Creating Interesting Characters

I’m in the beginning stages of the next book in the Aurora Anderson mystery series so I’ve been thinking a lot lately about creating characters. As a writer, I want to create characters that are memorable enough that readers will keep coming back to my books. But what makes a character interesting or memorable?

I’ve read a lot of writing books that talk about creating well-rounded and interesting characters. In one of them (don’t ask me which one, I’ve read a bazillion of them), the author talked about giving a character an “obsession” like loving chocolate ice cream. They also noted that whatever interest you give them, it should be there for some reason. e.g. she loves ice cream because she has fond memories of eating it with her mother when she was growing up.

The shredder

Most people have some sort of obsession. It might be as small as loving ice cream or it might creep into the realm of stalkerville. I’ve talked before on Type M about my love for the Great British Bake Off and may also have alluded to a slight obsession with Celtic Thunder. Even our cats had their own little quirks. The oldest loved shredding paper with her claws. Any piece of paper that landed on the floor was fair game. Leave paper too long and she’d methodically rip it to shreds. The other cat loved tearing down towels from the bathroom towel racks. He would systematically move around the house, from bathroom to bathroom, reach up and bring down every single towel with his claws. He wasn’t satisfied until they were all on the floor. Then he’d just walk away. He didn’t do anything with them. For some reason, he wanted them all on the floor. After awhile, I just left them there and he eventually grew out of that obsession. I adored my cats. Their quirks made them more interesting to me.

The towel puller

The same goes with characters in stories, I think. As an added bonus, you can use those obsessions for and against them. In an episode of the TV show “Rosewood”, the detective knew someone was lying because of her love of a particular brand of pretzel. Because of it, she knew exactly where in the local mall the store was located, which told her the person she was talking to was lying. On the “Big Bang Theory”, Sheldon loves trains. Besides showing a different side of him, it’s also been fun for the writers to work with. I can also see a character using another character’s obsession against them, perhaps to lure them into a trap.

So, Type M readers, what makes a character stand out to you? Do you find it interesting when a writer gives them an obsession?

Considering the aftermath of murder

by Rick Blechta

My post this week sort of riffs off Vicki’s post from yesterday.

Every crime writing author has to face how they deal with violence and death, because let’s face it, that’s what our books are about at their roots. I won’t go over the same ground that Vicki has already covered so ably about her personal choices as a writer when her stories face and describe violent death.

I want to cover how we writers deal with something further down the line: the effects of violence and death on those unfortunate souls who are the “collateral damage” when someone’s life is taken: the families, the loved ones, friends, colleagues. Those effects can be horrible and long-lasting as well as wide-ranging. They can completely ruin lives. It takes a very strong person to put it all behind them and carry on.

In a previous post here on Type M, I touched on this. It must be pretty far back because I can’t find it in the past 4 years of our little blog. (Sorry!)

I have some personal experience with this. A high school friend had to face something beyond comprehension when his son was tried and convicted because of his involvement in the brutal death of a woman in her home. I’m not going to go into any detail about the actual crime, but instead how the son’s actions affected his parents.

Their support for him was unwavering, and since this was a crime that garnered national attention, the media presence was intense. All they said (stripped down) was that they loved their son and felt horrible about the death of the woman. I cannot imagine having to run the gauntlet of reporters shouting questions at them as they arrived at and left the courthouse every day of the trial. Knowing my friend (a kind and gentle person), it must have been unbearable. (I’m sure equally so for his wife.) I was so heartbroken for them. They didn’t deserve any of this.

A lot of crime novels can get pretty violent descriptively. These are ones I usually put down. I’m not squeamish, but I just feel that violence can be done in the setting of a novel without choreographing it exhaustively. It’s the difference between seeing the “results” of an attack as Hitchcock did in Psycho or actually watching each knife stroke in full gory detail — as it most likely would be shot in today’s world. Which is better? Which is stronger? I think you know where my choice lies. Knowing about murder is bad enough. My imagination is very good and I don’t appreciate having my face rubbed in it.

