Love a Good MacGuffin!!!

by Thomas Kies

  

In his last blog, Mario Acevedo mentioned a story device called a MacGuffin.

What exactly is a MacGuffin? The term originated with Alfred Hitchcock who said, "In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers".

If you read books, watch movies, or play video games, you most certainly have encountered a MacGuffin. It’s a plot device that motivates the characters and is the engine that drives the story forward.  But in reality, the MacGuffin has little or no real value or meaning.

Some famous examples of MacGuffins are:

● The briefcase in Pulp Fiction (what WAS in there, anyway?)

● The letters of transit in Casablanca

● The Death Star plans in Star Wars

● The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—or the Ark of the Covenant, or the stones in the Temple of Doom, or the Crystal Skull (awful movie).  Or…whatever else is in the new flick. 

● The Maltese Falcon in The Maltese Falcon (Loved the book, loved the movie!!)

MacGuffins can be objects, people, places, or concepts. They can be tangible or intangible, concrete or abstract, realistic or something from a fever-dream. They can be sought after by the good guys, the bad guys, or, even better, both. They can be revealed, hidden, lost, found, stolen, destroyed, or forgotten.

MacGuffins are great story props and often where the real tale begins.

The MacGuffin is there to create conflict and tension.  And all stories are moved by conflict and tension.

It helps drive the story forward. It gives the characters a reason to pursue their goals, face obstacles, and overcome challenges. It also provides a source of mystery and intrigue for the audience, who may wonder what the MacGuffin is, why it is important, and what will happen to it.

However, a MacGuffin is not the same as a theme or a message. A MacGuffin does not have to be symbolic or meaningful in itself. It does not have to reflect the deeper issues or values of the story.  As a matter of fact, maybe it shouldn’t. 

 It does not have to be explained or resolved by the end of the story. In fact, sometimes the best MacGuffins are the ones that remain ambiguous or irrelevant. Once again, think of Pulp Fiction and whatever was in that briefcase.  Everyone wanted it, but we never find out what it was.

A good MacGuffin is one that enhances the story without dominating it. It is one that sparks curiosity without demanding attention. It is one that drives action without dictating outcome. It is one that matters to the characters but not to the audience.

Humphrey Bogart, playing Sam Spade, describes the Maltese Falcon as the “thing that dreams are made of.”  The Maltese Falcon, of course, turns out to be a fake.  The ultimate MacGuffin. 

My Crystal Ball Needs Adjustment

 I have good news to share as Denver Noir won a Colorado Book Award. The anthology had a great roster of writers who each contributed an amazing story. Our editor Cynthia Swanson deserves shiny accolades for doing the heavy lifting in putting this collection together.

As the title Denver Noir implies, the stories were set in the Denver area. Most were contemporary and a few had a historical backdrop. While I wrote mine to occur in the near future, in looking at the story now, I am surprised how even in the short interval from first draft to publication, that my crystal ball didn't get it quite right. I was certain that we'd have a woman mayor by now. Got that wrong. Also, technology has leapt ahead of where I predicted. When I began writing my story, I'd heard about AI but didn't recognize its impact on society. Here we are, wringing our hands, wondering to what extent AI will take our jobs. Without rewriting the story, I'm not sure how addressing AI would've changed the plot, but it might've. 

Another futuristic detail that would've rated a mention was the newest development of smart gun technology, which was part of the story's MacGuffin. The latest such type of gun is quite sophisticated as it relies on a fingerprint reader plus an IR camera that uses facial recognition to verify the identity of the owner. Again, I'm not sure how this would've altered my story but it goes to show that no matter how hard I stared into my crystal ball, the future remained a little too blurry.

In celebration of writers' retreats, writing or not

 This will be a short post because I am spending four days at a "writers' retreat" with two of my close writer friends, Vicki Delany and RJ Harlick. We have been getting together two to three times a years for three or four days. Typically we go to Vicki's 140 year-old farm house in Prince Edward County, Ontario in June, to my lakeside cottage in late summer, and Robin's cabin in the Quebec backwoods during the fall for the gorgeous fall colours or in the winter. Each season and each place has its own charm and rhythm. Sometimes other writer friends like Linda Wiken come too, and I have also done writers' retreats with her and the rest of the Ladies Killing Circle for years.

We each contribute to the food and the wine, both of which are sumptuous, and cleanups are also a chance to chat, exchange stories, and laugh as well. There was a time when there were more of us, which meant more food, more chaos, and more fragments of conversation but still lots of camaraderie and support. And that, in essence, is the purpose of our writers' retreats. We talk shop, we share horror stories and moments of triumph and joy, whether it's a touching email from a fan or a slamming review. We dispense advice and therapy about this exasperating, frustrating, often disappointing but occasionally exhilarating world of writing. We catch up on industry gossip, brainstorm plot ideas and titles, troubleshoot blocks, and discuss the next dream.

Do we get any actual writing done? Usually, but not necessarily. Most of us have a schedule we like to maintain, in my case a scene a day, which typically takes two to four hours, but between the breakfast and morning coffee, then the day's activity (shopping in "The County", kayaking at the cottage, hiking at the cabin...) , lunch, more activity, afternoon drinks, dinner prep, etc. etc. Well, the day often gets away from us. Usually I am happy to steal two hours of writing time over the course of the retreat. 

But the shared activities and the social support are just as important. Writing is a very solitary life. We spent hours a day holed up with our own imaginations, working on a project that no one even sees for months, even years. We write it, polish it, send it off to the publisher, edit it, rewrite, and so on, often all accomplished without actually talking to a soul about the work except by email or text. Even the editing process is all remote. Track Changes is our way of talking. Wow, the editor made a comment! Yay!

And once the book is out in the world, people we will never meet pick it off a bookshelf or online, they devote a few days or weeks of their life to reading it, but we probably never hear what they thought of it. Did they like it? Did it touch them? It's a very solitary way of interacting with the world. That's why book signings, readings, launches and conferences are so meaningful. They connect us to our readers and give us inspiration to keep going. 

Writers' retreats connect us to our kindred community. Crime writers, whether we write capers or cosies or gritty thrillers, are a unique breed of writer, and when we get together, we feel among family. There's a Yiddish term "Landzman", which means a fellow Jew from the same town or district. A very useful word to describe that sense of instant connection among people who speak the same language and share the same experiences. That's what writers' retreats are good for. Not for getting
pages of brilliant prose down on the page but for making us feel less alone.

What Happened?

 by Charlotte Hinger    

I'm finally back after a long absence. So here's what happened:

On a long-planned and much anticipated trip to New York with two of my daughters, I ended up in the emergency room in New Rochelle due to an onslaught of sepsis and a rare strain of pneumonia. 

What a shock! In more ways than one. I was in the hospital from Saturday morning until late Tuesday night and hit with a wicked mixture of antibiotics which, of course, resulted in a prolonged case of diarrhea. 

