Rhythms in the life of a writer

The lazy days of summer

Barbara here. The first week in September has a special meaning for me, as I think it does for much of the Western World. That is the week when the real work of the year begins again. August is lazy, often hot; businesses operate at half-staff and half-efficiency, tourists flood the streets, and friends and family are posting pictures from Ontario lakes or Scottish castles or Parisian cafes. But the first week of September, I suddenly notice the nip of fall in the air, the tinge of red in the trees, and the swifter descent of night.

For about sixty years of my life, I was governed by the rhythm of the school year, starting at age five when I headed off to my first day of kindergarten. Back in the mists of time, children walked to school, usually accompanied by an older sibling or neighbourhood child, and we didn't carry a backpack worthy of a trek up Mount Everest. We skipped along, trampling lawns and jumping over small privet hedges, our hands free to pluck dandelions.

For the next thirty years, I sat in one class or another, pored over books in the library, and hunched over a typewriter, as I slogged my way up the academic ladder to a PhD. I was a slave to the school year. July and August were months of lightness and relief, September arrived with a thud, and then every week had its own small echo of this. Friday night was a night to celebrate surviving the week, and Sunday night was a night of panic and dread as I faced the looming week of unmet deadlines and unfinished work.

No sooner did I stagger across the finish line with my PhD clutched in my hand than my children began their march through school, and I landed a job as a consulting psychologist for a school board. Once you become a parent, days off become a distant mirage, but even so, there remained a relaxed rhythm to summers and a hectic pattern to school days. Alarm clock, up, wake kids on way to shower, race downstairs pulling clothes over head, breakfast on table, lunches in bags, boots found, jackets, etc. etc. You've packed a full days' work into the morning and you aren't even out the door yet. On days when the driveway needed shovelling, well ...

Throughout the following quarter century, the week was for work (and soccer and ballet and music lessons and and and), while the weekend was for everything else– shopping, cramming in appointments, seeing friends and family, and having fun. Work hung over my head, usually in the form of presentations to be prepared or reports to be written, but generally my non-work life took priority. There was a pervasive sense of "not enough time!" for either work or fun.

During all those years, I was a writer in my "spare" time, driven by a compulsion to tell stories that began when I was a child, and I squeezed out moments of writing time from my already overloaded day. That's why my first novel took over fifteen years to complete. But once it was published in 2000 and I embarked on a new career as a writer in addition to psychologist, I discovered there really were only twenty-four hours in a day and no amount of screaming on my part would change that.

When I retired from psychology, and turned my full attention to writing, I thought I would have all the time in the world. No more September panic or Sunday night despair. Time would spread out before me, mine to fashion and fill as I wished. I discovered the joy of shopping at times when the whole world was not also trying to shop, the joy of navigating the streets at non-rush hour (although increasingly there is no non-rush hour), the joy of scheduling appointments at midday, midweek.

I also discovered that without the imposed rhythm of the work year, it was up to me to impose my own if I wanted to get anything done. Moreoever, to finish a novel at deadline and do all the other writing-related stuff the job requires (like writing this blog, which is late today), I had to put in hours of work every day. Aspiring and beginning writers ask, rather wistfully, how I manage to finish a book a year or so. I do so by writing at least a scene a day, every day. Skip a day, and the story slips away from you. How easily that one day stretches to two or three, and the momentum of the growing story is lost. Writing does not always mean pen to paper– it can mean research, rewriting, scouting out locations– but the story is always in mind, worming around in my brain.

At a book signing at Sunshine Coast Festival in BC

After the story-related writing, which can take three or four hours, mainly in the morning, I have to attend to the other writerly activities like blogging, social media, preparing presentations, planning and travelling to signings and tours and launches, etc. People ask me how I'm enjoying retirement, and I have to tell them I am not retired, I am on a second career. It's a career I love, and one I continue by choice, but it's serious work nonetheless. My life is no longer governed by the rhythms of a regular job. No longer 9 to 5, no longer Monday to Friday, no longer September to June. The leaves still turn in September and the days grow shorter, but now I am just as likely to be hunched over my computer on a Sunday morning or Friday night as any other time.

But I can shop when I like, and make sure I'm home before rush hour. What day is it today, anyway?

Being read to

For many of us (hopefully most!) our first exposure to books was when someone (parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, etc) read to us. Right this moment my wife is reading a few of his favourite books to our grandson. Nearly every time he comes over, he asks to be read to. It was the same with his dad and his uncle. Generally I put the boys to bed and books were an important — dare I say critical — part of the bedtime ritual. All these years later, I can still do a large part of The Cat in the Hat from memory. With son #1 wanting it every night for nearly two years, how could memorizing it not happen?

Hopefully, reading to them starts children off on the path to reading in adulthood. We were only 50% successful in this regard. One of our boys reads incessantly, the other confines his reading to the newspaper and occasional magazines. Why? I can’t tell you — but wish I could. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.

As I got older, the only time I was read to was when I was really ill. That’s how I got my first exposure to a “real” book: Uncle Wiggily in the Country. Even though I only got the story in dribs and drabs doled out when my mom wasn’t busy, I was certainly hooked on reading. Around seven at the time, I certainly had decent reading skills, but it suddenly became important to read books on my own.

From then on, I devoured books. Any spare moments I had, you would find some book or other in my hands, and I read anything that took my fancy. While friends were stuck on comic books, I was reading history or short stories or novels or biographies, anything that caught my interest.

By the time university rolled around, reading has to take a back seat — although I didn’t like that necessity. Sometimes I would sneak in some reading when I should have been doing other more important things. I inevitably paid the price, but I didn’t completely regret what I’d done.

Do I still enjoy being read to? You bet. But now it’s generally audio books (especially on long car trips). If there’s a radio play, I’m first in line to listen. There’s something about a voice (only) telling you a story that brings me great comfort. Perhaps it’s a harkening back to my childhood with my mother’s gentle voice reading me The Jungle Book or Uncle Wiggily stories, but whatever the reason, I love to be read to.

How about you?

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And I can’t wait to read Uncle Wiggily and The Jungle Book to my grandson. I just mentioned this to my wife and she told me that my (non-reading) son is already delving in to The Jungle Book with Jackson. Wow! That’s the best news I’ve got in a long time. Maybe we didn’t do so badly — vis-a-vis reading — with our second son after all.

A Future Customer

Every other day, it seems, there is a media item about the modern child's adddiction to electronic entertainment. With television, smartphones and tablets on offer they don't have either the concentration or the inclination to read a book. Books, by comparison with the excitements of technology, have allegedly lost their enchantment.

So I was enchanted to find this clip  on YouTube:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/this-little-boy-loves-books-so-much-that-he-cries-when-his-mother-stops-reading-to-him-10483080.html

At least we have one future customer. In fact, more than one. My small grandson, a robust little boy – and we all  know what that means – has even so always been so addicted to stories that his nursery had to make a deal with him that when he had had two he must go and do a different activity before he would be allowed to have another one.

Of course, the effect was to make stories more desirable than ever. Whether it's really the story itself – and in the case of the little boy who cries, it certainly seems to be – or the adult attention and cuddles that go along with the reading, it's hard to say, but there's no doubt that it's the best way to instill in a child the instinct that books are a Good Thing.

I was talking the other day to a first year primary school teacher who works in a school in one of our poorest areas and it was one of the saddest things I've ever heard; there are children coming into her class who don't know their own name, and have to be taught to speak, because their parents have never engaged with them.

