Guest Blog : Dennis Palumbo

Donis here. I am inordinately pleased to welcome today's guest blogger and one of my favorite mystery authors, Dennis Palumbo. Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis is now a licensed psychotherapist and author. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). His acclaimed series of crime novels (Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors and the latest, Phantom Limb) feature psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, a trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. All are from Poisoned Pen Press.

The Unknown

By

Dennis Palumbo

After 27 years as a licensed psychotherapist, and almost 40 as a working writer, the one thing I know for sure is that I don’t know anything for sure.

Maybe it’s the result of seeing hundreds of patients over the course of my practice, encountering such a wide variety of people, issues and experiences. Maybe it’s the hard-won acceptance of the idea that few things can be reduced to black or white, true or not true, but rather some mixture of the two. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older.

I was thinking of this a few months back, while serving as a panelist at a local writing conference. I was seated between a talented, successful mystery novelist and an equally talented, successful screenwriter. The audience was made up of sincere, passionately attentive people who seemed to be yearning for something from the panelists: Some answer. Some blueprint for success. Something we three veteran writers Knew For Sure.

What struggling writer doesn’t yearn for this? I’ve taught countless writing workshops over the years, and was always moved by questions like “What are editors looking for nowadays?” “Is it better to write in the morning or evening?” “Should a writer always outline first?”

In other words, What Did I Know and When Did I Know It? The funny thing is, I used to try to answer those questions, as ultimately unanswerable as they are. I could understand from personal experience the yearning behind them, the struggle to find a path through the dense forest of a writing career, or at least to identify some markers.

Not that there aren’t things to teach, and for writers to learn. Things having to do with craft, consistency, perseverance. Things that we all need to learn and re-learn, one unceasing lesson that lasts as many days as we do.

But the most important lesson, the one truth that experienced writers know, is that there’s a limit to knowing. Which means there’s a limit to safety, sureness, technique. Regardless of the pragmatic tools you forge, the creative gifts you were given at birth, the teachers you meet along the way, sooner or later you bump up against the Mystery: the Thing That Can’t Be Known.

Because the truth is, good writing is a combination of the above-mentioned factors, yet it transcends them all. It’s bigger than the sum of its parts. You can do everything “right,” approach the work with talent, diligence and craft---and yet while on Monday the writing sings, on Tuesday it sucks.

Why? I don’t know. More importantly, you don’t have to know. You just have to keep writing.

St. John of the Cross, describing a mystical union with the Almighty, said, “I came into the Unknown, beyond all science.” That may be well and good when it comes to mystical unions, but what does it have to do with making your characters richer or solving some tricky plot problem? More than you might think. Regardless of experience, level of talent or career success, every writer “comes into the Unknown” the moment he or she begins to write.

It’s part of the compact made between the writer and that which is being written. It’s an agreement that reads something like this: “I (the writer) bring to this work my talent, craft and professionalism. I also bring a fair amount of life experience, emotional baggage, grandiose fantasies and inchoate dreads. I’m also throwing in some pragmatic understanding of the marketplace, a few story turns my agent suggested, character nuances from my writing group, and a couple jokes I’m recycling from that last novel (or screenplay, short story, whatever) nobody bought. Finally, I offer my blood, sweat and tears, enough good will to float a hospital ship, and a vague sense of wanting my authentic voice, whatever it may be, to shine through the material.”

And what can the writer expect from the other party to this compact? The Muse, the Unknown, whatever you want to call it?

Not much.

In fact, expect nothing at all. Except the occasional miracle. The great, pitch-perfect line of dialogue. The surprising story turn. Those infrequent moments when you look at something you’ve just written, something wonderful, and say to yourself, “Where the hell did that come from?” And your heart soars.

Talk about a risky business! You pour all your talent, energy and commitment into writing, and there’s still no guarantee that anything good will come of it. And when it does, most of the time you won’t know why it does.

Good writing is damned mysterious, as much to the writer as anyone else, which is probably the source of its power to move, enthrall and inspire.

I say “probably,” of course, because when it comes to writing, you never know.
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Visit Dennis’s website at www.dennispalumbo.com

And Then You Celebrate

I have a to-do list that I need to knock off between now and tomorrow morning. Allowing time to go into school and get some work done in between. Luckily, next week is spring break at my university, so I have some catch-up time. But tomorrow I have the book launch party for What the Fly Saw, the second book in my Hannah McCabe near-future police procedural series. Look to the left to see the gorgeous cover that the art department at St. Martin's Minotaur created. That cover has been getting rave reviews. I hope a lot of potential readers are judging my book by its cover.

The official publication date for Fly (note the cute abbreviation -- could also be an acronym, WTFS, but that sounds like a radio station) was March 3. But I was able to do a pre-publication "sneak preview" at Sleuthfest, an annual conference sponsored by the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America. That was the last weekend in February. This weekend, I'm launching my book in Albany with a book signing/reading:

The Book House

My McCabe series is set in Albany – or an alternate universe, near-future version of Albany. The Book House, a local independent, conveniently located, with a great staff, is the perfect place for the launch party.

I'm excited about the party tomorrow. However, I'm not the most relaxed of hosts. I always make a to-do list and then live in fear that I forgotten something. But with a few launch parties under my belt, I've finally figured out that you just go with the flow. That doesn't keep me from searching the Internet (and back through old posts for my fellow Type-Mers) looking for tips about how to do a terrific book reading/signing and/or launch party. The two are not necessarily linked. One could do a book reading/signing without providing refreshments. But I like feeding people. I think the mood of the event is much more upbeat when people have a chance to nibble and chat.

Here's my to-do list for tomorrow:

1. Order book-themed specialty cake
2. Order platters of cheese and fruit
3. Stock up on beverages
4. Stock up on plates, cups, napkins, etc.
5. Remember to bring serving utensils
6. Bring sandwich bags, garbage bags, aluminum foil
7. Call bookstore about cake being delivered by bakery
8. Make guest book to get sign-ins for newsletter
9. Pick up book-themed items for door prize
10. Take box for entries
11. Select and practice excerpts for reading
12. Remember to tweet, Facebook, send e-mails
13. Charge camera and remember to bring
14. Pick up Harry's give away
15. "Celebration of life" theme

The list above is not in the order of importance. But once I have the food out of the way, I can focus on the more serious issues. I've been so busy that I had to make time to get to the bakery and order the cake. With The Red Queen Dies, the cake had an Alice's Adventure in Wonderland theme. This time, I asked for a cake that duplicated my cover. The inspiration for the book was "Who Killed Cock Robin?" The bakery's going to add birds around the sides (is that called "the base") of the cake. Can't wait to see what it looks like. Last time, the cake was so gorgeous, no one wanted to cut it.

