Guest Blogger Judith Starkston

Type M is thrilled to welcome our guest Judith Starkston, whose historical fantasy series is set in the most fascinating place, in the most interesting era, and features the most original protagonist you can imagine!

Murder and Magic in the Bronze Age

Thank you, Donis Casey, for the invitation. I’m delighted to be here and to introduce you to my historical fantasy series set in the distant Bronze Age past of the Hittite empire that once spanned the area covered by modern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.

Type M for murder, you say? That was the easy part: the murder, I mean. What about the other m’s? The murderer, the motive, and the muse? I studied classics. I believe in muses.

I’m not sure if I discovered my particular muse because I love to explore archaeological ruins, or if the muse decided to make herself known in the person of Puduhepa because the long-forgotten queen was tired of waiting more than three thousand years for someone to pay her proper respect. Puduhepa ruled the huge Hittite empire for decades. The legacy she left behind survives today inscribed on clay tablets. Through these writings I’m able to “listen” to her across time in her prayers, letters, judicial decrees, and diplomatic skirmishes with her various foes, particularly Pharaoh Ramses II (of Biblical fame). She had a brilliant mind and a tough but gracious manner. Reconstructing her ancient world so my readers live there for a time—see, smell and taste it—is one of the pleasures of writing fiction based in a culture unfamiliar to most of us. Queen Puduhepa became the inspiration for my priestess Tesha in the series. The Hittites became my Hitolia.

As for the easy part, the murder. In Priestess of Ishana, an unsuspecting shepherd discovers a charred dead body in a dank hillside cave and, lying next to it, the murder “weapon”: “…a black lump of bitumen, the size of a man’s thigh. Even with its arms and legs partly melted, the tarry figure formed an evil effigy.” I borrowed this murder method directly from the Hittite records written in cuneiform on clay. They had some fantastical beliefs—an obsession with sorcery and curses, for example—that make great source material for murderous plots that combine mystery, romance, political intrigue, and magic. I use these tantalizing ancient descriptions as the base from which my fiction grows.

Then there are the murderers and their motives. The villains step into my books from the fascinating conflicts of this empire. Some reflect the deadly disagreements within the royal family that the tablets hint at. Some march in from rival empires and bring international intrigue in their wake. Some more fantastical foes arise from the Hittite penchant for the supernatural and afflict their victims from within. Thus, I craft historical fantasy from both specific rites or customs found in the records and from the broader sweep of events suggested there. I allow full range to the magical beliefs arising from this world and that produces the fantasy amidst my historical grounding.

The initial two books of the series are available now, Priestess of Ishana and Sorcery in Alpara. Sign up for my monthly newsletter and/or my weekly blog posts to download a short story set in this world and updates on my latest history and archaeology finds that could wind up shaping one of my future plots.
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www.JudithStarkston.com
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And Life Goes On

One of the facts of a writing life -- as I and my blogmates have noted -- is that life goes on even when we would rather be focused on a work in progress. I'm having one of those weeks. Last week, we learned of a reorganization that is going to affect my academic unit at school. That has meant meetings and discussions and the need to re-orient before we move on. The fact that all this is happening during one of our gloomier weeks here in Albany has me thinking of Shakespeare's  "winter of our discontent" or Melville's Ishmael "growing grim about the mouth."

School is closing this afternoon because of the weather. It looks like rain from my dining room window, but obviously more is happening. So I may not be able to make it to the post office to mail out some paperwork about reissuing the next book in my Lizzie Stuart series. And I won't be able to get to Best Buy to pick up a printer and take it to my computer tech to be programmed. (I ordered a new Dell to replace my ancient desk top, but I was so focused on choosing the right computer that I neglected to order the speakers and a new printer). My computer tech has the speakers waiting to be picked up. But it looks like a few more day without sound on that computer.

Getting back to Ishmael and his gloomy mood. Last night I was looking up that paragraph from Moby Dick -- one of my favorite first paragraphs even when I'm in a good mood. I clicked on one of those sites with quotes from famous authors. I had never done a search for quotes from Melville before. After reading a few, I wanted to post them over my desk. 

I share below three quotes from Melville that sent me back to my keyboard feeling inspired and invigorated:


I try all things, I achieve what I can.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. 

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. 

So I am going to venture out to see what I can get done before the weather gets worse. Then I am going to spend the afternoon and evening trying to "achieve what I can."

(And the rain just turned to snow, so now I'm in for the day. But I'm ready to work).

Hamster on a Wheel

As usual, I'm under a deadline and feeling desperate to finish the second installment of my new Bianca Dangereuse series, which is ironic because I just finished the launch events for the first installment, The Wrong Girl. But that's the way it is on the writing merry-go-round. At this point I don't have many launch events left to do - a couple of local talks on Mar. 11, which is the day before I fly off to San Diego for Left Coast Crime, one of the premier author/reader mystery conferences! I'll be on a panel called Hooray for Hollywood: Tinsel Town as a Setting (and what a setting it is!) on lucky Friday the 13th at 4:00 p.m. along with fellow mystery authors, multiple-award-winner Kellye Garrett, Sherri Leigh-James, and Phoef Sutton. I don't get to go to many conferences, so I'm crossing my fingers that everyone who lives in my house stays healthy and nothing weird happens so that I have to change plans at the last minute, which has happened to me far too often.

Speaking of weird things that interfere with one's writing but must be dealt with - February is going to be very doctor-y around here. My husband is having minor surgery on the 12th (pacemaker replacement), and I'll be chauffeuring him to surgery, the follow-up appointments, and a couple of eye-shots (yes, if you have certain eye problems, the current treatment is to get shots in you eyeballs.) on Feb. 17th, 19th, 25th, and 27th. He actually was scheduled for a different minor surgery last Monday, but (long long story) it ended up getting cancelled at the last minute. We're looking forward (irony alert) to having that rescheduled.

Ending on a much more fun note, I recently got to do a Page 69 Test for The Wrong Girl, my mystery set in 1920s Hollywood. What is the Page 69 Test? It's a test to see if page 69 of your novel is representative of the rest of the book. Marshall Zeringue posted my page 69 test - and guess what? Yes, page 69 is an important turning point for the main character in The Wrong Girl. You can read my page 69 test, which of course includes the entirety of page 69, here - https://page69test.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-wrong-girl.html

I read Canadian

A very special day is coming up on February 19, 2020: the very first I READ CANADIAN day celebrating Canadian authors and stories coast to coast. Why this blatantly nationalistic hype? As a true Canadian, I apologize in advance. Canada is a modest, relatively unassuming but awesome country full of diverse regions and cultures. Proudly, it has many voices, but with the exception of Quebec, its literature is mainly in English. It is stuck between two English-speaking cultural behemoths – the UK and the US – which have a far larger readership and much larger budgets to reach that readership. The population of the UK is 67 million, and the US 328 million. Canada's is 38 million, of which 20% are French-speaking.

Canadians have many influences. In many ways we float midway across the ocean between the two powerhouses. A bit British, a bit American, with lots of other colours thrown in. American culture swamps our TV, our airwaves, our movie theatres, and our bookstores. UK culture acts as a kind of counterweight to this, providing another voice that seems familiar, at times nostalgic, to our ears. In this clamouring of cultural offerings, Canadian offerings find it hard to be heard. I have been doing book signings across Canada for over twenty years, and I am often discouraged that readers who express an interest in crime fiction often can't name a single Canadian crime writer. This despite the fact there are about 300 active published authors who are members of Crime Writers of Canada.

In the music industry, there are Canadian content requirements for radio stations that have nurtured a world-class Canadian music industry. Some Canadian content regulations also exist for TV and film. But sadly there are none for books. No requirement for Canadian writers to be included in school curricula, no requirement or even incentive that they feature prominently in bookstore displays, alongside the "Scandinavian Noir" or "James Patterson" piles. The big publishers are international businesses, and they don't make their money on Canadian authors, but rather on international best-sellers  Independent Canadian publishers don't have the money to compete with them for space.