I'm recovering well, and there's a lot to be grateful for. I received outstanding care at the Montefiore hospital. Although I hated to put my daughters through this ordeal, I'm very grateful they were there at the hotel to call 911. My blood pressure plummeted and my temperature did too. I literally simply fell over. 

In addition to the shower, we missed a lovely brunch the following day held by the mother of the bride. 

I also had a meeting scheduled with my agent the day we were to fly home. I've talked with Claudia Cross a number of times on Zoom, but this was to be our first face to face meeting. So this whole misadventure was a double whammy for me. 

The following weekend there was a family gathering over Memorial Day and that, too, was out of the question. 

Today, I would have been going to the Western Writers of America convention in Rapid City South Dakota. This is my favorite writers' organization and I love seeing friends. Also, I am a finalist for the Spur Award for short fiction and wanted to be there for the Finalist Luncheon. I emailed my remarks to a friend and asked her to accept the award for me. 

By some stroke of good fortune, I had nearly completed my large historical novel for the University of Nebraska Press. Talk about luck! I received an email from my editor saying all manuscripts received before June 30th would be published in the spring of 2024. After that, they would go on the fall list. 

And my lovely, wonderful fellow Type M'ers. It was great to see posts up and running without a hitch. I'm so happy to be a part of this blog. 

Writers are a funny lot. In spite of careening off the road, my dominant emotion was relief because I only lacked thirty pages from finishing the final draft of my book. 

Starting Something Completely Different...

 ...and wondering what the hell did I do that for?

Donis here. I've started writing a book that is entirely different from anything I've had published before, and it's rather frightening. All twelve of my previously published books have been historical mysteries, which I love. I love research, and I love going back in time and living there with the natives for a while. My new manuscript is a contemporary mystery set between - of all places - Arkansas and the Netherlands. I've always been interested in fish-out-of-water stories, so I decided to write about a woman who was raised by her single father in the Netherlands, always believing she was Dutch. After her father dies, she discovers while cleaning out his belongings that she was actually born in the U.S. to an American mother. Her European father is wanted in Arkansas for killing her mother twenty-five years earlier, then kidnapping our heroine and raising her in the Netherlands.

So of course she heads to the states to discover who she is, find her American family, and try to find out if her father really did murder her mother. The research has been tremendous fun for me. It's been quite an exercise to put myself in my protagonist's shoes and try to imagine what this country looks like to someone who was raised in Amsterdam. From having spent quite a bit of time in Europe myself, I already knew something of the feeling from the other side. The first time I stayed with an English friend for several weeks is when I learned first hand that English and American are not quite the same language, especially considering Allison was from Lancashire (Beatles country) and I'm from Oklahoma. Then she came and stayed with me at my house in Tulsa. Talk about culture shock. While Allison was in the states, we visited the home of a high school friend of mine whose father grew up during the depression in a tiny Oklahoma town. Lancashire girl and Oklahoma father literally could not understand one another. I ended up translating for them as though they were speaking different languages, which I suppose they were. Imagine trying to navigate the legal system of another country when you don't even know that what you said to someone is not what what they understood.

Allison and I discussed our cultural differences at length, and I came away fascinated by our cultural assumptions and how people from other countries view Americans. The Dutch heroine of my new book takes many of her impressions of the United States from Dutch people I've known over the years - constantly amazed and always bemused by our warm, friendly, scary, messy country. 

One thing I adore about writing is the opportunity to see the world through someone else's eyes and judge it by their experience, which may be entirely different from your own.  That's why I'm a little bit skeptical about the idea of never writing from the POV of someone of another race or ethnicity. The world is so fraught now that trying to do so is like navigating a mine field, and it's true I can never truly understand the lived experience of a Native American, for instance. But isn't it important to try and understand? Having said that, I'd never try it without running it by at least a couple of sensitivity readers. Even if I'm writing about a Dutch woman.

CCWC 2023 Recap

by Sybil Johnson

I spent last weekend at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, California. It’s a 2-day conference held every other year, put together by the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime and the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America. This is the first in-person CCWC since Covid. I haven’t heard the final stats, but I believe we had 160ish people there interested in learning more about all aspects of the writing/publishing game.

I admit to being a tad nervous because I was serving as a mentor, I really prefer guide, to one of the three WriteGirl scholarship winners. From WriteGirls website: “WriteGirl is a creative writing and mentoring organization that promotes creativity, critical thinking and leadership skills to empower teen girls and gender-expansive youth.” I had breakfast and lunch with my winner, Kai Adia, introduced her to people and basically tried to make her feel welcome. It was a lot of fun. Kai is a graduate of the WriteGirl program and co-founder of Bee Infinite Publishing. She’s also an experienced copywriter, a writer of poems and an artist. I enjoyed meeting her and the other WriteGirl scholarship winners.

 

Me and Kai

CCWC Guests of Honor were Deborah Crombie and Rachel Howzell Hall. They each did a keynote address at the luncheon (Rachel on Saturday and Deborah on Sunday) as well as leading a workshop.

Deborah Crombie

Rachel Howzell Hall

They both did a great job, but Rachel’s keynote address really resonated with me. She talked about her 10 commandments of a writer’s life. Here they are: 

(1) You shall not ignore your emotions. It’s okay to cry when you get a rejection or don’t win an award. Acknowledge your emotions. 

(2) You shall not forget those trunk novels. Maybe you can get an idea for a new story or take a passage out of one of them for your next project. Mine them. 

(3) You shall not quit your day job.

(4) Remember the IRS.

(5) Honor your interests outside of writing. Take a break away from writing. Do something else you enjoy. 

(6) You shall not ever say ‘I don’t have time to read’. You can learn a lot about writing by reading. 

(7) You shall not shun friends and family. 

(8) You shall not hustle all the time. Remember to enjoy your accomplishments. 

(9) You shall not stay home. Travel somewhere. Drive somewhere. 

(10) You shall be kind. To readers, to authors, to family.

During lunch, the hotel alarm kept on going off. The hotel folks told us it was a false alarm. When Rachel was giving this speech, the hotel alarm went off once again. She held her cool and kept on going.

A full schedule!

There were lots of panels and presentations to attend. It was hard to choose. I tried to mix it up, doing a little forensics, a little business of writing, a little on writing. I went to one on advertising strategies given by Sheila Lowe, one on a brief history of criminal investigations by Anne Louise Bannon, one on the road to publishing by Naomi Hirahara, a panel on Hollywood and book options, a panel on writing historical mysteries, and a panel on anthologies, how they’re put together, how to find calls for submission...

Anthology Panel

They were all great. I got a lot out of them. I also enjoyed meeting new people and reconnecting with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. I always come away from events like this a bit more inspired. The next CCWC will be in 2025. I’m looking forward to attending that one, too.

Gatekeepers

 On Saturday I attended a book event that I, along with nine other authors, were invited to.  I generally don’t like to spend time at an all-day affair like this, but the organizers are good friends and have been supporters of mine since my first book was published.  Plus, I met some great people and got to know the other authors who attended.  I had a terrific time. 