My reading will be brief excerpts from the first three chapters. That's because reading for 15 or 20 minutes straight makes me nervous. I know that sounds odd when I teach three-hour classes and have no problem doing presentations or appearing on panels. But in those situations, I know the material and I just talk with occasional glances at my notes or slides to stay on track when it's a presentation. When I'm reading, I'm no longer in contact with my audience and I can feel that spotlight glaring. That's why I like to read a little and talk a little and have some interaction.

The reference to Harry is to my Maine Coon mix, the cat I adopted back in late October. Harry has his own page on my website. That's because I find him fascinating (never having had a cat as an adult). I have a Maine Coon cat who appears in my first Hannah McCabe book and that was what led me to Harry. The reference above is that Harry is going to have his own giveaway at the party. No, he will not be attending. He prefers to stay at home looking out the window.

If you're wondering about the reference to "celebration of life" theme, in Fly, an 85 year old woman throws herself a party to celebrate her life. As some of you may know, this is becoming more common -- to do a celebration of your own life that you can attend rather than waiting for people to say nice things about you at your wake. I'm going to invite my guest to share the theme they would select for their own celebration.

Got to run. If you're in Albany tomorrow, please join me for my book launch.

Conference Season

I, Donis, won’t be going to the Left Coast Crime conference this year. I’m sorry, too, because so many friends will be there, and Tim Hallinan, whom I greatly admire, is the guest of honor. Besides, it’s in Portland, which is worth the trip on it’s own.

Tucson Festival of Books, a huge book festival that is held on the University of Arizona campus on the same weekend, March 14 and 15. I’ve done TFoB every year that it has been held. Since I live in Arizona, I know many of the organizers and I am always set up to appear on several panels and do a number of signings. I also present a mystery-writing workshop every year which has been incredibly popular. In fact, Dear Reader, if you are going to TFoB and have always wanted to write a mystery novel, come by the Integrated Learning Center, Room 141, on Saturday, March 14, from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm, and in one hour I’ll tell you everything there is to know about the craft.*

Many years ago I owned a small Celtic import gift shop in Tempe, Arizona. I sold jewelry and goods from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (and Man, Brittany, and Galicia, when I could get them.) I had my little store, but I also set up shop at festivals and games all over the Western United States. In fact, if I had had the energy, I would have made more money if I had gotten rid of the storefront and spent every weekend traveling to Highland games and Irish Feis. I could have done it, too. There is some sort of Celtic celebration somewhere in this country every blinking week of the year. I could have sold my house, bought myself a travel trailer, and lived on the road. Many retailers do just that.

Working at Highland Games, Orange County, CA

As it was, I hit games half-a-dozen times a year, in Arizona and California, mainly, with the occasional foray into Utah and New Mexico. I not only made a lot of money, but setting up at festivals was a great way to advertise my shop. After a game weekend, I’d gain a fair number of mail-order customers from wherever I had been. The only problem was that however profitable it was to travel, it was exhausting to pack up the shop, drive five hundred miles, set up the shop on a field at four o’clock in the morning, run off your feet selling all day while praying it doesn’t rain or the wind doesn’t blow your tent over, then pack up the shop after the games were over and drive home.

I’ve been thinking of those days lately. I don’t own a shop any more. I write mystery novels, which is a lot less profitable but a lot more fun. I still travel, and if I could afford it, I still could do writers’ conferences and workshops every weekend of the year. Last month I spent a week doing programs in Wake County, North Carolina, with Erika Chase and our own Vicki Delany. I had a spectacular time and gained five pounds (Vicki wrote an entry about that on this very blog here. You should check it out if you haven’t yet, Dear Reader. Nothing is more delightful than gorgeous photographs of Southern cooking.) I wrote about the trip on my own blog, here, if you are interested in the details of the trip and how a woman from Arizona deals with ice and snow.

I think that it is a helpful thing for an author to go to conferences and to make as many public appearances as she can afford, mainly because it’s good to be with other authors, to learn that you’re not alone. Even the Very Big Names suffer the same fears and insecurities as you do when they write. One famous author told me that every time she finishes a book, she’s absolutely sure that she’ll never be able to do it again, and every time she starts a new book, she’s terrified that she won’t be able to pull it off.

It’s also good to get your name out there. Let yourself be seen. Learn how to promote yourself. And I must say that it’s a lot less tiring than selling jewelry in the middle of a field to a thousand
people in kilts.

The only thing is that you don’t come home from a speaking engagement or a writer’s or fan conference with bags full of money. In fact, it’s hard to measure whether the money you spend to do these personal appearances is worth it in terms of book sales. You have to pick and choose what you can afford and which conference or appearance will get you the most bang for your buck. All you can do is the best you can do.
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*Sarcasm. However, I do present a technique for teaching yourself everything you need to know. My complete TFoB schedule can be seen on the TFoB site or here.

Twists and turns in an author's life

There are few highlights in an author's life more exciting than the arrival of the author copies of a brand new book. Unless it's going to a mystery conference where everyone talks, breathes, and loves mysteries, and where those who love to read them can connect with those who love to write them.

Luckily for me, this is a week to celebrate both those things. Today a box arrived in the post that contained not only my author copies of THE NIGHT THIEF, but also a whole stack of bookmarks which I immediately packed into my suitcase for the conference. THE NIGHT THIEF is the third book in my easy-read novels for those who want a fast, entertaining read, featuring shy but inventive country handyman, Cedric O'Toole. It has been receiving excellent advance reviews and I am very proud of how the story came together. Beyond the dead bodies and the mystery, it is a touching and human tale about Cedric's connection to a boy who's had a very rough start in life.

Left Coast Crime is one of the premiere mystery conferences in the world, so called because although it is held in a different city every year, it always occurs on the western side of a country. Generally this is the western united States, but it has also been held in Bristol, UK, and rumour has it Vancouver may host it soon. Like all reader-centred conferences, it is organized and run by dedicated volunteers who work for years to pull together a fascinating weekend of panel discussions, author interviews, readings, and special events. It's a challenging, exhausting, and rewarding job, for which we authors are extremely grateful.

This year the conference is being held in Portland, Oregon, and in addition to informal chats and get-togethers at the bar, where traditionally all the best fun can be had, I will be participating in a panel entitled "Do the twist– Keep the audience guessing" with an eclectic mix of authors from legal thriller  to romantic suspense writers. This panel takes a look behind the scenes of creating a killer plot, which should intrigue readers and fellow writers alike. We will talk about creating the perfect twist, avoiding the overdone cliche, what is a twist, and do we really even need them. Apparently there are five different kinds of twists, and since I've been writing twists all my writing career, I look forward to learning what they are!

Besides my panel, I am also co-hosting a table at the Saturday night banquet with my very good friend Robin Harlick, fellow Canuck and author of the Meg Harris series. We promise goodies, book draws, and hopefully lots of intrigue and laughter.