Hence this grassroots social media campaign by authors, publishers, and literary organizations aimed at raising awareness. Hey, Canadian stories exist, and they're actually pretty good! Although the focus is on children's books and the campaign is aimed at school and library participation, the idea is gaining traction within the broader community. So with any luck, on February 19, there will be events in schools and libraries across the country, and blitzes on social media as well as traditional media. All authors are encouraged to wave the flag. If Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are suddenly awash in I READ CANADIAN slogans and stories, that's why. Please share them, and I hope they will inspire some of you to pick up a Canadian book from your library or bookstore.

As a lead-up to that big day, a more modest campaign will be held this upcoming weekend, February 7 - 9, to celebrate that subcategory of books called "High interest/ Low vocabulary". Although most of these books are aimed at struggling or emerging young readers including middle school and YA, some imprints are written for adults who for whatever reason are looking for a quick, easy read. Some are busy or have short attention spans, some just want a quick read for the airplane or the doctor's office, while others, such as ESL, LD, or the elderly, enjoy the simpler format. Orca Books is a leader in HiLo books for all ages, and my Cedric O'Toole series is from their adult Rapid Reads line. Their mission is to develop a love of reading that lasts a lifetime. So if you see a flurry of posts and conversations with #GetToKnowHiLo or @GetToKnowHiLo, please share and join the conversation. Spread the world.

Let's Hear It For Copy-Editors.

The copy-edited ms of Devil's Garden, my new book, arrived this week so I've been head-down for the last few days.

Usually the copy-editing is a straightforward matter – I just work through to the comments, change if I think it's necessary, explain why I'm not going to change if not. There are usually only a handful anyway – and I'm particularly grateful when they pick up on the fact that I have somehow not noticed using the same word three times in as many lines or contradicted what I had said in Chapter Two when I reached Chapter Eleven.

This time I was surprised and not a little dismayed when there were three pages of queries as well, nearly all of them relating to a time problem, where they couldn't work out what day it was meant to be – the evidence was contradictory.

Most of my books have a tight time schedule, and in this one the whole action unfolds in the course of a week, on the basis of real time, so trying to unpick it all looked as if it was going to be a major nightmare to sort out.

My copy-editors had meticulously gone through the whole book, quoting and highlighting phrases where the time was mentioned. I hate to think how long it must have taken and when I got down to studying the comments I could see why it was a problem.

Then I started working through the book and I realised the whole thing had stemmed from one word. I remembered considering whether the junior detective should arrive on the scene on the Monday or on the Tuesday. I'd thought at first it should be Monday but then as I wrote on the action dictated a Tuesday arrival and somehow in the revision I didn't notice what I'd done.

With the change in that one word, it all worked, with only a very few minor tweaks of the 'last night' when it should be 'two nights ago' variety. (At least I hope it has – they'll be checking it next week!)

When I was small and learning to knit I would get it into a bit of a mess and take it to my grandma. She would painstakingly rip a bit back, pick up the dropped stitches and give it back to me – sorted.

That's what copy-editors do. I'd like to say a great big thank you to mine, and a great big apology too, for giving them so much trouble by my carelessness.

Going back to the beginning

Michael Sears

This weekend, I'm delighted to welcome guest author Michael Stanley, who is actually two fabulous writers in one. To make matters even more amazing, they manage this collaboration while living on two different continents. Here, they talk about why, after writing six books in the Detective Kubu series, they went back to the beginning. Take it away, you two!

Stanley Trollip

In most cases, the writer of a series has from the very beginning a good grasp of the protagonist’s character, personality, and skill set. And has a general idea of how he or she will develop over time.

In our case, things happened very differently.

First, our motivation to write a mystery was largely to see whether we could do it. The catalyst was a trip to Botswana’s wonderful Chobe National Park to watch birds and animals. During the visit, we watched a pack of hyenas attack, kill, and devour a wildebeest. In a matter of hours, there was nothing left because hyenas eat both flesh and bones. 

That gave us the idea for a new way to get away with murder – leave the corpse for the hyenas to dispose of. No body, no case. We decided to take the idea and try to write a complete novel. For ourselves. Certainly, there was no thought of a series, so we put only a little effort into planning our protagonist.

We’d been advised by experienced writers to write what we knew. Because both of us were professors, it made sense to have our protagonist be a professor—in his case, a professor of ecology at the University of Botswana.

So, in chapter one of our mystery, titled A Carrion Death, our ecologist and a game ranger stumble upon a human body being eaten by a hyena. It was immediately obvious to our smart professor that the absence of clothes and teeth suggested that this was no accident. It was murder. So, he had to call the police in to investigate.

We decided to have some fun with this policeman. We made him a very large man, so large, in fact, that his nickname was Kubu, which is the local word for hippopotamus. He packed ample food before he jumped into his Land Rover, as well as cassette tapes of his favorite operas. Then he set off for the Kalahari to inspect the half-eaten corpse.

It was a long way to drive, and Kubu mused about how his bushman school friend had shown him things in the desert that other people overlooked, and how that had sparked his interest in being a detective. By the time he’d arrived at the scene of the crime, Kubu had made it clear to us that he had to be the main character. That came as a complete surprise. We thought we were in charge of the story.

So Kubu was even less planned than our ecologist.

We wrote away, and three years later we had a manuscript. We’d accomplished what we’d set out to do. We twisted the arms of some of the friends who’d been with us in Chobe and asked them to read our magnus opus. They obliged and liked it. So we decided to see if we could get it published.

Forty rejections later, we landed an agent in New York, who, in a matter of weeks, landed a conditional offer from HarperCollins. The condition was that we write a series.

And so from wondering whether we could write a mystery for ourselves with an academic as a protagonist, we ended up with a contract for a series with a protagonist we hadn’t planned.

We were delighted that Kubu won readers’ loyalty, but how well did we actually know him? He was smart and good at solving problems. Unlike many detectives in police procedurals, he was happily married and sober almost all of the time. Of course, during the series his character developed, and his relationships with his wife, parents, and colleagues deepened. There were clues about his childhood in the books—things that had come up as we wrote. We knew he had loving, traditional, but Christian parents and knew of his Bushman friend. We knew he loved to do puzzles with his father. We knew where he’d met his wife. But there was nothing that explained how he’d gone from school to being the star detective in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. 

Since the seventies, diamonds have been Botswana’s most important export and allowed the newly independent country to flourish. The richest diamond mine in the world is there, owned by a joint venture between the government and the giant De Beers. The fact that the country was almost totally reliant on diamonds for its success made us wonder about the impact of a massive heist. Could it shake the country’s financial foundation?

We decided to explore both the issue of Kubu’s early role in the CID and a robbery at the height of the diamond boom by writing a prequel to the series—a Kubu mystery that starts the day he joins the CID as a new detective straight out of university. 

Kubu’s first case is a minor matter, yet it’s a challenging puzzle, and he loves it. However, he has to struggle to find a place for himself in the CID. Sometimes his new boss, Assistant Superintendent Mabaku, seems disappointed in him. Then a massive diamond robbery takes place and suddenly everything changes. Everyone is thrown into the case, even the raw detective in his first week on the job.

As we wrote the prequel, we were delighted to watch Kubu develop, having insights, but also making the mistakes that only experience can avoid. He earns respect, but also opprobrium. And as Mabaku comes to appreciate his talents, Kubu becomes more and more central to the case. Eventually, they deduce who the mastermind behind the robbery actually is, but they have no strong evidence. Now they have to find some way to catch him, and Kubu and Mabaku both find their careers on the line—in Kubu’s case, before his career has even begun. 

By the end of the book, Kubu has learned a lot about being in the CID and how to interact with his colleagues and his superiors. He has also fallen in love with a wonderful women and sees some hope that his feelings are reciprocated. 

Writing Facets of Death was a very enjoyable journey of exploration for us. We learnt a lot about how Kubu became the CID’s best detective and about who he is as a person. We know him better now. 

Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip write under the name Michael Stanley. Their award-winning mystery series, featuring Detective Kubu, is set in Botswana, a fascinating country with magnificent conservation areas and varied peoples. The latest book in the series is a prequel, titled Facets of Death. Their latest thriller Shoot the Bastards introduces Minnesotan environmental journalist Crystal Nguyen. Set mainly in South Africa, it has as backstory the vicious trade in rhino horn.

Michael has lived in South Africa, Kenya, Australia and the US. He now lives in Knysna on the Cape south coast of South Africa. Stanley splits his time between Minneapolis, Cape Town, and Denmark. To learn more about them, check out their website.

The Roller Coaster

One of the best talks I've ever hear about writing was given by Wister Award winner, Win Blevins, at a Western Writers of America conference. It was superb. Even if the audio of his presentation had been recorded it would not have been adequate to convey his emotions to the listener.

The title was Give Your Heart to the Hawks. He spoke about the dangerous rise and fall of fortunes for those of us who write professionally for many years. He spoke of falling from the sky to the rocks below. He spoke of ascending once again on the wings of a hawk to a cloudless blue sky.

Writing is like being on a perpetual roller coaster. Yesterday I received an invitation to participate in a collection of novellas featuring myself and three other writers. I was absolutely thrilled. I said yes immediately. What a great boost.

Since the first of the year, I've been writing steadily, at my most workable pace of five pages a day, five days a week. I'm sure of the book. The plot is sound, and I'm comfortable with my characters. But I'm not sure how well it will be received by my editor.

So I'm happily putting the Work In Progress aside for a different Work In Progress. One that's a sure thing and requested by a publishing house that is terrific to work with.

Recently I watched a YouTube presentation that featured three agents from my new agency, Folio Literary Management. I was struck by the fact that agents experience many of the same problems faced by their authors. Agents might love a book and be shocked that their favorite editor does not.

Just doesn't. Isn't going to buy it either.

Agents are on a roller coaster too.

Nevertheless, it's winter now. And the rise of hope whether induced by hot-house tulips in the grocery store or an ego-boosting email from my favorite editor is mighty pleasant.

Spring is coming!

Travel and writing, not travel writing

I have the good fortune this week to be writing this post from Morgan Hill, California. I arrived Saturday afternoon, got my rental car at the San Francisco International Airport, and drove an hour south to Morgan Hill, taking in the scenery (and the traffic) all the way.

One of the interesting things about stepping into a new location is that your perception of your surroundings becomes heightened.

I called my wife from the car, passing San Jose, and said the area felt a little like El Paso, Texas, where we lived for three years. When I arrived in Morgan Hill and spent time driving around the town, I told her it felt like a combination of Bend, Oregon (big-money, outdoorsy), and El Paso (mountain ranges, farm land). Being in a new place forces me to observe, and being forced to do that makes me think about how and where I incorporate setting details into my writing.

I love atmospheric books. James Lee Burke’s rich portrayal of New Orleans. Robert B. Parker’s depiction of Boston. Alexander McCall Smith’s use of Mma Precious Ramotswe to offer insights into Botswana. Even settings that can’t be described but are present, like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, the physical structure of which I can’t explicitly describe but I feel the weight of the lighthouse on the characters on every page of the novel, nonetheless. (I’m still not sure how she does that.)

The settings in these books offer a layer of richness and nuance that readers might not even notice as they follow the plot and grow attached to the characters. And writing setting details is never easy. Hemingway said, Writing is always architecture, never interior design.

Likewise, the “clever” metaphor is only clever if it helps the reader by saving her time. Symbol, unless you are Steinbeck, is a critic’s word, not a writer’s.

So the use of setting to enhance a work can be a tightrope walk. I find myself often adding and just as often cutting in the same scene. A brushstroke here. A cover-up there. How much is too much? Am I writing that because I like it or because it will add something to the scene? (Be honest, John!) All are questions I struggle with as I go.

I’d love to hear what others think about setting and the place those details play in one’s work.

How Cozy Mysteries Changed My Life

Awhile back—don’t ask me how long ago because I’ve forgotten—I was on a panel titled “How Cozy Mysteries Changed my Life.” As you can guess, the topic was about writing cozies, although I don’t remember directly addressing the question mentioned in the title. Still, it did start me thinking about how they’ve affected me, both as a reader and a writer.

I’ve read cozies for most of my reading life, though I don’t think I’d heard the term “cozy mystery” until well into adulthood. I don’t know if that’s because it’s a newer term or if I was just oblivious to the different categories of crime fiction and what “everyone” called them until then.

I find reading cozies a very calming activity. There’s generally an interesting puzzle, characters and settings plus the killer is always identified and brought to justice. By the end of the book, the world is righted once again. Something that brings me great comfort and doesn’t always happen in real life.

I’ve also learned new things. I wrote a post for Chicks on the Case awhile back titled Unexpected Influences where I talked about how reading has influenced me to learn about things I would either never have known about or never have thought to study. You can read the full post here.

While I love reading, I never intended to be a writer, particularly of mysteries. I always thought it would be too hard. But when I woke up one morning with an idea for a book, I immediately thought it would make a good cozy so I decided to give it a shot. I believed because I’d read so many that I understood what made them tick. While that was partially true, I soon realized I still had a whole lot to learn. Still, if I hadn’t read a lot of cozies, I wouldn’t have had the courage to try my hand at writing one.

Writing cozies has changed the way I read them. I still get immersed in the stories and characters and enjoy them, but now I also notice things—how a book is structured, how a character is described. Sometimes I jot down interesting lines and paragraphs so I can study them later to see how the writer works their magic.

Probably the biggest change is that I get out of the house more and attend local events. I’m pretty much a homebody. I live near the beach because I prefer the weather, not because I’m into swimming, surfing or sunbathing. I’m not super fond of crowds, either. Here’s where you ignore my love of Disneyland and Las Vegas, which tend to attract lots of people. Somehow, I’m not as bothered by them in those two places, although I do avoid the busier times of the year.

Since my series takes place in a beach city similar to the one I live in, I like to put in events in the books similar to the ones that happen in my area. It’s fun to create my own version of a fair or festival. But to do it justice, I feel I need to see what the real events are like, which often means attending them. Sometimes I can get enough info from videos on YouTube or pics on a website, but that can only take you so far. It’s not the same as attending the event itself. Some I would have gone to anyway, but others I probably would have avoided if I weren’t writing my series.

When I found out my city holds a pumpkin race every year, I knew I had to go and see what that was all about. It’s a short walk from my house to downtown so we’ve attended a few times. The race is an all-day event. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it, but enough to create my own version for my book Designed For Haunting.

An event that I probably would have avoided because of the size of the crowd was our annual pier lighting ceremony. I was writing a Christmas book at the time so I decided I needed to see what it was like. The husband and I walked down to the beach so I could get a feel for it. I’m glad I did. I got a lot of good ideas from attending, things I wouldn’t have known about or thought of if I hadn’t been there. My own version of the pier lighting ceremony appears in Ghosts of Painting Past and is one of my favorite scenes in the book.

When I was in junior high and high school, I was a “joiner”. In junior high, I was in FHA (Future Homemakers of America, now known as Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA)) plus I worked on the student newspaper and yearbook. In high school, it was FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America, now known as FBLA-PBL where the PBL is Phi Beta Lambda), student government, worked on the yearbook for one year and was part of the Bicentennial Quiz Team. (Not hard to guess what year that was.) But in college I was too busy studying and working to join anything.

But when I started writing, I decided it was important to join a group of like-minded people so I joined my local chapter of Sisters in Crime, which led to my being on the board for six years as Recording Secretary, Vice President and President. It also led to my co-chairing the California Crime Writers Conference in 2011 and doing a stint as We Love Libraries! coordinator for SinC National. I wouldn’t have had any of those experiences if I hadn’t started writing cozies.

What about you? How has writing the kinds of books you write or reading the kinds of books you read changed your life?

Accompanying your writing

by Rick Blechta

I’m still working on my promised post (more research than I expected!), so I’m filling in with this post idea instead since it’s getting pretty late in the day to post.