Only one other author at the event, other than myself, was traditionally published.  That is, with an agent and a publishing house that handles the editing, design, and distribution of your book.  

All the other authors were self-published or worked with a hybrid publishing house.  The question I got most often is how I found my publisher. 

I told them that it started by finding a literary agent.  

Agents are the gatekeepers.  Nearly all publishers will only accept submissions that are agented. But how do you find a literary agent who is right for your book? Here are some steps to follow:

1. Write a synopsis of your book.

I hate writing synopsis.  I’d rather write the book.  I’d rather get a root canal. But no matter what agent you pitch, you’ll need a synopsis. A synopsis is a short summary of your book that tells what it's about, who the main characters are, and what happens. It should be no longer than one or two pages, and it should be written in an engaging and clear way. A synopsis is not only useful for pitching your book to agents, but also for clarifying your own vision and direction.  

2. Write a query letter.

Each query letter should be tailor made for the agent you are pitching.  If you write a letter and think you can send it out  in a batch, you’re delusional. A query letter is a one-page letter that introduces yourself, your book, and why you are looking for an agent. It should include a hook (a catchy opening sentence that grabs the agent's attention), a blurb (a short paragraph that summarizes your book and its genre, audience, and word count), a bio (a brief paragraph that tells something about yourself and your achievements), and a closing (a polite sign-off that shows your interest and gratitude).  

3. Research literary agents and make a shortlist.

There are a lot of online sources but the way I did it was Google “literary agents”, “mysteries”, and “debut authors”. When I did that, about thirty-five agents came up that specialized in the mystery genre and were looking for new authors. 

When researching agents, pay attention to their submission guidelines, preferences, genres, clients, sales, and reputation. You want to find agents who are reputable, experienced, enthusiastic, and compatible with your book and your vision.

4. Follow up 4-6 weeks later.

After sending your query letters, be patient and wait for the agents' responses. Some agents may reply within days or weeks; others may take months or never reply at all. If you don't hear back from an agent after 4-6 weeks, you can send a friendly follow-up email to check on the status of your query. But don't be pushy or rude; remember that agents are busy people who get hundreds of queries every week.

FYI, you may never hear back from some of them.  There was even one that had sent me a rejection a year after my first book was published.  I had the pleasure of writing her back and letting her know that not only had I found an agent but had a three book deal. 

There was one author, self-published, at the event this past weekend that, after I’d explained how I’d found an agent, told me he simply didn’t want to spend the time.

It’s an investment in time, yes, but well worth it in the end.   www.thomaskiesauthor.com

Nuggets

Inspiration. Muse. Ideas. Call it what you will. But story nuggets, regardless of where you get yours, keep us going.

I started out as a reporter at a daily newspaper and never lost my love of that world. To this day, I’m a news junky and get many story ideas from reading daily papers.

A recent example came last month when I read this article. A local man made national news when a DNA match taken from a genealogy kit linked him to two rapes from 1999. I became fascinated with the story –– and even more so after realizing my daughter is on the same swim team as the daughter of the man accused. I’ve been working on a short story inspired by it since.

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/west-bloomfield-township-man-charged-in-decades-old-sexual-assaults-in-oakland-twp-pennsylvania/ 

I say “inspired by” the story because I make it my own, of course. The story intrigues me not because a genealogy kit, such as Ancestry.com, linked the man to two rapes that took place 25 years ago, something to which the media has latched on. Rather, I’m drawn to what my daughter told me: the accused man’s daughter, the girl on Keeley’s swim team, missed practice the day of the arrest because of “a family problem.”

That is what has stayed with me. This family, in a home no more than four miles from my own, woke up on a school day, and went to school with one life but came home to another. A wife and daughters, who thought their husband and father was one man, returned that evening to the same home, the same dishes in the sink, the same dog, but to a very different life.

He is a different man when they get home. Except he is not, not to them. Yet they now know he is and always was. How does the accused man’s wife and daughters reconcile this knowledge, these conflicts? He is the man they’ve known for 25 years, and yet at the same time is not.

And no bail has been set. In my mind’s eye, the sneakers he left by the front door will be put away forever, if he is convicted. His dresser cleaned out, his closet emptied. Dead but still very much alive. He left a coffee cup on the kitchen table and may never return home again to rinse it. My story is written from the point of view of the family members impacted by the man’s alleged double life.

Questions that I’m working through in my writing: Were there signs over the years? And if so, who saw them? What signs does his wife think she missed? Were there other victims? Could an alleged serial rapist simply have hit a switch and stopped, cold turkey, becoming a family man?

Inspiration. Where do you get yours? I’d love to hear from my Type M colleagues and our readers.

Vicki Delany takes over Facebook

 Yesterday was a special day. My great friend, travel buddy, and writer extraordinaire threw a Facebook party to celebrate the release of her 50th book. 50th!!! Vicki is a former long-time member of Type M for Murder, and she has been variously described as "the queen of cosies", "a one-woman crime wave" and "the energizer bunny of mystery fiction". In her twenty-one years since publishing her first novel, she has written nine different series and several standalone thrillers across a wide spectrum. Police Procedurals (Constable Molly Smith), historical (Klondike mysteries), adult literacy novels, and more recently several cosy series which she keeps in the air simultaneously. She now writes about three books a year, while the rest of us struggle to write one. It's a feat worth celebrating!

For her celebration, she used a format more familiar to cosy writers than to those of us who hang out in the darker shadows of the mystery genre, but since she herself has gone over to the light side, that seems fitting. The cosy community, both readers and writers, is a close-knit community bonded by several blogs and Facebook groups where they share each other's news (and recipes) and build a powerful network for the cosy brand. When Vicki first invited me to participate in her party, I had never heard of the idea, but it's apparently a common promotional approach among cosy writers.

The idea is to set up an event on Facebook and invite a group of authors to "take over" your feed for a specified part of it to talk about some theme. Interested readers are invited to join the event and participate in the discussions.  In this case, the theme was the celebration of Vicki's fiftieth book, WEDDING BELLS AND DEATH KNELLS. Beyond that, authors could do whatever they wanted. In her usual style, Vicki set about with focus and determination to plan the event long in advance  She invited select author friends and fellow cosy writers to sign up, she developed a day-long roster of writers, gave each of us a specific thirty-minute time slot to lead the discussion, and set about making each of us "hosts" on her page for that thirty minutes so that we could control the discussion. Twenty-eight authors, each hosting a thirty minutes segment over a 14-hour period. What could possibly go wrong?

The first problem was that although she could invite most of the authors to be hosts on her Facebook feed without difficulty, there was a subset of us (myself included) that couldn't get the invitation. For days we tried various tech strategies to solve the problem, but no dice. We had to find another way to participate without being hosts. We solved this by having us comment under posts hosted by Vicki, and although that worked reasonably well, it did mean that our comments and replies did not always show up in the feed and the continuity of the discussion was fragmented. 

