Memories given a Help!ing hand.

Howdy, Type M folks, Douglas Skelton at the keyboard.

I want to talk about triggers today. Not the ones that crime writers usually talk about - you know, the ones that makes things go bang. 

Yesterday (Saturday) I was watching '8 Days a Week', Ron Howard's brilliant documentary on The Beatles, and as soon as the song 'Help!' began I was instantly transported back to when I was very young on the streets of Springburn in the north of Glasgow. There is a bond between the words melody and memory, for the former lingers on the latter for a lifetime. 

A few years ago I went back to those streets and this is what I wrote:

The man was talking to someone I couldn’t see. Or maybe he was talking to someone only he could see.
All I knew was that when I reached him, there was no one at the top of the steps.
He carried a plastic supermarket bag and he looked about my age. He was wearing a dark jacket and his shoulders were stopped but his hair was still dark and full. As I neared, he turned, nodded to me and walked away.
I wondered if he’d lived here all his life. I wondered where he’d been, where he was going.
I wondered if, at one time, I knew him.
I was back in Springburn, where I spent part of my childhood. We moved around a bit – I usually say that we moved whenever the rent was due. From Glasgow to Manchester to Ashton–Under–Lyne back to Glasgow to Cumbernauld to East Kilbride (the latter two new towns built to tackle what was called the overspill from Glasgow).
But this was where I was born, in the very street I saw the man talking to someone who might not even have been there.

Valleyfield Street. There used to be tenements on both sides but now only one. There was a little shop here then, Dale’s Dairy. I remember I used to think about a popular radio show called ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’ whenever I saw the sign.
I’d had a lunch meeting just down the road (boy, that sounds grand) and had a few hours to kill before meeting a couple of close pals for dinner. At the lunch I’d talked about Springburn, about being born there, living there.
My memories, though, are fragmented. Snapshots, really. Shadows of time that flicker in my mind and then are gone. Some may be false. Memories can be tricky.
My grandmother – my Nana – lived in Adamswell Street, up the flight of steps from Valleyfield Street. It was a much longer street back then. Part of it has been bulldozed to make way for a wider road taking traffic to and from the M8. All the tenements have gone, although the street remains.

Snapshot
The café at the corner sells drinks for a penny. Irn Bru in little glasses, just like the cowboys used in the films. We sashay in, order a drink, slap our money down and stand at the counter like it was a bar. And, if we’re flush, there are Penny Dainties and Blackjacks and lucky bags.

I remember coalmen in leather jackets with no sleeves carting huge bags up the stairs of the tenements to the flats, big, burly men covered in coaldust, and they lifted the heavy loads with such ease I thought they must be supermen.
I remember, or think I do, men with little ladders lighting lamps but that can’t be, because we’re only talking the mid-1960s and that didn’t still happen, surely?
I remember the rag and bone man on his cart, calling out RAAAGS, RAAAGS. And his horse, which I hope was cared for properly but we didn’t think about it back then.
I remember bits and pieces, and many came back to me like flashbacks that day.

Snapshot
I’m running through a dark passageway. We call it ‘The Dunny’ and it runs from the back courts of Adamswell Street to Valleyfield Street. I’ve been dared to go through and honour dictates that I do it. It’s pitch black and seems to go on forever. There’s a smell of damp. And there’s water dripping somewhere, I’m splashing through it. But there’s something else here, I know it, something breathing in the shadows. Something watching. Something waiting for my step to falter so it can pounce. But I keep moving, faster now, feeling the fear build with my beating heart and when I finally burst back into the daylight that fear escapes in a giggle. I’ve made it. I’m safe. And my honour is intact.

I was asked during the lunch about street gangs in Springburn. I’m sure they existed but I was too young to be aware of them. Our gang was made up of the kids from Adamswell Street and there was a brief rivalry with kids from a neighbouring street.
I recall us facing them down one day. There was about six of us and maybe a dozen of them, strung out across the street. They had sticks and leather belts as weapons. We had a few cheeky comments and not much else. There was at least one coward among us that day, and he ran off and hid up a close. I couldn’t help myself. I’m no fighter. The street battle didn’t amount to much in the end. A lot of shouting. A lot of running. No one was hurt. I’m not even sure any blows were actually struck in anger. So much for my juvenile delinquency.
The other side did capture two of our guys, though, and I redeemed myself by sneaking over the old disused wash house roofs to free them. They’d been tied to an old metal washing pole and I’d watched their captors running round them and whooping like the Native Americans we’d seen on the telly. We didn’t call them Native Americans, though, for these were less than politically correct times. Being PC back then meant getting into blue serge and keeping your thermos and sandwiches in the blue police box on Adamswell Street.

Snapshot
An old car. Rusting. Abandoned. Unlocked. We can climb in and pretend we’re driving, hands running up and down the steering wheel in exaggerated fashion.

My old primary school is still there – Hyde Park. It’s now a business centre, but you can still see the two entrances, one for Girls, one for Boys. It was my first experience of school and I was there twice – before we moved to Manchester and after we came back.

Snapshot
I’m fighting with a boy outside the gates. I don’t know why. We’re rolling around the ground and landing weak punches. There’s very little pain but real tears. Especially from me because I’m losing. My honour is not so intact now.

We used to walk down the hill to Valleyfield Street and the dinner school, a collection of low pre–fab buildings (or that’s the way I remember them). We used to sing a hymn every day before food was served. All Creatures That On Earth Do Dwell. I now can’t hear that without smelling boiled cabbage.
There are houses on that bit of ground now but as I stood looking at them I remembered the dark day I ended up with a severe gash on my leg. We’d snuck into the dinner school grounds, the mean, fierce, scary old man who watched the place must’ve been away, and we were playing at the far end, up against what is now Flemington House. There was a steep concrete ramp from the grass to the fence at Adamswell Street and we used to take a runny up to try to reach the top. There were metal railings at the side of the building, big, rusting old spiked things, and somehow – I still don’t remember how, although I was probably climbing them – I managed to slide down one and gouge a large flap of flesh from my leg. There was pain and there was blood and there was crying and there was more blood, so much blood.

Snapshot
I’m being carried out of the grounds. There’s a crowd of people at the gate. My sister, Katrina, is there. An ambulanceman is there. They take off my shoe and it’s filled with blood. I remember nothing else.

I still bear the scar of that encounter.
What I don’t remember are the names of my friends and that makes me sad. I know some of them lived across from my Nana but that’s all.
So maybe that guy, the one with the companion who may not have been there at all, maybe he has lived around there all his life and maybe we once knew each other. And if that was the case, what’s he been doing all these years? What has he seen, what has he done, what’s happened to him that he talks to the air?
Did he see ghosts?

Snapshot
I’m walking back from a youth group, passing the great cavernous sheds where they used to build the locomotives. Springburn was famous all over the world for its locomotives. They’re empty now, the din of the machines and the riveters and the voices of the men who worked them has stilled. But now and again I find a way to peek into the empty sheds and faintly, behind the steady and incessant drip of the water from the holes in the roof, I fancy I still hear hammering and tapping and shunting.

The past. It’s not what it used to be. But it never dies.
They can bulldoze the buildings and they can build factories on parkland and they can turn the schools into business centres. They can flatten the old washhouses and the bin shelters we called middens. They can take away entire streets and create new ones. They can do all that but the old places – the way they were – live on as memories.
We grow out of childhood but it also never dies. It nestles within us, living, breathing, the way we were shaping what we are. Good, bad, happy, sad, loved, neglected. It’s all in there.
And that day parts of it came back to me. Snapshots, certainly, but vivid and real.  Chronologically I didn’t live in Springburn for very long but wherever I am, I will forever take a piece of it with me.

Cold Hard Truth

 A strange thing happened during when Americans were shut in during the Covid crisis. They started reading books again. This should be terrific news for writers, but according to a recent article, they mostly read authors they already liked. They read old familiar books. The cold hard truth is that these readers were wary of newcomers. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing or Typing?

