Proper Libraries

Marianne has really sparked something off with her post about a digital library. Personally I feel quite sad at the thought. Speaking as someone who went to Mallorca recently for week, taking only seven T-shirts, two pairs of shorts and undies so that I could use the weight allowance for paper books, I'm not prepared to compromise on the quality of my enjoyment.

There is something about a library, whether it's the little local one on the doorstep, the glamorous one in a stately home that comprises yards of beautiful bindings in bookcases with ormolu trellises across the glass, or the huge university ones with undiscovered treasures hidden in the stack rooms below, that holds a promise of true romance.

When I was at Cambridge University I was studying Macbeth and went to do a bit of direct research on Holinshed's Chronicles, which was Shakespeare's source for the story. (He badly distorted it in the play – Macbeth was actually a rather good King of Scotland for fourteen years, imposing law and order and supporting Christianity.)

There in the university library, amazingly enough, I was allowed to consult a copy of Holinshed which was actually the same edition that Shakespeare used. I bet they don't do that now! I was able to take it to a table and turn to the section on Macbeth, just as he would have done. It gave details of the conflict where Duncan was killed but there was no mention of murder, or of a Lady Macbeth.

It didn't take long to read and I browsed on, turning the stiff, heavy pages to see what would catch my eye, just as Shakespeare obviously did. And there was an account of the murder of one King Duff by Donewald, who was spurred on by his wife. Who could resist a scenario like that? Not Shakespeare, certainly – never mind historical accuracy here, we're talking drama.

And because I could physically turn those pages I had the extraordinary privilege of seeing how Shakespeare's mind had worked. The chill of shocked delight I felt stays with me still.

The digital library may offer infinitely more resources than any normal library could. But what about that physical stuff – the feel, the smell, the look of the stacks of books? What about the intimacy of feeling that you are seeing directly what the author saw when he proudly picked up the first copy of his new book?

If you want information, digital is just fine. If you want to read a book – really read a book – I would contend that it isn't, and the research is on my side.

Long live proper libraries!

Rapid Reads Novellas

by Vicki Delany

Rapid Reads Novellas

At the end of this month, Orca Press will be releasing my fifth novella for them, White Sand Blues.

This is a cozy mystery, the first in a new series about a young Canadian paramedic working in a small Caribbean Island country.  Any resemblance to Turks and Caicos and one of my daughters, is purely coincidental.

It’s a novella, meaning short (about 100 pages). But these books are far more than just a long short story, or short novel. The Rapid Reads books are written for a very specific audience. Adults with low literacy skills, (the reading level is about grade 2 – 4)  ESL students, the elderly who might not have the attention span for an entire novel, and those who are looking for a quick, fast-passed, exciting read. Even teenagers who aren’t big on reading might enjoy them as a way to ease them back into the reading habit.   Before the airplane restriction on ereaders during take off and landing was lived, I loved to carry one or two of these books for the short time frame when I couldn’t read my current novel.

I love writing these books. To me, it’s an exercise in stripping a novel down to it’s basics. Because of the space limitations as well as the literacy requirements, there are no alternative POVs, no flashbacks or alternating time frames, no subplot, no extraneous characters. Just a good story, well written.  The pace is fast, the story quickly developing, to get it all in those 120 pages (about 15,000 – 20,000 words).

In the earlier Sgt Ray Robertson series, (Blood and Belonging, Haitian Graves, Juba Good.) I used the short form to go darker than I usually do. Themes I didn’t want to develop into a full novel, involving struggles in fragile states,  worked perfectly in the shorter form.  With the new, much cozier series, I’m back on familiar ground, but working in a more restricted environment.

If you have someone in your life who needs a less-complex reading experience, I hope you’ll consider looking into Rapid Reads. http://orcabook.com/rapid-reads.com/whitesandblues.html

Finishing the book: Just what the doctor ordered

It’s good to return to Type M after several missed posts. The past six weeks have offered a wild ride.

Until Aug. 24, the summer of 2017 was the best of my life. Academic work led me to spend weeks in Tampa (gorgeous city), Bozeman, Montana (breathtaking), and had five weeks in Maine with all three girls at home (with one daughter in college, those summers are dwindling, I know). Then I caught “a stomach bug” the week before school began. After a few days in bed –– and two trips to doctors’ offices –– I went to the E.R. Aug. 24, expecting to leave with a prescription.

I walked out 17 days later –– and 40 pounds lighter (not a diet plan I recommend). What was “prescribed” that night in the E.R. was emergency surgery to correct a stomach ailment, one I never knew I had. When they wheeled me into the O.R., one of my last thoughts was, I’m only fifty pages from finishing my damned book. When I woke up and was given painkillers, I knew the book wasn’t getting finished for a while.

When I came home, school at Northfield Mount Hermon was in full swing. (I told my wife I feel like Rip Van Winkle –– I left the day before school started, now I return and a quarter has passed.) I live at the school. So “recovery” amounted to sitting with my dog all day “resting.” I napped and looked out the window. Then I felt strong enough to write. I couldn’t teach yet, but I could sit with my laptop and re-read the novel I’d begun 14 months earlier. I liked what I read, made numerous changes, and kept on going, banging out the final 45 pages in a week. Then I asked my four advanced readers to start from the beginning, received their excellent feedback (as always), made final changes, and sent the manuscript to my agent.

We are a beach family, and my 8-year-old offers the best perspective: “Next summer will be awesome! When people ask what happened [the scar on my stomach] we can tell them Shark Bite!” But there’s another perspective anyone who reads Type M will understand. It has more to do with what my visiting nurse keeps saying, “Your body won’t heal if you’re in pain or under stress.” My recovery is going swimmingly (knock on wood), and I think that has a lot to do with finishing the book and liking it. No longer is it hanging over me. No longer is my agent waiting for it. No longer am I, a writer who has an outline but rarely follows it, waiting to learn how or if the book will end.

I feel great. I’m walking an hour a day and resume my day job Oct. 10, and I credit finishing the book with offering me healing power.

Ladies of Intrigue

On a recent Sunday morning, I got up at 6:30 a.m. and headed down to Santa Ana, CA to participate in the 4th Annual Ladies of Intrigue event. I’m not usually up that early, especially on a Sunday, but this was a special occasion.

Co-sponsored by the Mystery Ink bookstore in Huntington Beach, CA and Orange County’s Sisters in Crime chapter, it was similar to the Murder on the Menu event I mentioned in a post several months ago. The main difference: author participants were all women mystery authors. We spanned the crime fiction realm from cozy to suspense to historical to...whatever you can think of.

One of the headliners was best-selling author and criminal attorney Marcia Clark who was interviewed by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, author and KUCI-FM show host. The other was suspense writer and New York Times best-selling author Wendy Corsi Staub aka Wendy Markham, author of more than seventy! novels. The interview with Marcia was interesting and Wendy’s talk was inspiring.