But we writers don’t often delve into the aftermath of violence such as I described in my personal example above, primarily because our plots are focused on the catching of the criminal(s) responsible, but we should at least think about the personal aftermath as we work through our plots, even if we don’t describe it. It can only make our other writing stronger.

Deliberate murder is an ultra-violent act, and we should be very respectful in our treatment of it. It’s not a plaything for us to use in a careless or frivolous manner. It is a tool, certainly, that must be used for us to tell our story, but we need to be mindful of its potency as a depraved human act.

We owe that to the dead — but also to those unfortunate souls left behind, sucked into a vortex not of their own making.

Light vs Dark: Writing in different sub-genres

By Vicki Delany

Crime novels fill the entire spectrum. Everything from the lightest of cozies to the darkest of noir.

Most writers stick to the style that they like, and that they know they are good in. Some readers do also but many like to try new things.

I like to mix up the moods and styles I write in. I’ve written psychological suspense (Scare the Light Away), modern Gothic thrillers (More than Sorrow) historical fiction (the Klondike Gold Rush series), gritty police procedurals (The Constable Molly Smith series) and cozies (The Lighthouse Library series by Eva Gates and the Year Round Christmas mysteries).

I’m now pretty much established writing cozies, and will continue to do so mainly because I enjoy writing them. They’re light and funny, and they take me into a good place, rather than spending a lot of time in a dark and frightening world.

I’m glad I’ve written about dark things though: it’s important that we all (readers as well as writers) get out of our comfort zones.

When I say dark and frightening, I am not talking about graphic violence. If anything, I believe that in the world today we are in danger of becoming immune to the effect of violence by the plethora of it, in books and certainly in movies and TV. It’s the aftermath of the crime or the situation that can be the deepest and the darkest. How people, – victim, family and relatives, police, even the perpetrator – react is what interests me.

I’m not interested in writing or in reading or in watching torture porn, thank you very much.

I’m very lucky to be able to continue mixing up styles and sub-genres.  Case in point: I have two new books coming out soon. Elementary, She Read is a light, funny (I hope) cozy set in a Sherlock Holmes bookshop and it’s been enormous fun trying to write a Sherlock-ish character. It will be out on March 14. Then in April, the Rapid Reads imprint of Orca Books is publishing Blood and Belonging, the third Sgt Ray Robertson novella. These books are most certainly not light. They’ve dealt with some dark topics (again, nothing graphic on the page. It’s not needed and can be counter-productive). In Blood and Belonging, Ray, an RCMP officer working for the United Nations in developing and dangerous countries, is on vacation in Turks and Caicos. Needless to say, his peace and tranquility is interrupted.

I’d be interested to know what sub-genre our Type M readers like. Do you have a preference or do you love them all?

This weekend's guest blogger: Lisa Black

Type M would like to welcome back novelist Lisa Black for a second visit!

Lisa Black has spent over 20 years in forensic science, first at the coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and now as a certified latent print examiner and CSI at a Florida police dept. Her books have been translated into 6 languages, one reached the NYT Bestseller’s List and one has been optioned for film and a possible TV series. Visit her website: www.lisa-black.com and follow her on Twitter: @LisaBlackAuthor

OOPS!

by Lisa Black

Research is a wonderful thing, except when a pesky fact gets in the way of something you’ve already written. Ever set a heartbreaking scene among the weeping willows at the city park and then, just to gather added atmosphere for some last finishing touches you decide to actually visit the park only to find that the trees have been cleared out for a children’s wading pool? And they had been birch trees anyway? And the park is right next to an off-ramp so the hero’s fervent proposal would have been drowned out by engine noises?

Sometimes reality sucks.

Yes, you’re writing fiction, so you could erase this picture of the real park and recolor it in your preferred images. But we write mysteries, hard gritty things in which gunshots don’t smell like cordite and heroines aren’t stupid enough to wander around dark basements unarmed and DNA results aren’t back in an hour. We want the details to be right.