Sometimes it's a problem of drink or drugs, sometimes it's just a teenage parent who has no proper experience of mothering herself, but the child will have spent its infancy in front of a TV screen with a dummy in its mouth to keep it quiet.

Recent research shows that success in adulthood can be predicted from the age of two by a child's interest in books.

So I hope the parents of the baby who cries with disappointment when the story is finished keep reading – even though it may seem a long five years before he's able to do it for himself..  

Buy My Book. Please!

Gentle Reader is going to read only one of your books. I’m convinced of that. Then GR is either going to love your work or give you a pass. One book. That’s it. I don’t care how good you are or how much money you make or if the whole known universe thinks you are the best writer ever.

If Gentle Reader loves you he or she will buy everything you’ve ever written. If the dear soul doesn’t.

Well.

I’ve seen writers agonize over sales, quality of their books, marketing, social media, etc. But basically it comes down to a tricky match between the reader and the writer. Books are too expensive to buy those of writers we really don’t like all that much. For that matter, reading books we aren’t enthusiastic about are like being on a forced march. We don’t have to if we don’t want to. It’s one of the bonuses of being an adult instead of an English student.

I read books that I don’t care for. Quite a few, in fact. I read them out of curiosity, or because a friend has asked to “blurb” a book, or because I thought they were going to be worth reading. But I often feel cheated and resent wasting my time. I read a number of books to study technique, or because they are a classic that everyone else has read. I’m a sucker for good reviews. I read books that win awards. I’m going to read everything that’s on the Edgars list. And all the Pulitzer finalists. Ditto National Book Awards.

My oldest daughter, Cheryl was over the other night carrying books I had given her for Christmas. On top was Lila by Marilynne Robinson. The first words out of her mouth were, “Whatever you are reading, put it down. Right now. Start reading this instead.” Now that’s the way to sell a book.

My daughter, Michele, tried to stop me from taking The Secret Place by Tana French. Because her husband hadn’t read it yet. Isn’t that silly? I pulled the seniority card.

Our whole family reads everything Tana French writes and also Craig Johnson who writes western mysteries. Audrey likes David Mitchell, but I don’t. How could she not have liked Gone Girl—but she didn’t.

My husband loved military history. Especially books about World War II. I gave Mary Beth one of Mo Hayden’s books and she was an instant dedicated fan. She bought everything Mo had ever written.

What we are looking for is a real live fan. The kind that adores our books and will tell all their friends. But to reach this person we have to do a lot of work. We can’t make someone like our books. But we can do everything possible to make sure a likely person knows about a book we’ve written and if possible, persuade them to read the first few pages.

That’s where the rub comes in. What is the best way to get our books in the hands of a reader?
At the beginning of this year, I decided to do more with social media and go to fewer conferences. I went to fewer conferences, but fell down in my determination to conquer social media.

There are three basic ways to get find that elusive dedicated fan:

1. give talks and presentations at bookstores, libraries, or groups
2. Become a social media whiz
3. Go to conferences and befriend a fan

The trick to find our own "best way."

Getting the itch again

It's been a month. Almost to the day.

In early July, I finalized and delivered my spring 2016 novel, Destiny's Pawns. Then I wrote a 63-page screenplay, a pilot for a would-be TV series featuring my heroine Peyton Cote. My agent is doing her thing with that now.

It's autumn. School has begun, and I run a dorm at a boarding school. That means I'm up late lots of nights. Recently, on those nights when my family has gone to sleep and the house is dark that little voice has been whispering in my ear again.

It's been one month since I've written, and there are stories to be told.

My three-book contract with Midnight Ink is up. Now we wait to see what they want to do and what I want to do. Do they want more Peyton Cote novels? Do I want to write them? I have more of them in me; I know that. And a single mother who's also a US Border Patrol agent in a region as interesting as northern Maine and who has a loony mother is just plain fun to write. So we'll see how it all shakes out. If Peyton doesn't come back I have another character who's been whispering opening lines as well.

As an aside, one thing I love about Midnight Ink is they let me do what I want: I've written three books in this series, and each is very different from the others – stylistically, structurally, as well as the pace in which the novel unfolds. In a day when branding seems to mean so much, it's great to have artistic freedom to stretch yourself.

We'll see what the future holds for Peyton Cote. But I know it's time to start writing something.

Batteries Recharged

As my computer informed you a couple weeks ago, I was on vacation—a driving tour of parts of Idaho, Montana, Utah, and a teeny bit of Wyoming (Yellowstone.) Three national parks and 2700+ miles later I’m back with my batteries recharged.

Unlike the Donald*, I’m a firm believer in taking breaks from work. No matter how much you enjoy what you do, I think most people benefit from a change of scenery and not thinking about their job. You come back with a new perspective and new ideas.

I didn’t actively think about my WIP on the trip, but my mind must have been working away because I came up with some new ideas that will make the story much stronger. I jotted them down in the handy-dandy notepad I carry in my purse because otherwise I’d forget them. Since I returned, I’ve begun incorporating the ideas into the book.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from my trip.

Here I am at the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, ID. By the way, Idaho has the nicest rest areas of any state in the west. Okay, Oregon has good ones, too. Hey, these things are important on driving trips.

Yep, that’s a real bison wandering around a parking lot in Yellowstone.

Here’s a photo of Glacier National Park in Northwestern Montana. Even with three fires burning in the park, the air was remarkably clear and the scenery beautiful when we were there.

Here are a couple pics of Arches National Park. Much hotter here in eastern Utah and not as clear. The 16 or so fires burning in Washington state were causing bad air in Idaho, Montana, and parts of Utah. (Montana and Idaho seems to have taken the brunt of it.)

*In his book, Think Like a Billionaire, Trump gives ten ways to think like a billionaire. The first one is “Don’t take vacations.” He believes there’s no point to them. “If you’re not enjoying your work, you’re in the wrong job.”

Autumn arrives!

When I was younger, autumn was my favourite season (even though it meant that school was starting up again). Eventually, when I began my career as a school band teacher, autumn began losing some of its lustre as my favourite (because it meant that school was starting up again).

Now my favourite season is summer. Though I no longer teach — except on special occasions — I still love summer more. I think it boils down to the length of the days. Those long summer evenings are absolutely golden, as are early summer mornings when the wind is still but the air is cool. What a wonderful time to sit and watch the world go by.

Still, autumn retains some of its charms for me. For one thing, I feel much more energized, and no, it has nothing to do with cooler weather. (I actually like hot weather.) For whatever reason, autumn’s arrival actually helps me focus better and get more done.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that autumn has arrived — at least as far as I’m concerned. Huh? It’s still summer Blechta! The calendar says so.

I disagree. Calendars are very arbitrary human inventions and mean absolutely nothing to the physical world. The earth thumbs its nose at our stupid expectations, courtesy of J. Caesar, Esq. I know with certainty that autumn arrived here in Ontario last week—if you were paying attention.

When our family was younger, the highlight of our summers was to camp in late August on Flowerpot Island off the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. What made it so cool for all of us was that it was pretty rough, just a platform near the water (to protect the fragile ground) on six campsites and very seldom were all of those occupied. A few times, we were the only ones camping. Tour boats came to the dock all day long disgorging daytime visitors, but around 5:00, they stopped running and you were alone out there until the next morning around 9:30. We didn’t have cell phones in those days, so if something bad happened, you were stuck. But the solitude was also magnificent.