I read an interesting quote once by a poet that went something like this: I write 23 hours a day, I type for one. It indicated that the poet spends a lot of time in her head. Similarly, Truman Capote once said of Jack Kerouac’s work, That’s not writing, that’s typing.

Typing vs. Writing is a concept I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. No, no one said to me what Capote said of Kerouac; not yet, anyway. But I do know myself: when I get in trouble on the page, I’m overwriting. 

I once believed overwriting came from over-thinking. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe overwriting comes from not thinking enough. I’ve turned to journaling –– thinking through my plot in my notepad. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, nor should it have taken me this long to figure out. In my classroom, students must free-write in a notebook, never on a computer, because we know they digest the material better when writing longhand. Why it took me until age 51 to take my own advice is a conversation for another day (or post).

But now I’m much more likely to slow down or even stop writing and return to my journal. I’m not working from an outline. The journal is where I think things through, where I make realizations, where I solve the puzzle I’ve created. In short, it’s where I trouble-shoot. It saves me from writing scenes (or as many as I usually write) that will never see the light of day in a final draft. It’s also a place where I can make plot decisions. This is key for me. In the journal, I’m making deductions and figuring out why and how things have happened to date. For a “pantser” (someone who writes best by the seat of his pants), the journal provides a safety net.

It takes me away from the keyboard and, if I’m being honest, slows me down. But both of those are good things. We’ve all spent too much time in front of our computer screens these past 18 months; and slowing down to speed the novel up, is a trade I’m willing to make.

My Own Little Happy Dance

 

You know that happy dance that Snoopy does? That’s what’s going on in my head right now. 

 Last week I finished the book I’ve been working on for about two years now, the sixth book in my Aurora Anderson Mystery series, Final Brushstroke. Now it’s with a Beta reader who will tell me if I’ve jumped the shark or not. I think it’s pretty good, but I always feel there’s room for improvement in my writing. This book took way longer than it should have, but I persevered, working on it in some capacity most days, either writing or researching things like love locks, lock sporting groups, bank robberies and stun guns. Yep, they’re all in my book somewhere.

While I’m waiting for comments, I’m celebrating by taking a little time off and doing things I’ve been meaning to do for a while now: cleaning, painting projects, watching Icelandic crime dramas and doing other stuff around the house. I think it’s important to pause and acknowledge a writing victory.

Things are looking up here in Los Angeles County, virus-wise, as well. We went from overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes to having way, way fewer cases of COVID-19. More things are opening up, as well, including Disneyland. I don’t intend to go anytime soon. I’m just glad it opened back up. Not that everything has been peachy-keen in my world, but there’s been enough positive stuff, I’m optimistic.

My challenge right now is what to do with this book. The publisher who published the previous five books in my series passed on this one. I’m reluctant to look for another one because this is the last one I want to write in this series, at least for a while. I have other ideas I want to work on. I’m considering self-publishing this one, but I have yet to grasp the magnitude of that task. I’ll figure it out. Right now, though, I’m just enjoying the victory.

You can’t stop making up stories, can you?

by Rick Blechta

I had really limited time over the past week to do much writing because we put in a new front lawn and I did a lot of yard work in the back. Hey, it’s that time of year!

However, I was also guilty of using some of that scarce time to do more model railroading than I should have.

I previously wrote about building “Miss Lucy’s House” and lately I was working on her big brother’s tribute building, “Jackson’s Village Pizza.”

Now, you’ll notice that I’ve added two HO scale figures. That’s Miss Lucy watering a pot of flowers on her front porch and Jackson getting some much-needed fresh air after turning out a busy evening’s batch of pies, fresh and hot.

Here’s where the storytelling comes in.

Miss Lucy is a successful young musician. What you’re not seeing yet is her 1953 baby blue Porsche Spyder. (She did have two #1 hits in the past year after all, so she splurged a bit.) It arrived yesterday afternoon. I’ve yet to construct her yard, with a driveway for the car, and no doubt a garage. There will also be a garden in the backyard and I have a lovely apple tree to go in the front yard.

A pretty, young girl would have a boyfriend being in her mid-twenties, wouldn’t she?

So I bought her two possible beaus. One is an army officer who has just returned home since he’s carrying a suitcase. Lucy hasn’t spotted him yet. I guess — assuming he makes the cut — I’ll have to buy the taxi cab that just dropped him off. He’s stopped midway up the sidewalk gazing fondly at his girlfriend.

Bachelor #2, as my wife feels, looks like a bit of a bad boy. He probably combs his hair a lot and he has a definite slouch. Maybe he’s a want-to-be boyfriend. He’ll have to toe the line because Lucy is a girl who knows her mind. I think she’ll be able to handle him — if she even gives him the time of day.

I haven’t even gotten to Jackson’s back story, but you no doubt see where this is going. I’m unable to do anything without adding the human factor. I can’t even resist giving my model buildings a story.

My granddaughter isn’t even five years old yet and her grampa has imagined her 20 years in the future with a career, her own life, and a complete back story.

After uttering the words in the title of this blog post, my wife told me she thinks it’s cute…

My Seven Rules to Raise the Heat in a Novel

 I'm halfway through teaching my first-ever Advanced Creative Writing course.  Most of the students are returnees from my earlier classes and it’s a treat to see them all again.  They’re all outstanding writers.  

Tonight, I'm presenting my list of seven rules to raise the heat in a novel. 

A good book is like a well-prepared meal.  A lot of key ingredients go into it—relatable characters, a believable plot, a satisfying story arc, evil villains, and the occasional plot twist.

But like when you’re cookin’, ya’ gotta bring the heat.

Storytelling is characters under stress. But, keep in mind, there should be an ebb and flow of tension.  Non-stop stress will wear a reader out.  Too little and you become boring.

Here are my seven rules of building tension in your novel.

1)There should be internal conflict within your characters.  And that’s not only just for your protagonist and his friends, but for your villains as well.  Internal conflict can take many forms—alcohol or drug abuse, fear, PTSD, a fear of spiders—really almost any phobia will do. 

Want to amp it up a little?  Add a physical hurdle for your protagonist.  Jeffery Deaver turned his hero, Lincoln Rhyme, into a quadriplegic. If that’s not taking it to the extreme, I don’t know what is.

2) There has to be believable and engaging characters with competing goals. The simplest example of this is the bad guy wants to kill the good guy and the good guy wants to keep breathing.  

Sometimes the competing goals aren’t so clear cut.  In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice’s goal is to catch a serial killer.  To do so, she needs the help of Hannibal Lecter.  At first it seems Hannibal’s goal is to simply use Clarice as a distraction from the boredom of his jail cell.  Then his goal appeared to be just how far into Clarice’s head he could crawl, like a spider digging deeper and deeper into her psyche. Ultimately, his real goal was to escape prison.  

3) Create secondary sources of tension.  We see these in our personal lives all the damned time.  

Think of some of the daily sources of secondary tension you might experience.  Your boss has a bad day and takes it out on you.  You’re late for a job interview and you get a flat tire. You see charges on your credit card statement that you didn’t make.

In and of itself, relatively minor annoyances.  But add it up and mix it into your story, and it ramps up the stress.

4) The main story conflict must be crucial to your character. In the film Fatal Attraction, Dan Gallagher is married to Beth but has an affair with a female magazine editor by the name of Alex.  Dan, thinking the affair was a one-off, is ready to forget about the fling.  Alex, crazy as a bedbug on meth, isn’t ready to forget anything and obsessively stalks Dan.  

The conflict here heats up when Dan thinks his marriage is in danger.  Then it grows when he realizes that his life could be in danger.  It escalates yet again, when he comes to grips that both his wife and daughter’s lives are in danger.  

Oh, FYI, if there’s a boiling pot on your stove and your pet bunny is missing, don’t look in the pot.