I’m finding more and more that I like listening to music when writing. Somehow it helps to “grease the wheels” creatively-speaking. I have no idea why this is, but most days, I’ve got music on in the background as I work.

That being said, there are some very strict rules applied (through trial and error) if music is going to work its magic on my deathless prose:

• No music with vocals in English! If it’s in a language I don’t know, lyrics don’t bother me; in fact, I listen to a lot of opera. But if the singing is in English I’m in trouble. On more than one occasion I actually listened a bit too hard and included a phrase or two of lyrics in my writing. It’s easy to spot the next day, fortunately, but it’s pretty jarring to see.
• No music I’ve never heard before. I’m sorry. I’m a musician and it’s easy for me to get caught up listening to something new. Then I realize I haven’t written a goddam word for the past half-hour. That sort of defeats the whole exercise.
• I have to pick out all the music beforehand. If the music runs out, then I start hunting for something else which means opening a browser window. Then I’m lost. YouTube is especially bad for this. All of a sudden I’ve wasted 15 minutes just looking at choices. It’s best to bring a few CDs into the studio with me. And no covers or program booklets to tempt my wandering eye! Just the CDs.

So that’s what works for me.

Oh, one more thing: it seems to help if the music I listen to is complimentary to the mood of the scene I’m working on.

And there are days I find I’m just too distractible so I remove the earbuds and work in silence.

Does any of this resonate with you folks? It doesn’t have to be fiction writing. Really, it can be any sort of work.

Let us know!

The Movie 1917, Action, and Characters

In my last blog, I talked about how and why you need tension to keep a story moving forward.  A week ago, my wife and I saw the movie 1917.  The action was so non-stop,that at the end of the movie, while the credits were rolling, I felt myself exhale.

Had I held my breath for two hours?  Of course not.  But it felt like it and I know I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire film.

So, what worked for the movie and what didn’t?

1917 has already won the Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture and Best Director as well as a slew of other awards.  It’s nominated for 10 Academy Awards and a ton of nominations from such organizations like BAFTA and dozens of film critic associations.  The movie has received numerous glowing reviews.

However, the New York Times was less complimentary, “The idea behind the camerawork seems to be to bring viewers close to the action, so you can share what Blake and Schofield endure each step of the way. Mostly, though, the illusion of seamlessness draws attention away from the messengers, who are only lightly sketched in, and toward Roger Deakins’s cinematography and, by extension, Mendes’s filmmaking. Whether the camera is figuratively breathing down Blake’s and Schofield’s necks or pulling back to show them creeping inside a water-filled crater as big as a swimming pool, you are always keenly aware of the technical hurdles involved in getting the characters from here to there, from this trench to that crater.”

The review continues, “In another movie, such demonstrative self-reflexivity might have been deployed to productive effect; here, it registers as grandstanding. It’s too bad and it’s frustrating, because the two leads make appealing company: The round-faced Chapman brings loose, affable charm to his role, while MacKay, a talented actor who’s all sharp angles, primarily delivers reactive intensity. This lack of nuance can be blamed on Mendes, who throughout seems far more interested in the movie’s machinery than in the human costs of war or the attendant subjects — sacrifice, patriotism and so on — that puff into view like little wisps of engine steam.”

In a review by Peter Sobczynski, he says, “… the film is so obsessed with its particular technique that it doesn’t leave room for the other things we also go to the movies for—little things like a strong story, interesting characters, or a reason for existing other than as a feat of technical derring-do. Sitting through it is like watching someone else playing a video game for two solid hours, and not an especially compelling one at that.”

Two weeks ago, in my blog about building tension into a story, I wrote that the readers must be invested in the characters.  I was invested in the action and wanted the characters to complete their important mission (saving 1600 British lives) but didn’t know much about the protagonists at all.

Giving the movie credit, you can make some suppositions about the lead characters through their actions.   That’s not a bad thing at all.  It's just that throughout the movie, I was more invested in the mission rather than the protagonists.

I mentioned in my blog how you have to ratchet up the tension. Just when you think things are bad, you have to make them worse.  1917 certainly does that.  However, it's lucky for the good guys that the  bad guys are such bad shots.

There should be an ebb and flow in the tension.  1917 is shot brilliantly, seemingly in one long seamless take, one breathless action shot after another.  There’s nearly no place for breathing space.  Like I said at the beginning, I exhaled at the end of the movie as if I’d held my breath for two hours.  If it hadn’t been such a dark tale, it would have felt a lot like an Indiana Jones movie.

It all worked, though and I predict the film will collect a whole basket of awards.  I highly recommend you see it, if for nothing more than the cinematography.

Wokeness Killed My Favorite Movie

On the off chance you don't know what "wokeness" is, it's viewing the world through the lens of whatever is currently deemed politically correct. And being "woke" killed my appreciation for one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man starring John Wayne. It's a saccharine homage to Ireland in which Wayne plays an Irish-American boxer who killed a man in the ring and out of guilt, decides to return to his ancestral homeland and start over. The screenplay lards on the clichés so thick that it's a wonder that a real Irishman didn't lob a firebomb onto the set in protest. I realized those shortcomings the first time I saw the movie but gave it a pass because why let reality interfere with a good tale? If nothing else, what I most admire about the Irish is the way they let everyone mangle their heritage and customs, but buy them a pint and they shrug it off. The rest of us should live by their example. In The Quiet Man, Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne play their roles in a typical romance-movie template of cold-warm-cold-warmer-colder-hot-coldest-hotter-happily ever after. For me, the wokeness part comes in when after a spat, O'Hara locks the door of her bedroom. Wayne kicks it open, demonstrating that he will not allow anything to come between them. When he did that, I immediately thought of "Domestic violence. He's off to jail." The movie had plenty of other period tropes that are now painfully uncomfortable to watch.

A couple of TV shows that trigger wokeness are Cheers and Frasier. Both sit-coms depend on double entendres, sexual innuendo, and outright come-ons that would get you hustled to HR and then right onto the street. What blunts the offense are the sharp put-downs and physical reprisals, though I would not suggest acting this way in any professional setting. At least, not without legal representation.

The one author who most activates my personal "wokeness" meter is John D MacDonald. As a teenager I loved his Travis McGee series but on a recent revisit, his women characters are decidedly milquetoast. On the other hand, Mickey Spillane would today be pilloried for his lack of political correctness, though at the time, he was his own brand of woke. Plus his women characters tend to be as dangerous as the men and that trumps any level of wokeness. Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow.

Just a Little Tummy Ache

Thank you, Aline, for your post on Monday. You've given me another destination if I actually do take a vacation in late May (meeting up with friends who want to do a bus tour of Scotland). You also made me happy that I'm working on a historical novel set during an era when one could still hope to get away with accidentally seasoning the stew with a poisonous flower.

I long to have an herb garden. Since our growing season here is short, I thought of doing a window box. My only problem is that I have a cat who snacks on anything green. I've taken to the internet to Google the various lists available on plants that are dangerous for four-legged family members. I've even noted the green plants that my cat's vet has in her office waiting room. But I'm still wary that somehow I will manage to purchase the wrong plant at the garden store and do my cat in. And, yes, I have asked the staff in several stores. They always seem reluctant to assure me of the safety of their lovely plants. I suspect they're concerned about a lawsuit if my cat decides to have a snack and gets more than a stomachache. 

One of the workshops that I'm scheduled to do at Sleuthfest in March is titled "Food, Crime, and Justice." Since I'm not an expert on poisons, I'm leaving that discussion to the presenter who is. But I do plan to discuss the theories in criminology about killers who use poison. For example, the male criminologist who in the mid-20th century wrote a book in which he argued that poison was the preferred murder weapon of female killers. This preference, he argued, was for both practical reasons and because women were secretive and devious. 

I'm going to encourage my workshop participants to think about everyday interactions that involve food and drink. I've thought about this because whenever I go back to revise my own books and short stories I notice how often my characters eat and drink. I don't think I'm capable of writing a high-octane thriller in which no one ever stops for a meal or a bathroom break. Not that I want to. My characters stop off in their favorite cafe or restaurant. They make trips to the supermarket. They talk as they are cooking and sitting down to dinner. Their favorite foods and how they consume them reveal something about them.