I was one of the panelists which also included Jill Amadio, Greta Boris, Carola Dunn, Naomi Hirahara, Elizabeth Little, Nadine Nettmann, Kaira Rouda, Alexandra Sokoloff, Jeri Westerson, Patricia Wynn and Pamela Samuels Young.

The event lasted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. That seems like a long time, but it sure went by fast. I’m always interested in hearing other authors speak about writing and their books so I had a good time listening to the other panelists talk about their experiences.

Books for sale!

The women at my table were great fun to talk with and I enjoyed myself immensely, though I admit to being a bit tired at the end of the day, but it was well worth getting up so early.

More on old books

by Rick Blechta

I’d like to stay on the topic of old books again this week. Besides the 11 comments left on Type M (a record for one of my posts), I’ve had e-conversations with a number of other people. Several things were pointed out and I’ve cogitated on most of them.

Then yesterday, Marianne posted on the topic of bookless libraries and that led to even more thought pour moi. I believe I’ve at least sorted out why I prefer real books to e-books, but because of last week’s post, it extends even further.

Let me start off by saying that I have a Kobo reader, and while I don’t use it all that much, I do find it very convenient for certain things. For travelling, e-readers cannot be beat. The last time I took a plane and tried to read a paper book I quickly gave up. Why? It wasn’t the weight of the book. It was because the rows of seats are so damned close together. Even if the person in front of you has their chair back straight up, you can’t put a book on your lap without looking nearly straight down. After a few minutes, that starts your neck aching. The solution is to hold the book up in front of your face. With a hardcover, that gets difficult because of the weight factor. If the person puts their seat back, the book winds up too close to your face.

And ebook reader solves some of those problems. First, it’s lighter than a hardcover and if you have to read close to your face, you can just change the size of your type. They also can easily be held in one hand, a big plus over nearly any paper book.

But outside of travelling, give me a paper book anytime. I just enjoy the experience of reading better with one in my hands. I don’t think it’s a matter of “it’s what I grew up with so of course I prefer it”, either.

With an ebook, there’s little “soul”. You buy the book, load it onto your reader and that’s it. Unless you pass around your reader, no one else is likely to read it. With a paper book, you can pull it off a shelf at home or in the library (assuming it’s not a newly-purchased book) and there’s some “history” that comes along with it. Perhaps you’ve read it before (that little food stain on page 141) or it may be inscribed by the author or you or someone else (like the volume I wrote about last week). Perhaps it belonged to someone you remember fondly. Maybe it’s from your childhood. You get the idea.

And what about library books? You can see when the book was last taken out, at the very least. If you go back to an old-school library, you might even see the name of the people who’ve read it. That can be a very cool thing to browse. I remember withdrawing a book from the McGill library when I was at school there back in the ’70s and found the last time it had been taken out was nearly 40 years before! That was very cool.

If the internet had been around in those days, I would have looked up that student and found out what became of him.

Try that with an ebook!

Would you use a bookless library?

The world's first ever bookless library, the BiblioTech, was opened in 2013 in Bexar County, Texas, in the United States. It has 100 e-readers on loan and dozens of screens where the public can browse, study, and learn digital skills. The BiblioTech people don't like the term bookless, calling it instead a "digital library" — after all, it's filled with books, but in digital form. On its first day it had 1500 visitors.

As I understand it, it's a low-cost way of bringing books to a relatively poor district in the city and I applaud the library authorities for their efforts. But even for someone like me, who likes ebooks as much as paper books, I find it difficult to get my head around the idea of a library that houses no physical paper books whatsoever. Rightly or wrongly, the BiblioTech sounds a soulless place and reminds me of the bookless bookshop in Stanislaw Lem's book Return from the Stars (published in 1961!).

"...No longer was it possible to browse among shelves, to weigh volumes in hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They can be read by the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it. But optons were little used, the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons – like lectons read out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation... . Thus all my purchases fitted into one pocket, though there must have been almost three hundred titles. My handful of crystal corn – my books."

I can't imagine holding an author event at a BiblioTech, or taking my granddaughter to story telling sessions there, or doing any of the other fun stuff our local libraries here in Edinburgh offer, from pole dancing lessons (!) to guerrilla operas. Okay, I've yet to go try the pole dancing classes but I was once lucky enough to catch a couple of opera singers perform a love song between the bookshelves. Fantastic!

 

But maybe such things could also occur in a Bibliotech? What do you think? Have you ever been to a digital library? Did you like it? Can you see yourself doing an author event at one? And by the way, do you think the Stanislaw Lem's "opton" is the first mention ever of a Kindle?

Julia Thomas, Guest Blogger

What do you suppose it is like to live in a two author household? Type M is most happy to welcome Julia Thomas, author of two well received stand-alone contemporary mysteries, who just happens to be married to Will Thomas, whose Barker and Llewelyn novels, set in Victorian England, is a multiple award-winning mystery series. How do you manage, Julia?

Julia Thomas

Two Authors in the Family

We live in a household with two mystery writers, on a quiet suburban street in a small town. No one knows what evil lurks just inside the door – in our books, of course.

Will Thomas

I’m writing this on a cool fall day as I sit in our den, my husband sitting on the chair nearest me. We don’t often write in the same room because we both like to talk, but now and then, he has his pad and pen in hand and is scrawling a chapter of the newest Barker and Llewelyn next to me while I have my laptop perched on my knees and I’m tapping a few pages of my third book.

We came to writing a little late, both in our forties, and spent five years working on each of our first books. His first attempt was Some Danger Involved, which became a Shamus and Barry award nominee and won the Oklahoma Book Award. Mine was never published. A year later, his second book came out, and I also finished another, which was also never published. We persevered. After another year, he published his third novel, The Limehouse Text, and I suffered my third failure.

I was getting used to rejection slips. There are many different kinds, of course: the form letter; the form letter with a line or two of encouragement scrawled across the top (“Don’t give up!” or “Send me your next one.”) Eventually, there were longer letters from agents telling me what they liked about it but why it wasn’t right for the market today.

It’s not an easy thing to do to learn from your failures, particularly when your husband hit a home on his first try. It would have been easy to give up or to decide that my role in editing his books – a skill I developed over the years – was enough of a contribution to the literary world.

Julia's latest

But I just couldn’t stop. After three failed attempts, I decided to write a book just for myself, something I could love and nurture and which would feed my creative instincts. I wouldn’t send it out to agents. I’d been crushed plenty of times already. And just for fun, I would break a couple of our agreed upon rules. I’d promised not to write a mystery (since he writes mysteries), and I’d promised not to set a book in England, either, since his books are set in Victorian London. But, because this was a personal exercise in creative writing, something to pass the time, I broke both of those rules.
It’s hard not to have his writing rub off on me, anyway. I’d gone along on research trips to Europe; I’d typed and edited each of his books; and through the years, I’d participated in some of the research he did to make certain his books were period appropriate. And then I realized one day that I had seen almost every important British mystery series on TV, and never once watched an episode of CSI. In other words, I had no idea how to write a police procedural set in the U.S., while I knew a great number of the ins and outs of the British justice system.