Stay tuned, and on my next blog slot, I will report back on the conference and on everything I learned about twists.

One way to have some fun with character names

by Rick Blechta

I’m one of those fiction writers who struggles with coming up with good character names, or should I say, I used to be one of those people.

The answer to my dilemma came to me “like a cold fist at the end of a wet kiss.” (Wish I could take credit for that bit of descriptive text but it comes from an old Firesign Theatre sketch.) I have perfectly useable names right at my fingertips: my friends!

It started back a number of novels ago in Cemetery of the Nameless. At first I didn’t want to throw actual people I knew into the mix as characters. I mean, what if they didn’t like who I made them? So in Cemetery, I used them for my sort of “Greek chorus” idea at the beginning of each chapter where various people make comments on the action going on in the story. It was a fun project, and the names of reporters, reviewers, and other musicians were all various people I knew. It worked out well for me, and the friends whose names I used loved it.

As further books were written and I got more comfortable with the idea, I began to name minor characters after people I knew. With my current novel release, Roses for a Diva, I jumped all the way into the pool. Nearly every one of the supporting characters are friends and people with whom I grew up.

If you’ve read that book, you’ll remember Leonardo Tallevi, the general manager of the Canadian Opera Company (a real entity). Lenny is a friend from way back and a great tenor sax player. I left off that last bit, but I did use something of the real person in my character. A Roman cop is another old friend, Steve Pucci. Drummer Tommy Giorgi turned up as the conductor for the Rome Opera, and Eddie Furci saved the day in Tosca.

Back in Toronto, the two detectives from the Toronto Police Services are former colleagues from my band teaching days and very good friends. I don’t even know if they’re aware I “borrowed” them. Somehow I don’t want to be the first to break the news.

Minor characters are fine, but I don’t think it would be fair to use a real person’s name – at least, real to me – for a main character in that it would be too restricting. Walk-ons are one thing, but protagonists and antagonists need depth (warts and all) to be believable, and I know what I’d wind up doing to a real person would probably lead to hurt feelings — if not law suits.

As for main characters, I rely on my wife to tell me what their names are.

So…problem solved for moi. And it’s a hoot to do. Does anyone else use a dodge like this?

The battle of the blurb

I've just been signing off on the blurb for my new book, The Third Sin, coming out at the end of April. My publisher is brilliant at coming up with a framework that sums up the book better than I could myself so what I do is really just a bit of tweaking here and there.

It's an anxious business, though, and I give it a lot of thought to be sure it's just right. I'm acutely conscious of the blurb's importance as the calling card you place in the hands of the casual browser.

I know the ways in which I choose books myself. There are various factors, of varying levels of importance. First and foremost, of course, is the author.  If it's a new book from an author I love I'll order it before it's even published.

Next comes word of mouth. I have several friends who like the sort of books that I like and a recommendation from one of them will definitely send me looking for it.

After that, I suppose, it's reviews. I can't say I'm much influenced by Richard and Judy style recommendations (would that be Oprah in the States?) because I've never found a professional critic whose views totally chime with mine, but I rely on reviews to tell me about content and subject matter. Something set in small town America, for instance, is a good bet where I'm concerned.

If I haven't anything else to go on and I'm wandering hopefully round a bookshop, a striking cover will probably make me pick it up but remembering my grandmother's warning that you can't tell a book by it's cover, that wouldn't make me buy it.

But then comes the blurb. I read it, and it has to grab me there and then. If it doesn't, the book goes back on the shelf and the author has just lost a new reader.

So it's important. It's like an advertisement for the product. But should it be short and intriguing? Long enough to be informative? Just a snippet from the book itself, maybe, from one of the most dramatic episodes?

I don't know what I think. Are there rules for what makes an effective blurb, and if there are, has anyone ever found out if they actually work? 

Guest Blog: Gillian Galbraith

Aline here. I'm delighted to have Gillian Galbraith as my guest this week. As a former advocate specialising in cases of medical negligence and a writer of law reports for the Times, she's got an impressive pedigree for a crime writer and the details of her detective Alice Rice's cases are always authentic and handled with the assurance of familiarity. She writes cracking good plots too, usually with Edinburgh as their vivid setting.

She is a countrywoman at heart, though, and she now writes full time in rural Kinross in the company of dogs, cats, hens and, I believe, even the occasional bee buzzing past.

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I spent last year learning a great deal about the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and the threat posed to those dependent upon its products from the Hepatitis C and the Aids viruses. My involvement in the Judicial Inquiry into the contamination of the Scottish Blood supply and its effects on haemophiliacs and other patients came about because of my past life.

Prior to taking up writing on a full-time basis I was an Advocate (Attorney) specialising in Medical Negligence. The offer to participate in the Inquiry was too good to turn down from a financial point of view and also because I thought the experience would be too interesting to miss.

And I was right. During it, I encountered a charming civil servant with a tattoo of Audrey Hepburn on her back (in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” garb) and an encyclopaedic knowledge of Dr Who, and an aged member of the Judiciary who regaled me with his fish recipes in between arguing forcefully if I attempted to alter his prose by adding or subtracting a word. I witnessed the tearful aftermath of vitriolic phone calls by assorted, aggrieved lobby groups, felt claws unsheathed in office spats and earwigged for scintillating snippets of legal gossip.

More importantly, I also discovered how innocent lives had been destroyed in a multiplicity of different ways through the contraction of one or other, or both, of the viruses. My work place was a dark and dingy Victorian terrace in the new town district of Edinburgh, my office, wood panelled and dusty and my companions, astonishingly tolerant of the new recruit. Outside, the capital hummed and buzzed as it always does but with extra volume due to the excitement generated by the , then impending, Scottish Referendum.

What a contrast. For more than ten years I have spent day after day alone in my kitchen on a remote Scottish hillside in the county of Kinross-shire. Once my husband and daughter disappear to work and school, respectively, the principal companions of my working hours have been two cats and three dogs.

So, last year’s experiences should provide much needed grist for the mill. Somewhere within all of that there must be a plot. I certainly hope so as I am due to meet my publishers later this month.

So far, plots have in some mysterious way presented themselves in the nick of time. The first in the Alice Rice mystery series, “Blood In The Water” arose out my experiences within the medico-legal world. The second, (“Where The Shadow Falls”) whilst using that background, centred around the passion wind farms generate, as I had become involved in a battle raging around the potential construction of one on my own hillside. To the delight of this author’s ears, I even heard threats being made to those in hard hats who might despoil a much loved landscape. Prostitution figured in the third book (“Dying Of The Light”) , assisted dying in the fourth (“No Sorrow To Die”) and homelessness in “The Road To Hell”. All of the Alice Rice books are set in Edinburgh.