I always notice how characters prepare and consume food in crime films. It's one of the topics I'm discussing in my book about gangster films. For example, two of my favorite scenes in Goodfellas involve food preparation -- the gangsters cooking their own elaborate meal in the prison kitchen, and, later, Ray Liotta (as Henry Hill) back in the kitchen preparing a meal as his character's world is about to come crashing down.  

In everyday life, we do tend to pigeonhole people by what they consume -- vegans versus meat eaters. Hard-working, drive-thru black coffee drinkers versus the espresso latte elitists who lounge in cafes. We have stereotypes of who these people are -- work, friends, beliefs. In fact, these perceptions have become so much a part of American culture that politicians can alienate voters by fumbles when they try to shop in a supermarket, order a hamburger, or eat a slice of pizza. Note to politicians:  Do not eat your pizza with a fork in New York City. 

My fascination with food is one of the reasons that I'm writing a book set in 1939. My characters  travel in a Pullman coach, attend the New York World's Fair, and appreciate having enough to eat because they have survived the worst years of the Great Depression. 

Time for lunch. I missed breakfast, and I will be grateful for the meal I am about to consume.

The Agony and the Ecstasy and the Agony Again

As I (Donis) noted in my last blog entry, I have recently returned from a two week book-tour/family reunion to my native state of Oklahoma, during which I did some quite successful book events but no actual writing while I was on the road. Then five minutes after we returned home I came down with an evil plague and spent the next week or so trying simply to live. In short, I did not write on my WIP for three weeks. The fact that Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's Day were in there didn't help, either.

Well, I'm back at it now, trying to get the first half on the new book in order so I can sent it to my editor for her approval THIS WEEKEND. I like what I have, and I certainly hope my editor does, too, because the book half done, by god, and I certainly don't want to have to start over at this late date. On top of everything, I'm still involved in publicizing my last book, The Wrong Girl, which is set in Hollywood in the 1920s In fact, I did an event at my local library a couple of days ago. That is where my husband took the above photo, which is one of my favorites. I've started using power point illustrations when I do talks, if the venue can handle them, and I've found that the audiences like it. It's fun for me, too. That particular photo is of 1920s screen icon Mae Murray, the Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips. I used it to show how movie make-up was done in the silent era.

The Wrong Girl seems to be doing well. I have gotten some mail from a couple of Alafair fans who think I mistreated her in this book (which is ironic since Alafair does not appear in this book), but most of my fan mail and reviews have been very good. In fact, I just got a note from one of my favorite authors, Tim Hallinan, which said:

Dear Donis --

Just finished THE WRONG GIRL, and I could kill you because I want the second book RIGHT NOW. This is just amazing, and I can only hope that your publishers know what they've got.

I finished it about 90 minutes ago and posted a five-star review on Amazon. If they run it, here's what it will say"

A WONDERFUL VINTAGE HOLLYWOOD MYSTERY

I love Donis Casey's Alifrair Tucker books for their living, breathing characters, their meticulous prose, and their remarkable sense of place. The good news is that Casey has brought all those gifts to this remarkable new series, set in silent-movie Hollywood during the still-roaring Twenties and she's struck solid gold. In telling the story of the Oklahoma teenager Blanche Tucker, swept off her feet and out of her tiny home town by a handsome, smooth-talking man who has dire plans for her, Casey takes a wonderful route that leads us ultimately to the Hollywood of stars whose voices no one ever heard, where the studios eradicated real life stories in order to manufacture new names and legends to go with them. Holding things together is a believable private eye who, trying to solve a years-old and trace a missing financial ledger, finds himself in the highest stratosphere of Hollywood, where nothing and no one are what they seem. I'm looking forward impatiently to the next one and wondering whether Casey will explore Oklahoma's sprawling Tucker family. which (it seems to me) must include both Alafair and Blanche.

Now, that made my day, you betcha! And then, while I'm basking in this much appreciated praise, my sister calls and says she's listening to the recently released audio version of the book and the reader mis-pronounces one of the characters' name over and over.

So much for my momentary elation.

In search of a name

It's two weeks since I wrote my post 'Ready, set go!' about putting my pen to paper and getting started on the first draft of my new, no-name Inspector Green novel. At that time I had about 10 pages written. I am now proud to announce that I have 73 pages! Mind you, it's 73 handwritten pages and half the paragraphs are crossed out, but still, it's progress! Moreover, while I was doing that, the proofs of my novel THE ANCIENT DEAD arrived from the publisher and I have been wading through those too. And I had to prepare a talk to give to the local editors' association.

As an aside, that group is impressive! It was a regular monthly meeting but almost all the seats were filled. Not only did they laugh at my jokes but they listened for nearly an hour and then asked questions for another half hour, despite a snowstorm brewing outside. One tip I learned for any association struggling with poor attendance: serve excellent snacks (croissants, cheese, strawberries, among other things), and in addition to coffee and tea, serve alcohol! I noticed several members pouring Baileys on their ice cream.

I also updated my website, did some social media fiddling, and spent hours researching on the internet. And by the end of two weeks, I had 73 pages and two problems. First of all, no body. There was lots of mystery and intrigue, but I was writing and writing and writing without ever reaching that crucial point in a detective novel: the appearance of a body. It arrives on p. 74, but it remains to be seen, once I get this handwritten scribble down on the computer where I can examine it, whether that's soon enough. I don't think I've ever put off murder for so long before,

The second problem is, no-name doesn't cut it as a title. A title is like the cherry on the top of a sundae, the perfect touch that ties the whole creation together. Sometimes it comes to me easily, even before I've started the book. Sometimes it jumps out at me from a phrase I've written. Other times I play with words, comb through Internet quotations and generally tear out my hair before I hit upon the perfect title that captures the essence of the story.

No-name is about domestic violence, so I toyed with variations on the wedding vows. 'For better or for worse' and 'Till death do us part' have both been done to death. To have and to hold... Meh. I combed through Shakespearean quotes online. Nobody does death quite like Shakespeare. But so far, I've struck out.

So the search continues. I hope that by the summer I will have found my answer. Stay tuned!

Pet Peeves

by Rick Blechta

I’m feeling ornery today, which means my planned blog on “character dangers” is postponed for a week. So there!

This is going to be an “audience participation” post.

I’d like to request that everyone reading this contributes a pet peeve of theirs. Allow me to explain.

I’m going to limit peeves to something usage-wise in the English language that annoys you to the point of distraction.

Here are a few of mine:

• Bogus use of apostrophes, as in: “Houses available NOW in the low $600’s!” A book titled Eats, Shoots and Leaves deals with this and other usage topics in a most entertaining manner. If you haven’t read it, you will find it rewarding.
• People who say (or write) “restauranteur” instead of restaurateur. It’s not a huge thing, but dammit! It’s just sloppy and, well, WRONG!
• This one originates from texting and I understand why it came about (texting is a very onerous thing): “ur” instead of your. I’m probably fighting a losing battle here, but I’d like to stamp this one out right here, right now! Are you with me? People who use it should be shamed and ostracized from polite society firmly and immediately!
• But there’s one that makes me want to scream: When I hear someone say “nucular” (sic, sic, SIC!) in place of nuclear. Again, it comes about from pure sloth, but it REALLY grates on me.

So there are some examples of what I’m looking for. Please add your own to entertain and elucidate us all.

I thank you.

Name Your Poison

I've never poisoned anyone. Even after I dropped the lemon meringue pie taking it out of the oven, and it landed on the floor, miraculously intact and I scooped it up and served it to my supper guests with a bland expression, they all survived unscathed.  (Science later proved that the 10 second rule is right - it isn't long enough for bacteria to get organized and climb on.)

And I haven't poisoned anyone in fiction, either.  I'm not sure why, but perhaps it's because using poison seemed a very complicated thing.  You might be able to research the likely effects, but then you'd have to work out when your poisoner could use it so that he/she wasn't the obvious suspect, and whether the victim wouldn't realise, as PG Wodehouse's hero Rollo Podmarsh did, that 'the arrowroot had tasted rummy.'