I’ve run into this more than once.

In Takeover I had planned a bank robbery to set up the rest of the plot, then on a whim decided to set it at the gorgeous Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Cleveland. However, Federal Reserves don’t function like your corner S&L and besides, the ground floor of the Fed had been turned into a tourist attraction. I kept it at the Federal Reserve and used all my erroneous preconceptions in the story.

I had planned to end Takeover with the criminals faking their own death by driving a car off the end of East 9th street into the cold waters of Lake Erie. I lived there, right? I knew the street came to an end at the pier that used to have the fabulous seafood restaurant at the end of it. I dragged my always-supportive mother along and we did a little photo shoot at the Cleveland Public Library and the Fed, checked out their lobby displays, and as an afterthought drove to the end of East 9th. Which now terminates in a pretty park area rimmed with large, concrete—you couldn’t even call them posts. More like rotund bollards. Any car trying to reach the water would end up with a badly crumpled front end and quite dry.

In Unpunished, my last murder would have been dramatic and quite bloody, a body hacked to pieces in the printing press of the Cleveland daily paper. I envisioned huge blades clamping down to cut through several reams of paper, and what that would do to a body—eek. But when kindly staff members gave me a tour of the Fort Myers News-Press building, I discovered that newspaper are cut, a sheet at a time, by a round blade smaller than what Domino’s uses to slice its pies. A person tossed into that machinery would get no more than a boo-boo. Oh, if the rollers caught an arm he might have a few crushed bones, but still nothing that would kill him. I stood among the clacking mechanisms and stared in horror and the completely unhorrible tableau.

But, the printing supervisor comforted me, there’s this method…different means, but able to produce an equally grisly corpse. I looked. I listened. And I rewrote the end of the book.

Things usually work out.

A Visual Aid

Yesterday was a snow day here in Albany. My driveway was covered and the streets (according to local news) were treacherous. I slept in and then spent the rest of the day working. Around mid-afternoon, I was deep into what I was reading, completely focused, when I heard a bump in the kitchen. I got up to see what had happened. Harry, my 16 pound cat, had managed to leap from the counter top to the top of the refrigerator. Forty-six perpendicular inches according to my tape measure -- twice his 21 inch length. I was dismayed because (a) he has taken in the past couple of months to prowling across and perching on my kitchen counters. I've been wiping them down with disinfectant cloths before preparing every meal, and (b) the jump he had made was the equivalent of a roof-top leap by a movie action hero. It scared me to think of what would have happened if he hadn't nailed his landing (hampered by an ornamental mug, a bunch of bananas, and the container of oat grass that had motivated his leap). But I sure wished I had seen him do that because when I adopted him two years ago, he was chubby even for a Maine Coon and preferred to stay close to the ground. His diet is working. I would also like to have seen that leap so that I could describe it in a book or short story one day.

I am a visual writer. I need to see the scenes play out in my head like a movie. I also write best when I have seen what it is that I'm describing. Last week I discovered a wonderful new visual aid --
Pinterest.

Last week was not the first time that I'd used Pinterest. I opened an account three years ago when I wanted to do a photo essay of Albany, New York  locations (the setting for my Hannah McCabe police procedurals). Since posting the photographs, I haven't used my account. Until last week.

Last week, a speaker visiting UAlbany mentioned how powerful the use of a vision board had been in staying focused on his goals. I've flirted with vision boards before, but never really completed one. This time, I decided to make it easier by giving myself access on all my devices. Didn't work. Fortunately, the website I had signed up for offered a 60-day-money-back guarantee.

That was when I thought of Pinterest -- except I didn't want to have my vision board on display. It turns out -- I must have skipped the tutorial when I set up my account -- it's possible to make a Pinterest page "secret" and designate people who are allowed access. That solved my problem. But when I was about to start selecting images for my vision board about life and career goals, it occurred to me that Pinterest would be perfect for visualizing my books.