Sometimes, but not often enough, plots appear with the ease of dreams. Sometimes they have to be extracted like rotten teeth, arriving garlanded with blood, sweat and tears. All that is needed is a spark of interest. For the latest in the Alice Rice series, “Troubled Waters” it was effortless. I opened an art exhibition and got talking to the Art Club president. A chance remark by her about her upbringing amongst a strange sect, once commonplace amongst small mining and fishing communities in Scotland, lit the fire.

From that point onwards, in my experience, the sub conscious mind takes over and as one drives along, feeds the hens, runs a bath or performs other mindless, or semi-mindless tasks, ideas bubble up, submerge and re- emerge. Of course, what one is creating is, in essence, one long and sustained lie. But part of the beauty of being an author is that within that lie one can explore truths, psychological, moral or whatever in a non- didactic fashion. More I suspect is revealed of an author in their works than they might know, or wish. Preoccupations are likely to emerge.

Whilst I was beavering away within my office in Edinburgh, daffodils blooming in the gardens opposite, my first Father Vincent Ross mystery (“The Good Priest”) was published. In my experience, the many and sophisticated tools available to a modern day police force inevitably affect the plot of a police procedurals. I wanted a return to an amateur sleuth, reliant only on his intelligence, in order to avoid such plot constraints.

Sin is also, of course and delightfully, a much wider canvas than crime. When I was thinking of the plot for that book, the newspapers were awash, as tragically they still are in Scotland , with dark secrets concealed by the Catholic church. Plentiful motives for murder were apparent in the copy. Also I wanted, in my fiction, to leave Edinburgh and return to the countryside.

So, the setting I chose was my own, the sleepy village of Kinross, lying on the banks of Loch Leven. As I gaze out of my kitchen window today onto a landscape simplified by snow, racking my brains for a plot, in the foreground a dog lies asleep with a Siamese cat slumbering between her paws. Alice Rice has a dog, Vincent Ross, a Siamese cat. As I said, we all reveal ourselves in our fiction.

That Time of Year

The Have-Read, To-Be-Read, and Am-Reading piles

Each spring I write (ever briefly) about the annual two-week stretch where the world stops and I make final edits to the novel coming out in June.

It's that time again. The proof pages to my June novel Fallen Sparrow arrived this week.

Some people love this stage of publication – you haven't looked at the manuscript in months, you can read it as a reader might, (hopefully) genuinely enjoying the book upon arriving at it with fresh eyes. Not me. I sit under a desk lamp, as if beneath an interrogation light, and sweat out every punctuation mark, slowly combing through the pages, hoping and praying that the plot holds up, that I don’t find a typo (which, of course, is unrealistic), and that I genuinely like the book while reading it as a reader might, but knowing all the while that, as my extraordinary editor reminds me in her letter, This is the last opportunity…

Happy reading. See you in two weeks.

What Tole Painting Taught Me

I’m back from a week in Vegas where I attended the Creative Painting convention. Had a great time. Came back to discover that fellow Type Mer, Vicki Delany, and I are going to be on the same panel at Malice Domestic. Pretty cool! 

While I was painting away at the convention, I was reminded of what painting taught me about writing. The post below originally appeared on Michele Lynn Seigfried's Blog as part of the Fatal Brushstroke blog tour last November.

One of the projects I painted at the convention

Like Rory Anderson, the main character in my book, Fatal Brushstroke, I’m a tole/decorative painter. (Decorative painting seems to be the preferred term these days, though I still often use tole.) I started painting in the early 90s, several years before I started writing. I’ve gone to conventions, taken classes, and worked on projects on my own.

Over the years I’ve learned a lot from painting that I can apply to my writing life. Whenever I get discouraged, the following bits of wisdom keep me moving forward.

• You can only paint/write based on your ability at the time. Be patient. Don’t expect to be perfect right off the bat. It takes time and practice to learn a new skill. The more projects you work on, the better you’ll become.

• Don’t constantly compare yourself to others. There will always be someone who paints better or writes better. That doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t valid. Just do the best you can. We’re often not the best judges of our own work, anyway.

• You won’t know what a project looks like until it’s finished. Don’t fret over it while it’s in progress. About halfway through every painting project I’ve ever worked on, I look at it and think it’s not turning out as I’d hoped, so why bother? The same is true of every writing project, be it short story or novel. But I keep on plugging away and, at the end, I like the final result and feel it was worth spending time on.

• You can always start over. Wood can be sanded, paint can be removed from most surfaces. In writing, chapters can be rewritten, characters can be changed. Just because you put it down on paper or typed it into a Word document doesn’t mean it’s permanent. We tend to think if something is written down or already painted it can’t be modified. Why? You started the project in the first place. You have control over it, you can change it.

• Periodically look at a project as a whole. One of my painting teachers told me this when I complained about how a project was turning out. She held the project a few feet away from me and told me to look at it again. It looked better than I’d thought. Don’t dwell on every brushstroke, don’t dwell on every word and sentence. Look at the project as a whole. Sure, details are important but, in my eyes at least, the overall effect is more important.

• You don’t have to do everything the way the instructions say. You can change paint colors if you want. You can omit part of a design if it doesn’t suit you. You can ignore writing rules as long as you understand them and know why you’re ignoring them.

• Don’t give up. You never know what’s going to happen or how something is going to turn out until the end. A painting project looks better after it’s varnished. A writing project looks better after it’s polished.

And most important of all

• Be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Take a moment to celebrate your achievement. You finished a painting project! You finished a book or short story! If you’ve never painted or written a book or short story before, wow! you did it! If this is your second, third or nth short story/painting project/book, wow! you did it again! Remember to take time to celebrate your accomplishments. Lots of people say they want to write or paint. How many actually sit down and do it?

Vampires

by Rick Blechta

No, I’m not thinking of switching to the horror genre, nor trying my hand at penning a YA novel (although I have always been a fan of Bram Stoker’s Dracula). I am also not talking about those LED thingies on all our appliances and electronic devices that you just can’t turn off unless you unplug the whole damn thing, in which case you’d spend half your life bending down to plug/unplug nearly everything you own.

What I am referring to are those people who just tend to suck the life and joy out of everyone surrounding them.

You know the type: high maintenance people with big needs, never very much help with anything and usually with constant complaints about nearly everything.

It’s easy to collect them, especially if you’re any kind of an empathetic person. I am and I do. These sorts of vampires can suck you dry of any energy or enthusiasm in one brief phone call. Maybe the legends of blood-sucking night creatures actually revolve around the sort of person who seems to have perfected self-misery and shooting themselves in the foot.

I had an email from someone the other day, and I am well aware that emails from this person are usually very negative. It’s as if they sense where my weaknesses are and the home in on them like a guided missile. I was just about to sit down and work on my very “sluggish” novella project. Now is the time for it to get into hyperdrive and really start humming along. I know what I want to write and it’s dammed up inside my head, threatening to gush out whether I want it to or not.

