Journal which said:

“This charming, entertaining, and smart series launch by Gates ... features an unusual (and real) setting and colorful cast of characters that set it apart from other bookish cozies.”

And it was a staff pick at the Sleuth of Baker Street bookstore in Toronto:

“Fun to read, interesting insights on Jane Austen, great setting, it makes me want to visit Bodie Island and I was jealous that Lucy got to live in the lighthouse as part of her job.” 

If you’re near any of those locations, I’d love to say hi.

Weekend Guest Blogger: Reed Farrel Coleman

I'd like to introduce the Type M for Murder community to Reed Farrel Coleman, who is making his second appearance as a Sunday contributor. A lot has changed for Reed since we last heard for him, as you will soon read.

Reed is the New York Times Bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone series. He has published twenty-two novels and novellas as well as short stories, essays, and poetry. His a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year and a three-time Edgar nominee in three different categories. He has also won the Audie, Barry, Macavity, and Anthony Awards. Reed is a former Executive Vice President of Mystery Writers of America and an adjunct instructor of English at Hofstra University. He lives with his family on Long Island.

You can find him at: Reedcoleman.com
Facebook.com/ReedFColeman
Twitter: @ReedFColeman

Becoming Parker

By Reed Farrel Coleman

After his death in 2010, Robert B. Parker’s wife, Joan, went to Otto Penzler and asked him to create a project that would pay homage to Mr. Parker’s career. So was created In Pursuit of Spenser, a collection of essays on the subject of Robert B. Parker’s literary legacy. Contributors included Lawrence Block, Dennis Lehane, SJ Rozan, Ace Atkins, a host of other noted crime fiction authors, and yours truly. Otto asked if I would do a piece on Jesse Stone, Mr. Parker’s second most popular protagonist after Spenser. I gladly accepted the assignment. I wasn’t a voracious Parker reader. I had read some of his novels: a few Spensers and a couple of Jesse Stones. But given my assignment, I went back and read several more of each, adding a Western as well, and gained a greater appreciation for the characters and Mr. Parker’s writing talents. In the end, I wrote an essay entitled “Go East, Young Man: Robert B. Parker, Jesse Stone, and Spenser.” The well-received tribute was published in 2012, and that, as they say, was that … or so I thought.

Skip forward to early May of 2013. Two weeks earlier I had finished writing The Hollow Girl, the ninth and final installment of my Moe Prager Mystery series. The only contract I had was to write novellas for the Raven Books imprint of the Canadian house Orca Book Publishers. These are twenty thousand word books featuring little person detective Gulliver Dowd. They’re fun books to write and I love Gulliver, but they only take me about a month to do. What was I going to do with the other eleven months of the year? I suppose I thought I would write the books I always wanted to write, but never had time to do before: the YA/sci fi novel, the straight literary novel, the series of connected short stories. You know, all the ideas that had been kicking around in my head for years. I never got the chance.

At about 3 PM on the first Wednesday in that early May of 2013, I got a call from my agent. He kept asking me if I was sitting down. He asked me so many times that I threatened to strangle him if he didn’t just say what he had to say. “How would you like to be Robert B. Parker?” is what he asked. I knew he couldn’t be asking me to do the Spenser novels because my old pal Ace Atkins was doing a brilliant job with those. I had never written a Western, so he couldn’t be asking about Hitch and Cole. Sunny Randall? Maybe, but I was hoping he was asking about Jesse Stone. Bingo! It took me about a nanosecond to say yes. My life has taken quite a turn since then, including a stay at numbers 11 and number 17 on the New York Times Bestsellers list last September and October.

Here’s the funny part, though. I had assumed I got the gig because of my essay in In Pursuit of Spenser. It made sense, right? And that was the narrative I had created. Only when I had my first conversation with my editor and I mentioned the essay, she said, “Oh, that sounds interesting. I’ll have to read it.” So far becoming Robert B. Parker has been a lot like that, full of unexpected turns and surprises.

Okay, so now I had the gig. How was I going to handle moving forward with Mr. Parker’s Jesse Stone series? Would I try to do imitation of style in the way that *Michael Brandman had? Or should I take a different approach with the series? I am good at imitating voice, but after twenty-five years at this, I have also developed my own strong authorial voice. I sought the advice of several respected colleagues. The most influential of which was with my close pal Tom Schreck, the author of the popular Duffy Dombrowski series.