I'm now using it for both the nonfiction book about dress, appearance and criminal justice. It's really helpful to be able to "pin" both images of the clothing (colonial era to present) and the memory joggers about the cultural themes that I want to include. I'm doing it chapter by chapter.

I've also set up a page for my 1939 historical thriller. The images that I'm pinning (searching by keywords) come with page links. I now have 240 items related to that year, people, settings, and events. Some of the pins that I've pulled are linked to YouTube music or videos. I'm really excited about the music because I'd thought of using a song for each chapter and now I can incorporate that into my research and plotting.

I'm sure some of you are already using Pinterest for marketing. You may be way ahead of me when it comes to using Pinterest for your writing. But it you haven't tried this other use, I recommend it.

And Harry just leaped from counter top to refrigerator again, and I missed it. Maybe I need to set up a camera to catch him in motion. Or, move that oat grass in case his feline agility is rusty.

Whither Is Fled...

…the visionary dream?
William Wordsworth asked that question. Nowadays he’d say “Where has the imaginative idea gone?”

William Wordsworth

Donis here today. I love my blogmates’ previous observations on the way the English language is changing, and how we are losing or changing the meaning of so many many perfectly good words. I’m sorry about the loss of “whither” and “whence”, at least in American English. So much more concise than “where are you coming from” or “where are you going”? I once read an essay by Mark Twain in which he complained that no one seemed to know how to use “whither” or “whence” correctly, so I suppose those words have been on life support for a hundred years, anyway.

Anyone who is enamored of words, which most writers are, knows what it’s like to try and find that perfect word to convey the subtle shade of meaning you want.  My first drafts are filled with blank spaces, which I leave because even though I can think of one hundred nouns/verbs/descriptors that would be perfectly adequate in that place, I know the Absolutely Perfect Word exists, and I can’t quite come up with it.  However, I can’t afford to spend fifteen minutes wracking my brain for it, so I leave a blank and torture myself with it on the rewrites.Sometimes I do end up having to use one of those one hundred almost-right words, but when I do, I feel a sense of failure for not having adequately communicated with the reader.

Subtle meaning is only part of what a writer strives for with the perfect word.  Sometimes the poetry of the sentence, the way it sounds, can only be served by a particular word.  In my current manuscript, I originally wrote a narrative from the POV of one character, but decided later that it would be better to have a different character experience this event and tell us about it.  Changing the point of view necessitated a major change in language, even though the gist of the scene was the same.

I read that if you ask an author why he writes, the better and probably more successful writers will answer that it’s because they love language.  I think that learning how to manipulate language is like* learning to manipulate the keys of a piano.  Language is our instrument, and if we don’t practice, study, experiment, and play with it, as I’ve said many a time, we might end up writing Chopsticks instead of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

Confronting that vast empty space

Hah! It worked. Barbara here, and actually on time for my Wednesday Type M blog post. Two weeks ago I posted that I was always forgetting because I had a very casual relationship with the calendar and the days of the week, so I had vowed to put an alert into my electronic calendar. The result? Here I am.

I might add that I am also looking for any excuse to avoid my current writing project. I have not yet reached the "cleaning the refrigerator" stage, but that might yet come. Writing first drafts is incredibly hard work, especially when you are staring out over that vast expanse of emptiness, knowing you have to fill it with roughly 90,000 words, and knowing a deadline hovers overhead, ready to crow in your ear or peck at your heels.

The first in the Amanda Doucette series

As part of the original contract for this novel, signed over two years ago, I had to dream up a title and "synopsis" for the book, along with those for the two previous books in the contract. At the time, that third book seemed awfully far away, and every writer knows a synopsis for a hypothetical book three years out usually bears little resemblance to the book that eventually gets written. Better ideas come along, or the idea, hastily dashed off, does not stand up under closer scrutiny. Furthermore, I am mostly a fly by the seat of my pants writer who finds outlines tedious and confining and who prefers to leap in and see where things go.