Then of course, how would someone go about obtaining strychnine, say, when Health and Safety regulations have done away with the handy gardener's shed with all those pesticides that worked just as well on human pests in the classic murders? A knock on the back of the head with a blunt instrument when no one is around is easier and certainly more true to life.

Then I went to visit the Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.

The gardens are well worth a visit anyway and the castle was used in the filming of Harry Potter, but it was the garden where every plant was poisonous that fascinated me. Smelling or touching is forbidden. It was pretty horrifying to realize how many of the plants I lovingly treasure in my own garden (and smell and touch) have lethal qualities, and how easy it would be for anyone, with the help of their beautifully illustrated brochure, to literally choose their poison from the handy line-up in the herbaceous border.

Fancy complete kidney failure for your target?  There's the clematis over there, with the pretty pink flowers. Or the rhododendron - put your beehive next to it, regularly spread the honey on the victim's toast and oops! vomiting, dehydration, tremors,  convulsions and death.  Then there's a whole range of bulbs that could be  popped into a delicious, spicy stew - snowdrop, bluebell, lily of the valley - with gratifying results like intense sleepiness followed by coma and heart failure.  There are dozens and dozens more - like that hydrangea, containing cyanide.

Every part of the innocent daffodil  is poisonous.  During the Second World War there were numerous cases of people slicing up the bulbs as a substitute for scarce onions.  Some survived, some didn't.  So perhaps the villain could claim to be a non-gardener who had made a terrible mistake?  It's certainly an idea.

I think it's a little bit too Golden Age for the books I write, but I'm sure there's a good plot - in both senses - out there in the garden!

Fraud Mania

What on earth is going on? So many times lately I have opened my email and been greeted with another warning of a scam.

Last week, my church (St. Luke's Episcopal), cautioned the parishioners that someone was soliciting funds in the name of our priest.

Western Writers of America sent out a group email stating that someone named "Jacqueline" was fleecing members under the guise of our organization. My AARP bulletin has dire articles in both the magazine and the newsletter.

My week was capped with both a print and email warning from my local health organization about fake third-party billing.

Last year, I was invited to attend a conference in London (all expenses paid) and speak about my historical specialty: African American history. They were going to pay me $25,000. That was way too much money. Which I needed, but never mind. It was the wildly inflated amount that aroused my suspicions. If they had offered about $5000 for an overseas appearance I would have been inclined to take it seriously.

The letter was off. Just slightly. There were some phrases that were not constructed in accordance with standard American usage.

 Nevertheless, I was wistful enough to do some research. I was so happy, so flattered. They said such nice things about me. So I checked. The cathedral was real. The Bishop was real. And then I emailed the church secretary. Church secretaries know everything. It was a fraud. Their next step would have undoubtedly been the classic "ask" for my bank account number so they could mail my expense check.

I have no idea how beginning authors manage to pick their way around in the publishing industry. There were so many really crooked people when I was starting. It's a thousand fold now. There are fake agents who have never sold a book in their lives, fake publishers who expect authors to put up seed money, fake reviewers, fake publicists, etc. The list goes on and on.

I'm grateful for all the breaks I have received. Grateful for the wonderful friends I have made through the years. And more grateful than ever for stumbling onto a wonderful agency at the very beginning of my career who put me with editors who really care about books.

Where editing meets my Mac Or a curmudgeon’s guide to technology

I teach because, as I tell friends or young teachers I’m working with, I get paid to talk about books. What could be better? I also get paid to talk about writing and the writing process. (There is also a never-ending pile of papers to grade, but we don’t have to get into the negative stuff here.)

The truth is it’s about symbiosis: teaching feeds my writing, and writing feeds my teaching.

I’m working with a young writer this spring, a senior who wants to write novels. It’s a one-on-one class. He’s absolutely driven, and our focus is on his work. But I am sharing some of my processes with him.

One is absolutely painful:

• Find your weak verbs and replace them.

Using the CTL + F option, typing in “has” (or “was” or “be”) and spotting, say, eight uses of “has” in a 500-word argumentative essay, taking time to punch up those verbs with suitable revisions is one thing. Try doing it for the first 57,000 words of a novel. This took me two hours last week. Time well spent? I hope so. I wish I was a write-it-and-edit-when-you-are-finished writer. But I’m not wired that way.

CTL + F is useful for many things:

• How many times have I written “had been”? Yikes!
• Did I tell the reader that she wore RED glasses too many times?
• Lower case to start an independent clause after a colon?
• Can I shorten my sentences? Search for the word “and.”

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a stickler (did I just write “stickler”? Am I becoming an old curmudgeon?) about reading works aloud or having the rat on the wheel inside the computer (or whatever powers the thing) read it to you. On a Mac, this is OPT + ESC. On a PC, it’s Windows + ESC (there are other ways on a PC as well).

The benefits of hearing your work are many: you find clunkers, spelling errors (the rat will read whatever you write –– if your hands move like mine, “to the” becomes “tot he” often.), throw-away lines in dialogue, and cliffhangers that simply hang. You hear the pace of your scene. You hear the rhythm of the language. In short, you hear what you really wrote. Not what you think you wrote.

These are some places where old fashioned editing meets technological advancements for me. I’d love to hear how others are using technology.

My Year in Books 2019

It’s time for my annual reading wrap-up.

In 2019 I read 108 books, 38 more than last year! Unlike last year where about half of my reading was non-fiction, only about 5% was in 2019. Not really sure why that was since I do love reading non-fiction. Maybe because I listened to a lot of Great Courses series this past year instead.

The most interesting non-fiction book I read in 2019 was “The Trial of Lizzie Borden” by Cara Robertson. Just a fascinating book with a lot of details of the investigation and the trial. Well worth reading.

Another book of note in the non-fiction category was “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean. You may remember I mentioned it in a post last March. It’s about the library fire in the downtown branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Also well worth reading.

As you know, I read a lot of cozies. This past year I finished up some series that I really enjoy. I read the last books in the Button Box Mysteries by Kylie Logan and the Mall Cop series by Laura DiSilverio. I’m saddened that there won’t be any more of these. I enjoy them so much they have a permanent place on my bookshelf and they’re probably one of the few series I will read again.

But my absolute favorite books in the cozy category were two in the Family Skeleton series by Leigh Perry: “The Skeleton Makes a Friend” and “The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking”. I’m hoping there are many more of these on the horizon.

Another great traditional mystery series (I hesitate to call them cozies) is John Gaspard’s Eli Marks mystery series featuring magician Eli Marks. I’d recommend reading all of them, but if you only read one make it “The Floating Light Bulb”.

I also continued my fascination with middle grade books. I finished off the Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud and discovered the Sixty-Eight Room series (which I finished reading) by Marianne Malone. Another series worth mentioning is the Moon Base Alpha series by Stuart Gibbs. Just pick up anything by Gibbs and you’ll enjoy it, but this series is my favorite.

In the non-mystery fiction category, I recommend “Year of Wonders” by Geraldine Brooks set in 1666 when the plague reared its ugly head once again in England. It’s about a town that voluntarily cuts itself off when plague surfaces in their midst and the consequences of doing that. It’s based on the real town of Eyam who isolated themselves from the outside until all signs of the plague had disappeared. I found this one particularly interesting because I’d just listened to the Great Courses series on the Black Death.

I also read a fair amount of historical mysteries. 2019 was the year I discovered Bonnie MacBird’s series featuring Sherlock Holmes

(“Art in the Blood”, “Unquiet Spirits”) as well as Renee Patrick’s series featuring Lillian Frost and Edith Head (“Design For Dying”, “Dangerous to Know”.) I picked up MacBird’s books largely because I love the covers. They turned out to be great reads. And I had to have Renee Patrick’s series because it has the Edith Head in it. I remember when I was growing up seeing her accept Oscars for her work in films. I always found her fascinating.