One of the phots I had no time for

The second problem was that even some of those who were privileged with host status couldn't get posted in the right place. With a changeover of authors every thirty minutes, the posts and comments were coming so fast and furious that it was difficult to keep up, or to find a particular post or comment. Perhaps it was Facebook being its usual fickle self choosing at whim which posts it wanted to show. 

The third problem was was that old favourite – unreliable internet. We've all been in virtual meetings or Zoom calls where one of the participants suddenly vanishes because their internet crashed. Vicki lives in the country, and when this happened to her at the height of her party, she had to scramble. She solved it by using her phone's hotspot until her internet was restored, but it could have ruined the party for sure.

Technical glitches and participants' varying skills in solving them will always be challenges when we try to organize a large, long-lasting event with constant changes of hosts and posts. From what I could see, however, authors were enthusiastic and well-prepared. Most of the authors were from the cosy community and they had neat things like jigsaw puzzles, recipes, and interesting promo photos ready to post, and readers were engaged and eager to comment. From the inside, it felt like chaos when I was trying to find new comments (Facebook has to be constantly refreshed), keep up with the flow, and type in a coherent reply. I wanted to share some of our travel photos, but only got through about half my planned photos in my thirty minutes. Live and learn. But I think Vicki should be very pleased with the day, (although tired and in need of several glasses of wine).

I will be very interested to hear others' experiences with this type of promo. It's a great idea, but it's a lot of work and not without its moments of frustration and panic. Planning well in advance, anticipating the unexpected, like internet crashes, and having a Plan B, consulting with others who've done it before, and making sure you have quick communication capability with the authors hosting will help make it run more smoothly. Oh, and a huge sense of humour.

Facebook is not an intuitive or versatile platform, but is there an another option? 

I'm Back

 Better late than next time. I've missed my last two Friday posts. With the last, I was returning from South Burlington, Vermont. Luck was on my side. The GPS worked, the ferry from Vermont to Essex, NY was on time, and the traffic was not as heavy coming toward Albany as it was headed north into the Adirondacks. But by the time I got settled and ready to write, it was after midnight and no longer my day to post.

I went to South Burlington because I really need a break. School was out and I needed to get my grades in. I also needed some sleep. Thanks to the staff in the Registrar's Office I was able to get my grades in. Thanks to the hotel I stayed at in South Burlington I was able to get two nights in a lovely king-sized bed in a junior suite. I was supposed to have had four nights there, but my recently discovered carpal tunnel syndrome slowed me down when it came to grading the papers in my two classes. I'm looking forward to my doctor visit to learn about the treatment so that I can focus on the manuscripts I'm working on. 

While I was in Vermont I had a chance to scout out the settings for the 1939 historical I'm working on.   was rainy, but much like New York. When the sun came out, it was warmer than when I arrived. The friend who I had joined for her trip to Vermont left a little before I did. We spent Thursday enjoying the food Vermont hat to offer -- including delicious maple ice cream. I had a few stops I wanted to make to do research for the Vermont portion of my book. With map and guide book in hand, I looked for buildings that were there in 1939. 

I enjoy doing that kind of research. I enjoy walking in my characters' shoes. I enjoy imaging how my characters with various backgrounds and experiences would respond to the same setting -- the food, the music, the people -- to something they have never experienced first hand. I try not to make that off the cuff. If my protagonist loves Southern accents and blues music, I want to know when she experienced both. Maybe her mother sent her to live with her grandparents and that was the first time she also experienced being cared for and living in a stable environment. Or, if another protagonist hates the South and wants to get on a train or plane and never come back, maybe that character has experienced something traumatic in that time and place. Maybe my protagonist is someone who has fled a small Southern town one step ahead of a lynch mob. Maybe when he arrives in New York City, he is like the young African American man in one of Rudolph Fisher's stories who looks around him in astonished delight when he finds his way to Harlem -- just as my Southern-born schoolteacher will. But she will not be delighted. As I tried to imagine Vermont in 1939, I knew it was only an exercise. But as I gave some thought to how my white Southern plantation owner felt about the snow and the ski lodge and the laughing, happy young men and women with jobs in the city, The ones who had been on the train that the senator's daughter who he was courting had taken. She had invited to come along. He might well have wondered if she had wanted him to be uncomfortable. But he had accepted the invitation and was  having the rare experience of being ill at ease, 

 His insight was mine. Or, rather, his lack of insight was a clue to the mystery of his childhood and his pride. That was important and it made the time I had put in doing general and not very focused research about America in 1939, both the South and the North, worthwhile. I've been thinking about what I could use for other characters. I always take my characters to the settings where they might get a clue -- and if I pay attention, I will get more than a clue about who they really are and how they see the world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Learning How To Write

 

by Sybil Johnson 

I’ve been making roman shades lately, replacing ones that are way too old and falling apart. I could have had a blinds company make new ones or even found a class on making them and taken it. Instead, I chose to do it myself, using as much of the old hardware and wood as possible. This is not my first rodeo making this type of shade. I’ve replaced seven other shades around the house over the years so I was familiar with the process. When I did the first one, I took apart the old one, taking pictures at each stage, essentially analyzing how it was put together.

 This got me thinking about how I like to learn things. I decided it depends on what it is I’m trying to learn. Sometimes, as in the case of tole painting and Swedish, taking classes is the best route for me. A lot of the time, though, I try to figure it out myself.

I taught myself how to do counted cross-stitch by buying a kit and following the printed directions. I re-taught myself macramé, which I last did in junior high oh so many years ago, using a kit and some YouTube videos.

When I decided I was going to write a book, I thought about how I should go about it. I could have taken a creative writing class or pursued a degree program. Neither of those paths seemed right for me. I’d read a lot of cozy mysteries over the years so I was pretty familiar with the rules, but I still didn’t know a lot about writing one.

One of the first things I did was to analyze a few cozies that I liked, picking them apart, trying to understand how they were put together. At the same time, I forged ahead, trying my hand at writing. I also read tons and tons of books on writing, including several that concentrated on mysteries. At some point, though I realized I could benefit from taking an online class or two. I chose one from Writer’s Digest taught by G. Miki Hayden and one from UCLA Extension taught by Kris Neri. (I didn’t take them at the same time.) I learned an enormous amount from both of them and got valuable feedback. I like to say that the two courses set me on the right path. I don’t think I would have gotten as much from those classes, though, if I hadn’t tried my hand at writing first.

At some point, I also realized the benefit of writing short stories. They helped me understand how to plot better and also were a good way to “try out” characters. One of my first short stories that was published, “Family Business”, involved the main character from my Aurora Anderson mystery series.

I don’t think there is only one way to learn how to write just as I don’t think there’s only one way to actually write a book. Everyone has to figure out what works best for them.

What about you? How do you like to learn new things

Relatable Characters? Not This Time

  I did a workshop at our local community college last week about drawing upon real life to write fiction.  It’s a great subject because isn’t that what we do?  Take our real-life details and put them into make-believe stories?