But I opened the email anyway. I know, I know. It’s like that horror movie where you know something awful is hiding in that closet, but you watch helplessly as the character insists on opening the door.

Instant despair. I just sat there blinking like an idiot when I finished the lengthy missive. If I really was going to be the terrific friend I’d like to think I am, I would have hopped on a plane and gone out to help sort out a life filled with turbulence due to a lot of misery. I can’t help it. I’m an empath and really feel that I could help. It’s a close friend, and well, it’s hard to turn away.

Knowing I couldn’t do that, I picked up the phone. By the end of that lengthy conversation, I was completely depressed and stared at my computer screen for a good five minutes, mind completely blank and feeling like I just wanted to go back to bed. Perhaps that would have been a good idea: start my day over.

Yeah, you’re probably thinking that I should just not turn on my computer’s mail program when I sit down to write. Problem is, I have to know what my design clients are up to. A new job may be in the offing, or there might be a problem with something I’d sent off to the printer the day before. I have good reasons to watch my incoming mail.

In thinking about it since, I realized that I have to steel myself against taking ownership of other people’s problems. If this means losing friendships, so be it. This empathy thing can easily become a very full-time job.

Its side effect of sapping one’s creative energy, however, has gotten me thinking.

Why is creative energy so much more fragile than physical or lower-level mental energy? On the day in question, I went on to be very productive doing the (admittedly rote) assembly of a large graphic design job I was working on (adding images to an already conceived layout). And I did a large amount of work out in the kitchen on some meat-curing I’m involved in. I shoveled snow. I vacuumed the upstairs.

But as for my grand writing plans? Zilch. Nada. The circus had left town — at least for that day. I tried again later in the evening with nothing useful happening. It was as if my writing idea vault suddenly had a big fat lock on it. Even though I knew what I wanted to say, it just wouldn’t come out.

Next morning, I stayed away from the computer for a couple of hours and had a very profitable time writing. It meant, though, that I had to get up at 6:00 when clients are never in their offices. The house was quiet, and the phone wouldn’t ring unless it really was an emergency.

It was lovely.

So here’s my question folks: why is creative energy such a fragile and whimsical thing? Any ideas? Please share them! I, for one, will thank you.

An Eating Tour

By Vicki Delany

Last week I went to Raleigh, North Carolina on an extensive book tour. I travelled with my friend Linda Wiken (aka Erika Chase) and Type M’s own Donis Casey. Our escort and superb organizer was the indomitable Molly Weston.

Did I say, book tour? I fear it turned into more of an eating tour with a few book signings thrown in. North Carolina cooking, I have discovered, is FABULOUS!

And that's just great for me (if not for the waistline) because my new cozy series, the Lighthouse Library Series, is set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. So all this eating was, of course, necessary research if I'm going to have veracity in the series.

I think I like hush puppies the best, followed closely by fried green tomatoes. I am not terribly fond of collards nor of okra (in the pic above to the left cooked with tomatoes).

 

But nothing, but nothing, beats shrimp and grits done well, as they were in the dish below. The cabbage was kinda an odd side though.

 

Oh, right, book tour...

Here are some pics of that:

On Not Plunging In

Generally, when we write about attending mystery conferences, we mention opportunities to catch up with writer friends, meet and mingle with readers, see editors and agents, and appear on panels. We write about what we learn by attending workshops and interviews with bestselling authors. We write about how we soak up all that energy, and come home ready to sit down and write.

These are all excellent reasons for attending conferences. In fact, when I signed up for Sleuthfest this year, I thought of what fun it would be to hang out with friends, be on a panel, and do a pre-publication debut of my new book, What the Fly Saw. I have to admit – no offense to Floridians – that the chance to get out of snowbound, frigid Albany, New York and spend a few days in a balmy clime was not one of the reasons I wanted to attend. I'm not a warm weather person. But, I arrived this afternoon, and so far it hasn't been bad. I've gone from air-conditioned airport to shuttle to hotel room. There is no humidity. Much better than my last visit to Florida.

But I haven't gone to the conference yet. I'm in an overflow hotel across the street (busy boulevard) and – more important – I got up at five a.m. to make my 8:15 a.m flight. That wouldn't have been bad, but I got to bed at around 2 and had about three hours sleep. So I decided to pass on the last of the afternoon workshops and the Thursday evening kickoff events. Tomorrow, I'll go over fresh and wide awake.

Being in an overflow hotel does offer one advantage – the opportunity to hide out. This is also possible in the conference hotel if you dodge people you know and/or are willing to nod briskly and keep moving when you do encounter friends. It is much easier to hide out when you are in the overflow hotel because most people in your hotel will be heading to the conference hotel. In the overflow hotel, you have an excuse for not attending an evening event – you don't want to walk back to your hotel alone in the dark. This excuse only works if you purposely don't look for people you know who might be in your hotel and with whom you could walk. Of course, you also don't bother to consider the possibility that you would be safe walking across the street from one hotel to the other.

Obviously when you have gone to the effort and expense of attending the conference, hiding out in your room should not be something you do every night. Especially when you are attending a great conference like Sleuthfest. But I would argue that taking one evening for decompression before plunging in is acceptable.

The other opportunity that should not be missed when attending a conference is the chance to take an airport shuttle to your hotel. I say this without sarcasm. Yes, if you are rushing to plunge into conference activities, then waiting for your shuttle to leave and then going on a rambling journey while other passengers are delivered to their destinations can be tedious. On the other hand, if you decide to think of the shuttle ride as a tour of the area, it becomes much more interesting. Much can be learned about an area while a passenger on an airport shuttle.

The other first-evening pleasure you should consider – in-room dining. Room service or delivery. Tonight, I ordered a wonderful meal – including coconut flan – that was delivered to my hotel. And I ate it wearing old tee shirt, shorts, and flip flops.

I also got a little work done. Some reading I needed to do. Some notes I needed to make about a project. Bright and early Friday, I will plunge into Sleuthfest, and I'm sure I'll have fun. But Thursday was my transition day…and that is why I have no photos for this post.

The Exciting Climax

I’m in the midst of writing the climax to All Men Fear Me, my latest Alafair Tucker novel. It’s the big reveal, when the reader finds out whodunnit, and more importantly, when Alafair finds out whodunnit. Maybe she confronts the killer. Then what does she do? When I begin writing a new mystery novel, I usually know who the murderer is, and sometimes I know how and why s/he did it. I may also have an idea how the killer went about trying to cover up the crime. I’m pretty good about doling out clues at appropriate intervals throughout the story. But here’s the hard part: Alafair, my protagonist, has to figure out who did the deed.

And that is not easy, my friend, because I have to do it in such a way that is realistic and makes sense.