I could go on and on about other great books I read, but I won’t. Did you have any particular favorites from this past year of reading?

Can a crime novel have too much tension?

by Rick Blechta

As seems to happen more often than not, a previous post from one of my Type M confreres causes my well-made plans to change at the last minute. That’s happened again today — and is the reason I’m so late with my own post.

Yesterday, Tom posted a great piece on successfully building tension and stress into a plot. It is something every single crime fiction writer must face and overcome. If this isn’t accomplished the book is not likely to hold readers’ attention.

Probably the most important thing he points out is this: “Be mindful that there should be an ebb and flow of tension, a little breathing space. Otherwise, you'll wear your reader out. But at the end of the breather, that's always a great place to put a plot twist.”

A novel’s plot? feel? can only approach “relentlessness” in those few final chapters. By that point the writer should just be dragging readers along at a run. But you may disagree.

Tom is very right about breathing space. Sure, start a novel with a bang. We all try to do that. As we’ve all pointed out a one point or another, those first few pages are where readers are “auditioning” the story. It can’t be all exposition at that point, some action is needed to keep things zinging along. But once you figure you’ve got ’em hooked, it’s time to relax and let some of your characters’ other qualities come out, it’s time to get your readers invested in your characters.

Years ago I read a spy novel — the title of which escapes me at the moment — that opened with some tremendous, gut-wrenching action scenes. I was hooked. But then the action kept on…and on…and on.

A third of the way into the book I was exhausted. Not only that, there was no substance to any of the characters, especially the protagonist, because there had been no time to develop any. This was long before video games, but the plot structure was very much like a video game’s. The whole plot involved our intrepid hero going from one “level” to the next. There was no real substance.

My job that summer was as the “pool boy” at a resort in Maine. The place was not very busy and basically my job was to watch over the pool more than serve the guests. Consequently I had hours each week to spend reading. The book mentioned above is the only one during my entire time there that I remember not finishing.

I was too gormless at the time to analyze why this was so, but it’s interesting to note that most of the books I literally galloped through were ones written by recognized masters of the genre: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. It would be hard to stack up well against these authors even if the novel were pretty good. But I do remember thinking, “Time to find something else to read,” and putting the book back on the resort library’s shelves.

So it’s a balance, a very precarious one, that each author must find for every novel they write. And it can be very tough to do.

Next week: Never fall in love with your characters!

Tension

I received this by private messenger in Facebook this morning:

“Good evening, any idea when Shadow Hill will be hitting the bookshelves? I just started Graveyard Bay this week and can’t believe how much your books make my heart race. I find myself tensing and holding my breath, trying to prepare myself for when the boogeyman jumps out. I just ordered all three of your books today for a friend at work. They’ve got a birthday coming up and I know they’ll love them. Your books are really amazing.”

That made my day! I can't stop smiling.

Tension—the mighty engine that moves the plot forward. The dictionary defines tension as mental or emotional strain; intense, suppressed suspense, anxiety, or excitement. It also defines it as being stretched or strained. Isn’t that the ringer we want to put our readers through?

Here are my thoughts about creating tension.

The readers have to like and relate to the characters. They need to be invested in them, to care for them, and worry about them.

The protagonist has to be an active participant in the plot, their decisions and actions have consequences. How many times have you gone to a movie where the protagonist starts down a dark stairwell or dangerous hallway when your inner voice is screaming, “Don’t go down there!”

Be careful here, however. There’s something called “Too Stupid to Live” syndrome. If you’re allowing your lead character to walk into the serial killer’s tool shed, she’d better have a damned good reason. Otherwise your reader’s going to be saying, “Oh, for heaven's sake, she’s too stupid to live” and close the book.

There should be character conflict. We’ve all been in relationships with friends, family, lovers, or even co-workers and sooner or later, there's gonna' be drama. Readers can relate to that. They've been through it. No relationship is rosy all the time.

There’s internal character conflict. My protagonist has a problem with alcohol and relating to authority. And in spite of being extremely intelligent and aware, she makes bad life decisions. Most of my readers find these quirks to be endearing. I want her to be someone you'd like to have a glass of wine with...just not too many of them.

Your lead character should have a dark threat hanging over her head like the sword of Damocles. Maybe it starts out when your protagonist doesn’t know how she's going to pay her bills. Or when a lover talks about leaving. Then it might build with an unknown killer on the loose. Oh, my God, the boogeyman is hiding around the corner. Escalate the threats.

Want to ramp that up even higher? Threaten your lead character’s loved ones! Put them in danger.

Time itself might be a threat. Your character may only have a specified amount of time to solve the mystery before there are horrible consequences. Tension escalates when the clock is ticking.

Have you written a tense scene? Is your protagonist racing to beat a deadline? Is she running through the forest to save her daughter? Ramp it up. Do it during an ice storm, making it difficult to get traction, dodging falling tree branches, the clock is ticking. As the story unfolds, the road to any kind of success should get harder and the stakes get higher. Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, create another hurdle.

Be mindful that there should be an ebb and flow of tension, a little breathing space. Otherwise, you'll wear your reader out. But at the end of the breather, that's always a great place to put a plot twist.

In some ways, writers have to be cruel. You’re putting your babies in harm’s way, putting them in extreme danger, striking fear in their hearts, dropping them into a life and death situation.

In real life, I think we try to avoid tension and drama. I know I do. But when I read a novel or watch a movie, I want to be on that roller coaster ride with characters in whom I’m invested and want to see survive. I want to see them win.

A New Year, A New Book, an Old Problem

Happy at Magic City Books in Tulsa

If you haven't been following the recent entries here on Type M, Dear Reader, you've missed some interesting observations about the joy/problem of writing and trying to have a life at the same time.
I lost a little height and slinked away when I read Aline's last entry wherein she said "I'm so impressed with fellow-Type Mers like Donis and John who have gone on with their determination to write every day, no matter what, right through the festive season."

Because guess what? Did I faithfully work over the holidays? No, I did not. And here is my perfectly excellent reason - I took a road trip back to my homeland of Oklahoma in the middle of December. It was the first time Don and I have driven back together since he began having health problems over ten years ago, and it was great fun (though more tiring than when we were energetic young things) We drove through our old stomping grounds, through the mountains of New Mexico past the Very Large Array and Pie Town, through Lubbock Texas, where we were married oh so many years ago, to Norman Oklahoma, where we first met in grad school and went back to years later to work at the University. I did an author event at the new Public Library in Norman which is a beautiful three story building, and the event was beautifully attended. I was told that I was the very first author to talk in the new building, and for the inaugural event featuring my 1920s era novel, The Wrong Girl, a jazz band played before and after my presentation, and silent movies were projected on the back wall above the cookies and punch. The very nice crowd included five - count'em! - five of my first cousins, along with the cousins-in-law and cousins once removed they brought with them.

My sister Martha and my husband Don

If that wasn't lovely enough, we drove to Tulsa the next day, where I was born and raised and near where all my siblings have returned after a lifetime of being scattered all over the U.S. and the world. I'm the only one still living away from the homeland. For now, at least. We spent five nights with my youngest sister and her husband in their new house. Oh, brave Martha. Can you imagine hosting relatives in your house for five days? Fortunately we all get along great and spent some quality time yelling at the television together. Don and I tried to make a point of getting out of their hair for several hours a day. I had lunch with a childhood friend, and visited with the great Carolyn Hart, who now lives in Tulsa. The other siblings did meet us for meals, etc. Middle sister and her husband drove down from Joplin to see us a mere few hours before they caught a plane for Florida and a Christmas cruise to the Bahamas.

On the day before we left for home I did an event at a new bookstore in downtown Tulsa called Magic City Books, also surprisingly well attended considering that it was icy cold and drizzling. I have to admit that I am related to about a third of the people who showed up. We had gorgeous sunny weather on the drive back to Arizona, of course. Then the instant I got home I became deathly ill and collapsed in a heap for several days.

The gist of all this is that I did not write a word for three weeks. I'm back in the land of the living again, and desperately trying to write. Desperate, because my editor wants to see at least the first 100 pages in mid-January.