The book I sat down to write was a story based on a love triangle, two young actors who fall in love with the same woman. When she is killed, the race is on to find the murderer. Although I’d wanted to write since I was a very young girl, and had created numerous characters over the years, I became more deeply bonded with this book than with any of my previous attempts. The characters were alive to me in a way I’d never experienced before. One day, my oldest daughter read a couple of chapters and informed me that I had unintentionally written “the one.” I’m proud to say that The English Boys was published in 2016, and was followed in July 2017 by another standalone British mystery, Penhale Wood.

We never tell each other much about what we’re working on while we’re writing. Occasionally, he’ll read something funny that’s happened in his chapter, or I’ll show him a paragraph or two. But we usually find out what the other’s book is about after the first draft is done.

Will's latest

I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer and a woman through this experience. First and foremost, I am not a quitter. I am willing to learn what it takes to succeed at writing. Criticism is important, and you have to listen to it in order to improve. It’s also true that no one else can give you that magic ingredient it takes to make it in a highly competitive world. It’s a skill that you have to learn and develop on your own, no matter how closely you work with another writer.

I’m incredibly proud of the fact that I finished The English Boys before I handed it to him to read. He made a couple of suggestions, (especially about the fight scenes!) but it was my novel, my hard work, and my persistence in going after my dream that made it happen. And a pretty full file folder of rejection slips notwithstanding, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
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Julia's facebook author page is  Julia Thomas Author,  and her active Twitter Author page is @AuthorJuliaT  : Will's website is http://www.willthomasauthor.com

Pray for Rain

A few images from Oklahoma

Donis here...more or less. I never really believed in writer's block. Anybody can write something if she'll just sit down in the chair and start typing, and the resulting product can turn out pretty well.

I do very much believe in writer's drought, however, because I've had personal and painful experience of it, more than once. I'm undergoing a severe drought right now, in fact. I returned from my week-long flash tour of Eastern Oklahoma libraries on Sept. 17, then my husband went into the hospital for yet another operation on Sept. 20. I spent the night at the hospital, then left the next morning about 8:30 a.m. to go home and shower and get ready for a creative writing class I'm teaching at Arizona State U. Before I even left the house Don called me from the hospital and said the doctor had come in and told him that everything looked good and he could go home that day! So I went right back up to the hospital after my class and helped him pack up and fill out discharge papers and brought him home late that afternoon. His post-op doctor's appointment was Friday the 29th, and he had all the the tubes and staples taken out. The lymph node biopsies came back clear. Yay! He's still pretty sore, not tip top yet. He's not cleared to drive for another two weeks, and back to the doctor in six weeks. In the meantime, I'm trying to get my lesson plans for the class in some order.

Am I writing? I am not. I don't know why, except that my brains are not working that way right now. I've been known to produce amazing amounts of work while in the midst of some crisis, so why I can do it sometimes and not others I do not know. Of course, I maintain that intellect isn't the defining element in writing, anyway. Often I find myself creating wonderful scenes or characters, and I have no idea where they came from. I certainly didn't think them up - they sprang from my forehead fully formed. I have an intimation that our brains don't create thought, but are more like radios, and only receive and transmit thought that is out there somewhere.(Who thought it? I don't know. God? My higher self?  The collective consciousness?  How can you know?)

So, I suppose it only makes sense that sometimes we can tap into something mysterious and brilliant, and sometimes the equipment is on the fritz and we just can't.  You can't make it come.  You can only be patient and keep trying.  I read somewhere that "more than success, the gods love the effort."

During times of drought, I cling to that thought as I pray for rain.

Bouchercon

Next week, the world's largest mystery conference descends on Toronto, bringing together readers, authors, and others in the book business for five days of celebration of the crime genre. I'm in awe of the organizers of these events; some years ago I was part of the steering committee organizing the smaller Canadian version, Bloody Words, which after about a dozen years died from the exhaustion and burn-out of the small cadre of people running it. Other small conferences and festivals have also come, flamed beautifully for a few years, and burned out for the same reason. These conferences are conceived and run by volunteers, and consume a tremendous amount of time and energy.

Mystery lovers thank you all. We know that several years of behind-the-scenes hair pulling and scrambling has led to these spectacular five days of non-stop, everywhere-you-turn mystery. There are panels, quizzes, author speed dating, author presentations, awards, and just plain schmoozing. Something for everyone, whether you like cozy or noir, fiery debates or intimate conversations, hanging out at the bar with your favourite authors. The dizzying array of choices can be overwhelming, especially when you have to choose between several panels running concurrently, but it's rare that a mystery lover doesn't come away from the buffet stuffed and satisfied, usually with a stack of books from new-to-them authors whose work intrigued them.

Since the inaugural Bloody Words conference that I attended in 1999 just before my first Inspector Green novel was published, I have attended numerous conferences in the United States, Canada, and even Britain, including all the Bloody Words, several Bouchercons and Left Coast Crimes, and Malice Domestic. The conferences have taken me to new, interesting places like Santa Fe, Bristol, UK, and Monterey, CA. However, I've never been to a conference as a reader only. Authors are readers too, of course, but we have to split our focus between soaking up the conference offerings and promoting our own work.

Sometimes the pressure of promoting our own work can get overwhelming. Even after almost twenty years and fifteen books, I am still a very small fish in the huge ocean of authors at Bouchercons. There are still many readers who have never heard of me, and it's difficult to escape the nagging feeling that I need to get out there and tell new readers about myself. After all, conferences are not festivals; apart from the guests of honour, all the authors pay their own way, including registration fees, hotel and travel expenses. This makes it a very expensive enterprise for most authors, whose earnings are often below the poverty line. The hope is to spread the word. Sometimes this results in laughable results. I remember wandering around the cavernous lobby of the conference hotel in Austin, TX, as a newbie, looking for "readers" to chat with. I discovered all the others wandering around the lobby were also authors looking for readers. After a minute's conversation, they would switch to themselves ("Interesting. Well, I write..." and out comes the bookmark). We ended up having a good laugh and commiserating about the challenges of being an unknown writer in the sea of big names.

Along the way, authors also make many new friends and discover authors whose works we love. As I look back, that's the greatest reward from these conferences. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with the readers and writers who've become my friends, and am also looking forward to that serendipitous discovery of new friends and authors, often at the bar!. That is how I am approaching Bouchercon this year. I know I will be a small fish. I know there will be readers and authors chasing after the big fish, who will swan through the crowds with a phalanx of admirers. I am on a Saturday morning panel (10 a.m. Social Issues) as well as being a team leader in the Crime Writers of Canada Friday night pub quiz. Beyond those official duties, I will go to the panels and talks that interest me, go to my publisher's event, go to lunch with my fellow Type Mers, and hang out at the bar! I don't expect to be running around brandishing my bookmarks. Okay, maybe a few, but only if asked.