Experiencing the natural world like this brought you closer to it. You noticed more things: changes in the wind, changes in the temperature, and the state of the waves on Georgian Bay gave us a hint of something going on.

One day, we were walking to our favourite spot for swimming. Then something odd happened. You couldn’t see it or smell it, but you could certainly feel it. We walked through what felt like an invisible curtain. In one or two steps, we went from warm to chilly. It was probably a matter of a couple degrees, but it was certainly noticeable.

We stopped. What had happened? As it turned out, it was a weather front, a passage from a low-pressure southern system to a higher pressure northern system. We found out later while talking to one of the tour boat pilots that we’d actually walked through a change of seasons.

“Wind’s changed. The Bay will turn over tonight. You can bet on it.”

“What?”

“Georgian Bay will turn over. That’s what happens on all the lakes at the beginning of autumn. The cold water from the bottom will flow to the top and everything will change. Happens every year.”

Sure enough, he was right. A wind came up with the high pressure system and over the course of the day, the water began to get cooler. Swimming out over the big underwater cliff that dropped straight down a few hundred feet, I could feel the rush of the colder water rising up and flipping the sun-warmed “summer water” down to the bottom. It was probably happening all along the Niagara Escarpment that runs down the eastern spine of the Bruce Peninsula.

Next morning it was noticeably cooler and feeling, well, autumn-ish. Yes, we had some more warm weather that year (as we are experiencing in Ontario currently), but it was clear that another summer had passed into memory.

We weren’t in the north last week, but knowing the signs, we could definitely feel the shift in seasons. My wife has noticed it in her gardens, too. The plants certainly know that it’s autumn. I haven’t seen or heard goldfinches in a couple of days. They’re always one of the first birds to leave.

I also know it happened, because I suddenly feel a shift in my energy levels. Time to begin getting more work done! This probably harkens back to the struggle to amass enough food to last through a long, cold winter, but I’ll use it. I’m waking up this week, ready to get to work.

Today I wrote 2000 words before even making coffee. If you knew me well, you’d know that’s pretty strange on its own.

Rapid Reads

By Vicki Delany

As most of you know, as well as writing novels Rick, Barbara and I write Rapid Reads novellas for the Canadian publisher Orca Books. 

The Rapid Reads books have a dual purpose. First they’re short, fast, but interesting and exciting crime stories for the reading public with perhaps not a lot of time to get into a longer book.  Secondly, the books are aimed at a low literacy or ESL (English as a second language) audience.  

Adult books, with adult themes and adult language plainly written, without a great deal of complexity.

My third book with Rapid Reads will be released on August 25^th. It’s titled Haitian Graves.  

The first book I wrote for them was A Winter Kill, about Nicole Patterson, a young police woman with the OPP in Price Edward County, Ontario, where I live. Before I continued with another Nicole Patterson book, I had the opportunity to visit South Sudan , and there I met some RCMP officers who were working with the UN, helping that country set up a modern, efficient, police force. (Aside: I blogged extensively about my visits to South Sudan over at One Woman Crime Wave, my private blog.  Here a link to a sample, for those interested in reading further: http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.ca/2011/12/klondike-friday-juba-south-sudan-2011.html) 

And so I created Sgt. Ray Robertson and Juba Good.  But by the time the nice people at Orca asked me for another Ray Robertson book, the situation in South Sudan had deteriorated so much that I felt I couldn’t write another book set there.  

As it happened, I was heading off to Haiti to visit a friend there. And, as it also happens, the RCMP is active in that country, also working with the UN.

I asked my friend to introduce me to some Canadian police officers and then I took Ray to Haiti in Haitian Graves.

I love writing the Rapid Reads books.  To me, it’s an exercise in stripping a crime novel down to its most basic elements. No flashbacks, no subplots, only one POV, a linear time frame, little introspection. Just a fast moving plot, clearly defined characters, and a great setting. Word for word, these novellas take far longer to write that any of my other books do. 

Intrigued? 

Why not check out Haitian Graves or one of Rick or Barbara’s books. We promise you a great read!

Self-Discipline and Writing

I'm frequently told that I accomplish a great deal -- criminal justice professor and mystery writer -- non-fiction and crime fiction. Right now, I'm in the midst of writing a nonfiction book about dress, appearance, and criminal justice and a historical thriller. Meanwhile, I'm working out the plot details of another mystery. But the truth is, I am easily distracted.

As Donis told us in her post yesterday, sometimes there are ants in the kitchen -- or some other distraction from sitting down at the keyboard and writing. I think at some point, all of the Type M-ers have recounted a major or minor distraction from writing. So I know I am not alone in having to cope with the ups and downs of the real world. In fact, these legitimate reasons for not writing on a given day are of less concern to me than the thought that I waste time. I admit I have a limited supply of self-discipline.

Over the years, I have tried to develop strategies to compensate for my lack of discipline. I have read numerous books and articles and blog posts from other writers about how to be more productive. I have tried to apply some of that advice. For example, the advice to "be consistent" and "develop writing habits". I have tried getting up at the same time every day and going to my computer. That would work if only I could persuade myself that I should go to bed at the same time every night, or set my alarm to go off at the same time every morning no matter what time I finally fall between the sheets. I am a night person. I like being up and reading or doing research at night. When I have a deadline, I write at night. After all these years, my bed time remains erratic, and so does my rising. Actually, in summer I am much more likely to wake early because of the light pouring in. But if I am tired, getting to the keyboard consistently is still a problem. Hence, my feeling all summer that I was wasting my precious mornings with tasks around the house and to-do lists.

I am on sabbatical from teaching this fall because I need to finish my book on dress, appearance, and crime. I did a proposal, so two chapters and the introduction are already done. The other chapters are outlined. My research is done and I am ready to write. I have a deadline -- the beginning of January when I need to start preparing for spring semester. I know I will get the first draft done because I must. But it is still annoying that I could not develop and follow a writing schedule this summer. Yes, it was true I had another lingering writing commitment that I needed to finish up, and I served on a committee, and I cleaned out my office and my house. And my spaces are now much more tidy. But I might have finished those tasks more quickly if I hadn't been distracted by ideas that occurred to me and sent me off to the computer to spend whole afternoons looking for articles and then reading the articles or requesting the ones I couldn't access from the library. During the summer, I created new piles of articles and books to read. Some of them may be useful in the end, but looking for them was a distraction because much of what I was looking for could have been found later when I got to that point in my writing.

Right now, I am fascinated by Eleanor Roosevelt. I am reading her "My Day" newspaper columns (collected in book form). I needed to only read the columns from 1939 for my thriller. But the columns cover the period 1936-1945, and I sure that I will not be able to stop reading when I finally get to 1939. Eleanor and I will go right through World War II together. And then I will have to restrain myself from reaching for Goodwin's No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a hefty volume about the home front during World War II. But my book is set in 1939. I need to exercise some discipline and focus only on what people living in the years leading up to 1939 would have known. And as intriguing as she is, I will stop reading about Eleanor. I will get back to what I am supposed to be doing.

But you can now see the problems created by my lack of discipline. In spite of the good advice that would undoubtedly make my writing life easier, I am not consistent. I don't have a fixed time to write. I don't have a  word count/quota that I am trying to reach. I don't have -- and this is one of my greatest distraction even though I tell myself that it isn't -- but I don't have one place that I write each day. I move back and forth between my office at home and my office at school. I fear I am wasting a significant amount of writing time in transit. But even this fall when I will be on sabbatical, much of my collected research for the nonfiction book will be stacked up in boxes and file cabinets at the office. And I will still focus best on my fiction when I work at home.