5) Let the tension ebb and flow.  The best thriller writers are the ones who take you on that rollercoaster ride but slow it down from time to time to let the reader catch his breath. And just when you’ve let your guard down…

6) Bam, you raise the stakes and keep raising them. In Andy Weir’s The Martian, his protagonist is left for dead on Mars after his team blasts off during a dust storm to head back to earth.  Using malfunctioning equipment, his cunning, and knowledge of science, the hero manages to eke out an existence, thinking he can last the four years until the rescue rocket can retrieve him.

But Weir suddenly raises the stakes, throwing fearsome obstacles into his hero’s path, one after the other, until it appears all hope is exhausted.  Read the book, see the movie, it’s a nail biter right up until the end. 

7) Make it a race against time. You’ve laid out the conflict, you’ve thrown in secondary conflicts, you’ve raised the stakes, now you give the protagonist a deadline.  And if the conflict isn’t resolved by then there’s deadly consequences. 

In Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, we visit a house full of people on a remote island and one of them is a killer.  One by one, they’re being murdered.  The ferry that will take them off the island doesn’t arrive until tomorrow.  Can they survive the night?  There’s nothing that will raise tension like a ticking clock.

Writing a book requires many ingredients—engaging characters, a thoughtful plot, artful descriptions.  But in the end, ya’ gotta’ bring the heat. 

Technology Trauma

 My post today is really late because I've spent most of the day dealing with technology. I raced home (driving within the speed limit, of course) to join a Zoom meeting after dropping my puppy off at doggie daycare. I had said I might be a few minutes late. I was actually over half an hour late. That's because it took me that long to get into my email and access the meeting invitation. My computer would take me to the brink -- allow me to click on my campus email. But, then, that dreaded little blue circle that spins around and around went on for long minutes while I wondered if I should try using my cell phone to join the meeting. That was when I realized I didn't have Zoom installed on my phone and would have to do that.

I've had a few bad weeks with technology. Earlier this week, my computer guy gave me some bad news. Yes, spilling half a mug of hot lemon water into the keyboard of my laptop computer was not good. But my laptop might have survived if I had immediately turned it off and unplugged it. Instead, I turned the keyboard upside down and shook it. Then I tried to turn it back on. 

Okay, in retrospect, I admit that I should have realized the water was inside the computer and most of it wouldn't drip back out if I shook it. But I was desperate. 

My computer guy took the laptop apart and set the parts out to dry. That took days. Then he gave me the news. I had the option of replacing what the water had damaged or getting a new laptop. Given what fixing the damage would cost, I opted for a new laptop. But deliveries are uncertain these days. So now I have another week to10 days before my computer guy will have the new machine. He promises that he will set it up on the day he receives it. What was on my hard drive can be saved. 

Still, between drowned laptop and freezing desktop, I am feeling traumatized. I have a mug on my desk, but it pushed far to the side. I reach for it and hold it with great care. 

The worst part of all this is that I'm having a hard time getting any writing done. I work in my office when I have class work to do. I like my desktop with the big monitor that allows me to see what I doing as I set up assignments and prepare Power Point slides. But I prefer to do my Zoom meetings from my laptop while setting at my dining room table. I also prefer to brainstorm and make notes using my laptop. 

I'm feeling cut adrift because I have a process. That process involves doing my fiction writing on my laptop -- except for the occasional moves to the desktop to print out pages. 

Waiting over a week, maybe longer for my new laptop feels like a long and unproductive time. I'm trying to use the lag time for outlining and research. 

But I am feeling deflated because I knew what I wanted to write. I am hoping I can maintain my momentum. It is disconcerting to realize how closely my productivity is tied to the instrument that I use. 

I think I need to break bad and try writing with a pen and paper. 

 

Suspended Animation

As we near the end of pandemic isolation, I feel my life is in suspended animation. Like many others, I am having trouble organizing my thoughts. My writing is ... well, it just is. It doesn't seem to take off these days, and I can't say more about it than that. I venture forth from my house more since my vaccinations, timidly, blinking dazedly in the light. I don't know what to do for myself. I can't quite get that old mojo back.

And yet there is a peacefulness to the situation. In fact, there is something of a feeling of gestation about it.  My writing mind is quiet, but something is going on in there, just below the surface. I hope when I am able to return to a normal life, I will be refreshed and full of wonderful, bright new ideas. That’s how I’m looking at it, anyway.

There is a certain freedom in helplessness. When all possibility of a decision is taken from you, there is nothing to do but go with the flow.  One evening, many years ago, I was crammed under a dining room table, along with my mother, brother, and sister, waiting for a tornado to hit our house.  Having grown up in Oklahoma, I have been through more killer storms than I care to remember, and yet I never got used to them.  I was always terrified out of my mind when the sirens went off.

Once when I was in my twenties and living in my own apartment, the sky turned green and my front window bowed in, and I swear to God that the next thing I knew I was standing in my mother’s house five miles away.  I must have gotten into my car like and idiot and driven over there through the wind and hail, but I never exactly knew how it happened.  I was apparently so panicky that all I could think was that I wanted my mommy.

But I digress.

Let us return to the huddle under the dining room table, which occurred a few years later. The tornado wound right through the back yard.  The electricity went off, the house began to rattle and bounce, and it became perfectly obvious that there was no escape.  And suddenly all my terror and panic went completely away, because there was nothing we could do to get out of this.  

Miraculously, the house was not hit. But to this day I remember that feeling of peaceful resignation, and wonder if that is what it’s like at the moment of death.

Of course, I used the experience to write a novel. Never let a good feeling of existential angst go to waste.

Letting it fly

 I am at about page 75 of my next Amanda Doucette novel, and I'm at the point where everything is burgeoning. The story is expanding, subplots are developing, the complications that are at the heart of every good story are piling on. In the life of a pantser writer, it's a fun time of no-holds-barred creativity. Let 'er rip, as they say, and worry about if and how all these ideas fit together later on. 

In normal times, this is the stage when I would be travelling around the locations, taking notes and photos, and talking to people to try to get the feel for the setting and the culture. These trips spark sidetracks, unexpected characters, and deeper subplots. In fact my flight to Vancouver island was already booked for May, and the car rented. But unfortunately these are not normal times and I had to pull the plug on the trip. I hope to be able to go in September, by which time the book will probably be about half finished. Not nearly as good for stumbling upon fortuitous ideas that enrich, maybe even alter, the story.

So I am creating the story entirely within my own head, with the pale help of maps, books, and the internet, and I will have to adjust it after the fact. Some of the most enjoyable aspects of flying by the seat of your pants are the characters you create (or meet) along the way. I typically start the novel with a very small cast of characters, and as the story evolves, I add characters as needed. Sometimes they are just meant to be walk-ons, but I find myself needing them more and more often, until suddenly they become an integral part of the plot. I usually try to make even my walk-ons interesting, so that the brief scenes that they are in can sparkle, but once I realize I am bringing them back for a few more encores, I start giving them a real identity. That's so much fun. Who are they? What was their past? What do they do with their time? What do they think of Amanda? Etc.

For example, upon arrival in Tofino, where much of the book is set, Amanda grabs lunch at a coffee shop, and we meet the middle-aged, ex-hippie owner. But as Amanda has reason to go back to the coffee shop several times in the first 75 pages, I realize this character might play a more major part in the story. She is the keeper of the region's history, and its secrets. Another character who is evolving from a bit-player to a major one is the owner of the water taxi Amanda uses to get out to the islands. Who knows, I may even make him a suspect!

Kaylee, an ongoing character (actually my dog Eva)

Some writers know all the characters who are going to be in their stories and write extensive character sketches of the important ones before they start to write. Since I don't know where the story is going and what characters I'm going to need, I get to know them only as I meet them in scenes. This has the advantage that I can mold them into what I need for the story. Does the character need an edgier side? Easy to develop that as I go along. In the case of the water taxi owner, what would be his motive and how can I hint at that?