This is a conference I want to enjoy. I want to enjoy the company of fellow mystery lovers and soak up as many of the offerings as I feel like.

A new / old friend

by Rick Blechta

I clearly remember the first time I read John Buchan’s classic, The Thirty-Nine Steps back when I was 14. It was the first time I withdrew a book from the adult section of our village library where previously I’d used the children’s section in the basement.

I immediately fell in love with the romantic scenery of rural Scotland so ably described and the outrageous adventures of Richard Hannay as he attempts to avoid capture by a desperate trio of German spies (and the police) on the eve of the First World War.

Over the years, I’ve reread the book once or twice and introduced it to my sons when I bought it as an audio book for long car rides. Eventually I purchased a lovely illustrated version. However I loaned it to an author-friend who never returned it and claimed I never loaned it to him in the first place. (You know who you are!)

I ran across John Buchan again this summer while designing the Bouchercon 2017 program book. You see, he was also the 15th Governor General of Canada and because of that and his classic thrillers was nominated as this Bouchercon’s Ghost of Honour. In passing I mentioned to my wife that I really needed to get another copy of my favourite Buchan book. She immediately went off on Amazon to surprise me with a copy.

She purchased a used book published in 1935 (the original publication date of the novel is 1915) as the first novel in a four-novel compendium of Buchan stories from a re-seller on the Isle of Jersey. It finally showed up last week after a two-month journey to heaven-knows-where. It’s a small, thick tome covered in faded red cloth and I altogether love it.

But here the story gets really interesting. You see the original owner of the book had put his name and address at the front. He dated the book as 1/4/1947 and this reprint was from a 1946 press run, so I imagine the book was purchased new, perhaps as a gift.

In this age of Internet everything, I just had to find out where this man (boy?) lived. So I called up Google Maps and my wife and I spent a half hour deciphering the scrawl until we nailed down the address. Then it was on to Google street view to actually look at the house.

It is located in Birkenhead, Cheshire, just across the Mersey from Liverpool. The house we viewed on Google obviously dates from the time the book was inscribed. It’s a side-by-side duplex, one of many on the dead end road. Somewhere along the way it received a stucco and stone coating to make it look newer, but that was obviously years ago too.

Now in my imagination (in the left-hand bow window) a boy or young man sits reading the same story of daring-do I first read at 14 and perhaps looks out the window while imagining rural Scotland.

I did the same thing just this weekend looking out my window, thinking about visiting Scotland again.

But that’s another story.

Saved From Myself

I'm just in the process of going through the copy-editing for my new book, Human Face, which comes out in January. It's always a stressful moment when you look to see what problems have been discovered as an eagle-eyed observer scrutinizes the baby you've spent months trying to deliver.

I have frequently been deeply thankful for that eagle eye which has saved me from myself. In the past, it has pointed out that the car I described as having gone on fire in chapter three was still being driven around in chapter twenty-one, or that I had somehow managed to have eight days in the week instead of seven. On the other hand, there was the time way back in the days when the manuscript came back to you with the copy-edits written on, when the copy-editor had chosen to write her comments in red ink, like my English teacher with my school essays, and included the comment, 'OTT' in the margin. My editor was horrified when she heard, and I don't think that one had much of a future in the copy-editing business.

The meticulous skill and concentration to detail that a good copy-edit needs leaves me, frankly, awed. That goes for proof-reading too; I've always been a very fast and consequently careless reader and things escape me even when I am being as careful as I can. And it can be so important: readers hate finding mistakes of any kind in a book. I even had one – now former – reader who emailed me to say that though she had liked a previous book she wasn't going to read the next one because the word 'separate' was misspelled in the summary on the back. Another, in an Amazon review some time ago, said that though she'd been going to give the book five stars she was going to deduct one for a misprint.

So I'm very grateful to my current proof-reader and copy-editor for saving me from the mistakes I wouldn't spot myself. Fortunately this time I don't seem to have made too many blunders and there have been helpful and constructive suggestions for putting right the ones I've made. Just every so often, though, I dig in my toes – especially when it comes to Scots words!

It's too easy to forget just how much impact the workers in the backroom have on our finished product. I owe a big 'thank-you' to them all.

Why on earth do writers write? Guest blogger Priscilla Masters

Born in Halifax (UK), the third of seven children adopted by an orthopaedic surgeon and his wife, a Classics graduate, Priscilla Masters has spent a lifetime nursing and started writing in the 1980s, securing her first publishing contract in 1994. She is the author of more than 30 crime novels, medical standalones, a series featuring DI Joanna Piercy and another set in the mediaeval town of Shrewsbury featuring coroner Martha Gunn. Her latest title is set in a secure psychiatric unit in Stoke on Trent and features forensic psychiatrist Claire Roget.
 
Now retired from nursing and recently widowed Priscilla Masters lives in the Staffordshire/Shropshire border. She has two sons and two grandsons.

Please visit her website: www.priscillamasters.co.uk/

_________________________

I always feel embarrassed when this question is posed to me. No, I didn’t crawl out from my crib thinking, I’m going to be a writer. Neither did I spend my growing up days pondering the great novel I was one day going to pen.

So what triggered me?

It was a knee jerk reaction to a difficult question posed to me in the 1980s when I was a young mother of two very lively boys, whose husband came home for lunch every day. I had a large country house and garden to run with no home help and to top it all was running an antiques business. So who posed the question? A widowed aunt whose life, I suspect, had not lived up to her intellect and expectations.

The question? ‘What are you going to do with your life, Priscilla?’ (A sobering name which pulls me up short when used in full.)

I answered with what I considered to be the equivalent of a Stinger thrown in front of a stolen car. ‘Write a novel.’ No one ever challenges this lofty ambition. No one says, So where is it? Or Have you started or even When will it be finished? You can easily divert your response with secrecy and vague notions of keeping it all to yourself.

So how come the aunt followed up with, ‘So why haven’t you started?’

My response – admittedly a second knee jerk – ‘Because I can’t type.’

‘Pathetic,’ she said. Stung, as soon as she’d gone the very next day, I borrowed a manual typewriter and began to write. And write. I still haven’t stopped.

Write about what you know is the advice given. I was dealing with antiques so wrote about an antiques dealer. Better advice would have been, Write the sort of books you love reading. Which was and is crime fiction. The sole copy of the antiques manuscript was accidentally destroyed. The book was rewritten and finally published — but not until I’d had more than ten crime novels published.

So a word of advice.

Have ready answers in response to difficult questions.

Something better than, Write a novel.

Don’t write on a manual typewriter (Does anyone?) and fail to keep a copy. Yes, that’s exactly what I did!