Tom is a huge Elvis Presley fan. What has Elvis to do with Jesse Stone? For me, everything. What Tom said to me was that he had seen the best Elvis impersonators in the world, but that even the greatest of them was limited by one unalterable factor: they could never do anything new. I can’t oversell the impact Tom’s words had on me. I realized that to do imitation would be a trap, that no matter how skilled I might be at it, the readers would always see my work as imitation. I further realized I hadn’t struggled for so long and sacrificed so much to do imitation. And had I been willing, imitation is hard to sustain. Easy to do for a page. Difficult to do for three hundred pages.

I took following approach: 1) Respect the protagonist and his supporting cast as they had previously been written. 2) Keep the form of the previous novels—third person, short chapters—intact. 3) Return to the darker, grittier tone of the early novels in the series. Even with this plan, I had to find my own way into the character(s). Although I had written several series and knew the mechanics of writing series novels, this wasn’t my series. Jesse wasn’t my character. How could I get into his head, his heart, and, most importantly, into his soul?

I came at Jesse as I have always come at characters, through their foibles, flaws, regrets. Jesse has three glaring problem areas: alcohol, his ex, his baseball injury. Of these, baseball my way into Jesse.  He regrets his drinking. Is torn over his divorce. But it is the baseball injury that haunts him. It was easy for me to put myself in his shoes. Easy to imagine being one phone call away from Dodger Stadium only to have his future turned upside down by a stupid, careless incident. Once I found that sweet spot, writing Jesse became a joyful challenge, one I hope to keep at for many years.

_________________
*A longtime friend and associate of Robert B. Parker, Michael Brandman wrote the three Jesse Stone novels immediately following Mr. Parker’s death. He was, and continues to be, a major force in the production of the acclaimed Jesse Stone TV movies.

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".

The Best Writing Advice Ever

Jenn McKinlay, Donis Casey, Rhys Bowen, "pimping" our latest books

I, Donis, did an event last week at a library in Sun Lakes, Arizona, along with Rhys Bowen and Jenn McKinlay. If you are a lover of cozy mysteries, Dear Reader, you are familiar with both of these best-selling authors. The crowd was enthusiastic and the panel was lively, and I had a great time talking about writing, the writing life, our books, characters, you name it. At the end of the session, a woman in the audience asked if had any helpful advice for aspiring authors, and Jenn McKinlay replied, “Don’t think too much.” Just keep writing.

That is the best piece of writing advice I’ve heard in a good long while, and one that I need to take to heart. The most important thing is to get those words onto the page. You can fix it later. You can have the most brilliant idea every conceived on God’s green earth but what separates the men from the boys is the ability to get it down on paper in an effective way.

Both Jenn and Rhys are not just talented, they are disciplined and effective. Both of them produce two or three (or sometimes four or five) books a year, and they are wonderful books, too. Rhys, whose Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy series are two of my favorites, has been writing professionally for all of her adult life, and with any art, the only way to get to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice, practice. One of my favorite adages, and one I repeat constantly, is that you can study music theory until you have a Ph.D., but unless you practice the violin until your fingers bleed, you’ll never be a virtuoso.

Jenn told the crowd that she writes a book from beginning to end without stopping, without making any corrections. As she writes she keeps a list of things she will go back and fix once she has the first draft finished. My technique is similar. I always intend to write from beginning to end without stopping. If I get stuck or can’t quite figure out what to do next, I just write something, a filler, or leave a blank and plow onwards. Get that first draft done. By the time you write the last word, the story may have taken quite a turn from the way you thought it would go when you were writing the beginning.

But now you have something to work with. You can go back, if you need to, and craft the beginning to fit the end. You can cut out all the blather and redundancies that you put in there on the fly. You can tighten up that saggy middle and add another clue that will make things clearer.