It does mean that characters change, sometimes beyond recognition, but that's a worry for rewrites. For now, I am having fun playing with all the possibilities. Letting the story fly.

The protector of the apostrophe

By Rick Blechta 

I didn’t know such a thing existed, but apparently there was once a thing as the Apostrophe Protection Society. Had I known, I would have signed on immediately!

The reason I now know of this August organization is that it’s founder, John Richards, died last week at the age of 97.

A long-time newspaper editor and copy editor in Britain, he founded his group in 2001 and was quite surprised when people began joining. Originally, the membership of the APS was only John and his son. Seems as if there were a lot of grammarians fed up with the way those poor little apostrophes are constantly being abused and he was amazed so many people from all over the English-speaking world wanted to join up.

Something really gets steam coming from my ears is their incorrect inclusion in dates — as in “the 1980’s” — or in advertising copy for housing developments — “prices in the low 600,000’s.” I once vowed to my wife that I would never agree to purchasing a home in one of these because if they can’t even get their apostrophe usage together, what other construction shortcomings would be happen. Yeah, I was being flip, but really, is ever writer of realtor copy that ignorant?

So John Richards, like many of us who care about language I imagine, fought the good fight, and for that I’m grateful. He only shuttered the APS when he turned 96 and was “cutting back.” Sadly his announcement of the closure included, “the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won!”

I’d like to think not, and I vow to carry on. I may even become militant enough to go around in the dead of night and “fix” signs wherever I see apostrophes being abused.

In closing, I’ll leave the final words to John, concerning the importance of apostrophes. The following is from his obituary in The Washington Post.

“Just take the sign outside a block of flats,” he once told Slate magazine. “Residents’ refuse to be placed in bins. Remove the apostrophe and you see a very different notice.”

In the end, he said he didn’t mind if people saw him as a scold.

“I think that grammar is a valued part of our civilization,” Mr. Richards told The Washington Post. “I don’t like any attempt to diminish it.”

Moving on

If there's one thing in life that is a constant, it is that it changes. Put simply, stuff happens.

It might be little things - trying a new toothpaste, a different diet, rearranging the furniture.

It might be larger events - new job, new relationship, new house.

Or loss of the above.

In the past five or six years I have experienced huge change. 

I was made redundant from my job as editor of a weekly newspaper here in Scotland. It didn't hit me too hard, although I did notice the lack of a regular wage. I had been doing the job for about 18 years and, frankly, I was a burn-out. I was done and I knew it so the offer of leaving it behind was accepted without bitterness or rancour.

Frankly, I think my employers were glad to get rid of me because I was a dinosaur and very much a nay-sayer. No matter what cunning plan they came up with, I would sit at meetings and shake my head. I did not fit in, if I ever did.

Two years ago my wife died. I found her one morning in the dining room. She had been unwell for some time, her personality had changed until she was not the person I used to know. Things had not been easy for a number of years for a variety of reasons and I had struggled to cope.

This is the first time I believe I have written about it and I don't even know why I'm doing it now, so forgive me if I don't go into too much detail.

The day after Margaret died my dog also passed away. Katy, too, had been ailing and I think the events of the previous day had proved too much for her.

Life had changed but it had to go on. I still had bills to pay. I still had Mickey, now an only dog, and Tom, who had always been an only cat. When you have pets - or children - you cannot languish under the duvet of grief. You have to keep moving.

So I did. Eventually, I got back to writing. Author friends insisted I go with them on a tour of independent bookshops which included an overnight stay on the wonderful isle of Bute. They said it would be good for me and they were right. 

And Mickey came too!

Fooling around on St Andrew's Beach with Caro Ramsay and Michael J. Malone. 

And Mickey.

And now, and I may have mentioned this once or twice, I have moved house. I had become aware that my time in the old place, in the hills of Ayrshire in south west Scotland, was at an end. I had never been completely happy in that house - I had merely settled, as if on a bench on a long walk, knowing I still had to move on - and when one of those author friends offered to rent me this new house in the greater Glasgow area I decided it was time to move back closer to civilisation. Life is getting back to some kind of normal and the old place was too far away from everywhere. Even popping out for milk was an excursion.

And so, here I am.

Stuff happens.

Life changes.

Walking around the empty rooms of the old house on that final day was a strange experience, however. The removal of the furniture and the pictures from walls had transformed it from a home into simply a space.

And yet, there was something there.

Memories that hung like dust in the sunlight. Echoes of the past that reverberated from bare walls like the notes of a dimly remembered song. I may have only settled there but it had still been where the last few years of my life had played out, good and bad, happy and sad.

It was time to leave them where they lay and move on.

But now the three of us, the three amigos, are beginning our new adventure, in a new, but old, house in a new, but old, part of Scotland. I'm from Glasgow but not this part (which isn't really Glasgow at all but is part of the conurbation) so it's all fresh to me.

And the boys?

As I said before, they have settled in well. (I was asked for proof, so here you go)

As you can see, they have made themselves at home and there are many places within an easy drive to take Mickey for longer walks. Tom is being kept in for now but when I do let him out I think he will be supervised. They are fed and warm and loved. And that last one, I believe - I hope - is reciprocated.

I've also made myself at home. The books are on the shelves, the art is on the walls. The dust is already beginning to settle.

Okay, house.

I'm ready for new memories now.

Are We There Yet?

We're now into year two of the Coof. Last summer my touring schedule was abruptly cut short by a cascade of cancellations. I had already booked my tickets for Seattle's Emerald City Con and for New Orleans to visit the World War Two Museum. Lighthouse Writers did a quick hocus-pocus to turn their annual LitFest into what by now is a common experience, the online conference. A big part of LitFest is the socializing and drinking and that became something you did in the privacy of your own home.

Lighthouse predicted a gloomy forecast from the expected loss of revenue. Amazingly, pretty much every class had a wait list. What came into play was that people had a lot of time on their hands, with the reduced socializing because of the lockdowns people were eager to rub virtual shoulders on the computer screen, many writers are introverts and the remote classes allowed them to remain in their comfort zones, and because the classes were offered on the World Wide Web, people could attend from anywhere. In my classes I had students from the Bahamas, Greece, and Cyprus. 

It's a given that online classes and meetings are here to stay. But for months now I've been ready to step out and have some fun. I have older relatives I need to visit but I have to temper that wish against the risk of spreading the virus. The convention schedule is still tentative with folks being undecided between in-person vs. online. When will life go back to normal? This pandemic has been a very long road.

All Fall Down

 

Who knew that 2021 would be a continuation of 2020? One strange event after another. A couple of weeks ago we had a freak April snowstorm in Fort Collins that played thunder with our trees. It was a heavy snow that coated limbs until they broke under the strain. 

Above is a photo of the old apple tree in the yard at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. The trunk was neatly split into four equal pieces. There's no salvaging that kind of destruction. The whole tree was carted away. 

After reading recent posts in Type M, I was struck by the wary tone of my blogmates. 

One of the most consistent complaints I've heard about 2020 is everything slowed down creatively. It took forever to produce a page, a paragraph, or even a simple sentence. 

One of my biggest self-disappointments is a feeling that I wasted last year. I could have reorganized my paperwork, or produced short stories, or sewn up all my fabric. Instead I read and read and read, and binged on a lot of worthless TV. 

Some of my friends came out in fabulous physical shape. They walked and exercised and became healthier. I could have done that. 

Could have, would have, should have. If 2021 is going to be more of the same, this time I will  get my act together. 

A one-week news cycle

Bakari Sellers said it best last Thursday, when he spoke on CNN: Only in American, in April of the year 2021, could coverage of the Derek Chauvin murder trial be interrupted by news of Daunte Wright’s death, only to have that superseded by the news of Jonathon Pentland’s assault of a 14-year-old Black boy, only to have that upstaged by 13-year-old Adam Toledo’s death, only to have that coverage interrupted by another mass shooting, this one in Indiana that left eight dead.