VERY IMPORTANT POINT HERE. PLEASE READ. If you are a writer, you really should sit down and write every single day, because if you don't YOU WILL LOSE IT. I didn't write for three weeks, and when I finally got back to the computer, I had forgotten everything I ever knew. It's still in there somewhere, because it's been several days now, and I feel the muses stirring again. But let me tell you, I had a few days of panic, there. Oh, I wrote down words, crappy words, but they were words, and words can be shaped and smoothed and made uncrappy, because as you know, you cannot edit a blank page. Some writing days are good, and some make you question your life choices. As Barbara Fradkin said yesterday, "at some point the descent will slow, even reverse, and I will grind to a halt, forced to plod along and even climb again with great effort. Stories bog down and become mired in dead ends when one is a pantser. More and more forks crop up, with no clear path forward. The one principle I keep in mind (which is the same in skiing) is: choose the fork that promises momentum." And keep on going!

Ready, set, go!

I've been amused by the recent posts by my fellow bloggers, all along the lines of Happy Holidays, here's what I did with the family, why I didn't do any writing, and so on. I confess that because my last post was due on Christmas Day itself, it didn't get posted at all. I had a house full of family, a seventeen pound turkey to cook, and more family coming to help eat it. I was too busy even to take photos. So here's my first holiday photo of the blog. This is only one table of two. I call it The Aftermath. 

But I was most intrigued by Aline's post about starting her new book, to which I said "That's exactly me!" In fact, I think that so often when I read Aline's posts that I wonder if we aren't secret identical twins with different accents.

I have been researching my next book for almost three months, reading cheerful tomes on domestic violence and trolling through the internet to learn about shelters, police response, therapy groups, etc. As I read, the characters in my drama slowly began to take shape in my imagination and some key plot possibilities emerged. But I kept stalling on actually getting down to write. New Year's Day was my drop-dead deadline. Like Aline, I am mostly a pantser and once I have a couple of opening scenes, I start the journey, knowing that if I planned ahead, I would be seduced by the first intriguing fork in the road and be off in another direction anyway. If anything, trying to follow a plan would only frustrate and bore me. I do think ahead in fits and starts, but I like the surprises my imagination comes up with and I like not knowing how it's all going to work out.

But it is also terrifying to be lost in the wilderness, not knowing where I'm going or whether I'll ever get there. This is the curious paradox that I think pantsers find so addictive. The journey is both thrilling and terrifying. Rather like plunging down a ski hill on the very edge of losing control. And, keeping with that metaphor, there I was on New Years, poised at the top of the mountain with my ski tips pointing over the abyss, gathering my courage. Finally there is nothing for it but to push off. Put pen to paper and start the first scene. Which I did on January 4. It's a brand new Inspector Green novel: I am bringing my favourite detective back after an absence of almost six years. So on January 4 I started feeling my way down the mountain and now have four scenes written, with ideas for the next three that emerged out of the writing of the last one. The story is picking up momentum.

The skiing analogy breaks down somewhat at this point, unless the mountain is very high and the path very circuitous. Because although at the moment I am gliding along and enjoying it, I know at some point the descent will slow, even reverse, and I will grind to a halt, forced to plod along and even climb again with great effort. Stories bog down and become mired in dead ends when one is a pantser. More and more forks crop up, with no clear path forward. The one principle I keep in mind (which is the same in skiing) is: choose the fork that promises momentum. The Goldilocks fork. Not the Black Diamond run that plunges me to the finish line too fast and recklessly out of control. Not the Bunny Hill that lulls me effortlessly down through each safe and predictable turn. But the Intermediate hill that keeps me close to the edge of my skis, gripping my poles and screaming curses into the wind.

I've got a long way to go, but each day I try to put myself back on that mountain, picking up where I left off and feeling my way down through the open spaces and dense woods, the cliffs and the bogs. I've got about eight months to go and 85,000 more words to write, but it's exciting to be starting the journey. 

Robot Writing

by Rick Blechta

I began last year’s post with an article about books as works of art. That’s physical works of art rather than written ones.

Call it fateful, but in December I found a very interesting article in the Washington Post about people turning to computerized robots to write invitation, greeting cards, inscriptions and the like.

CLICK HERE for a link to the article.

My first encounter with robot handwriting happened a number of years ago at the (late and lamented) Toronto Book Fair. Believe it or not, Margaret Atwood was there to present a machine the idea for which she had conceived. It was called LongPen. CLICK HERE for a link to the website.

Her idea was being able to attend book signings in remote places (like the Canadian north without actually being there. She would be visible on a computer monitor and attendees could get personally signed and inscribed books by Ms Atwood via her LongPen invention. If you’ve looked at the website, you know how this was accomplished.

I duly took my place in line and after a short wait, got to sit down at one of the LongPens and wrote out something. Being the cheeky bastard I am, it went something like: “Now the amazing Ms Atwood in an inventor. Brava!” She thought that was very “sweet” and thanked me. She even said I could call her Peggy as we chatted about working out the tech details for the prototype. How cool is that?

Now people are using a simpler and speedier riff of the LongPen idea to make their greeting cards seem more personal. Since mostly pre-existing fonts are being used for this, the results don’t seem all that personal.

That’s something like getting computer software to write short stories or books. It can be done, and while the results might be interesting as a mental exercise, we imperfect humans are still definitely needed to conceive of and write works that truly are worth reading.

So why the pretense of sending a personal message when it really isn’t actually personal? It might just be me, but I would be more insulted getting something like this than I would be with some sort of printed out message that isn’t trying to look as if it was actually written by the person sending the message.

How about you? Have you received a faux personalized greeting card? Do you feel the same way?

If you’re going to go to all the trouble of this kind of subterfuge, why not get hold of a LongPen and do it right? Just let me know and I’ll get in touch with my good friend Peggy!

Ploughing the Field

I'm so impressed with fellow-Type Mers like Donis and John who have gone on with their determination to write every day, no matter what, right through the festive season. That admirable habit failed with me around mid-December when with the entire family coming for Christmas I realised that it was a choice between having a clean house, food in the fridge and freezer and no work done and having a thousand or two words written, plus chaos and a nervous breakdown where I just kept mumbling wildly, 'Mince pies! Christmas pudding! Home-made fudge...'

So I've been a bit of a slacker lately, but now I feel the better for the break. As it happened, Christmas came along at just the right time, when I felt I'd done all I could on the new book in the way of planning.

We've all talked a lot about being planners or pantsers and at heart I'm a pantser, usually prepared to set off once I've got the first couple of chapters ready to roll and a vague idea of what the ending will be (usually wrong) but this time I thought I would try looking a bit further ahead, attracted by the notion that once you had blacked it all out in summary, the book itself would be a doddle.

To be honest, it just didn't do it for me. I even tried that theory of writing one paragraph, then expanding it to a page, then a chapter and so on... By the time I'd got on to the second stage, I was completely revising what I'd written in the paragraph, and the chapter never happened. All it seemed to be doing was stopping the flow and making me panic that it wouldn't happen, ever.

Still, I did spend a lot of the planning time doing research that I'm inclined to postpone until I need the details on the way through. I checked out possible names for the characters I have in mind, instead of grabbing for a baby names dictionary every time a new character is introduced and thumbing desperately through it (there are people who actually call a helpless baby Zipporah?). I've got to know the characters themselves better now by living with them without putting them under pressure - though of course once I actually start writing they will change. They always do. I even have lots of ideas and snatches of dialogue written down ready for use later.

So I'm starting the new decade with the new book, ready to find out what the story is really about. And yes, to some extent it feels as if I've got the field ploughed ready for sowing but the drive that keeps me writing – to find out what happens in the end – is still there.

January gets a bad name, but I like it. After the frenzy of the festive season I'm looking forward to all of its 31 quiet days, when it's just me and the new book

A New Decade! Hip Hip Hooray

Short but heart felt. May this be the best year ever for my fellow Type M'ers and for all our faithful followers.

Onward and Upward!