While I talked about this, I mentioned how characters should be relatable, meaning they have to have good qualities, but they need flaws as well.  Because, let’s face it, nobody in our real lives is perfect.  Nor would we want them to be. 

Just like characters in books and in movies need both good and bad qualities.  I touched upon the fact that even antiheroes have some redeeming qualities.  Otherwise, we simply couldn’t relate to them at all.  

Walter White in the hit television show Breaking Bad was a high school science teacher who discovered that he had terminal cancer and became a notorious meth dealer, eventually graduating to murder.  But... he did it to leave enough money to his family that they’d be in a good place after he died. 

Never mind that he put them in danger on several occasions. 

Tony Soprano, on another hit television series, The Sopranos, was a mafia don that routinely terrorized, extorted, stole, and killed in cold blood. But you could overlook all of that because he was a good family man.  If you overlooked the systemic infidelity. 

They were bad guys but had some redeeming qualities. 

Now comes Succession.  We have a whole cast of characters, none of whom seem to have any redeeming qualities at all.  None.  Zero.  

They’re money obsessed, class snobs, insulting, bullying, and extraordinarily narcissistic. I wouldn’t want to spend any time in real life with any of them.

And yet, the show has been wildly popular.  

Alert…I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon, May 28th, the same day that the finale will debut on Max, Formerly HBO Max.  Why did they delete HBO?  It’s an easily recognizable name.  Another topic for another day. 

In a nutshell, the show is all about who among the four Roy children will succeed their father in running his vast media empire.  Every single one of the children feels entitled and the entire series seems to be about who can be the most ruthless and cutthroat, just like their old man, Logan Roy.  

So, why is it so popular?  The pacing is incredibly brisk, the scenes are lavish, the music is elegantly beautiful, and the lengths at which the kids are willing to go can be jaw dropping.

And the dialogue.  It’s biting, witty, hip, crude, and hilarious---sometimes all at once.  It’s also incredibly fast.  Pay attention, because it comes at you so quickly that you’re liable to miss a bit of conversation that is priceless. 

So, I’ll be in my chair tonight at 9pm, ready to see how this all ends.  Relatable characters?  Not in this show.  But it’s been addictive as hell, and I’ll miss it when it’s over. 

Will I ever write a lead character that's completely unlikable?  Not on a bet. 

P.S.  I just finished watching the finale.  It was the perfect last episode in so many ways for imperfect characters. It wasn't a happy ending. 

Emotional Filters

 While we humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved, coolly rational beings, we are in fact, emotional creatures. Every decision we make must leach through our emotional filters. Ultimately, we behave based on how we feel. 

We old-hands in this writer business teach about the importance of the emotional motivations and reactions in our characters, especially when writing fiction, but how often do we think about our emotional filters affecting our daily lives?

What caused me to be mindful of this came about from my role as the jefe editor for an anthology from CALMA - the Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors. I had put together a postcard to publicize our Go Fund Me, which I needed for a Meet & Greet this weekend. After checking out various online print companies, I settled on the best deal and sent the order. The company acknowledged with a delivery date of May 17. Perfect. 

Then May 17 came and went. No cards. The next day I sent an email asking for an order status. I received an auto reply telling me to expect an answer within 72 to 96 hours. What! The following day I did get a reply from a human informing that because of production difficulties, they couldn't promise a delivery date.

I felt like I'd gotten scammed. They had taken my money and jammed me into a corner regarding this opportunity to distribute the cards. My mind spun through all kind of scenarios. The cards arriving too late and of poor quality. The hassles of getting the credit card company to reimburse me. I imagined penning all kinds of vicious reviews everywhere that I could on the Internet, of contacting the BBB, putting the word out that this outfit was nothing but a bunch of crooked, incompetent weasels. 

With these venomous thoughts festering in my head, it was time to take my dog Scout for his walk. We took a different route than usual and passed by a house with signs asking dog owners to not let their dogs crap on the grass. Scout sniffed but didn't do any business. As we were leaving, the home owner came onto the front porch and asked, "Could you please keep your dog off my lawn?"

I snapped at him, "I'll take care of it," thinking that Scout hadn't done anything and the sign didn't say Keep Off The Grass. 

As the minutes passed I regretted how petty I had reacted. It wasn't the man's comments that had set me off, it was that I was still stewing about the postcards. Because of that, my emotional filter had been preset to bitter and so that was how I behaved, which I like to believe is not the real me. I wanted to go back and apologize but then I figured the incident was all about me so I let it go. 

After all that self-inflicted internal drama, the cards arrived yesterday, in plenty of time for the event. And they look quite nice. 

On being an Other

 Goodness, what a lot of wonderful stuff happened since I accidentally missed my last post! So much to comment on. I love all the talk about research and may tackle it next time. But today I'm going to pick apart the whole topic of appropriation of voice. It's different from book banning, which is ridiculous. There are some truly evil books out there, like Mein Kampf, but I think with proper guidance, most of them can be read in an effort to understand evil.

As for appropriation of voice, if I had to follow that guidance "Write what you know" (or more accurately, "stick to your own kind"), my books would be very dull indeed. All my characters would be white, middle-class, heterosexual women in their seventies. Trust me, we don't get up to much mischief, so thank God for our imaginations, which allow us to pretend we're someone and somewhere else, having exciting adventures, getting into trouble, and saving the day!

So I use my imagination, as well as lots of research, to get into other people's heads and try to experience the world as they do. I've written from the point of view of a middle-aged man in a coma, a learning disabled country handyman, a young girl, a male cop, and on and on. My books are peppered with diverse other characters as I try to reflect the society I'm writing about. I have Indigenous characters, BIPOC, Jewish, Moslem, and LGBTQ+ characters. My main limitation is that I need to know enough about their world, either through experience, friendship, research, or interviews, to feel I can write with authenticity and respect. I think most serious writers know their limitations and their comfort zones, and venture beyond them carefully.

So I suggest the writing rule should be not "Write what you know" but "Write what you can learn about." And it should apply to everything we write. If you're going to write about being caught in a blizzard, it's a good idea to have experienced one or at least get your facts straight from someone who has. As for venturing into other characters' heads, I have more difficulty writing from thirty-five-year-old Amanda Doucette's point of view than I do my older male characters. The world she grew up in and the challenges facing her today are extremely different from mine. I grew up in an era of airmailed letters, pay phones, maps, and "Europe on five dollars a Day". No computer, no internet (indeed not much television), and certainly no cellphone, social media, or Tinder. Pop culture and slang are also very different. I borrow heavily from my daughters' experiences. 

The more intimately you know something, the more power and resonance your writing will have. So dig, dig, and dig some more. I once created a character in my Inspector Green novels MIST WALKER who was a detective investigating child sexual abuse. I had fallen prey to the many negative cliches and horror stories out there about such investigations - insensitive, heavy-footed men who were rule-bound, disbelieving, and so on. As part of my rewrites, I arranged to have coffee with a senior detective who'd spent twenty-five years in that field, so I could find out what they're actually like. He talked at length about his experiences and feelings, and about one particular case that still haunted him. I realized that the real person was very different from the cliche, and I rewrote the character accordingly. It was an eye-opener even for me, a psychologist, to make sure I don't fall prey to superficial prejudices and pre-judgement.