So here I am, with the two previous books in the Amanda Doucette series written – the first released in last September and the second due out this coming September – and running out of excuses to confront the third book. I have a title, PRISONERS OF HOPE, that is not likely to change and I know vaguely what theme I want to explore and probably who will get killed to kick things off, but Ive been keeping my options open in case better ideas come along in the writing.

About a month ago I leaped into the opening scene and wrote forward for about forty pages before hitting a wall. I did not know where this story was going, I didn't know what the characters should do next or why anyone should care. I have three main characters to play with (and a dog, but she doesn't get to tell her own story), which is one reason the pantser approach is such a challenge. One of the tricks I devised for unlocking a stalled story is to check what one of the other characters is up to. So I bravely soldiered on with my second character, until he too hit a wall. I fussed and fretted, took long walks, cleaned the house (well, sort of), and finally realized I had to brainstorm ahead. In other words, sketch out a dreaded outline, at least to get me out of this dead-end into which I had stumbled.

Georgian Bay, the setting of Prisoners of Hope

As soon as I started looking ahead and applied myself to the overall picture, I realized I needed to boot one character out of the story, at least temporarily. Her presence was clogging up the scenes and dialogue between the two more important characters through the first forty pages. Secondly, I changed my mind three times on who needed to die, all in the interests of generating juicy suspense and creating lots of questions. Then I brainstormed the next twenty scenes in rapid succession, ending up with an outline of what will likely happen in the next hundred or so pages. That is all I need for now. By page 150, I should be well into the story and lots of characters and subplots will be milling around, providing fuel for my imagination for the next 100 pages or more.

This morning I printed out my outline and wrote the first two scenes in it. Everything went fairly smoothly and what a relief it was to have something to remind me where I was going and why. I'm not saying I will ever learn to love outlines or even that I will actually follow this one if a better idea flies into view, but at least I am moving forward in the maze with some confidence that I am not in a dead-end.

I will keep you posted on how it all works out for me. How do other pantsers feel when they confront that vast empty space and realize they are lost?

False words/false meanings

by Rick Blechta

Aline’s post from yesterday may have opened a can of worms — at least it has with me.

One of my greatest joys in writing (in English) is the chance to play with language. We ink-stained wretches can easily become obsessed with finding just the correct word to use that will bring a delicious nuance of meaning to our scribblings. In short, English has a tremendously expressive vocabulary, it’s a shame not to make use of it, right?

So I am completely onboard with Aline’s feelings that too often words and phrases are misused — sometimes to the point where those meanings can change due to ill-usage. Aline pointed out some examples. Here’s my favourite bugbear at the moment: fulsome.

Fulsome used to mean (in Middle English) that something was abundant to the point of arousing disgust (to paraphrase). My memory of it has to do with odors, as in something smelling truly disgusting (“a fulsome reek”). So basically, fulsome was not what you would call a “positive” word.

More recently, though, fulsome is being used to mean “copious or abundant” (as in “the press secretary was fulsome in his praise of the president’s political agenda”). Strictly speaking that’s an incorrect usage. To my mind, it somehow diminishes the word to use it in a positive — not to mention incorrect — way. To quote The American Heritage Dictionary, “Thus it may be best to avoid fulsome except where the context unambiguously conveys the idea that the praise in question is excessive or fawning.”

There are any number of other interesting examples of changes in usage of words over time. Indulge yourself and read these articles: “11 Words With Meanings That Have Changed Drastically Over Time” and “25 Words Whose Meanings Have Changed Drastically Over Time” to start with.

To finish off, I made several changes in my word choice to construct the sentences above. In the second paragraph, the second sentence contained right instead of correct. Both words would have worked, but I felt correct was a bit more “graceful” than going with right and is certainly more expressive of the way I feel.

And that is a major reason I enjoy writing and, especially, revising what I write.