Write about something you’re passionate (Yes I know it’s an overused word - apologies) about.

And finally enjoy the craft of moulding sentences, choosing words, giving your imagination free rein.

And good luck.

Author Speed Dating

I'm lucky to be included in an author speed-dating event at Bouchercon. The email I received asking about it contains terrific information. It's quite clear. I'm pasting it into this blog because I've always appreciated the shared advise on Type M.

Two persons are "teamed" and we will move from table to table. I'm working hard to prepare 160 table favors for fans and others who will remain seated. The authors making the pitches move from table to table. Not the fans.

I like to sew and fiddle with crafts. The 160 favors is not as daunting as composing decent pitches.
I suspect it's a good idea to wear comfortable shoes. Not an ideal venue for stilettos.

From the organizers:

What is “author speed dating”?

Each author gets a chance to pitch their book(s) to 20 tables of up to 8 readers to a table. Authors are put in groups of 2 and move from table to table every 4 minutes — so if you and I were paired I would talk for 2 minutes and then you would talk for 2 minutes. We’d pass out bookmarks or other stuff. And then at the 4 minute mark we’d travel to the next table!

 You two will be making the rounds of the tables together. You’ll both begin at Table # 15.

It is incredibly popular and the book room floods with buyers when it is done!

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW:

There will be TWO GROUPS OF TABLES – tables 1-22 and tables 23-44 – two sessions taking place simultaneously in the same ballroom. Each group consists of 44 authors. You will be traveling from table to table only within your group.

Please prepare your pitch and be sure it is less than 2 minutes long. Each author gets 2 minutes and you will then get 1 minute to move to the next table, for a total of 5 minutes for each session. We MUST enforce the time limit strictly in order to allow every author to address all the readers in your group. Leslie has a handbell and Les has a microphone and we will signal you when it’s time to move on.

It will help – a lot – if both of you work together – author 1 speaks while the other distributes any flyers, pens, takeaways, etc., then author 2 speaks while author 1 distributes. Please plan accordingly.

Each group will have two tables with just two seats and a LARGE Reserved sign. They’re your rest stops. When you reach one of these tables in the rotation, it’s a chance to sit and catch your breath for 5 minutes. You’ll be glad of the rest stop.

 

Wow, what a chance for promotion! I'm looked forward to this high energy event. Bouchercon is in Toronto Canada this year. It's count-down time already!

 

 

Jury Duty

I spent most of last week on jury duty in downtown Los Angeles at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. That’s 18ish miles away from where I love, pretty much the farthest they can legally send me.

I’ve served on jury duty there twice before. The first time I saw the name of the courthouse, I wondered who this Clara Foltz was so I looked her up. Turns out she’s pretty impressive. She was the first woman admitted to the bar in California and the first woman lawyer on the west coast of the United States. She also pioneered the idea of the public defender system. The courthouse was renamed after her in 2002.

This particular courthouse is where a lot of the big trials are held. We’re talking O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Michael Jackson’s doctor. I was on jury duty on an assault case when MJ’s doctor was arraigned. That was a zoo with all of the family present as well as media and protesters.

While I find trials and courtrooms interesting, I don’t exactly jump up and down with joy when I receive my notice. Generally, I groan. The courthouse in downtown L.A. is probably one of my least favorite places to go just because of the time it takes to get there. I’m not eager to spend 1 to 1 1/2 hours each way in bumper to bumper traffic. Given the nature of the cases tried there, I’m also afraid I’ll end up on a long trial that will disrupt my life for weeks.

Many, many years ago I served on a 6 week trial in a different courthouse. I know how tiring that can be. That one was particularly hard because of the nature of the case. It’s very difficult to listen to children talk about horrible things that have happened to them.

Anyway, I pulled up my big girl pants and braved the downtown traffic. I discovered, to my great surprise, that I kind of, sort of enjoyed the process this time around. The drive wasn’t as horrible as I remembered and the case I was on was fairly short. I met some interesting people and a couple of my fellow jurors bought one of my books.

Some things I noticed this time around:

There’s a new jury assembly room. The old one was basically just awful. This one has comfortable chairs, nice bathrooms, vending machines, a refrigerator, a microwave, tables and plenty of outlets for charging your electronic devices.

The courthouse was much quieter than I’ve seen it in the past, which meant it didn’t take me forever to get through security or get an elevator to my courtroom.

During the trial, interpreters were used for one of the witnesses. That’s something I’d never been exposed to before so I found that interesting.

In previous trials, I’ve seen the court reporter have to pick up their machine and stand beside the attorneys during side bars. This time around, the court reporter stayed where she was. The attorneys and judge talked into a small device that reminded me of a an old iPod. We couldn’t hear them, but the court reporter could through earbuds.

Overall, it was an interesting week, but I was still glad when it was over. I’m happy hanging out at home and working on my book.

Anybody else have any interesting jury duty experiences? Forgive my ignorance, but do my Canadian friends have jury duty as well?

The agony and ecstasy of writing

by Rick Blechta

Boy, did Marianne’s post of yesterday ring a lot of bells for me.

This post’s title says it all as far as I go personally. When writing is going well, it’s very, very good, but when it’s not, it’s like a walk through my own personal hell. I’m not feeling sorry for myself, just stating a personal truth. As I continue down the writing path, the agony is clearly in the ascendancy, sad to say. Allow me to explain.

When I first began writing, it was to give my poor teaching-addled brain a respite doing something wholly different from standing at the front of a band class or ensemble, but still allowing me to be creative. I’d always loved words and I’m a good storyteller. Hey! I know…I’ll write a short story!

So I began a short story. Three hundred and seventy pages of manuscript later I realized I’d failed at crafting a short story. I say that with tongue only partially in cheek.

The lovely thing was, I’d had a whale of a time. Sure, my new baby was pretty ugly and definitely had any number of warts, but I had really enjoyed the entire process. Every evening I’d dragged my tired ass to the bedroom after getting the kids to bed, sitting down at my computer, and within moments, finding myself completely energized with the words absolutely flowing. I often woke up well after midnight, having fallen asleep over the keyboard — once finding 39 pages of d’s before the computer went to sleep too.

My second novel went the same route and the third began that way too. But partway through, things began slowing down and writing became more of a task. The process still had the same joie de vivre about it but the words certainly weren’t coming direct from God anymore.

In reality what was going on was my transition from being a complete novice to really understanding how to write. I noticed more. I self-corrected more as I went along, rather than being able to wait until the editing stage. I’d write a sentence and stare at it as it lay flatly on the page, knowing that I could do better than this. And the ideas came out more slowly, almost shyly as if they were afraid they wouldn’t measure up — and quite often they didn’t.

So now I’m at the stage where I do feel as if know what I’m doing. I’d like to think that my writing is now fully confident (if not always competent) but I’m writing more slowly than ever. Now I have days where I throw out more than I write. What remains is definitely far better than what I could craft when I first started, but to be frank, writing is more often than not a chore, something that must be endured, rather than a rush of creative joy.

Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy writing, but it isn’t fun any more in the way it used to be. It’s become a challenge, although one I’m still willing to meet in battle. Sometimes I even craft something that, when I read it over a day or two later, strikes me with the fact that it’s not just good, it’s really good, as in, Did I actually write that?

And that’s where the payoff is and that’s why I keep going.

Taking dictation from God?

The Scottish novelist Muriel Spark (of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie fame) once likened writing to taking dictation from God, as if the novel writing process is one huge effortless, magical explosion of joy. If only! For me writing a novel is a trial and the most strained moments come at the beginning and the end, at what the American editor and writer Robert Gottlieb calls “the getting in and the getting out.”

I hate facing the blank page, especially when I only have the roughest of ideas of what it is I want to say. The thought of getting those thousands and thousands of words down almost immobilises me. I put it off and put it off. Until, eventually, after days, weeks, and sometimes months, of procrastination, I can't put it off any longer. Finally, I make myself sit down at the keyboard and dive in. I write as fast as I can for six hours a day, have the weekend off and start all over again. I try not to edit as I go because I don't want to waste time looking for a perfect sentence or word in a section which I may later edit out – this is not as easy as it sounds as I want to rewrite every word almost before it's down. My goal, though, is to keep going.

Fast forward x number of months. I feel I've aged ten years and my friends all think I've emigrated it's been that long since we've been in touch. But I have 70,000 plus words in front of me, albeit awful, terrible, shitty words, words that I wouldn't show my dog, but that doesn't matter. I am ready to begin the sifting, combing, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing, crafting and shaping – what T.S. Elliot called “the frightful toil of critical labour”. This is the bit I LOVE. Now I am creating! I rewrite and edit for meaning and context and plot and imagery and rhythm and sense and the possibilities are endless. I go to places I never imagined I could imagine, and meet new, exiting people.

I sometimes think the elation I feel when editing could be similar to the excitement the gambler feels just before the silver ball drops into the black or red chamber of the roulette wheel? Or to the buzz the slot machine player experiences just before a bunch of whirring purple plums kerchunk into a row across the front of the fruit machine. It is the thrill of not knowing yet believing everything is possible and I never want it to stop. Is that what Muriel Sparks felt when she was on her dictaphone to God? But the story has to end. It must. The readers expect it. So, eventually, after however long it takes (which is usually a very long time) and when I have nothing left to give, and even though I know my story is still not perfect – but perfection is the voice of oppression, isn't it? – it's time for me to take a chance. It's time to see if my novel can stand on its own two legs. Reluctantly, and filled with sadness, I write the final last words and I get out. But I know I won't be miserable for too long. A new idea has been mulling about in the back of my head for months and it's crying out to be explored. If I'm lucky, I'll master my procrastination and sit down and start all over again. Why? Because there's nothing that I would rather do. So, what about you? Do you struggle writing your novel or is the experience more like “taking dictation from God”?

Follow Your Heroes

Once in a while, I get asked to speak to young people about writing as a profession. When the time comes to offer career advice, I ask them, Who are your heroes? Why are they your heroes and why can't you be a hero like them?

I ask those questions because when I look back on my life and see the direction it's taken, I realize that my way forward is along the path illuminated by other writers. Reading about inventors and moguls was hit or miss, so I was never destined to be a business tycoon. However, the biographies of literary greats like Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and F Scott Fitzgerald spoke to me. I understood their struggles. A favorite source of inspiration was The Red Hot Typewriter, a biography of John D MacDonald, and my takeaway was his blue-collar approach to his craft. He wrote every working day from 8-Noon, 1-4, and during his career he published over forty novels. In 1964, he published five! Using a typewriter! No whining about writer's block from him.

Another hero, though he's excoriated by the literary world, is Harold Robbins because of his steadfast application at putting words on paper and spinning bestselling yarns. And there's Anita Loos, a screenwriter who defied conventions to become a pivotal force in the movie business and invented that Hollywood staple, the romantic comedy.

Not all worked out for my heroes. It's no spoiler if I tell you that the lives of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Robbins went off the rails during their later years. On the other hand, while literary critics like to talk about the burdens of artistic genius and its toll on the writer's psyche, Burroughs, MacDonald, and Loos kept pecking away at the keys well into their sunset years.

What brought these thoughts to mind is that I'm close to finishing one project, the next and long overdue installment of my Felix Gomez series. Now I have to decide what next to dig into. Those of you who've written a book know what it's like to stand on the ready line for another long march. No matter my approach, it takes a year to eighteen months to write the first draft. I've tried schemes, like Chris Fox's 5,000 words-per-hour method, to shorten my turn around time, but when I do that my result is a pile of mush that needs serious editing so I gain little. I wish I had the focus of Cindi Myers who can crank out four-to-six novels a year. People who've attended a writing retreat with her say she easily produces 15 thousand words in a weekend. And it's quality work since since she's won numerous awards to include a Colorado Book Award. Another slayer of the word count is Kevin J Anderson who's hammered out more than fifty bestselling novels. I've been at WordFire parties and when the rest of us are about to start yet another late-night cocktail, Kevin says he's got to go write. That's dedication.

My heroes.

Continuing Education for Writers

I had two ideas for today's post that are intertwined. The first idea occurred to me when I was thinking about a brief exchange I had with a friend and fellow writer about when we would be arriving in Toronto for Bouchercon. The Sisters in Crime pre-Bouchercon workshop, SinC into Great Writing 2017, is on Wednesday. I mentioned that I am going to miss the workshop, but I have the book (Screenwriting Tricks for Authors) by Alexandra Sokoloff, one of the presenters. 

That upcoming workshop reminded me of Sokoloff's book and that I want to go back and have another look at it. When I first read, I wished that I was working on a standalone rather than a series entry. Now, I have a historical thriller in progress, and I want to channel Alfred Hitchcock. Time for a second look at Sokoloff on structure.

Do you, too, engage in "continuing education"? Collecting multiple books about writing and dipping into them when you start working on a new book or when you're trying to think through a plot or bring a character to life?  Do you still seek out online courses and go to workshops? Still take notes at panels when another writer says something you want to remember?

It could be the teacher in me but even though I have a pretty good grasp on the basics after all these years, I feel I need to keep polishing my credentials. I worry that I might have gotten too comfortable in my process. That there might be new techniques or old techniques that I could apply better.

And that brings me to my second idea for this post. I've been invited to speak at an annual event of a literary volunteers organization. The event is an authors' night -- students and tutors will "share true and life-affirming stories". I will be the local author for this year's event, giving a 10-15 minute talk. I am going to speak first -- the "opening act" so to speak. The spotlight will rightly be on the stories of the students and tutors.