For all of us, there are some topics that are probably too far a stretch or too sensitive to be handled by an outsider. My second Inspector Green novel, ONCE UPON A TIME, dealt with Holocaust survivors, and I was extremely nervous about whether I could do their experience justice. I read as much as I could, both their experiences and personal accounts, I found online tape recordings of survivors telling their stories, I knew some as well, but I was on pins and needles waiting to hear the reactions. When I received a handwritten note from a child of survivors saying how well I had portrayed them, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. 

Empathy is the most powerful tool a fiction writer can have. It is through slipping inside someone else's skin and trying to experience the situation from their perspective that we create the most genuine and vivid characters. Empathy comes much more naturally to some people than others, and thirty-five years as a psychologist no doubt helped me, but it's a skill that can be learned. It takes an open, questioning mind, a listening ear, a curiosity to explore, and an ability to reach deep within oneself to connect to similar experiences. We may not have murdered anyone, but surely we have all experienced the urge to kill. That rage, desperation, terror, or whatever intense feeling that might drive you to murder. There but for the grace of god...

How Writing a Novel is Like Finding a Woolly Mammoth in Your Back Yard, or The Writer as Archeologist.

I adore Sybil's entry, below, on the joys and fascinations of the research an author does.

A few years ago I read about a soybean farmer in Michigan who was digging around on his property when he found something that he thought was a buried fence post. He tried to dig it out, but discovered it was much bigger than a fence post, and attached to something. He kept digging, and lo and behold, after much toil he discovered that his fence post was actually a tusk attached to a skull. He called in the archeologists, who discovered that the skull was part of the skeleton of a huge woolly mammoth that had been butchered and stored in a pond some one hundred and fifty thousand years earlier by prehistoric hunters. 

Now, that is quite a discovery, to go from a hole in the ground, to a fence post, to the tale of early American mammoth hunters, butchering their prey after a successful and thrilling hunt and then sinking the carcass into a pond to keep it fresh for a while longer. Why did they not retrieve it later? Did they move on? Millennia later, a scientist holds a bone in his hand and wonders.

In related news, I’ve been working on the first draft of a new novel. My fourteenth, something totally different than anything I have ever done. (Working title: Number Fourteen) Believe me, I have been digging and researching like crazy because this is a whole new excavation. 

Every time I begin a new book, I survey the landscape until I find a likely place to hunt for a tale worth telling. Then I haul out my tools and I start digging, trying to find the gist of the story. At first I tend to slog around, flinging shovels full of mud out of the way, occasionally coming up with promising bits and pieces of bone, but nothing that excites me. Until I just happen to hit upon something that is different from all the mud I have been digging into. Often I think I’ve just found a fence post, but as I continue to dig, my author eye tells me that I have stumbled upon something that is going to be interesting. Then my heart rate picks up because I realize that what I’ve found is made of gold, and if I keep carefully digging, then scooping, then delicately brushing away the detritus around the story, I will have discovered a tale worth telling.

Curious Me

 by Sybil Johnson

Writers are a curious bunch We see something we find interesting or we don’t understand, we look it up. I’m constantly finding stuff to investigate, partly because it’s fun and partly because you never know what might spark an idea for a story.

Here’s what I’ve been looking into recently: 

Exterior doors in Finland - I’ve watched a lot of Finnish/Norwegian/Swedish crime dramas recently. I just finished up Bordertown, a Finnish series set on the border of Finland and Russia. It’s called Sorjonen, the name of the main detective, in Finland. It took me many episodes before I noticed that the exterior doors for all homes in Finland open outward. That meant the police didn’t kick down doors, but shot out the locks.

Here in the U.S, since the Cocoanut Grove night club fire in the 1940s, all exterior doors on places of business must swing outward so people aren’t trapped inside if there’s a fire or some other emergency. That does not extend to private homes. All of the doors I’ve seen here in the U.S. swing inward. Though I hear there are homes in Florida where they open outward.

 So I was curious why Finland has doors that open outward. Is it weather related? Is it something else? Turns out, a false fire alert in Finland in the 19th century during a church service left dozens of people dead. They became crushed against the doors as they struggled to get out. Yes, you guessed it, those doors opened inward. Since that time, all exterior doors open outward, not just in public buildings. 

Black lines on the Freeway – While driving on the freeway here in Southern California, I noticed that the white lines that separated the lanes now have a black line on each side of the white stripe. I wondered what that was about. Apparently, putting those black stripes on can help drivers see the lines better on rainy days or when the glare is bad.

Åland islands – I watched Thicker Than Water, a TV series that is set mostly in the Åland islands, which are in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. Since the language used in the series is Swedish, I assumed the islands were part of Sweden. Silly me! When I looked them up, I discovered they are an autonomous and demilitarized region of Finland. The history of the islands is interesting. At various times, they were part of Sweden, Finland and Russia. The League of Nations in 1921 decided they should be part of Finland. The official language of the islands is Swedish.

Psychic Meditation – We were driving on the West side of Los Angeles the other day and I noticed a billboard that advertised psychic meditation. I wondered what that meant, so I did a little digging. Apparently, it’s a form of guided meditation that helps you focus on your psychic senses so you can tap into your psychic abilities. Regular meditation focuses on clearing your mind, psychic meditation focuses on enhancing your psychic gifts. Sounds very L.A., doesn’t it?

Disposal of animal carcass in a rural area – There was a column in the local paper where someone was complaining about a CA DMV written test that they’d taken. They’d taken practice tests, read the manual several times and still came across a question regarding disposal of a dog carcass in a rural area that they didn’t remember seeing in the manual. I don’t know what the exact question was, but I skimmed through the CA DMV manual online. Didn’t see anything that I thought would apply. But my searching did reveal that California recently passed the Wildlife Traffic Safety Act aka Roadkill Bill. It was recently signed into law by the governor, but is currently active in only 3 pilot regions. It allows people to take roadkill home and butcher it for the meat. Apparently, it was illegal before this.

I know from watching lots and lots of episodes of North Woods Law that, in Maine, if your car hits a moose you have first dibs on the meat. If you don’t want it, it goes to a needy family. You have to call and report it, of course. They investigate and, as long as you didn’t run into the moose on purpose, you can have it. I don’t know why anyone would run into a moose with their car. That seems a very dangerous thing. You'd be lucky to survive and your car probably wouldn’t. 

That’s what I’ve been looking into lately. Not sure if I have a story to go with any of these, but they were interesting. And, who knows, maybe one of them will spark an idea for a story in one of you.

 

 

Putting Novelists on a Leash?

 There’s an excellent op-ed piece in Saturday’s Washington Post entitled “Limiting What Novelists Write About Won’t Help Readers”. The column talks about how a writer can no longer depend on his or her imagination. According to the emerging social climate, one must only write about what one knows.