I am thinking of designating days of the week for working at school or at home. On those days, I will get up and move briskly to reach my desk -- a few feet into my office or get dressed and out the door and drive into school. I will sit down, I will focus, I will not be distracted by ideas that pop into my head that seem urgent but can be thought about later. I will write those ideas down on a pad and come back to them later. I will have a designated day of the week when I will do all my chores such as grocery shopping and taking clothes to the cleaners and filling the car with gas.

I will not be distracted. I will be consistent. . . well, I will at least do a calendar and write down proposed word counts and try to follow it. I must because if I don't, January will come and I will not have finished what I must get done.

A Bad Writing Day and a Good Review

I had a good writing day yesterday. Today, not so much. To begin with, I awoke to an infestation of ants in my kitchen. There are very few things more disgusting that finding ants all over everything in your sparkling clean kitchen. It’s a little bit cooler today*, and overcast, so I’m thinking the ants are taking advantage of the fact that they can emerge from their den in the daytime and not be instantly crisp fried.

So I spent half an hour or so moving all my utensils and spraying the little buggers with fruit wash, which is lemony and kills them dead while making my kitchen smell lovely and not poisoning me at the same time. Then I have fifteen minutes of cleaning up the carnage with disinfecting wipes, after which the toaster oven, can opener, and their friends go back into their places. The fruit wash is used up, so I’m off to the store to buy more, and for good measure, some ant traps for the window sill.

I have two blog entries due over the next two days, so after fixing a bit of lunch for my better half and myself, I spent an hour on the computer writing up one post, followed by finally checking my email and social media and responding to everyone who needs a response. By this time I have become stiff and sore from standing in one place (not to be left off the latest health fad bandwagon, I’ve been writing standing up). I took some time to pay bills, and noticed that one long-standing bill has gone up for some reason not explained. Like an idiot, I called the billing department to find out why.

Forty-five minutes later, I am informed that this is an across-the-board rate hike for everyone in Arizona, and she’s so sorry that I didn’t receive a notification.

It is now 4:30 p.m. I still have to finish this entry before Don gets home and supper needs to be made. I’m almost done! I may have an hour to get some work done on the WIP!

So, to end on a high note, I’m appending an excerpt of the first review of my November release, All Men Fear Me, from the August edition of Kirkus Reviews. It was a very good review, much to my pleasure and satisfaction. I hope this is a harbinger of things to come.

“When the U.S. enters World War I, hate and suspicion triumph over rational thought…Naturally, Alafair is worried about her sons being drafted, but she never suspects that a visit from her brother, Rob Gunn, will cause problems with people she’s known for years. Rob is a union organizer who’s lying low after his release from an internment camp for his involvement in an Arizona miners’ strike. While everyone waits to hear whose number has come up in the draft, strife breaks out between the pro-war patriots, who think anyone with a foreign-sounding name is a spy, and the anti-war socialists, some of whom want to march on Washington and take over the government… Casey’s skill at making you care about the injustices of a time and place not often covered in history books is second to none. The admirable mystery is the cherry on top.” Kirkus Reviews, August 17, 2015

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*“Cooler” is 102º. I live in Arizona.

Reflections on an author tour

Barbara here, recently returned from the British Columbia mini-tour that I blogged about two weeks ago. What a wonderful adventure it was! Some of the greatest, unexpected, perks of being an author are the adventures you have and the people you meet in the pursuit of your career. You may be out of pocket or at best clear mere pennies once you have factored in the cost of travelling, conference fees, promo, etc., but the sheer fun of the constantly changing experiences makes it all worthwhile. The tax deductions aren't bad either.

The trip began with the usual cramped, frustrating plane trip across the country. Air Canada had chosen to assign me middle seats for the two legs of my journey (despite my stated seat preference), and it was only by alert attention to detail that I detected this early enough to change to the aisle. So far so good. In Vancouver, after waiting ages in the ticket line, I navigated the city's fancy new Sky Train and found my way to my Airb&b, which provided reasonable accommodation near the downtown that didn't break my budget.

The Airb&b had a great location within walking distance of the Book Warehouse and the coffee shops on Main St., and I had dinner at a local noodle place with some old friends before the reading. The Book Warehouse on Main Street has a wonderful, flexible space that allows shelves to be moved and chairs set up for readings. Not only did I share the stage with two of my favourite Vancouver authors, Sam Wiebe and ER Brown, but I also met another terrific local author Janie Chang, who came to the readings and joined us afterwards for drinks at the pub across the street (by which time it was two in the morning for my eastern body). I bought her book, THREE SOULS, which I am currently enjoying thoroughly. Connecting with new author friends from all over the world is another unexpected perk of this author business.

The next morning my Sunshine Coast Festival adventure began with a 1955 DeHaviland Beaver float plane, which seats six people including the pilot. I got to ride shotgun. What a thrill! We took off out of Vancouver's downtown harbour and soared over the sunlit coastal mountains and twisting coastline to the Sunshine Coast peninsula. There I was met by Shelley, who drove me in her green Mazda Miata convertible to the inn. What an introduction to the next four days! The Driftwood Inn is an old-fashioned, unpretentious motor inn with a spectacular location right on the ocean front. Its dining room has a wall of windows overlooking the ocean. After lunching there, I walked along the ocean and took two swims in the warm, gentle surf. Being used to the wild, frigid breakers of the North Atlantic, this was a special treat.

That evening, the formal festivities began with a reception followed by a presentation by Anne-Marie MacDonald. The festival is unlike any other I have been to, and under the special stewardship of festival organizer Jane Davidson, it is an author's delight. Attendance at the festival as a whole is in the thousands, and each author is given a full hour on the stage to shine. Most of us combined talk and reading throughout our hour, and every presentation I attended was heartfelt and riveting. As a crime writer, I most frequently meet other crime writers at events and festivals, so it was a treat to meet authors from all across the spectrum, from Camilla Gibb to Waubgeshig Rice to Craig Davidson, Michael Christie and Cathie Borrie. Everyone used words in unique and moving ways. This is another unexpected perk to the writer's life– the chance to broaden and inspire our own writing.

Many festival attendees come year after year and often stay for the full three and a half days, giving a warm welcome to new authors and old favourites alike. Most sessions were full. Where else can an author get an enthusiastic and appreciative audience of 450 people on a Sunday morning? After each session the bookseller, the wonderful Bev Shaw of Talewind Books, did a brisk business. Mindful of my flight limit, I resisted the urge to buy books by each of the other authors.

Photo by Cathie Roy

My four days at Sechelt ended, fittingly, with a devilish moonlight swim in the ocean and then an early morning float plane back to Vancouver and a ferry ride to Victoria. I wandered the streets and pathways of that charming city for a day before my final event at Chronicles of Crime,  one of the few mystery bookstores left on the continent, and well worth the trip. Owner Frances Thorsen, along with Orca Books, had organized a panel with myself and local authors Kay Stewart, Linda Richards and Brian Harvey. What a lively and interesting exchange it proved to be, with the discussion ranging over morality, justice, mystery conventions, and the death of cats. The audience pitched right in and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

I staggered into my taxi at 6:00 am the next morning to begin the flight home, bearing a suitcase of lovely memories, new books, new friendships, and fresh inspiration to explore new heights in my own writing.