Caring About Language

I'm reluctant to admit that I'm a pedant. I'm all in favour of colourful additions to the English language. I'm quite relaxed about casual speech, with a particular fondness for American slang. 'Badmouth' for instance: it's neat, it's economical, it fills a gap.

Perhaps I should put my hand up to having a bit of a thing about the correct use of 'I' and 'me'. And I get irritated by the misuse of 'may' and 'might' - favourite example: 'The Queen may have married several times before she wed Prince Philip' You're suggesting that it's possible that she did and we just didn't notice? If in doubt, might is always right.

But when it comes to losing a useful word because people don't make the effort to learn the proper meaning, my inner pedant comes roaring into battle. At the moment, my particular fury is directed at the popular attack on the splendid word 'disinterested.' There is a perfectly good word, 'uninterested', to describe lack of interest, but increasingly 'disinterested' is used with that meaning. So what can I use when I want to say that someone is not influenced by consideration of personal advantage?

And then there's 'begs the question'. It's on every interviewer's lips when grilling some unfortunate politician, meaning that this is a question that is begging for an answer. But it doesn't mean that. It means to carry on a false argument that ducks away from answering, but that usage is long dead now.

Perhaps it's because English has such an enormous vocabulary that we're so careless about it. There are around 200,000 words in common use; French, for instance, uses only about half that number and they actually have a body devoted to guarding the purity of the language, the Academie Francaise. They have a thankless task as the French themselves seize on 'le weekend', 'le parking', 'le best-seller' with great enthusiasm, but there is still great pride in the integrity of the language.

Recently, the shocking suggestion was made that the circumflex had no place in modern French. Accents are a nuisance when it comes to typing on a computer and this one has no effect on pronunciation. But the French, as has been their habit since the French revolution, went to the (literary) barricades. The cry went up, 'Je suis circonflexe!' and the idea was dropped, at least for the moment.

What impresses me is that they cared. I admire that. And perhaps pedantry is just caring about the uses of language, and if it is I'll admit to being one after all.

Guest Blogger: Brendan DuBois

Brendan DuBois has published more than 150 short stories in such magazines as Playboy, Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as in numerous original short fiction anthologies.

He has twice won the Shamus Award for Best Short Story of the Year from the Private Eye Writers of America and three times been nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his short fiction. His stories have appeared in Best American Noir Stories of the Century, and Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He is the author of 20 Lewis Cole novels. published by St. Martin’s Press, and is currently co-authoring works with New York Times bestselling author James Patterson. He is also a one-time "Jeopardy!" game show champion, and is also a winner of the game show "The Chase."

The Challenge and Art of the Series Character

By

Brendan DuBois

A few months ago, my tenth novel in my Lewis Cole series – STORM CELL – was published, and it struck me that the first book in the series, DEAD SAND, was first released in 1994.

Wow, 1994!

Imagine all that’s changed in the world since that time. Back when I was working on DEAD SAND (which turned out to be my first published novel), the Soviet Union had expired just a few years earlier, a new era of peace and prosperity was predicted for the world due to something called “the end of history”, and MTV still played music videos. No cellphones, no GPS, home computers barely coming into the market.

So much has changed in the world since DEAD SAND was published, and that’s part of the challenge of writing a series character, for the author has to think, how much should my main character change as well?

It sounds simple but it’s not. For example, my lead character, Lewis Cole, was 35 years old when DEAD SAND was published in 1994. Now, 23 years later… is he really 58? Um, no, I really can’t see him running around getting into fistfights, doing stakeouts, and putting his life at risk in the pursuit of justice. I think that’s one of the reasons why Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series still remain in the 1980s; that way, she doesn’t have to worry about aging her heroine or stretching her timeline to places that don’t make sense.

And then there’s one of the masters, Robert Parker and his series character Spenser. Good ol’ Spenser. In his first appearance, THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT, he’s listed as 35 years old (hey, the same age as my man Lewis Cole in his debut), and also was a Korean War veteran. Fair enough. But Parker’s Spenser novels – before the very able and talented Ace Atkins took over the series – ran up to SIXKILL, published in 2010, meaning that our tough-guy, weight-lifting, two-fisted hero would have been… 75 years old.