That was a single week’s newscycle in the U.S.

I asked my students to visit the news source of their choice and consider where these situations intersected and, of course, to write about it all, alone, not for a grade, just to process and then to share as they wished.

The week left me reeling, quite frankly, and wondering about the state of the U.S., hearing from many international people about their perspective on all of it. And, of course, I returned to the place where I usually end up when my mind is ablaze –– at my writing desk.

Has there ever been a time when our genre –– the genre that considers issues such as moral ambiguity, legality vs. justice, race in the criminal justice system, the role of the media in the criminal justice system, the role of money and influence in the criminal justice system –– was needed more?

I remember reading somewhere, on the heels of the Sept. 11 tragedy, a decade ago, that crime fiction continued to sell when other books did not. The explanation I was given was that readers wanted to read of calm stemming from chaos, that readers needed reassurance that the world they lived in, even a fictionalized version of it, could offer truth and justice. Crime writers have always offered readers this. It’s the unspoken contract between author and reader: good will win out; truth will emerge; honor will win the day.

I need that, right now, as a reader, more than ever. I have a couple reads going right now, both mysteries, and, as is the unspoken agreement, justice, regardless of what the real world offers, will win the day, if only on the page.

Oh, To Travel Again!

 

Rick’s post yesterday reminded me how much I miss traveling. I’ve done a fair amount of it over the years, though not since the pandemic hit. I haven’t even been out of the county in the last year or so.

Back in the early 1980s through about 1990, I took a lot of slides. Remember when you had to load film in a camera and you didn’t know whether a picture turned out until it was developed? Yeah, I’m that old.

Anyway, I recently bought a Kodak Slide N Scan, which allows me to convert old slides and negatives to digital pictures. I’ve slowly been going through some of the many slides I took and remembering those trips. Here are a few of them. all from the 1980s:

Here’s Hanauma Bay on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. From 1982, my first trip to the islands.

 

Here’s the Space Needle in the early 80s. It’s changed a bit since this photo was taken. I grew up in the Seattle area so I have a special fondness for this landmark.

 

Here’s a peacock I encountered on the grounds of Warwick Castle in England in 1984. That was a fun trip with my sister.

 

Here’s a photo of the Green River within a short distance of the house where I grew up. Just a few bends down the river is where the first bodies of the victims of the Green River Killer were found. 

 

Here’s one of a backgammon game we saw on a trip to Venice, Italy in the mid to late 80s. KGB vs. CIA. 

 There’s a lot more for me to scan in. It’ll take me quite awhile. I’ll be traveling in my mind until we can actually move around the country and the world again.

Oh, the places you will see!

By Rick Blechta

Being pretty well house-bound by government decree here in Ontario, my mind slipped sideways the other day, thinking of all the places to which I’ve travelled for research purposes since I began writing novels.

These places include various places in the UK, Vienna, Paris and the northwest of France, and Italy, where we were forced to visit Rome, Florence, Tuscany, and Venice.

When I first began writing, I never considered the need for “on location” research. It really is indispensable if you want verismo in your story.

Never having travelled much, I didn’t understand how incredibly joyous is can be. You will meet wonderful people, have unexpected adventures and learn arcane things that will add wonderful layers of information to your plot — if used judiciously.

Another truth I soon discovered came at tax time. These research trips could be written off as long as I could prove to the Canada Revenue Agency that I was legitimately working on a novel.

Since many of the jaunts were to countries where English wasn’t spoken, it was indispensable to have a translator to do the job properly. Fortunately my darling wife is a polyglot. She speaks French, German, and learned to speak Italian well enough for our trip to Italy that she was able to haggle in Italian with a gondolier in Venice one night.

I could always count on her to gain access to a number of places I wouldn’t have been able to manage, using her language skills leavened with a dash of charm.

Best of all, as long as I paid her something — we settled on $25 a day, plus room, board, and travel expenses — she was technically my employee so her costs could also be written off.

The real payoff, however, was all the little details I unearthed, things I never would have thought of had I not visited those locations, and it’s those details, casually tossed into my writing, that help readers feel as if they’re actually “present” in the story they’re reading. I’ve had those comments a lot for which I’m really grateful.

I miss those days (as does my wife!) and I will have to make a trip to Washington, DC if I’m to finish the novel on which I’m working, and I’m sure some wonderful unexpected tidbits will come out of my research trip to that great city.

I can’t wait!

On Location

   When I started my first book, Random Road,  I picked Fairfield County, Connecticut as the setting for my Geneva Chase mystery series.  The primary reason was that I know the area from working at a newspaper there for eighteen years. I’m familiar with the roads, the towns, the time it takes to drive from place to place, the restaurants, the stores, and companies doing business there.

            Full disclosure, I don’t live there anymore.  As many of you know, I live on the coast of North Carolina.  Someday I’ll set a story here, but for the time being, I’ll just enjoy the beaches, the fabulous food, and the lack of traffic (except for tourist season).

            I picked Fairfield County for other reasons as well.  It’s a bedroom community near New York City and much of the area is extremely affluent with deep pockets of wealth such as Greenwich, Westport, New Canaan, Easton, and Ridgefield.      

            Fairfield County is home to CEOs, movie stars, Broadway actors, best-selling authors, rock-stars, and famous athletes.  The attraction is its proximity to Manhattan.  It is also far enough away that paparazzi aren’t usually an annoying factor.

            But when you have affluence, you often have crushing poverty as well.  One of the most economically challenged cities in Connecticut is Bridgeport in the southeastern corner of the county.  That kind of extreme diversity in an area makes it attractive to me as a writer.

            And you have some pretty gruesome crimes that take place—in real life.

            Two years ago, the body of a twenty-four year old woman was found stuffed in a suitcase in Greenwich.  The cause of death for the bookstore clerk from New Rochelle (neighboring Westchester County…also affluent) was deemed “homicidal asphyxia”.  The ex-boyfriend of the young lady was arrested after using her ATM card.  He claimed that the young woman fell and hit her head during sex at her apartment.  He admits that he bound her hands and feet, placed tape over her mouth, shoved her into a suitcase and left her in a “forest”.

            This kind of thing ain’t supposed to happen in Greenwich.

            In December of 2011, a friend of mine was murdered in his jewelry shop in Westport. Yekutiel Zeevi (known to his friends as Kootie) was the owner of Y.Z. Jewelers.  It was a fascinating place that wasn’t always open to the public.  You had to get past his security system and be buzzed in.

            When I first met him, he had a small, glittering pile of diamonds on a table in front of him and a jeweler’s loupe in his eye.  The first thing he did when I walked through the door was ask if I smoked.  I did at the time.  Then he bummed a cigarette.  We became friends after that, even inviting me to go to Africa with him on a diamond buying trip.

            I never took him up on the trip.

            In December, 2011, Kootie and an associate met with a buyer who we later discovered was a half million dollars in debt.  He shot and killed my friend, wounded the associate, and left with $300,000 in diamonds.

            That kind of thing ain’t supposed to happen in Westport.

            The killer was captured in Spain, where while awaiting extradition to the United States, he took his own life.

            On May 24, two years ago, Jennifer Dulos of New Canaan, 50, mother of five, went missing.   

            Her estranged husband, Fortis Dulos and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, were arrested for tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution.  According to prosecutors, Jennifer’s blood mixed with her husband’s DNA was found on the faucet in the kitchen of her home.

            Police continue to look for Jennifer Dulos…or her remains.

            The estranged husband committed suicide last year.  The investigation is ongoing.

            The point is that bad things can and do happen even in the best of neighborhoods.  That kind of juxtaposition makes for jarring news stories but can make interesting fiction.