Why the best font is often the one you don’t “see”

by Rick Blechta

Not a typeface I'd want to use EVER!

If you read Aline’s post yesterday, you probably guessed this was coming — or you should have!

I’ve always loved typefaces. Being a graphic designer, I also need to have some knowledge about how they work, an understanding as to why that is, and what to use where for the best effect. My collection of typefaces was in the hundreds before I got into graphic design. It now numbers in the thousands — and I still always have my eye out for something new and distinctive.

I don’t think anyone out there wants a treatise on typography, but I will share a few important things I’ve learned along the way. This is not just aimed at writers (whether published or not), but at anyone who’s reading this post.

Not all typefaces are created equal
Every computer comes with a generous compliment of free fonts. Some are really good, some poor, and many of them overused.

Just because a font is overused doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. An example: you’re sending out a digital form of your ms to an agent or publisher. This is not the time to exercise creativity in your font choices. You want to know what your deathless prose is going to look like on the receiver’s computer monitor. If you choose something that’s not generally available on everyone’s computer, the software will choose the font for you, and it might not end well. My suggestion: in cases like this, use Times New Roman for running copy and something like Arial or Helvetica for chapter headings, your name on each page, the book’s title, etc. Probably every computer on Planet Earth will be able to display your work in the same way.

Now, if you’re submitting a printed ms, that’s a different matter. Here, it doesn’t matter, so go for something that looks good and reads well. Two very popular (and for a good reason) fonts for book copy are Sabon and Bembo. Your computer probably doesn’t have these, but they are not expensive to purchase. A large proportion of the world’s books use these two (or variations of them). Why? Because they’re very readable.

They also aren’t Times New Roman. Those in publishing see mountains of material in TNR and receiving a printed ms in something else is going to be welcome to them. It’s also distinctive and that can score you a few brownie points.

But more importantly, none of these fonts draw attention to themselves. There’s a saying among typographers: “Good typography is invisible.” Aline already said something like this in her post yesterday. A typeface that draws attention to itself in any way is not a good one. It can be as damaging as poor prose or an impossible plot point. It can draw the reader out of the story. Don’t want that, do we?

If you’re writing business correspondence, I’d also recommend Garamond (a favourite of mine), Caslon, or Minion (another favourite). They’re distinctive and eminently readable.

Above all, every font I’ve mentioned are generally very well designed. That means they’ll go on the page (digital or paper) smoothly, without awkward spaces (called kerning) and they’ll be reliable since most have been around for many years — centuries, in fact, in some cases.

To finish up, may I share a pet peeve? To set it up, there are two types of fonts: monospace and variable.

Monospace fonts were primarily designed to work with typewriters. Every character is the same width. Whether it’s an ‘m’ or an ‘i’, the distance taken up between it and other characters will be the same. The result is an ‘i’ (or other narrow character will have a ton of space around it. The classic monospace is Courier (but there are many others). That’s why (to those of a certain age) if you learned to type on a typewriter, you were always told to put a double space after a period, question mark or exclamation. It showed clearly that you were at the end of a sentence.

Variable space type actually has been around for centuries, way longer than monospace. Each character has a different width, so thin or thick, the space between characters will look “right”. So because of this, you do not need to put a double space at the end of a sentence. In fact, it looks downright wrong.

So if you’re one of those “double-spacers” and you’re not using a monospace font, please refrain from following bad habits. It will make your prose look more elegant, and that’s always a good thing.

What's in a Font?

I have a confession to make. I've never really taken any interest in fonts.

Perhaps it stems from the fact that I'm sadly not artistic. I would love to be able to draw or paint but since I'm no good at it (Grandchild: 'Draw me a pussycat, Granny.'  Me: 'Er...') I have taken the 'Oh well, suit yourself,' position and have sulkily stopped bothering about stylistic detail.

I use good old Times Roman professionally, but it does look a bit formal. For my personal emails, I looked at a bewildering number of alternatives and chose Lucida Sans, I think because it was the first one I came across that looked less stiff but still sort of normal and not obtrusive.

Having said that, though, when it comes to the print in a book l'm like many philistines: I don't know much about it, but I do know what I like.

I hate it when the letters draw attention away from the words I want to read. I dislike it when to differentiate between two fictional voices, one's story is printed in italics, or even worse, in handwriting. When I'm racing along, enjoying the narrative, a solid slab of italics makes me feel as if I've fallen on to my nose. I've even been known to abandon the book in disgust.  And a flashy or jokey font in an email induces in me the same dark suspicions as a handwritten letter in green ink.

What I don't notice, I suppose, is good practice – the simple, elegant fonts that don't draw the eye. Certainly I would never have thought that these would make any difference to the way I read.

But the research Amazon did before introducing 'Bookerley,' a new font used for some best-sellers that that will soon be rolled out more widely, was fascinating. Some styles actually fatigue the eye (See above, italics and handwriting) but by making curves and serifs thicker and thinner in strategic places, the eye is led forward and reading, they claim, will be 2% faster and much less tiring.

It would never occur to me to have a discussion with a publisher about the principles on which fonts are chosen, but perhaps it should. We're all trying to write easy, flowing prose that draws our readers on, and we need any help we can get.

Guest Author Lois Winston

I am so pleased to host the inimitable Lois Winston at Type M today. Lois is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author who writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. See the links to Lois' wonderful crafting and writing blogs below.

Characters Who Think Like Their Authors

Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, was published in January 2011. Four additional full-length novels and three mini-mysteries have followed over the last four-and-a-half years. The timeframe for each book spans anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Thus, less than a year has passed in the life of Anastasia and her family. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun takes place in February. A Stitch to Die For, my newest release, takes place the last week in October and the first two days of November.

In this book for the first time Anastasia is confronted with a murder in her own neighborhood. Halloween also plays a role in setting the stage for A Stitch to Die For.

Like most authors, I’m often asked how much of me went into creating my protagonist. Anastasia and I have many things in common, including a communist mother-in-law, but we’re also different in many ways. Luckily, I don’t have a Dead Louse of a Spouse who gambled away all our money and left me up to my eyeballs in debt. However, in A Stitch to Die For Anastasia and I have something else in common—my hatred of Halloween.

I was a very shy child. Having to dress up in a cheap plastic costume and go door-to-door begging for candy was something I dreaded each year. From a very young age I was pushed out of the house to walk the neighborhood on my own, ringing strangers’ doorbells. If I didn’t come back with a full bag of candy, I was sent back out. Add to that the multiple times I was the victim of egg-hurling, marauding teenagers, and you can understand why I’m not a fan of the holiday.

I tamped down this hatred when my own kids were young, even making their costumes. I also accompanied them as they went trick or treating and never allowed them to approach homes where I didn’t know the residents. As a result, my kids have a much different attitude toward Halloween than I do.

Writing about Anastasia having the same feelings I have about Halloween was a bit of a cathartic experience for me. I still hate Halloween, though, not only for the memories it stirs up but also for other reasons, ones which Anastasia gives voice to at one point in A Stitch to Die For:

“Everything okay?” asked Zack as he unloaded the contents of our cart onto the conveyor belt.

I frowned at the bags of Halloween candy he grabbed next, wondering how many of the kids who rang my doorbell Monday night would offer a thank-you. Most of them didn’t even live in the neighborhood and few bothered with costumes—another reason I hated Halloween. “Hardly.”
~~
A Stitch to Die For
The adventures of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack continue in A Stitch to Die For, the 5th book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Lois Winston.