Ouch.

So what’s an author to do?

Pay attention, but don’t freak out.

Meaning what?

Meaning you should write your novels in their own universe, but try not to connect them to the here and now. For example, I tried to keep politics and current events out of my novels as they came out, year after year. For if I had my Lewis Cole talking about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton in a novel published in 1999, then it instantly dates it for readers in 2005, or 2010, or today. Remember that the passions and politics of this year doesn’t necessarily translate into anything of interest to readers down the road as you – hopefully! – continue publishing.

But that doesn’t mean some things shouldn’t change. If you’re fortunate enough to write a series character, that character should grow and be different with each novel. You can’t have a character remain frozen in amber, unchanging, year after year.

In reviewing DEAD SAND, I see how Lewis Cole then is much different than the Lewis Cole of “now”, whatever “now” means. Lewis is a former Department of Defense research analyst who is the sole survivor of his section – everyone else was killed in a training accident – and to keep his mouth shut, he is pensioned off to a beach community in New Hampshire, working a columnist at a Boston-based magazine called Shoreline.

But he has an urge to make things right, to seek justice, to right wrongs, and as DEAD SAND opens, it’s only been less than a year since he left government service. He’s tired, he’s feeling very guilty at being a survivor, and has troubles sleeping at night and making relationships. He’s also edgy and slightly paranoid about his new life.

Yet in book ten, he’s more relaxed, has grown to love his new community, and he has deep friends and relationships. He has suffered along the way, he’s experienced loss and wounds, but he’s definitely grown. And the same has occurred with his friends and supporting cast members that have appeared in each of the novels.

That’s the most important part, in working with a series character. To keep the reader’s interest, your character has to change, has to grow, has to suffer and move on.

Oh, and how old is Lewis for real?

According to the timeline of the novels and publishing history, he “should” be 58 years of age. But that’s only if you count each novel as a “year.”

Which I don’t.

When asked by readers, I say that each novel takes place within a six month period, meaning that instead of being 58, he’s probably in his mid-40s. Which makes the both of us happy.

Wait, you might say. How can that be? How can each novel just end up as a six-month period of time?

Just because.

Remember, you’re the author.

You can do anything you want.

So long as it makes sense.

Making Do

Last Friday I drove back to Kansas to give a talk at the annual meeting of the Solomon Valley Highway 24 Alliance. It was nothing short of miraculous that the weather was unseasonably pleasant both in Colorado and Kansas.

I don't mind long drives. I listen to audiobooks written by writers I haven't had an opportunity to read. Flying is impossible when I take an assortment of books along. I always drive when I can make my destination in a day.

The growth of the Solomon Valley Alliance was very impressive. Once again I'm stunned by the energy and accomplishments of small rural communities. Budget cuts have about brought Kansas to its knees. Everything is do-it-yourself. We make the most of what we have. We make do.

Much to my delight I was awarded a special merit plaque for writing Nicodemus: Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas. Additionally, I received an exquisite miniture copper windmill.

When people ask me where I live, I always say Kansas. My kids look at me funny because I've been in Colorado eight years now. But here's my story and I'm sticking to it: Colorado was once part of Kansas Territory. I don't care what these ignorant people call this state. I would never leave Kansas.

The next day I went to the Kansas Salt Mines. What an amazing trip. And yes, it has everything to do with my next mystery. The mines are 650 feet underground and the humidity and temperature are constant year round. The mines are where the negatives of Ben Hur, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and countless other films are kept. There are thousands of government documents stored in the mines.

There's nothing like on-the-spot research. The mines are not at all like I had imagined from on-line reading. There are so many tunnels, the ceilings are lower, and I still can't understand how the shape could be so perfectly rectangular.

The Salt Mines are a natural wonder. But in the make-the-most-of-what-you-have category, a wonderful lady who helped me with my book signing introduced herself as "the ball of twine in Cawker City."