Do you have favorite topics when asked to speak about writing? I have a few on my list -- such as "Why writers write". But all suggestions appreciated.

Meet the Author

I'm not really here today, Dear Reader. I am currently sitting in a hospital room at Banner Desert Hospital after my long-suffering husband has undergone his eighth operation in eight years. While not life-threatening, he is having more body parts removed. Truth is he does not have that many left. I'll be leaving him in the hospital later on this morning (Thursday) to drive to the Arizona State University campus to facilitate the first session of a writing seminar for ASU emeritus professors and at this point (Tuesday) I don't have much of a lesson plan! I have a lot of prep to get done today, so forgive me if I am brief.

Relatives Galore!

I have just returned from a week-long book tour of my homeland, eastern Oklahoma. I was invited by the Eastern Oklahoma Library District to do a speaking tour of nine small-town libraries in five days, and since I have not had the opportunity to tour Oklahoma, where my Alafair Tucker series is set, in ten years, I was eager to go. Besides, the district kindly paid my way to get there and to get home. The tour was a great success. I had good crowds, saw lots of relatives and friends that I haven't seen in 20 years, and was very much reminded of how beautiful eastern Oklahoma is. I hope it is not another decade before I can return.

The towns I visited are, Sallisaw, Muldrow, Checotah, Jay, Kansas, Tahlequah, Eufaula, Hulbert, and Muskogee. And there is a gold star for those of you who can properly pronounce all those place names!

Sallisaw, Oklahoma

Libraries as inspiration

This past weekend, I had the good fortune to be an invited author to do a reading at the Halifax Word on the Street Festival. For its size, Halifax, located in a spectacular harbour on the Atlantic shore of Nova Scotia, punches above its weight in terms of cultural and artistic activity, and also in post-secondary institutions. There are 400,000 people in Halifax and six universities. That's a lot of education.

Word on the Street is a celebration of all things literary, and includes author readings, panels, workshops, and booths which can be rented to showcase the products of publishers, authors, illustrators, and others connected to the written word. Similar events happen across Canada in the fall. They are organized by grassroots organizations and require commitment by local individuals passionate about the cause. Halifax is in its 23rd year, a testament to the dedication to literacy of the people of Halifax.

Another example of Halifax's dedication to literacy is their new Central Library. Fittingly, Word on the Street is centred around the library, using its front foyer for book sales and author signings, the conference rooms and halls for author readings, and the square outside the front entrance for the display booths. The library is in the heart of the city on Spring Garden Road and easily accessed by bus. It is a stunning, imaginative modern sculpture with floor-to-ceiling windows that flood the inside with light and warmth, and soaring ceilings that invite you to look up in awe and inspiration. I wish I'd had more time to explore the inner workings, but I'm sure it was designed with the latest digital access and learning hubs. Modern libraries have to do more than stack books in dusty rows of shelving. They are sources of community and information to connect people to ideas in the world.

To this end, the library has a wonderful independent cafe in the corner of the main foyer and a coffee shop on the top floor, serving fresh and local food. They have space for catered receptions and a beautiful outdoor patio on the top floor with a view of the harbour.

Ottawa has a dismal excuse for a central library, built in 1973 and crammed into a downtown corner far too small for it. It was designed in the brutalist architecture style which is what it sounds like, Brutal. Raw concrete and harsh lines suggestive of the Soviet Gulag.  Inside, it is dark and uninviting. The city is finally proceeding with plans for a new central library which it hopes will embrace the needs of the twenty-first century. The site has been chosen, and in the manner of public projects, it is likely to be many years of consultation, assessment, recommendations, more consultation, and so on before any shovel breaks the ground on the new site. I hope the politicians and the design committee tasked with it are possessed of imagination, courage, and vision, so that the city gets the bold and inspirational design worthy of a national capital, rather than a conservative, safe, and cost-effective building that offends no one but bores everyone.

In their deliberations, I hope the decision makers visit the great libraries already out there, from Vancouver to Halifax. Merely looking at pictures and blueprints don't do them justice. I dare anyone to walk through the glass front doors of the Halifax Central Library, look up in the middle of the foyer, and not be struck dumb with awe. That is a great homage to knowledge. 

How do you get ahead these days without lying — or at least stretching the truth?

by Rick Blechta

Okay. I promise to stop writing blog posts about Bouchercon (but I may be lying — or stretching the truth).

Being so, well, intimately involved in the whole process of mounting a production like this through being the designer and layer-outer of the conference program book, I know where all the bodies are hidden. Even including Kathleen Fraser, its very able editor, I’m probably the only person who’s read Every Single Word of the darn thing — multiple times.

The largest portion of the book is given over to the author and panelist (if they’re not also authors) profiles. One thing struck me over and over again: the use of the words “bestselling” and “award-winning”. Authors throw them around like confetti, occasionally multiple times in the same 600+ character profile.

I have neither the time nor inclination to check out any of these claims, but I doubt very much that every one of them is true. But taken as a whole, it is a depressing spectacle. It seems we poor scribblers have to use any means possible to separate ourselves from the crowd. The result is a very sad thing. The two terms listed above are used so often that a potential reader almost stops noticing – which is not the result being aimed for. Not only that, but if you’re actually not award-winning or bestselling, sooner or later you’re going to be found out and that will be a very embarrassing experience.

So how do you make yourself stand out? After having attended about six of these monster conventions over the years, I’m sorry to say there’s not much of a way to accomplish this. Funny hats won’t do it. Handing out bookmarks or postcards to all and sundry helps, but only a little. Being everywhere at once (I’ve actually seen people try this one) might get people commenting about you, but also will garner some head shakes and strange looks.

It probably sounds like I’m dissing the whole endeavour — and one I’ve toiled over for many hours — but I’m actually not. Come a little bit closer and I’ll tell you the secret I’ve learned about Bouchercons. Bouchercons (indeed any convention) can help you if you simply mingle and talk with anyone you meet. Standing in a corner, wearing black, and with an angst-ridden expression that you hope proclaims you as a serious author is no help. Spending your days hanging around with people you already know, comforting and enjoyable as that may be won’t get the job done.

You just need to schmooze.

That means introducing yourself to people you don’t know, being friendly, striking up a conversation as you wait. If someone notices you’re an author, they’ll probably ask a few questions (work out your “elevator pitch” in preparation). But the real key is to ask them questions. If they’re a fellow author, you start the ball rolling with a question about their books. Most will return the favour. (If they don’t, move on quickly in a polite way.)

The reason this works is that everyone is intimidated at Bouchercon (well, except maybe for the guests of honour), so reaching out is a nice thing to do — as well as being potentially useful.

If the person you’re speaking with seems receptive, give them a bookmark or such (to help them remember your name) and when you see them again — which you most certainly will in such a closed environment — at least wave and smile.

If you’re painfully shy and thinking, I couldn’t do something like that!, thinking of it as a performance might help you break through. Most everyone participated in plays or performances of some kind while in school. Put yourself in that headspace.