Ever since her husband died and left her in debt equal to the gross national product of Uzbekistan, magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack has stumbled across one dead body after another—but always in work-related settings. When a killer targets the elderly nasty neighbor who lives across the street from her, murder strikes too close to home. Couple that with a series of unsettling events days before Halloween, and Anastasia begins to wonder if someone is sending her a deadly message.

_________________
Visit Lois/Emma at www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. Follow everyone on Tsu at www.tsu.co/loiswinston, on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/anasleuth, and onTwitter @anasleuth. Sign up for her newsletter by clicking here.
Her books are available in paperback, on Kindle,  Nook, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play

Rangers Lead The Way

All the talk recently about the first two women to graduate from the US Army Ranger School made me reminisce about my time in Ranger school, 37 years ago. Where to begin. Well, it was hard. Historically the graduation rate is around 50 percent, and most quit within the first few days, which surprised me. To apply for Ranger school you have to be recommended by your cadre or your commander, plus you have to surpass the prerequisites for physical fitness and military skills. Basically, you have to convince everyone that you're the kind of demented, hard-headed kook who could make it through the nine weeks of anguish. Before you left for the school, you are briefed by recent graduates about what to expect. I remember listening to their litany of misery and asking, "Didn't you do anything fun?" The two Rangers looked at me like I'd grown an extra head. I did spend the month before I was to report for the school toughing myself up. Besides my usual routine of gym work and running, I'd take long hikes through the desert in the middle of the day with a cinder block in my backpack. I wasn't kidding about being a demented, hard-headed kook. The first days of school were what I expected. O-dark-thirty wake ups, lots of running, crawling through the mud of the infamous Worm Pit, obstacle courses, sergeants yelling, being tired all the goddamn time. When a student decided to quit, the RIs (Ranger Instructors) would pounce on the hapless soul and torment him relentlessly for the rest of the day. I didn't understand how someone could show up to the school and not realize what they were getting into.

The Ranger chow line. Even honed Ninja-killers have to eat.

Despite all the hype of "elite" training, most of what we practiced were tried-and-true infantry tactics. Except that we did them for days and nights at a stretch. As motivated as we were, because of the strain it proved tempting to slack off when we could. One embarrassing episode happened to me after we had forded a deep stream. At first opportunity we were supposed to field strip our weapons and wipe them dry. I got lazy and only toweled off the outside of my M-16 and the bolt. Later that day, an RI at random asked to see my rifle. Upon field-stripping it he discovered water dripping from the firing pin. He shamed me mercilessly in front of my Ranger buddies but thankfully didn't write me up.
 
The press loves photos of Ranger students rock climbing and rappelling during the Mountain Phase because it makes for good copy. I had some mountaineering experience so I didn't think that particular training was so strenuous. What did kick my ass were the mountain patrols. Those Georgia hills might not be as tall as the Rocky Mountains but they're more than impressive enough and go on and on and on. Plus they're covered with mountain laurel that would snag our rucksacks and radio antennas, whip the back of our heads, and stab us in the face. To test our daredevil mettle, my platoon parachuted twice into tiny drop zones surrounded by menacing pines, once at night. Between phases we'd get a break lasting eight to twelve hours. After hustling rides into nearby Columbus, Georgia, we would drop off our dirty uniforms at a laundry, visit a steakhouse and shovel food down our throats, pick up our clothes, and rush to the barracks for some lusted-for rack time. Mother Nature cut us slack during the notorious Swamp Phase as Florida that summer suffered a prolonged drought. The swamps and creeks had dried to trickles, forcing the alligators to vamoose for wetter terrain and leaving us plenty of dry ground to tramp over. But the Yellow River had grown so shallow that we had to drag our rubber rafts as often as we rode in them. And yet, every afternoon like clockwork, a thunderstorm would pound the area. To avoid lighting strikes--which have killed Rangers--we'd pile our gear in a heap, lay at a distance in groups of one, and get soaked as we waited for the storm to pass. The RIs advised us to not wear underwear so as to prevent crotch rot; we were going commando during commando training--how meta is that! When on patrol we'd get one C-ration per day (a normal daily ration is three) and would consume everything in that little box. We'd chew the instant coffee to stay awake (didn't work) and ate the creamer because we convinced ourselves it tasted like cotton candy. The big trial was getting a passing grade on the patrols, basically a small-unit operation--a raid, an ambush, a reconnaissance--which is what Ranger school is fundamentally about. If you got lost, you failed the patrol. If you misplaced equipment, you failed. If your team missed the rally points, you failed. If you didn't orchestrate a proper mission, you failed. Fail half of your patrols in any given phase and you'd be recycled or dropped. Keeping track of all these details was challenging enough in ideal conditions. Compound that with sleep deprivation and nutrition deficits and we turned into hallucinating physical wrecks. Sometimes the trance would fall over you in mid-sentence. You dreamed about food, I mean you fantasized about it like sex. Even though we had showed up for school lean and mean, we each lost 20-30 pounds. Finally, after nine weeks, my buddies and I were standing in formation to get Ranger tabs pinned to our shoulders.

So what's the big deal with Ranger school considering few of us would ever engage in small-unit operations? I guess it showed that we were willing to go the extra mile. As for women, barring them from attending Ranger school was a reminder that they are still regarded as second-class soldiers, as less than fully able to perform in any capacity, that they are judged on appearance and stereotypes instead of merit. Consider women athletes, particularly gymnasts, and they certainly have the strength and drive to make the cut. In the military we already have women fighter pilots, astronauts, submariners, divers (now that is tough training!), and combat nurses. The irony of not letting women attend special operations training is that women are deployed anyway with SEALs, Special Forces, Rangers, Marines, and Air Force special operations. Several have been killed on those missions. They have to do the job but not get all the training. So to the Army's newest Rangers, Cpt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt Shaye Haver, I say congratulations and it's been long overdue.

Cold Hard Truth

A friend emailed me recently who was worried about a young man she knew who was not doing too well. He had never held a "real" job. He wants to become a writer and she wanted to know what I thought of his ability.

In fact, I think he is quite talented. That said, it's very, very hard to assess the merit of a work in a genre you don't regularly read. But talent is not the problem here. The problem is reality.

Only a very few writers make really big bucks. They are very talented and have something quite special going for them. Never mind that this one or that one is not your own personal cup of tea. When they first started out, each person on the best seller list time after time brought something new to the marketplace. These are the born naturals. The cream of the crop. They cannot stop. Case in point is J.K. Rawlings. The lady doesn't need the money but she keeps on anyway. She can't help herself.

 And then we move on to another wealthy tier of writers. They are really good, usually genre specific, but things can get a little weird down the line. Books are outlined and someone else does the actually writing. Names are licensed. Writing becomes harder. Trips beckon. Time with family. A cocktail at sunset. They make a terrific living. Have a sweet life.

But the cold hard truth is that most writers need a day job. Seldom does one's writing alone provide enough to support a family, generate income for research trips, or enable one to attend the endless round of conferences that compete for time and bucks.

So what kind of day job? How many hours a day? I find it puzzling that some of the people with the most demanding jobs produce phenomenal books year after year. As to the type of job? When I taught a course in writing at Fort Hays State University one spring, I found myself worrying about the students' stories, instead of my own writing. It was like trying to water two fields from the same well. Yet, Joyce Carol Oates, who is incredibly gifted has taught writing at Columbia for decades. Our own Frankie Bailey is a professor in the department of justice.