—Thomas Kies

And Then There's the Dog

I understand what Donis wrote about in her post yesterday. I, too, have been dealing with "monkey mind." I'm doing distance learning (teaching from home) because my university has gone virtual for most classes. I've been doing Zoom meetings since last March. I've gotten better and more comfortable with the technology, but I've also been spending much more of each day in my house. 

I relied on the change of pace of moving from home to office and back again. Not being an early morning person, I got up around 9. I often sat down half-asleep, still in my robe, and woke up as I read what I had written the day before. The crime fiction, that is. Morning, work at home on novel or short story in progress. Then leave for my office at school around noon, in time to get a parking place when the faculty who did mornings left for lunch or headed home.

During the afternoon, I would teach my classes on Monday and Tuesday afternoon (3 hours each day). The rest of the week, I would meet with students, attend committee meeting, and do other teaching -related activities. And I would do my research and work on my nonfiction books -- which often overlap with my research for fiction because my areas are mass media/popular culture and crime history. 

Sometimes I was in my office from noon to seven or eight. Then I would go home and have dinner and write if I needed or wanted to get more done. Often as I drove the ten minutes -- 20 minutes for years until I move into the city -- often as I drove back and forth, particularly going home, I thought about what would happen next in a story. Worked out the scene and played out the dialogue in my head. 

I enjoyed that transition from home to office and back again. It was important because I got many of my best ideas in the cocoon of my car. Out of touch and in my own head. Sometimes I stretched the time out by doing errands before going to the office or home.

But for a year now, I haven't had that structure that was so important to my day. I thought in the beginning I would get more done because I didn't have that transition -- no need to watch the clock in the morning and get up and dressed. No need to plan my afternoon so that I got in everything I wanted to do and still made it home at a reasonable hour. An opportunity to do what I did in the summer and have more control over my worklife than during the rest of the academic year. 

What I didn't take into account is that even in the summer, I normally go into my office at school in the afternoons. I don't have to go. But going in, settling down with my bookcases with all of the books I need in reach, with my computer set up just right, and the library next door -- that is how I like to work on my academic books. Going into the office gives me structure and ensures I don't spend the day watching TCM and nibbling on snacks. 

And then there is the dog. During the pandemic, I decided -- as did many people -- to finally adopt a dog because I would be at home to take care of a puppy or help an older dog settle in. I got a puppy. An adorable Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who arrived from Maryland when he was about four months old. Fergus came well-socialized by the breeder, healthy, and full of energy. Too much energy. He is exhausting. He goes to doggie daycare because I need him out of the house so that I can focus. He likes to be where I am -- when he isn't he is up to mischief. Or, in his crate barking because he isn't where I am. He is six months old now, and beginning to hang out in my home office napping or set on top of the radiator or the sofa looking out the window. He has his own pet steps to get up to the radiator. But this week he is at home because his vet put him on an antibiotic because he has been sneezing and may have a virus. And when he's not looking out the window or napping or in his crate or playing toss with his favorite doll or bone, he is up to mischief. And I really want to be in my office at school with my books around me. But he is adorable and soon he will be past the toddler stage and he is smart -- today he learned "down" -- will learn for treats. 

But still I long for my routine, for the rituals that settle my "monkey mind" and allow me to focus. I'm a plotter -- and, yes, for this plotter, it is harder than it used to be to get the structure of my works in progress to come together. I would love to be able to plunge in and see what happens. I think that would help me to shut out distractions. But I can't work that way. 

Fingers crossed that soon we will all be able to get back to what works for us. 

 

Monkey Mind

I've been reading my blogmates' entries about lockdowns with interest and sympathy and some fear. We are doing better here in Arizona, quarantine-wise. This sunny southwestern state has lifted its mandatory restrictions (though mask-wearing is widespread and still required by most public buildings and businesses). Outdoor temperatures hover around 90º F for a high every day. My husband and I are fully vaccinated now, and I've actually gone out to eat with similarly vaccinated friends a couple of times. I've been asked to do a book talk at an outside library venue early next month and I said I'd love to. I see light at the end of the tunnel, though I expect I'll be wearing masks around strangers for the foreseeable future. 

It won't be long until our weather becomes so hot that doing anything outdoors for any length of time is impossible. I can only pray that when it happens we haven't become so cavalier in this state we have to lockdown again as well.

I'm already half-crazy as it is. 

When I was lunching with author friends yesterday, discussing our works-in-progress, as one does, I had to admit that I'm suffering from a bad case of monkey mind.  I have a finished manuscript awaiting acceptance, and in the meantime I'm trying to start another project – "trying" being the operative word, here. I've begun three different stories: another Alafair Tucker mystery, a fourth Bianca LaBelle Hollywood mystery, and a third novel that is so different from anything I've ever written I expect if I manage to finish it and find some way to get it published, I'll have to use a pseudonym. I can't concentrate on any of them for very long. I can't concentrate on anything for very long. 

I'm alarmed by my inability to stick with a thought. My poor mind jumps around from one thing to another like a monkey in a tree. I'd tell you more about it, but I have to do something else. Maybe later...

By the way, a lovely interview with me appeared April 9th at Marshal Zeringue’s Campaign for the American Reader in which I answered this very question and a few other fascinating queries about Valentino Will Die. You’ll be surprised at who I identify with…

The rollercoaster continues

 I agree with Rick. Here we are in another  bleeping lockdown, only a couple of months after our hopes were soaring high because vaccines were arriving and our liberation was near, along with the arrival of spring. As an aside, we Canadians relate everything to the season and the weather. Warm, sunny, deluge, freezing, blizzard; nothing is ever the same old same old. Right now we are in the midst of a gorgeous, sunny, summer-like heat wave. The tulips are blooming, when in other years dirty traces of snow might still linger in the shady parts of the yard.

This weather should be enough to energize and lift the spirits, but instead this recent crushing lockdown has made us all slightly unhinged. People are doing nutty things like trashing businesses in Old Montreal, already struggling from lockdowns. Driving donuts inside rings of fire created by pouring gasoline in a circle in an empty parking lot. Holding huge, maskless beer parties in public parks in normally well-behaved Ottawa.

As writers, as observers and commentators of human nature, this should all be fascinating stuff. We kill people for a living, for heaven's sake. What's a flaming donut or maskless beer party? But while we're living through it, this mass hysteria is pretty scary stuff. The best we can do as writers is file it away in that mental file marked "random story ideas" and try to cling to our sanity. As many writers have already noted, keeping our focus and our energy in these times is exhausting. I am writing in fits and starts, finding it difficult to get any purchase on the crumbling ground of my concentration. 

Maybe it would be easier if I were a plotter. It seems to me that's a more methodical way to write, because you proceed almost point-form from one scene and stepping stone to the next. Once you have the structure and the essence, there is a built-in scaffolding to hang on to and keep your focus. I'd like to know from plotters whether this is a help to this pandemic writing challenge.

Unfortunately I'm mostly a pantser. I don't know the overall story or what's coming next or where I should end up. This scaffold-free creativity demands lots of energy, concentration, and inspiration. The muse doesn't need to be here all the time, because once I hit on a new idea to move the story forward, I happily run with the idea until it's done. But the muse needs to make frequent visits. Pandemic lassitude saps the creative mind of energy. It takes a lot of determination to force myself to sit in the chair and stare at the page, willing the next brilliant idea to flit in. It's so much easier to walk the dogs or browse Facebook. I haven't resorted to mopping the floors yet, but this morning I did vacuum them. Yikes.

Because this is my twentieth book, I do know that it will get written, that at some point as the deadline approaches, the required amount of panic and frustration will kick in to give me the energy I need. With each book, there has always been a time when I thought I didn't have an idea left in my head and the book was going to fall flat on its face. Somehow, by the end of the teeth gnashing, hair pulling, massaging and rewriting, a passably good book emerges. And so it will this time. 