Alafair is not a law enforcement professional or a private investigator. She doesn’t do this for a living, nor does she have any official authority to compel people to answer her questions. She also lives in an era when people are constrained by fairly rigid gender roles. In fact, question number one is: what is she doing trying to solve a murder, anyway? The first thing I have to do is give her a really compelling reason to get involved at all.

Then I have to give her the means and the opportunities to uncover information and make connections, and I can’t force the action to fit the outcome I want. In other words, I can’t have Alafair doing things that a woman with the resources she has couldn’t do. I can’t have her act against her own nature, either, just to advance the plot or create tension in an artificial way.
This is the reason I’ve been known to stare at the screen for an hour when I’m at a critical juncture, thinking “how can I get Alafair off the farm and into that office in town to search for the gun, before sundown, when she has a bunch of kids and a husband, all of whom want dinner?”

I could just have her up and leave and let everyone fend for himself, or I could contrive to have all the children and the husband go out to eat at whatever the 1917 equivalent of McDonald’s was. But if I did that, I have a feeling I’d hear about it from disgruntled readers. Not to mention a horrified editor. Sometimes I just can’t come up with a plausible way to do it, and I have to go at it from a totally different angle or rework the scene altogether.

This is one of the things I like about writing an amateur sleuth. She has to be sneaky, persistent, smart, and clever in order to find her answers. And sometimes, she’s smarter than I am. In fact, there have been occasions where Alafair came upon a clue that I was not aware of myself until it appeared on the page. Toward the end of my fourth book in the series, The Sky Took Him, Alafair was sitting in a hospital corridor, having a nice, normal, conversation with the family, when she noticed something at exactly the same time I did, an observation which provided both of us with a vital piece of information. It surprised the heck out of me, but it was plausible, very much in character for Alafair, and worked like a charm. Moments like this are why writing a mystery can be such fun.

The invisible foe

Barbara here. What do the West Edmonton Mall, feminist writers, and Justine Sacco have in common? They have all been in the news recently as targets of internet threats. The internet is surely the great invention of our era, connecting us across the world and providing access to knowledge, entertainment, and services at the click of a mouse. It is such an integral part of most of our lives that it's difficult to remember how we did things before. Book a flight, find a B&B, find the best Italian restaurant in town, bake oatmeal scones, compare features of lawnmowers... It's all there. And email and social media have made it possible to stay connected (and indeed to reconnect) with friends and family around the world. To share photos and anecdotes and birthdays.

But with this vast, unfettered playground have come the playground bullies, who have their own dark desires to fulfill  and who revel in the chance to unleash their cruel side without ever having to reveal their identity or look their victim in the eye. We've all encountered them. At their most harmless, they are the trolls who hijack the 'comments' sections of newspaper articles with absurd rants or who make crude personal attacks in place of reasoned argument. Most of us have learned to ignore them rather than respond and thus give them the forum they crave.

As writers, whose work is out in the public sphere, we have to learn to ignore a special kind of troll– the negative reviewer. By this I don't mean the carefully considered critique that finds our work lacking. As painful as these are for us to read, we generally recognize they are written in the spirit of appraisal rather than attack. But there are reviewers out there whose goal is not to appraise or critique but rather to trash. Because they can. Because they enjoy it. Although these are more difficult to ignore, because their negative reviews can affect the ratings of our books, we generally grit our teeth and try to ignore them too.

But many forms of internet abuse are far more destructive, because of formless and unknowable nature of the threat. Sometimes it becomes a multi-headed monster, as when a single, ill-advised tweet gets retweeted and retweeted until perfect strangers all around the world are savaging you (as happened to Justine Sacco), causing you to lose privacy, friends, and sometimes even your job. How to contain it, how to grapple with it and try to reverse it?

Sometimes the threats are graphic and criminal in nature, as in the case of the feminist writers who were threatened with rape and other violent retribution, but the persons responsible, being anonymous, cannot be called to account and dealt with. Not knowing where the danger lies, or how serious it is, can lead to serious anxiety, which is of course one of the abusers' goals. Such is also the tactic of terrorists making videos containing vague threats of destruction, the exact time and place unknown but specific enough (like the West Edmonton mall mention) to sow fear and get the reaction they want– a world held hostage to nameless and faceless bandits.

But to bring this back to writers, on a much smaller scale, I have begun to notice a small but increasing number of nasty personal attacks, some of which have made me feel vaguely unsafe. Writers are vulnerable because our work– and our soul– is out there for all to see, and we encourage interaction with the public. I have a Facebook page which anyone can view, and a website with contact information. Generally I love the messages and emails I receive, the vast majority from readers who have enjoyed my books or want to know when the next is due out, etc. Sometimes I receive pleasant, mildly chiding messages correcting a fact or a typo in one of my books, and these too I appreciate.

But I have received a few notes which seem just plain nasty, which attack the book or myself in a way that feels vindictive. As a crime writer I tackle social and moral issues, and I understand the messages in my books are not going to appeal to everyone. Sometimes I choose to respond, and the exchange of emails opens up a dialogue that ultimately enriches both of us. But in most instances I sense there is no basis for reasonable dialogue; that as with 'comment' trolls, the vitriol is the thing, not the message itself.

But it does leave me feeling vaguely unsettled. Vaguely threatened. I would be easy to find, if someone chose to go beyond the emailing of nasty notes. And as I embark on my new series, which will tackle even more global moral and human rights issues than I did previously– issues such as human trafficking, self-radicalization, and human rights– I suspect the subtle threats may increase. It gives a writer pause, not just about what they might choose to write about, but also about how publicly available they want to be. Which would be too bad.

I'd be interested in hearing people's experiences with this, both as readers and writers. Is the phenomenon growing, and if so, how do we respond?

What's It Worth?

After my pitiful moan in my last post about having to get a new PC, I felt I must give you an update.  After a few fraught days when we gazed at each other in mutual horror ('Who is this idiot, mucking bout with my inner workings?') we have settled down to a remarkably harmonious relationship.

There are different ways of doing things, certainly, but on the whole they haven't been too hard to figure out and some of the differences are definite improvements.  And I have to say it is very refreshing not to have a sulky 'Not responding' popping up every ten minutes.

The corner was turned once wonderful Brian came round and installed Solitaire and Free Cell - so essential for bad days at the office as the civilised alternative to banging one's head against the keyboard and screaming.  So I'm well set up now (even without switching to a Mac, Rick!) with hopefully a few years ahead before I descend again into depression about having to buy a new one.

That's not really what I wanted to write about today, in fact.   I've blogged before, as have others, more than once about book prices being cut to the bone.  I remember the point being made that if you spilled your coffee over the book you were reading, it would be cheaper to replace the book than the coffee.