I know all this very well and this is what I tell anyone who aspires to write a book. Yet sometimes I’m not so successful in taking my own advice. I’m working on a manuscript right now, and I keep obsessing over one particular scene. I sit down every day to go, go, go from beginning to end, but for the past several days I keep going back to a family dinner and messing with it. Big mistake, and I know it. If I get the whole story down, the dinner scene will resolve itself. So today my fervent resolution is to take Jenn McKinlay’s advice and not think so much. To hell with the dinner scene. Onward to the end!

The eighth Alafair Tucker novel is on the publisher’s schedule for release in November. My deadline for the complete manuscript is April 20. That is the day that no matter what, I’ll be forced to pronounce the book done and send it in to her. Sometimes this is the only way a book ever gets finished. You simply have to turn it in.

I’ll get it done. I always do.

New beginnings

Barbara here. What an interesting, meandering examination of gender, identity, and character creation we have been having over here at Type M in the past couple of weeks. Several of us have also talked about changing hats and writing a new style, or creating a new series, and how that has enriched and invigorated their writing.

Writers face three challenges in continuing to write a long-running series. Firstly that they start to repeat themselves and fail to grow as writers, which most of us dread. Series allow us to stay with old friends we know so well that it takes little effort to get into their heads. It allows us to stay in comforting surroundings, using the neighbourhoods and background colour that has become as familiar as our own back yards. These two advantages are also the greatest pitfalls. Comfortable and familiar does not encourage risk, growth, or leaps of imagination.

The second challenge is that the series dictates the kind of story that can be told. My Inspector Green novels are police procedurals, and no matter what curves I throw at Green nor what detours my stories take, a police procedural has the particular flow of a police investigation. Moreover, all the stories have to take place in Ottawa (well, I cheat a little) because that is where Green has jurisdiction.

The third challenge derives from reader expectations. Both Rick and Vicki had alluded to this notion that a reader buys a book expecting a particular kind of story, and may rebel if they don't get it. The Green stories are gritty and realistic, but with a heavier emphasis on psychology than on blood and gore. If the next book turned out cozy (or serial-killer horror), I would likely get a slew of complaining emails. Writers, and their publishers, deviate from the winning "formula" at their peril.

But writers get all kinds of story ideas involving different heroes and places, and those stories can't be shoehorned into a police investigation in Ottawa. Writers of long-standing series sometimes solve this feeling of straitjacket by writing occasional standalones. Or by writing a second series, which is sufficiently different in tone, form, and setting that they can explore new vistas and experiment with new styles.

This is why the start of 2015 marks a new beginning for me as well, as I embark on a new three-book contract for a completely different series. There are ten books in the Green series, and it seemed like a solid place to take a break and explore something new. Green will be back, and I suspect I will be delighted to reconnect with him when I am ready. But for now, I am deep in the world of a very different character.

First off, my main character is a woman. I always thought it amusing that authors were often mistaken for their main character, or that the lines between author and character blurred, because Green was quite clearly distinct from me. Although as any author knows, not as distinct as one might think.

My new character is also not me. Amanda Doucette is a lot younger than me, the age of my daughters in fact, and is still searching for her place and her path, which allows her to have adventures and experiences which I get to share vicariously. Always fun for a writer. But she shares many of my passions and my values, and is in some ways who I might have been had I been young in today's world. I became a psychologist to help people; she became an international aid worker. She is resourceful and smart, determined and action-oriented, yet she struggles with what she has seen. She is a powerful and interesting person for me as a writer to spend time with, and I hope readers will think so too.

The setting of my new series is a wholly different concept as well. Each book will take place in a different setting across Canada, the first one in Newfoundland and the second in Quebec's Laurentian Mountains. I hope to explore wonderful locales across the country, taking myself on adventures and never growing tired of one place. Some of these adventures I will take in person, as on last fall's Newfoundland trip, but some of it will be within my own living room, as these photos attest.

Pidgeonholed!

Vicki’s post from last week, as well as others here on Type M recently, plus some side discussions I’ve had with people, have got me thinking how the crime fiction genre has gotten divided and subdivided and then subdivided again over the past several years, to the point where it’s getting quite, well, silly in many way. Publishers, readers and writers, we’re all guilty in this…crime.

Several years ago, I was describing a novel I was working on to an interested bookseller. “Oh, it’s a chase thriller then.” Huh? “There’s a category for this kind of story?” “Certainly. I have customers who will read nothing else.”