Rediscovering an old friend

By Rick Blechta

Ontario, where I live, is in yet another Covid lockdown. Actually, Toronto, where I specifically live, has been in some kind of lockdown or other since last Boxing Day, so we’re approaching four months of staying home — more or less.

I’d like to say I’ve been kept very busy by writing, but the truth is, I didn’t have, I don’t know, the mental stamina for that these days. In speaking with other ink-stained wretches, and not just my littermates here on Type M, I know I’m one of many.

Not having performed in the past 412 days — but who’s keeping tabs that closely? — practising trumpet for the sake of practising is getting pretty old.

“You know the back of the basement is a real mess,” pointed out my very observant wife two months ago in a leading sort of way.

Little did she know what those simple words would unleash.

Yes, indeedy, the back of the basement was a mess. So with good intentions, going down to give it the old heave ho, I, well, got sort of sidetracked…literally.

You see, in the back of our basement on shelves and languishing for years was my model railroading equipment and tools. I began taking things off shelves, opening boxes and the wave of nostalgia was overwhelming.

In my late 20s and early 30s, I was really into this hobby — and I was pretty good at it. As our family arrived and grew, and faced with a ridiculous work load filling six days of the week, something had to give. I’d already been forced to give up performing music. Model railroading went next. I packed things up, put them on shelves I’d bought, and there it all sat for over 30 years. Sure I saw it from time to time, but I never felt inclined to go any nearer.

Until that day — as requested, remember! — I went down to straighten up the basement.

Something else happened a couple of days later that sealed the deal. I was browsing the site of the biggest model railroad retailer/manufacturer in North America. In the structures section was a model kit to build a charming clapboard-sided house. Nice, but what captured my heart was its name: Aunt Lucy’s House.

Our four-year-old granddaughter is named Lucy, or as we sometimes call her Miss Lucy.

Bingo!

I suddenly had to buy this kit, now and forever to be called Miss Lucy’s House.

And that kicked off the whole model railroading mania once again. With my wife’s enthusiastic approval (surprising, that), Miss Lucy’s House soon needed a vegetable garden, complete with a snake and rats(?!)), as well as a garage, a sporty car, and an adult Miss Lucy herself.

Then our grandson asked, “What about me, Grampa?”

So now I’m working on “Jackson’s Village Pizza” (Jax lives in the apartment upstairs), and Lucy lives on a soon-to-be-built side street with two other houses.

Going back to my hobby turned out to be a good decision. I feel more energized and enthusiastic about everything, and during our current lockdown, that’s a pretty big deal. I’m getting more writing done, more practising done and I’m ahead on getting our backyard ready for the warmer weather (with my son’s help). Life feels a lot better.

But the basement’s still a mess…

Getting back to work

Happy Monday to you from Douglas Skelton in a sunny but chilly Scotland.

As you know, I have been moving house. And if you didn't know, where have you been? Do you not pay attention when I'm talking? Yes, I mean you at the back there. Stop your giggling and behave!

I am now fully ensconsed in my new bolthole, having swapped the peace and quiet of rural Scotland for the excitement and traffic noise of the big city (the new place is Glasgow adjacent).

With the house now in some semblance of order. Books are shelved, pictures are hung, rugs are down and shampooed. Mickey the dog and Tom the cat are more or less settled.

Time now turn my mind to the day job.

That's writing, just in case you didn't realise. 

I have a new book to complete by July. I hit the halfway mark of the first draft just before all the moving madness began but now it's time to pick of those threads and see if I can weave them into something magical. Or at least readable. Or, at the very least, completed.

Halting a work in progress in the middle is a double-edged sword. On the one hand there is the danger that whatever muse was working to get me to the midway mark has flitted elsewhere and alighted on some other writer's brow. 

On the other hand, the break may help me see the piece more clearly and let me attack it with renewed vigor. Or something. (And I hope you noticed I used the US spelling there. I am nothing if not considerate.)

Time will tell, I suppose.

I've used the word time three times so far. Where's an editor when you need one?

I mentioned the muse earlier. People often think of such a thing in relation to creatives.

Here's the thing...

It doesn't really exist.

Writing is a job, at least it is to me. Sometimes it's a chore. It's something I do. It's how I (try to) make a living.

Inspiration - the muse - is that flash at the beginning of the process. In other words, the idea. The big 'What if...?'

After that, it's application. Sitting at the desk, thumping those keys. I'm a two-fingered typist and I tend to poke at the keyboard as if I'm trying to prod it awake. 

The work progresses one letter, one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. Sometimes it's as slow as molasses in January. (Yup, another US reference). Other times it flows like....like...

Oh, dear. I can't think of a simile. 

This does not bode well for getting back to work on Monday.

Writing is something you work at. Books do not appear as if guided by some unseen hand. It has to be written and rewritten, honed, edited, smoothed, manipulated. In our genre (crime, just in case you've wandered in off the street) clues have to be dropped with the kind of legerdemain that could give us membership of the Magic Circle. Twists have to be twisted so subtly that no-one sees them coming. Characters have to step off the page and walk around the room. Dialogue has to sing (not literally, unless you're pulling a Rodgers and Hammerstein. Or Cop Rock. Remember that? Steve Bochco's short-lived show which saw cops burst into song, literally on the beat.)

So by the time you read this on Monday I will have selected a suitable soundtrack and will be back in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Back with Rebecca Connolly and her friends. Back, this time, in a dark world of murder and magic.

Cover me - I'm going in...

What will the world look like, post-Pandemic?

It’s a question I keep coming back to. Tom’s post this week, in which he mentioned the changes 2020 brought regarding book promotion, only created additional questions. Among them, for me: What, in the book industry, will go back to pre-Pandemic? What new ways of doing things will remain?

My agent reports that she’s worked from the Berkshires almost exclusively for the past year-plus and doesn’t feel the need to maintain her New York office. In terms of reading and submitting, the move out of the City changed little.

In my day job, as director of writing and founder of the Lamplighter Literary Arts Summer Writing Institute for Northfield Mount Hermon, many online ventures have been successful, author readings among them. A.M. Homes read to a virtual crowd of 225 people over ZOOM, then hosted a spirited Q@A. Books sales? I have no idea. Nothing signed obviously. But the night did allow her to reach 225 potential book buyers. Was the connection between author and reader as authentic as a face-to-face reading and signing? No, but . . .

. . . but it was not bad. Not bad at all, really. People liked the story she read (if you haven’t read her, you should. She has ties to our genre, in fact. She produced Mr. Mercedes for TV). People laughed at her jokes. People found her, even over Zoom, totally genuine, humble, and sincere. And I didn’t need to spring for travel and lodging. Was the evening as compelling as a live reading? I won’t go that far. But the Zoom option was cost-effective and allowed many more people to attend.

So I wonder, come post-Pandemic, what goes and what stays? Will my daughter have six-plus snow days each year and go until damn near July to make them up? Better not. This year, I had several authors visit classes over Zoom, something the students embraced and got a great deal out of. That will stay.

Signings?

I hope those come back. A Zoom conversation, especially with strangers, isn’t the same as a face-to-face one. But it’s a good option to have.

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Speaking of live readings, here's the real Keeley when she was 6 reciting Shel Silverstein's "True Story."

Emotions and Characters

 

In the last year, we’ve all experienced a lot of different emotions, each of them probably more intense than they would have been under normal circumstances. Fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, envy, relief...

Fear of going out and contracting the virus... For me, it was more a fear of not knowing the new rules and unknowingly breaking one of them.

Frustration that we can’t go to the usual places and do the usual things...

Anger at some of the events that have happened in the last year and how the government/police/community has responded... 

Envy that other people seem to: have more spare time than you do, are handling the pandemic better, getting more writing done, have gotten their shots while you’re still waiting to be eligible... 

Relief at finally getting that shot (or even just an appointment for one) and that you can go out a little more... 

Not everyone handles these emotions in the same way, which can lead to conflict. 