I've also read a good number of blogs by readers saying they should be cheaper still, indeed free, even one defending using a pirate site on the grounds that he wanted to read the book and couldn't afford it, ' so I had to.' No one would be sympathetic to me if I stole a Rolls Royce for similar reasons.

But actually, this isn't a moan about our work not being properly paid for.  I read an article recently that pointed out, in very reasonable tones, that we're not exactly in a seller's market.  There were 140,000 books published in Britain last year, and that's without counting the self-published ones that no one's counted.

The recent glut of oil worldwide has meant that the gas prices have come down.  Bad weather in the significant regions has meant that the price of chocolate has risen.  Of course books aren't cans of baked beans but we're still engaged in a commercial transaction.

We can all talk about the concept of 'worth' when it comes to books, but I suppose an article is only 'worth' what anyone else will pay for it. Even if I don't like it, I accept that it's a rational argument.

On the other hand, the French have been totally adamant about the fixed book price.  Yet go into any large French supermarket and you will find a book section easily comparable in size and range to a good bookshop.  You can pop in for a trolley of groceries and chuck in a copy of  Sartre's L'Etranger at the same time - and they do.

Recently Tom Stoppard was complaining that he can't rely on a hinterland of literary knowledge in the audiences for his plays the way he could twenty years ago.  I would doubt if the same would be true in France.

You get what you pay for - which I suppose is where I came in.

Guest Post: Diane Vallere

I'm delighted to welcome Diane Vallere as this weekend's guest. Diane is the current President of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime and my partner-in-crime for our recent "Paint and Polyester" bookstore tour.

After two decades working for a top luxury retailer, Diane Vallere traded fashion accessories for accessories to murder. SUEDE TO REST, the first book in the Material Witness Cozy Mystery Series, has been nominated for the 2015 Lefty Best Humorous Mystery Award. Diane also writes the Mad for Mod Mystery Series, featuring a midcentury modern interior decorator who has modeled her life after Doris Day movies, and the Style & Error Mystery Series, featuring a former fashion buyer. Diane started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since.

Jury Duty

by Diane Vallere

Last week I asked my Facebook friends if I was the only person who got excited about Jury Duty. The replies came fast and furious. Turns out there are two kinds of people in the world: those who dislike Jury Duty, and mystery writers.

Admittedly, I have two reasons for liking Jury Duty:

1) it feels like research, and
2) it gets me out of the house.

Much research can be done on the internet, but I think there’s something to be said for research that is done in person. You can read about what happens in the jury selection process from start to finish, but you won’t fully appreciate the experience unless you catch a subway at 6:30 in the morning, stand in line for half an hour before they scan your belongings, sit in an uncomfortable chair staring at a photograph of a flamingo (occasionally wondering about the significance of said flamingo photo in a Los Angeles courthouse), watch the people who ignore the sign that says “take a packet and sit down” and form an unnecessary line at the front window.

Plus, you’ll miss the blue carpeting that is stained with a previously-spilled cup of coffee and the scent of the popcorn being sold at the concession stand outside of the Juror Room. You will rarely get this kind of chance to see a snapshot of the people who are a cross-section of the town where you live, pretty much a crash course in human nature.

The thing about research is that it fuels two parts of our manuscripts: the facts and the world-building. Facts can be looked up. World building can be made up. But for both facts and world-building to come alive, you need to deliver the complete experience to your reader. It’s not just the words of dialogue that matter. Creating the setting where a dialogue takes place is important. Whether it’s a historic courthouse for a civil trial or a dingy community center for a town hall meeting or a fancy restaurant that has altered their hours to accommodate a club meeting, when a writer pays attention to what it feels like, smells like, and sounds like—in addition to what it looks like—the reader falls that much farther down the rabbit hole. Their surroundings fade away because we gave them a new place to hang. Even if it isn’t paradise, it’s sometimes the place where our characters hang, too.

And don’t underestimate that getting-out-of-the-house thing, either. Works wonders for a stuck manuscript!

Let Me Go

Let me go ye gods of manuscripts. Take this book off my mind. Shoo! Get out of my writing room.

I sent off my non-fiction book this week. It's for University of Oklahoma Press. Right now the working title is Nicodemus: Race and Culture on the Kansas Frontier. The moment I put it in the mail I wanted it back. I instantly thought of things I wish I had said, or shouldn't have said. When I worried that the paper was too cheap or not the right weight or the right degree of brightness, I knew I had passed over the line into a new kind of craziness.

Did I remember everyone I wanted to thank in the acknowledgements? Were all the names spelled correctly. Was I wrong on just about everything? Was there some crucial resource that I left out? Was the epilogue too short? It took a long time to finish this project. Academic books require extensive documentation. I've read so many microfilmed newspaper that I'm lucky I still can see.

Non-fiction books have their own protocol. For one thing, I had so send this manuscript in both print and digital formats, with each chapter in a separate digital file. Poisoned Pen Press wants everything in a single digital file. In fact that's true of most fiction publishers nowadays. Each method has it's own merits.

Single large files are a dream to edit. For that matter I can change a name instantly throughout the whole book. We had to do that in Hidden Heritage when I read two days before I sent in the final manuscript that a family in New Mexico was suing the government over the same issue that was the linchpin of my mystery.

When I got home from FedEx, I realized I had left out the checklist. See? I told myself I would leave out something that was critical. I'll scan it and email it to my editor.

I have a couple of things left to do. This kind of book has a lot of pictures and acquiring permission to print them is quite tedious. The first step is to determine who owns the copyright. The next step is  writing to the owner and getting signed permission to publish. The stipulations are very restrictive. I only have one more picture to collect. I don't want to take a chance on it getting lost in the mail and will go to LaJunta, CO to scan it. It's a priceless picture of Lulu Craig, whom I quote throughout the book.

I have to do my own indexing. The process is quite precise. However, one of the things I appreciate about OU Press is detailed instructions. There are professional indexers, but the price would come out of my own pocket and it would be really hard for someone else to pick out the sub-headings I have in mind.

This is a learning process. Right now, I'm maxed out on integrating new information. And I want the book off my mind while I finish my fourth mystery.

You can bet I'll let everyone know when the academic book is published.

Philip Levine: A (Second) Tribute

Philip Levine died this week. He was my favorite poet, a man whose work not only inspired my novels, but a man who helped me out when the mechanism of the publishing industry got in the way.

I wrote Snap Hook, a novel featuring a dyslexic protagonist, in 2001 just after discovering Mr. Levine's work. When the copy of The Simple Truth arrived, I flipped to the first page, began reading, and did something I had never done before (or since) with a collection of poetry: I read the entire book through, cover to cover.

My father owned a garage, and I had spent time working in it. Levine was writing about people I knew and had known. Of course, he was writing about the men and women "of Flint...the majors of a minor town," as he eloquently describes in "Among Children." But I fell in love with those poems and his work.