Reaching out will also make the experience of attending the granddaddy of all mystery conventions a lot more satisfying fun for you, as well — and I’ll bet profitable more profitable too.

You’ll also make a lot of other people feel good.

Too Smart For Our Own Good

Mapping DNA was one of the smartest things scientists have ever done. It has been a gift to the criminal justice system, freeing the wrongly accused and convicting perpetrators even when it's a cold case many years old.

Eye witness evidence is notoriously unreliable; no two witnesses will ever describe the same event in precisely the same way - and indeed, if they did it would be evidence not of what actually happened but of collusion.

Circumstantial evidence, despite the 'it's only circumstantial evidence' comment sometimes being made, is much more solid. Even so, it has to be part of a chain of evidence to be convincing.

DNA evidence, though, like fingerprints, is hard evidence. It can stand on its own. Even the most optimistic and persuasive defence agent is unlikely to get anywhere with a jury if he challenges it. If a man's DNA is found at a crime scene, then he was there too.

Or was he? When DNA evidence was first used, obtaining it was the big problem. You needed a substantial sample before you could get any sort of result. Then the technique got cleverer still; DNA from even the smallest fragment could be analysed, even if it was just a few cells.

Recently there was a notorious case where an individual's DNA was found on the hand of a murder victim and he was arrested. It was only after he'd been in prison for some time awaiting trial that it was established that he'd a cast iron alibi; on the night in question he was in a hospital bed in an alcoholic stupor. Eventually they discovered that the paramedics who had treated him had then rushed to the aid of the murder victim, transferring cells of the alcoholic's DNA as they did so.

And there's another problem too. Belief in the infallibility of DNA evidence led to the arrest of a man whose DNA was found on the till in a coffee shop that had been robbed – despite the fact that the CCTV footage showed someone of a completely different height and build.

I was talking a while ago to Senior Investigating Officer who said that we had become so clever at picking up smaller and smaller samples of DNA, that the evidence from a crime scene had started to be a bewildering mass of tiny mixed-up traces of evidence, obscuring rather than illuminating what had happened. We are, indeed, becoming too smart for our own good.

In writing a modern crime novel, you have to retain at least the impression of realism, but somehow using DNA to solve the murder has always seemed to me a cop out. However, thinking about it now I know this, I can see it might prove to be a very useful red herring.

Guest Post: Kathleen Valenti

Please welcome fellow Henery Press author Kathleen Valenti to Type M. I met Kathleen at Malice Domestic last year and had a lovely conversation with her. Her first novel, PROTOCOL, featuring new college graduate Maggie O’Malley was recently released. You can find out more about Kathleen at https://www.kathleenvalenti.com.Take it away Kathleen...

 

Message in a Novel

by Kathleen Valenti

 

There are many adages about novel-writing.

Write the book you want to read.
Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

And the truth is, I abide by many of them. They’re good advice doled out by some of the finest writers ever to hold a pen or sit before a keyboard.

But there are a few writerly axioms I don’t follow. Case in point:

If you want to send a message, call Western Union.

It’s a quote alternately attributed to Goldwyn, Capra, Hemingway and Bogart (although playwright Moss Hart appears to be its true author). And while Twitter has largely replaced telegrams, this perennial advice still makes the rounds in writing circles.

The implication is clear: keep the story the story. Forget about including a moral or expressing an opinion or assigning a deeper social meaning. Readers want to be entertained, period.

Of course, many (if not most) writers eschew such notions. We write where our heads—and our hearts—lead us. But still…That message (no pun intended) comes through loud and clear, especially to authors of genre fiction. We’re often told the plot’s the thing. End of story. And that’s perfectly wonderful if that’s the book you want to write or the story you want to read

Me? I can’t help but include a little message with my mystery

The Maggie O’Malley Mystery Series is young. PROTOCOL, the first book in the series, has just been released and 39 WINKS is in the queue, with another soon to follow. Yet already I know that each book will highlight, in one way or another, some kind of larger issue.

It’s a part of my writer’s DNA, a snippet of my real-life voice, a way to work out the mysteries of life’s dark secrets right along with each book’s plot. It also helps me advance the story and inspire my protagonist to action. Maggie is driven by a desire to solve a mystery and address a personal conflict (and life always seems to present those), all within a context that’s larger than both.

I’m not alone. Many mystery authors give a nod to social ills or worldwide problems that go beyond the page. We may write about death and violence, but in many ways, these aspects are the other side of a coin emblazoned with justice and compassion. The denouement that contrasts the action. The “after” that rights the “before."

We crave a world of kindness, courage, help and hope, and we create it, in part by bringing in larger issues that affect our human family.

Readers tell me they like to read books that provide entertainment and escape, along with a theme that informs and inspires. They say that as long as a book’s deeper meaning doesn’t impede the plot, feel didactic, or come across as preachy, they find that thematic elements add to the texture of a story rather than detract from it. In short: they like a side of message with their plot and characters.

And to that I say: message received

About PROTOCOL

Freshly minted college graduate Maggie O’Malley embarks on a career fueled by professional ambition and a desire to escape the past. As a pharmaceutical researcher, she’s determined to save lives from the shelter of her lab. But on her very first day she’s pulled into a world of uncertainty. Reminders appear on her phone for meetings she’s never scheduled with people she’s never met. People who end up dead.

With help from her best friend, Maggie discovers the victims on her phone are connected to each other and her new employer. She soon unearths a treacherous plot that threatens her mission—and her life. Maggie must unlock deadly secrets to stop horrific abuses of power before death comes calling for her.

When Kathleen isn’t writing page-turning mysteries that combine humor and suspense, she works as a nationally award-winning copywriter. She lives in Oregon with her family where she pretends to enjoy running. Protocol is her debut novel and the first of the Maggie O’Malley mystery series.

The New Mystery

The other day I had a lengthy wait in the post office line. Most of my fellow detainees were gazing at their cell phones.

Lines used to be a great place to people-watch. I could tell a lot by the expression on the face of a person forced to be idle and moderately civilized as we edged up in the queue. The varying postures are still revealing. Posture always has been.

There was little to be learned watching the new techies. Writers who guessed about the details of someone's life before cell phones was doing just that. Guessing. That's all. But it was fun.

One of the best books on characterization was Maren Elwood's Characters Make Your Story. It was published in 1941. She has an excellent chapter "Look at His Face." Faces in repose reveal a great deal. Is a person pleasant? Self-confident? Harried? If so, how does one present this on a page. If they give a critical glance at a crying child are they worried? Judging the mother for not having better control? Their faces told it all.

Not any more! In fact, I was tempted to sneak around and gaze over the shoulders of these unmoving statues. Were they playing solitaire? Reading email? Have they downloaded one of the Type M'ers novels? Most of the faces were expressionless.

Our job just got harder.