I think it’s a good exercise, when developing characters for a story, to take one or two of these emotions and figure out how each character responds.

When experiencing: 

Fear: do they lock themselves away? square their shoulders and confront their fear? make sure they’re never in a situation where they have that fear?...

Frustration: do they get angry? throw up their hands and quit? get someone else to do the frustrating task for them?... 

Envy: do they go into a deep depression? strike out at the person they are envious of? try harder? give up?...

Anger: do they keep it all inside and explode at a much later date? throw an object across the room? punch a wall? exercise until the anger lessens? protest an injustice?...

If you place people in a story who handle emotions differently, natural conflict arises. One can’t understand why another isn’t reacting in the same way. I think this is also a good way to get to know your characters better. During the course of writing the story, you just might need to use this information. 

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On another note, I found Rick’s post yesterday very interesting. Even though I don’t take criticism terribly well, I actually like being edited. I want to be called out on things that just aren’t working. Part of being a professional writer is believing that editing is a good thing and handling the comments gracefully. You need to find a good editor, though. The very first editor I had was absolutely wonderful. We fit together well. She always delivered her comments gently, but firmly. And, believe me, she had some comments! In general, I took every one of them. The few times I didn’t, I tried to figure out what she was really having a problem with and addressed that issue. My books are much better because of it.

If you want to be a professional writer, you’ve got to learn to deal with the editing process, no matter how painful it can be at times.

Writing and the hard truths

By Rick Blechta

As anyone who’s ever had a book published knows, relatives, friends, friends of friends, even complete strangers will eventually find their way to you, asking for help getting their book published.

I had this happened to me again last week, and in a fit of (misguided) generosity, I said I would look over a few chapters of the novel the writer told me, “…is finally ready to be sent to publishers!” (The budding novelist was also asking for help with that.)

There were a number of positives in what I read, but there were also a number of rather huge problems. I first gave congratulations on the good things I spotted (a couple of good characters, a plot that looked — based on four chapters — as if it might go somewhere, and reasonably good writing, as in the nuts and bolts of punctuation, grammar, paragraphing, etc.

Then I had to move to the things that were definitely not good, the biggest of which was verbosity. The writer just went on too long about things that did not need to be told to readers. For instance, characters couldn’t just walk into a room without it being minutely — and I mean minutely — described.

There were also tons of what I refer to as “dead words”, as in they just weren’t necessary for any good reason.

I knew, based on just these two things, that no publisher or agent would be interested in the manuscript. The person I was offering to help seemed very nice, so I took some extra time and provided what I hoped would act as a template for the ms being, well, pretty massively revised.

As an example of more economical writing, I took two multi-paragraphs of description and rewrote them. At the end, one was now only two paragraphs long with about half the number of words, and the other had even fewer words and was one paragraph long. With a covering letter explaining the thoughts and reasoning behind my suggestions, I sent everything back.

As I feared, the reaction from this writer was somewhat hysterical. She’d previously shared her manuscript with her husband (“an avid reader of mystery novels”) and some friends (ditto), and they’d all loved what she’d written and thought it was great. “Now you’re saying that I need to go back and completely redo my novel!”

All I did was tell her the truth. Based on my own experiences, I knew I was 100% correct. Of course every writer thinks all their prose is deathless. The truth is, it isn’t, and you have to expect and accept that. As I’ve said on this blog several times before, “I’d rather be good than right.”

These days publishers aren’t willing to take the manuscript of a writer who shows some promise and do the heavy editorial lifting required to see a novel make it to print — assuming they ever were.

In a return email, I told this person that I was only giving her my opinion, but that, based on my experience with 10 published works under my belt, I felt I was on solid ground. “But by all means, if you disagree with what I’m saying, send your ms out into the world and see what feedback you get.”

I have good suspicions how this will end. I just hope she’ll have the resilience to accept the truth and continue polishing what I think might actually be a good story. She simply has a good bit of growing to do in the craft of writing. But I suspect she might well give up.

I fervently hope she proves me wrong on that score.

Announcing the Reissue of My First Book, RANDOM ROAD.

They say that writing a book is a little like telling a joke and waiting two years to see if anyone laughs.  I wrote my fourth book, Shadow Hill, in 2019.  It was originally set for publication for July of 2020.  But, even before the pandemic struck, the publication date was moved to September of 2020.

Then all hell broke loose, and the new date was set for July 2021.

I was fine with that.   In addition to the delay, Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, my publisher, is reissuing my first book, Random Road, for April 13 (about a week from now) to gin up some interest in Shadow Hill.  The new edition of Random Road contains an introduction by the author, a conversation with the author, a reading group guide, and the first pages of the sequel to Random Road entitled Darkness Lane.  It also sports a dynamite new cover. 

Something I didn’t expect happened.  The interest level and buzz for the reissue has been so intense that the publisher asked to move the publication date of Shadow Hill one more time, to August 10, to extend the marketing efforts for Random Road. 

Additionally, Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks has redesigned all the covers of my former books and asked me to start work on a fifth Geneva Chase mystery.  By the way, the redesigned covers are fantastic!!

2020 was a strange year and I watched while a lot of my author friends launched their books during the height of the pandemic.  Many of them had to pivot in the ways they marketed themselves and their novels.  

Many bookstores were closed altogether and, even now, they’re open at reduced capacity.  Nobody did book signings.  No mystery conferences were held. You couldn’t visit book clubs. 

Online video was nearly the only way to reach potential readers.  I think that even as life returns to normal, we’ll find that online will remain a powerful marketing tool.  Shameless self-promotion…I’m doing an online conversation with the Poisoned Pen Bookstore on Thursday, April 22, at 8 p.m., Eastern Time. 

So, this is my celebratory blog for the re-release of Random Road and it’s mercifully brief.  

I hope you’ve been vaccinated and were able to be with friends and family this past weekend.  I know that the only thing that will make me happier than seeing my books released is when I can visit my own family and see my grandchildren. 

In the meantime, stay safe and stay healthy.

Strange Days

 I (Donis) came very close to missing my day to post. I literally didn't know the date – and I don't mean just what date I'm supposed to post. These days, I often don't know what day of the week it is,  or the date, and sometimes I even forget the month. As I posted two weeks ago, I am now fully vaccinated and could carefully begin integrating into the world again, but I find I have forgotten how to do that. The idea of going out to lunch with a friend fills me with trepidation. I suppose the only way I'm going to get over that is to actually do it. If I can find a brave friend who is willing to go with me. Who should I ask? I've kept in touch with friends by email, Skype, Facebook and Zoom, but I haven't seen any of them in the flesh for over a year. Have they changed?  Sometimes I feel as though I've aged ten years during the last year.

This feeling  hasn't been helped by the fact that I've been a bit ill lately. Nothing serious, I think, just allergies, but bad ones, with knockout sinus headaches, fatigue, swollen eyes, even occasional nausea and vertigo. The irony is that this allergy attack began exactly two weeks from the day I had my second COVID shot, so I didn't even get to celebrate my new immunity. 

I'm feeling better now, thanks for asking. I've done a couple of Zoom classes for local writers' groups and written several articles and guest blogs to promote my February release of Valentino Will Die. Just today (March 31) my guest article for Marshal Zeringue's My Book, The Movie blog came up.I got the chance to pick the guy I'd like to play Rudolph Valentino if my book Valentino Will Die were made into a movie! And it took a while, but I think I've found my fictional silent screen adventuress Bianca LaBelle. Check it out here to see if you agree with my casting. 

In my waking life, I'm living in a timeless, immobile place on the earth right now, but in my dreams I've been traveling the world, looking for something. Monday night my husband and I were searching around the Italian hills on a Vespa. I was in South America, looking for I don't know what in the Amazonian jungle. Last night I was hiding from the Nazis in the German forest with a group of other women, looking for a way out, or waiting to be rescued. These are strange days. I don't know know what I'm hunting, but I'm certainly scouring the world to find it.