This came at a time when I was directing a visiting writer series in northern Maine. (Stephen King had donated funds to launch it.) So I invited Mr. Levine to visit. He lived in Fresno, Calif., a place where he long resided, and said he was too old to travel. But we spent a half-hour on the phone one afternoon -- me trying to convince him to come, he suggesting other feisty poets. I had just had my second daughter, and we talked about fatherhood and children, he told me stories about his grandchildren. And while we were on the phone, I told him of an idea I had, which he was very much in support of.

Not long after that conversation, I was finishing Snap Hook. And I had added a character trait to Jack Austin, my protagonist: He would read a Philip Levine collection in each book. In Snap Hook he was reading The Simple Truth, the title poem to which offers the lines:
          Some things
          you know all your life...
          it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
          you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
          it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
          made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
          in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

These lines appear on the final page of my novel. What better denouement? (Perhaps, now, what better epilogue?) My editor liked the final page and called after reading the manuscript (I had already signed a two-book contract), and asked where the permission form was for those lines.

"Mr. Levine and I spoke over the phone. He knows I'm using them and likes the idea," I said. (Everyone starts out you, so work with me; I was in my 20s.)

"Random House owns those lines. You need to pay for them."

I was writing for a university press at the time. If you don't already know, university presses don't pay a lot. When I called Random House and got the rights people on the phone and heard their fee, I nearly dropped the phone: They wanted three times my advance for the book.

I did the only thing I could think of. I called Mr. Levine again and told him the situation. He dropped several expletives and said to send him $50 so he could take his wife to lunch. He wanted mystery readers to see his work, saying my books could open up his to a new audience.

A short while later, I got an e-mail from Random House with a contract I could afford. And Jack Austin went on reading Philip Levine poetry.

My books were – I sincerely hope – on some level tributes to Mr. Levine. And I will offer one more here. Take a moment today to read "Among Children" in which he concludes with:
          I will be gone into smoke or memory,
          so I bow to them here and whisper
          all I know, all I will never know.

Getting Out in the World

This is a really short post since I’m preparing to go out of town. Next week I’ll be attending the Creative Painting convention in Las Vegas. Every year around this time my sister and I meet up in Vegas for this tole/decorative painting convention. (She lives in Seattle, I live in Los Angeles.) We enjoy painting, seeing the Vegas sights, and doing a little sister bonding. It’s great fun.

It’s also a semi-working vacation for me since the protagonist in my book, Fatal Brushstroke, is a tole/decorative painter. Being around so many people who enjoy the craft always sparks ideas for scenes and stories.

It’ll also be a welcome change of scenery since I’ve been hunkered down over my computer these days, madly writing, rarely even going outside. It’s time for me to re-engage with the world. That’s something that’s important for every writer to do—leave their keyboard behind and go somewhere, do something that sparks your interest and creativity.

Writers who have day jobs and work outside the home do that all the time. But, for those of us who work at home or write full-time, it’s more of a challenge. One day you’re writing, a few days later you look up and realize you’ve not stepped out of the house in a week. (Particularly true near deadlines.) I suspect most writers have experienced that at one time or another.

So, on Saturday, I will put down my keyboard, leave my computer behind and get out there. I’m looking forward to coming back with oodles of new ideas.

Vegas here I come!

More thoughts on “backstory”

If you haven’t read Frankie’s post from this past Friday (Finding the Backstory), I suggest you do so now. It very clearly lays out why this is important when you’re writing any sort of fiction.

I have to admit that I am almost obsessed with who my characters are. To my mind, the greatest compliment I can receive from someone who has read my scribblings is “the characters seem so real”. Readers may not always like all my characters (and I’m not referring only to the bad guys), but often my characters have “bad attributes” because, well, everybody has some of those, don’t they? Bad attributes and weaknesses can also inform readers much more and make characters all the more richer and “true”.

It’s my feeling that in order to really understand a character’s responses to stress and what their motivations for doing things are, you must know where they came from. These details are often not meant to be in the book. The backstory about a character might warrant merely a passing mention, or maybe no mention at all, but knowing the backstory can be of the utmost importance to the storyteller. These details are the building blocks of creating real and believable characters.

Whenever I get stalled in a book and quite often before even beginning it, I think about my main characters and often write out little scenes from their lives outside the parameters of my plot requirement. In some cases this has proven to be the salvation of a novel that’s going south on me.

This was especially true with the character of Victoria Morgan in both the novels I wrote about her, oddly more in the second one than the first. For whatever reason (probably because she’s a redhead), I couldn’t get a handle on why she would do certain things and not others. I was stalled for nearly three weeks in the writing of Cemetery of the Nameless for just this reason. I needed Tory to do something for plot reasons, and no matter how I wrote this critical scene, the results felt uncomfortable, unbelievable and awkward. The problem was, I really needed her to do what I was asking. It was as if she was refusing my requests. (Redheads do tend to have very strong opinions and vast amounts of stubbornness.)

Not being able to write is an uncomfortable feeling for an ink-stained wretch like me. So, approaching the end of the third week of writing stasis, I began working on a story of her at the age of eight, having one of her weekly violin lessons. To this day, I can’t tell you why I did that, but as this little vignette took shape, I suddenly realized something about Tory’s make-up as an adult, and that had its genesis in this rather turbulent lesson. Because of what transpired between her and her teacher, the first seeds of doubt about her ability on violin were sown and wormed their way down into Tory’s psyche. It forced her to respond certain ways even though I doubted if she would barely remember what had happened so many years earlier.

All I had to do was tap into that doubt some two decades on in her life and Tory (reluctantly) would do what my story needed her to do. It was suddenly right and believable that she would do something like this. The logjam was broken and the words flowed out.

I now go through this process quite regularly, usually with my protagonists and often my antagonists, but sometimes with minor characters. I may or may not write it down, but I at least think it through. The series I am currently (and sporadically) working on has gone through this process quite extensively. If I’m going to turn out a series of novels about these people, I have to understand them as completely as I can.

It also opens up a a huge source of possibilities for further novels. What happened between this character and his wife to cause their separation and eventual divorce? And more importantly, how does my protagonist feel about this now? It will have nothing to do with the first novel, and probably won’t even be mentioned, but I’m sure it will come up eventually and may even form the basis of a story further down the line. Who knows?

And that’s one of the wonderful things about writing fiction. The act of creation is so much more intense than any other kind of writing. We get to play god as it were. But with awesome power comes awesome responsibility, and the fact that our characters are merely figments of our imaginations doesn’t absolve us from the fact that we must nurture and take care of them, look out for their interests. Backstory is one of the best ways to help us in our quest to write natural and believable characters, and to my mind, that’s the most important thing in what we do in our writing.

There’s too much cardboard in this world as it is. We don’t need to add to it!