Yes, I’ve heard that old, tired cliché, “Write What You Know.”

Boloney. Writers use their imagination.  Did Tolkien live as a hobbit? Did J,K.Rowling live in a wizarding world? Did George R.R. Martin ride a dragon? 

Was Pat Conroy Black?  Was he ever a slave?  No?  And yet he wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner. 

Could he have published that book today?  I seriously doubt it. 

According to the Washington Post piece, the “literary dark age” started in 2020 when Jeanine Cummins published American Dirt.  It’s a story about undocumented immigrants, a woman and her son, were forced to flee when the woman’s husband, a journalist, exposes a drug cartel.  

The book was picked as an Oprah Book Club selection, it was on the New York Times bestseller list, selling three million copies in 37 languages.  It was an unqualified hit.

And then it wasn’t.  Cummins and her publisher were the victims of public blowback.  Cummins wrote from the viewpoint of the immigrants…and the author is white and from New Jersey.  Her book tour was canceled.  

In my series of mysteries, I write in the first-person viewpoint of Geneva Chase, a female reporter.  I’m very lucky that I’ve received mostly good reviews and that most of my readers are women.  I have, however, gotten reviews labelling me as a misogynist and one review in particular, was unusually harsh: “I hate this book with a passion. While the murders were initially interesting the main character is so obviously written by a man it’s vomit inducing.”

As I said, my books have garnered hundreds of good reviews.  But you know, it’s the bad ones we remember. 

And I’ve also been criticized for a single paragraph I wrote about Fox News in my book Random Road. It was a single sentence and it’s been described as being overtly political.  It wasn’t…but yeah, it kind of was. 

 I write about current affairs.  They’re things that concern me like climate change, sea level rise, school shootings, LBGTQ issues, and sex trafficking. They’re subjects I think are important. 

Write what you know?  I don’t think so. 

How many mystery writers have actually murdered someone?  Hint…I’m hoping the percentage is really, really low.  

And that brings us book banning.  According to PEN America, these are the subjects most often banned in schools and some libraries:

o Titles that deal explicitly with LGBTQ+ topics, or have LGBTQ+ protagonists or prominent secondary characters have been a major target in the current wave of book bans. This is reflected in the Index, with 379 such titles (33%), including a distinct subset of 84 titles that deal with transgender characters and topics (7%).

o Fiction novels and non-fiction books with protagonists of color also made up a significant part of banned books in the Index, including 467 titles (41%).

o Books dealing with Jewish and Muslim characters and religious/ethnic themes have also been targeted, with 18 titles listed in the Index.

In some school districts, even some classics have been banned at one time or another, such as The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Handmaid’s Tale, and Slaughterhouse Five.  

Pat Conroy once said, “Fiction is where I go to tell the truth.”  

Let’s hope the pendulum swings back to center again sometime soon and our imaginations run wild. 

Poor Souls

By Charlotte Hinger

 I was moved by Donis's last post. She raised the question about the merits of a work of art when the artist is not a good person. I'm of the opinion that a beautiful song is a beautiful song no matter who has composed it. However, I respect the opinions of those who disagree with me and believe that a rotten person is a rotten person, and that fact affects how they hear the song. 

In fact, the number of people who don't agree with any of my opinions is staggering. Just poll my daughters and grandchildren.   

Nevertheless, I'm appalled by growing movement of groups that suppress all dissention. There's no opinion to object to because anything controversial is squelched immediately. The era of passionate verbal articulate donnybrooks is going the way of the dodo bird. 

Although I'm a liberal, in times past, I've liked hearing the ideas expressed by my conservative friends. I'm sad when I read about college students refusing to allow a speaker to present a program opposing the liberal canon.

Last summer I listened to a man on a panel explain why he asked for a book to be removed from his local library. I disagreed with both his action and his choice of book to remove, He explained he was dealing with his daughter's attempted suicide and felt the book she checked out contributed to her sorrowful state of mind. He didn't want other teenagers influenced by it.

What immediately struck me, though, was that I had never--not even once--listened to a person explain why they wanted a book banned. I used to listen! Now I don't. I'm so opposed to banning books that I close my ears at once to anyone who disagrees with this stance. I've been contaminated by group think and I going to correct that. 

When I read of parents wanting to protect their children from feeling "sad" when they are exposed to some of the less attractive aspects of our country's history, I'm speechless. 

I adored our lovely music teacher when I was in grade school. She traveled from school to school within the county. Much of my interest of African American history can be traced to the stirring of my heart when Teresa Shurr led us in traditional spirituals. They made me very sad.

She taught us about people through their country's songs. To this day, during the opening of the Olympics I recall the line "but other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as high and pure as mine." Right now, my heart aches for the people whose "hopes and dreams" are broken through war. 

Developing a soul is painful. It always has been.

Art and Outrage

I (Donis) have been seeing some discussion on television about this year's Met Gala being a tribute to the late German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Some people have taken exception to the choice of Lagerfeld because of some of his unsavory positions in the past and some of the offensive things he said. And they were offensive, for sure. But his designs are beautiful and were quite influential in the fashion world. All of this brings up the eternal question: How do you separate the artist from the art? And should you? Picasso was an egomaniac. Hemingway was a raging misogynist. They were both brilliant.

Several years ago an NPR program held a contest to rank the ten most offensive classical music composers over the last 500 years. They had plenty of nominees. Beethoven never bathed. Mozart gambled away everything he earned and left his family destitute. Vivaldi was a libidinous priest. Whether any of these accusations are true I would never presume to hazard an opinion. However, even if they were all true, would this mean their music was not beautiful or worth listening to? The winner of the contest, by the way, was Wagner, who really was a despicable anti-semite. No orchestra in Israel can play his music without furious opposition. There's even a play about it called "You Will Not Play Wagner". I recently read an article in the Brandeis newsletter about the play, and the author made a good case that  "music itself cannot be antisemitic. But music has memories attached to it, and music moves the soul." (It's an interesting article. Click here if you want to read it.)

Still, does this mean the music is not brilliant? I can understand not buying the works of a living artist who is horrid because you don't want to support them personally. What about after he's been dead for years?

I've pondered this question for decades, but I've been thinking about it more since so many government entities have taken it upon themselves to start banning books. If you don't want to read a book or support the author, then don't. But there's something disturbingly Nazi-like about passing laws to keep anyone at all from reading a book or author because you don't like their point of view.

Many, many years ago - 1961, to be exact - Lawrence Durrell and the Austrian writer Alfred Perles published a book called Art and Outrage, A Correspondence About Henry Miller. It's a collection of their letters to one another over several months in which they wrote about this very subject. The author Henry Miller had no filter and his books contain passages that border on porn, which got him banned in many places at the time. But his writing is beautiful and deep. Is it art, Durrell and Perles wondered (very wittily)? Miller himself had a thing or two to say about it.