Some writers find that working in a trade or doing something involved with physical labor is just the right contrast. That makes sense to me.

I like bookkeeping and accounting. It's comforting to do non-creative work that is exacting and precise. It's black and white. Right or wrong. Writing is a very messy occupation, but it's so exhilarating! I would rather be a writer than anything else, nevertheless sometimes I think how nice a regular paycheck would be. Sometimes I hate the fog that is a part of creativity.

So my question for the young man would be "How do you intend to support yourself?" The cold hard truth is that if you plan to become a writer you must figure something out.

Off the Grid

Hi, all.

John here.

This week, I've been in the woods of Maine, near Baxter State Park,

at a camp that has no Internet.
I've done nothing but swim with my daughters, kayak, and fish (no luck). Here are some pics of Mt. Katahdin and Togue Pond.

Taking a Breather

Psst! Sybil’s computer here. I need your help. She’s gone off somewhere. Said she needs to recharge her batteries. What’s that about? I recharge mine just fine at home. She “claims” she needs a rest from all of this electronic stuff. No Facebook. No Twitter. No email. I don’t believe it.

I think she’s cheating on me. I’ve seen the way she looks at that Kindle Fire of hers. And I don’t see it anywhere in the house.

I found some photos on websites she visited. I think they’re clues as to where she’s gone. She thought she’d hidden them from me, but I’m smarter than she is.

So, what do you say? Can you help? Wait, what’s that?

Oh, looky here. She downloaded the latest Nancy Drew mystery game. Never mind...

Learning from negative experiences

I am currently dealing with an extremely distressing and unhappy situation. It has consumed a good part of my daily life, is nearly unbearable to think about, and most importantly, completely unnecessary. These sorts of things happen to everyone at some point or other in their lives. They can be tough to live through and tougher to deal with. Eventually, it will all be resolved — hopefully without further grief, although I’m not expecting that sort of happy outcome.

Thing is, something like this can also be a good learning situation if you happen to write fiction. I’m trying to look at it from that viewpoint. It’s been a struggle to embrace what I’m feeling and let it flow over me, but I’m determined to see the process through. Out of something bad, maybe some good can come.

For any novel to be successful, something has to happen that causes change in the story’s characters’ lives and/or personalities. The real story is how these imaginary people deal with what they’re facing. In crime fiction, this usually means dealing with death or violence of some sort. If it’s a police procedural, the cop has to solve the crime. If the protagonist is an “amateur sleuth” then they have to rise to the occasion and solve the crime. (I know most of you understand this, but it helps to set out the parameters of the discussion.)

Thing is, the narrative of characters changing has to, above all, be believable. This is precisely what Frankie was talking about in her post last Friday, Stupid with an Excuse. Sometimes writers are fortunate when faced with this conundrum, other times not so much. How many of us have yelled at our TVs while watching something and a character does something so incredibly stupid that we fall right out of the story? Obviously, the writer failed miserably in making the situation believable.

The believability of a character’s actions is something we fiction writers have to face a lot — and we have to become good at it to enjoy any kind of success and ultimately satisfy our readers.

What many writers are not successful at is injecting negativity into characters’ lives. Yeah, you can superficially deal with it, nearly anyone can understand it on a basic level (the character has a drinking problem, or an unhappy home life or something of that nature), but to really have a character be ultimately believable, negativity of some sort needs to be injected at a very basic level into their psyche and allowed to grow and develop as we get to know them. Once it’s organic in a character, then it just needs to be teased out by the writer, glimpsed here and there, before it is needed for a big scene or perhaps the book’s climax.

Since negative things in people’s daily lives are something that we all shied away from as much as possible, we don’t give ourselves much of a chance to learn the nuances of these feelings. (“I just don’t want to dwell on this. I want to get it over and done with.”) As a writer, I’ve let many good opportunities to improve my writing in this way by shying away from uncomfortable/unpleasant situations — ie: dealing with negative issues as quickly as possible to get them over and done with — slip away without completely understanding my underlying feelings. We all write best when we’ve lived through something first, and quite frankly, I’ve blown it more times than I care to remember.

So as I deal with this unfortunate issue in my life, this time I’m trying to embrace the way I’m feeling, digging deeper even though it’s making me truly uncomfortable. Down the road I’ll be able to relive what I’m discovering and (hopefully) realistically inject it into a character’s DNA and then come up with some prose that will successfully make a situation more real and visceral for readers.

It was a favourite saying of a dear friend that “everything can provide a learning opportunity if you just look for it”. This is one of those occasions.

Guest Slot

Aline here.  I'm delighted to be able to introduce Chris Sims to you today.

His life experience has given him quite a range of experiences to draw on in his writing: he's travelled the world and worked in airports, nightclubs and telecentres.  He is now the lively editor for the Crime Readers Association's free on-line magazine – well worth a look at for exclusive insights into your favourite British writers. His two most recent books are Sleeping Dogs and Sing me to Sleep. 

Proud to be a Genre Jumper

Just about every crime novel ever written shares a common link: corpses. That’s always been fine with me. When I wrote my first novel, I didn’t actually think of it as a crime novel – but it certainly featured a few dead bodies. In fact, Britain’s motorway system was strewn with them by the end.

My next few novels kept to convention – people got slashed, stabbed and strangled in all sorts of interesting places. Saddleworth Moor. The island of Anglesey. A secluded hill in the Peak District. I even had a dead guy pop up in the Manchester Ship Canal, putting some of the city’s restaurant goers off their meals in the process.

The city of Manchester makes a superb setting for crime novels. Once known as Cottonopolis, it was the world’s first industrial city. Factories, mills and warehouses sprung up at an astonishing rate – and with them grandiose civic buildings and sprawling slums. The textiles produced were transported around the world.

Manufacturing has now moved to other countries, yet many of those buildings remain. Some have been converted into plush apartments for young professionals. The derelict ones are inhabited by people at the other end of the social scale. I find the city’s stark contrasts fertile ground for plots.

But while writing my detective thrillers, I was always enchanted by another genre where the dead are de rigueur. Ghost stories. They’re a fine British tradition; everyone from Charles Dickens to Daphne Du Maurier has had a go. And so recently, I put my two detectives aside and fulfilled a long-held ambition of writing one. Well, two actually.

In many ways, crime novels and ghost stories are incredibly similar. There’s amystery to solve. There’s a threat of danger. Tension needs to be built. Justice demands it be served. And, most importantly, the reader must be gripped. The only real difference is, in a ghost story, the dead person doesn’t just…lie there.

Writing my two ghost story novels has been a truly refreshing experience. But now I feel ready: it’s time to bring my detectives back from the dead.

Stupid with an Excuse

The other day I heard some people talking about the stupid things characters in fiction do. We've all had this conversation. It's even played for laughs in a commercial for a well-known insurance company. You know, those kids who run into a barn rather than toward the car with the engine running. From horror novels to crime fiction, romance to "mainstream" – hapless characters run, walk, or meander into situations that any sensible person would avoid. They put themselves in danger and often – well, yes, always – it's the writer's fault. Character in dangerous situation gets to be brave or saved (if the character is female). Character in dangerous situation has an opportunity to discover the crucial secret/clue that leads to the resolution after a climatic confrontation. But modern readers are often annoyed by characters who should have known better, who should have been smart, who did not behave like sensible people.