I’ve found out since that there are now very specific categories called things like “woman in peril”, “crafting mysteries”, “food mysteries”. Vicki has started a new series that I guess should be called a “library mystery”. All of this on top of the older categories made up of things like “thrillers”, “hardboiled”, “police procedural”, “amateur sleuth” and “cozy”, to name a few of the main ones.

But now it’s all sliced and diced and readers and publishers are demanding that your novel fall into a neat, little pigeonhole. From a marketing standpoint, I can see why publishers and booksellers might want this. It used to be that you only had to deal with whether you were writing standalones or a series. Bookstore owners usually knew what they were selling so they could tell you about a specific book. Even if you preferred a certain kind of story, you could often be persuaded by someone’s enthusiastic endorsement. If you’re purchasing a book and lack that personal description and recommendation, you might well hesitate to put done as much as forty dollars on a hardcover.

So for various reasons, we’ve become a lot more exclusive these days. It goes far beyond economics and marketing. As I’ve already mentioned in a recent post, many people won’t step outside the little box into which they’ve put themselves. I guess some of it has to do with comfort zones, and for sure, those are important. If a person is not up for a “blood and guts” storyline, it would be a shame to sell them a book that contains this sort of thing.

But these “product placement” boxes may also lead to comments like, “This story is unlike anything we’ve seen. We wouldn’t begin to know how to market it.” Now, unless the writing being commented thusly on is drop-dead, best-ever stuff, the person saying this might well be tempted to take a pass, be they agent, publisher, bookseller or book buyer. I know it happens. One of my novels was stillborn because my description of its plot led to a very similar comment being made by my then-agent. That’s a shame. I still believe it might have been a very interesting story, but I have little enough time to spend on writing to take chances with a dodgy plot line somebody might not be interested in buying into.

Often the best and most groundbreaking writing comes from something experimental or just plain different. These days, for some very good reasons — but also some very bad ones — experimental writing and storylines have a much harder go of it. We’re probably missing some exceptional writing and stories because of it.

Here’s your homework: come with an exact and specific category in which to place your work if you’re a writer. For readers, describe your ideal sort of book. You must be very, very specific so that you can go right to a bookshelf in a store to find it. For my current novel, Roses for a Diva, it would have to be something like “woman in peril, psychopathic chase, musical thriller”.

Sounds enticing doesn’t it? And I’ve also given away a large part of the plot, too!

Just Who is Your Main Character?

John raised some interesting points in his recent post when he talked about not using real people in books. I don't either, at least not consciously, though as I've written here in the past I did base a major character on someone I had met many years before, someone I'd completely forgotten about until something jogged my memory. I suspect there are more fragments of real people in my books than I realize.

The other thing he said that intrigued me was that he constantly has to tell people, 'No, I am not Jack Austin. No, my wife isn't Lisa Trembley.'

When you've written am extended series, people do tend to assume that you and your heroine are, to some extent, the same person. I was on a panel once where the chair decided that we were actually to come as our detectives, answering the questions in the way that he/she would. I commend it to you as an idea; it was great fun, but it was quite enlightening as well.

Working out how to present myself was a challenge as DI Marjory Fleming is nearly six feet tall, slim and athletic-looking, while I'm – well, not. But I did think to bring in half-a-dozen eggs for the chair from her flock of hens to, as WS Gilbert put it, lend verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

The most memorable question asked the country-loving farmer's wife 'Marjory' what did she think of her author? The reply was basically, couch potato, spends all her time with her nose in a book – often a cookery book,ugh – lives in a town of all dreadful places to live, has never been known to have a good yomp up a hill.

I wasn't allowed a reply, as me, but at the very least I would have expressed my contempt for her total lack of culinary skills since it has always seemed to me that if you can read, you can cook.& Oh, I forgot. She doesn't read either. No, I'm not Marjory Fleming.

But John raised the question of identity. Whose mind is it behind the character's thoughts, decisions, judgements, values – unless our own? In fact I suppose every character we create comes from some aspect of our own brain; where else could they come from? So are we the villain as well as the hero? Just a thought.