I can't help but be influenced by an artist's personal beliefs, if I know what those are. But as an author myself, I also know that when you're in the writing zone (or painting or composing or designing zone), what comes out feels like it has nothing to do with you, but comes from some higher power. I think this is why the ancients believed in the Muses. In the movie "Amadeus", the composer Antonio Salieri was moved to renounce God because his rival Mozart was blessed with genius, and whose music was heavenly, even though Mozart was a totally unworthy sinner and Salieri had spent his life composing only to please God. 

That's the problem with genius. It's like the rain. It falls on the worthy and the unworthy alike.

I'd be very interested to read what you think about Art and the Artist, Dear Readers. Perhaps you can clear things up for me.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

 

by Sybil Johnson

I spent part of the weekend of April 22nd at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFoB). It’s a huge book festival that is spread across the main campus of the University of Southern California here in Los Angeles. It includes events inside various buildings and lots and lots of booths outside. Events inside included interviews and panels with authors and a screening of the first episode of an AppleTV+ series, “The Last Thing He Told Me”, based on the novel by Laura Dave. There was a children’s book area, a YA stage, an En Espanol stage, a Cooking stage...

Some of the many booths.

The entrance near the Expo Line (or whatever it's called these days) and the En Espanol stage.

Everything is free, though I believe the ticketed events (all inside) were charged a processing fee. It’s a great way for an author to get their books in front of lots and lots of readers and for readers to discover new books and authors.

In 2022, the festival was held for the first time since the pandemic started. I missed that one since it was the same weekend as Malice Domestic. This year, though, I was good to go.

I haven’t seen any official attendance numbers for this year, but the 2022 festival drew 150,000 people, making it the largest book festival in the U.S. My feeling, though, was that the number of people there was lower than the times I attended before the pandemic.

Rides on Metro to the festival were free this year. At least that’s what people tell me. I admit to being slightly embarrassed that I drove there on Earth Day.

I attended the festival on Saturday where I signed at the Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles booth for a couple hours. Had a good time talking to readers and my fellow writers. I saw people I knew and some that I didn’t. Even sold several books! Always a bonus.

Me, Wendall Thomas, James T. Bartlett signing at the SinC/LA booth

The SinC/LA booth

USC is my alma mater, but I hadn’t been on campus for several years. Turns out it is now a no smoking and no plastic campus. The no smoking is self-explanatory. No plastic means they do not sell plastic bottles of sodas or water. It’s all aluminum.

The day was a bit warm for my taste. It was probably around 85 or so at 10 a.m. when I arrived. At least it felt like it. The Trojan Marching Band kicked off the festival on one of the stages. I listened for a while, then wandered around for a couple hours before my signing and for a bit after. Lots of booths. Lots of interesting things to see.

Trojan Marching Band opening the festival

I always enjoy attending even when it’s raining or too hot. You never know what the weather will be like in April.

I found this article about the festival interesting from the Daily Trojan, the campus newspaper: https://dailytrojan.com/2023/04/21/festival-of-books-2023/ 

If you’re in the Los Angeles area the weekend of the festival, I highly recommend going. It's usually held on a weekend in April toward the middle or end of the month. You can see more about this year’s festival here: https://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Tommy Trojan. The SinC/LA booth was a hop, skip and a jump from here.

 

The festival map

Banking Woes

By Charlotte Hinger

Guess what! The historical novel I'm writing right now is timely. It's about that period in America's rural history when small communities were losing their banks and farms. The bank failures afflicting our country right now sound very familiar to those of us who remember the 1980s.

I've been writing this book, Mary's Place, forever. Happily, it will be published by the University of Nebraska Press. But who would have thought the non-fiction aspect of this novel would be a hot news item?

 Everyone's book is about some particular setting or topic that can be exploited for talks. Speaking about that little something in the background is much more likely to hold an audience's attention than trying to persuade people to buy your novel. 

I've always known this, but with the advent of social media it's easy to get sidetracked. So many platforms, so little time. With the daily bombardment of emails and messages, I've become a chronic and habitual deleter. Yes spellcheck, I know deleter isn't a real word, but I'll bet Type M followers know what I mean. 

Sometimes, traditional methods work best. When was the last time you read a novel where a banker is a heroic character? I'm going to target agricultural bankers with postcards and letters. One banker recently told me a friend of his was shot for not loaning the client money. He personally had been kicked. People in this occupation need soothing and that's always best accomplished with a book that makes them feel appreciated. 

Ah, marketing. The perpetual burden. I was warned that I couldn't expect to sell my mystery series along with historical novels. But that's not true. Because all of my books are set in Kansas and I have a flaming state loyalty, the duality works. 

With Mary's Place, I'll start contacting clubs and organizations far ahead of the publication date to see if they would welcome a program about banking. For instance, I'm a member of Westerners International and that's the first group that came to mind.

It's so heartening to speak to people on a topic that they are interested in. 

For some reason planning marketing comes hard for me. It's not that I can't think. It's just that I don't like to lock in plans. Oddly enough I love to solve problems. An ability to solve problems would seem to carry over to futuristic planning, but it doesn't. I tend to be crisis oriented.

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

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

Cataloguing Things I See

  This weekend, my wife and I are enjoying time spent in Southport, NC.  It’s a lovely, quaint little village right on the edge of the Cape Fear River.  From the shore, you can see Oak Island and Bald Head Island.  

It just so happened that this is the same weekend as a huge vintage car show.  I loved seeing a 1963 Ford Galaxie, similar to my the first car I ever owned.  All metal, massive engine, big as a beached whale, no AC, no power windows, a radio that was only AM, and a steering wheel the size of a hula hoop.  

Even the smell of the leather interior brought back memories. A new car smell is nice, but a car with some age to it is even better.  I don’t know why.

Southport is also famous for being a location where movies and episodes for television shows have been filmed.  Some of the movies include Firestarter, Crimes of the Heart, Weekend at Bernie’s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, as well as many others.

The town’s most favorite (yes, they seem to have a favorite) is Safe Haven adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel.  Now, admittedly, romance is not my genre, but we did watch the movie before we came to visit.

During the movie, they clearly identified the location as Southport, North Carolina. We took a golf cart tour of the town and our guide cheerfully pointed to where all the scenes were filmed.  Of course, our guide also informed us that he’s met a few of the celebrities.  One of them was Ryan Seacrest who was dating one of the actresses in town at the time.  Mr. Seacrest’s bio states that he’s five feet eight inches tall.  Our guide said he’s 5’7’’.  The guide told us that he had doubts as to the veracity of the biography because standing next to him, he felt like an NBA player. 

So, what does any of this have to do with writing mysteries?  Nothing, really, other than I’m filing and cataloguing things that I see, sounds that I hear, scents I smell, and people that we meet.  All grist for the mill. 

Lesson for today, nothing is wasted on a writer.  Enjoy everything and then use it in your next story. 

One last thought, the Washington Post ran an excellent opinion piece about how novels are important now more than ever in difficult times.  If you get a chance, take a look!  

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/24/why-read-novels/

Opinion | Reading novels in times of trouble - The Washington Post