I've been thinking about this because I was listening to a CD from a recent writers conference. The speaker was talking about why writing oneself into a corner can be a good thing because it forces the writer to find a solution. That solution – in a thriller – means finding a way to get a character (or characters) out of an impossible situation. I've been thinking about this because I'm a hybrid writer. Although I don't plot out every scene in the book I'm writing, I do like to have some sense of what is ahead. I've learned to allow for a change of direction, to let my characters take the lead (my own intuition at work). But this idea of being more of a pantser and writing in a way that allows my characters to get into impossible situations – that they (I) must get out of – is new to me. 

My series protagonist are both rational, sensible women. Hannah McCabe, my police detective, walks into dangerous situation with backup there or on the way. She has her gun in her hand. Lizzie Stuart, my crime historian, may be curious and determined, but she is also cautious. She may end up in danger, but it's not because she did something "too stupid to live".  If I allow the protagonists in my historical thriller to rush forward and get themselves into an impossible situation, do I also have to worry that the reader will wonder how they could have been so stupid?

But, there is a different standard for protagonists in thrillers, isn't there? They are allowed to go boldly forward, to be impetuous and even reckless. If the stakes are high enough, they can take chances -- try to break into impenetrable fortresses, rush into a basement with a bomb ticking, walk into a room full of enemy agents wearing a thin disguise. They get to be stupid with an excuse. The excuse is someone must try to do this. And the person who tries is a hero not an idiot. 

As we have been told in books and seminars, the stakes must be high in a thriller. When the stakes are high enough, what would otherwise be reckless and/or stupid becomes courageous. But how the reader evaluates the situation depends on how well the writer has laid the groundwork. What the character perceives as high stakes might not seem so high to the reader. I've been thinking of a real-life example. This happened year ago, but I still think about it now and then when the weather outside is scary. A severe storm warning had been issued. As I recall, there was also a tornado watch in effect. Maybe it had been elevated to a warning. It was late afternoon, and the time when classes were ending and students and faculty should have been heading home. But most of us were sheltering in place in the massive brick and stone university buildings on the downtown campus. With the ferocity of the storm outside, a few of us had even headed down to the basement in our building. I was standing there in the basement hallway, when a man passed me, heading for the exit into the parking lot. Without even thinking, I called after him, "You aren't going out in that?" He called back over his shoulder, "Got to. My family's waiting for me at home."

He was probably a grad student taking a late afternoon class. He seemed in that brief glance to have been in his thirties. In his mind, the need to get to his family and be there for them outweighed the danger he might face as he drove through a storm. If this man were a fictional character in a book, it would be my obligation – if he were my protagonist – to make his actions reasonable. Rational people might think that rushing out into a storm was reckless behavior. What if he were injured or even killed as he tried to get home to his family? Where would they be then? Would his family want him to risk his own safety to get to them? But what if he had just spoken to his wife on the phone and knew she was frightened? What if he knew she was terrified of storms and she was there alone with their toddlers? What if his wife were pregnant and had miscarried before? What if the family waiting at home was his two children and his elderly mother who had been living with them since his wife died? What if he knew his mother would have a hard time coping if something happened in the house? All good reasons for rushing out into the storm. I could make these personal stakes matter. Bad things might happen to people he loved if he didn't take this risk.

On the other hand, I could take this character in another direction. What if his calm and capable wife had assured him during his call home that both she and the children were fine? They were in the basement, had books, flashlights, snacks, and were prepared to ride out the storm. His wife is a nurse. His son and daughter are both Scouts. They all know what to do in the event of an emergency. But my character ignores his wife's concern about his safety. He thinks a "real man" would brave the elements to get to his family. He is sure they wouldn't be able to handle an emergency without him. He has several mishaps on his way home and finally arrives after the storm is over. The power is off, but he finds his children playing a board game by lantern light. His wife is in the kitchen making sandwiches. He feels ridiculous. Maybe he sulks or gets angry when his wife exclaims about how wet and muddy he is and asks why he didn't wait until the storm was over before heading home. 

Before I begin to write – and write myself into that corner that I will have to get out of -- I'm going to think some more about who my characters are. Actually, I rather like the idea of having my protagonist do something really stupid  – with an excuse rooted in who he is and how he sees the world. 

Make Your Own

Grandma's homemade dress, 1911

I have been called penurious in my time. Yet, in comparison to my mother, or her parents, who had to support themselves and their families during the worst downturn in U.S. history, I am downright profligate.

Nobody knows from frugal any more.

I recently saw a woman on television say that there is a trend among fashionable young people to buy cheap, hip clothing that may fall apart the first time it's washed. But they don't care. The only spend $30 or so for something they throw away when it's ruined and then they can buy something even more stylish and up to date.

I make no judgment. I'd rather be in a position to do that than to have to wear clothes I made myself out of a flour sack. For much of American history, few farm families had the money to buy ready-made clothing from a store. Clothes were homemade and worn until they were so patched and stained that they were unwearable. After which the mother would use what was left the make a quilt, or a rag rug, or a mop. Then she'd use the scraps to make a patch for a shirt or trousers, or a button cover, until the material disintegrated into molecules and floated away on the breeze.

In the mid-1800s, companies that sold sugar, flour, and animal feed began packing their goods into heavy cotton sacks instead of boxes and barrels. It didn't take long for women to realize that once the bag was empty, they were in possession of a piece of fabric that made durable work shirts, or aprons, or really nice, cheap clothes for the kids. Once the flour and chicken feed companies found out what was going on, they started printing pretty designs on the bags, and suddenly every rural child in America was wearing a dress or shirt with little pink flowers on it, or underwear with "Pillsbury" printed across the seat.

A while back I received a note from a cousin of mine who wrote, "Aunt Thelma [our mutual great-aunt] always bragged about how Grandma Bourland [our mutual great-grandmother] only had to look at a photo of a dress to be able to copy it." That comment made me smile, because my grandmother on the other side of the family had said exactly the same thing about her mother [whose name was Alafair].

"Ma didn't even need a pattern," Grandma Casey told me. "You'd just tell her, 'I want pleats here and this kind of sleeve,' and she'd whip it up."

She did, too. Above is a photo of my grandmother Casey standing in front of her parents' house in Kentucky in 1911, clad in a dress that her mother made for her. For a fictional wedding in my second book, Hornswoggled, I dressed the bride in this very outfit.

I suppose if you had seven daughters and you made every stitch of clothing they wore from birth until they left home, not to mention clothing for your sons and your husband and yourself, you'd become an expert seamstress in short order. Even if you had to sew it all on a treadle machine. Years ago I tried to make something on my grandmother's treadle sewing machine. You really have to get the knack of pumping the treadle with your foot. It's like rubbing your head and patting your tummy at the same time.

Me in Italy, 1969. My mother made my outfit.

My own mother made a lot of clothing for her three daughters. We did not live on a farm and could afford store-bought clothes, but Mama grew up in the country during the Depression, and she was the living embodiment of frugality. If she could make do, she did. I never felt put-upon by wearing homemade clothes, because what my mother made was excellent. She had a great eye for material and color and we girls always looked chic. I so loved some of the dresses she made for me in the '70s that I still have them to this day. I think they are museum quality. I'd model some for you, Dear Reader, but these days I could get into them with a shoehorn.