Oh, you've never heard of this? Kansas has the world's largest ball of twine. People come from all over the world to see it. She said recently there was even a vistor from Mongolia.

But you would have to live there to understand this brand of humor. And who would have thought the ball of twine would become a leading tourist attraction.

Goal setting and Gremlins

I believe in worrying about what I can control. Some days this is easier said than done. But by and large, this has served me well as a parent, husband, educator. And writer.

By nature, I’m a goal setter. Short-term goals are very important to me. I try to accomplish something on the writing front most days. Be that writing a paragraph, rereading and revising a chapter, or writing five pages of fresh copy. The result is usually a book a year.

Some writers make it sound easy. At Crime Bake this fall, several writers said they write three pages a day no matter what. That gives them a draft of a novel in six months. Like clockwork. Hmmm. My writing, no matter how detailed my outline is, is often interrupted by problems the manuscript poses –– the need to stop and research; a plot move that forces the revision of a previous section; even the need to stop and think for several days and go reread what I’ve written to see where the train has come off the tracks. Outline or not, my process usually feels like E.L. Doctorow described writing: “. . . like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” It’s usually scary, but I always survive the trip.

When the process is stressful, goal setting is important. I can control finishing 30 pages this month. And 30 more next month. Thirty pages a month is an attainable goal. It needs to be because the gremlin never leaves my shoulder.

He’s always whispering doubts into my ear, asking where I get off thinking I can write a good novel. There are times in the process of writing every novel where the book gets hard and I am suddenly the fourth-grade version of my dyslexic self struggling to find the confidence to continue. So focusing on the here and now, and controlling what I can is a way to tune the gremlin out.

Mystery on the Menu

Last Saturday I planned on cutting down the roses in our back yard (it’s that time of year here in Southern California), but instead I found myself appearing along with 14 other authors at Mystery on The Menu at the Cerritos Library. One of the scheduled authors dropped out so they asked me to fill in, which I was happy to do.

Presented by the Friends of the Cerritos Library, it ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Besides me, participating authors were: Jill Amadio, Connie Archer/Connie Di Marco, Mike Befeler, Marcia Clark, Dianne Emley, Betty Hechtman, Naomi Hirahara, Linda O. Johnston, D.P. Lyle, M.D., Christopher J. Lynch, Paul D. Marks, David Putnam, Nancy Cole Silverman, and Patricia Smiley. I was happy to be included among so many wonderful authors.

This was the 13th year of this sold out event. I’d never been to an event like this before so I didn’t really know what to expect. There were 3 panels lasting about 35 minutes with each author serving on one panel. The first panel was held prior to lunch, the two other panels after. The ballroom was full of enthusiastic mystery readers, 18 tables worth! The time just flew by. It was wonderful to see and connect with so many people who enjoy mysteries as much as I do. The Cerritos Library is also quite beautiful, listed as number 28 in Best Value Schools 50 most beautiful libraries in the world.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos so I don’t have any to share.

P.S. Yesterday was official release day for A Palette for Murder, the third book in the Aurora Anderson Mystery series.

It’s getting awfully hard to be optimistic these days

by Rick Blechta

No need to amplify much on the title of my post. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past, say, two years, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Not having been alive during the 1930s, I can’t say for certain, but I’ll bet any number of citizens of the world felt much as we do now during Hitler’s rise to power. Regardless of what camp you’re in, you’ve got to be feeling a lot of apprehension right now. Everything has changed and the unrest is only beginning.

But Type M is not about politics, so let’s move the conversation, shall we — but not too far.

Over the next few years, I can’t help but think that we’re going to see a lot more plots with terrorism, racial strife, government spying and the like at their centre. Most of these will be thrillers which by their nature often have plot elements like this.

But I also see a new subtext spreading into other sub-genres of crime writing. Police procedurals are a natural setting. Will it even affect cozies, or will the writers of cozies batten down the hatches to allow readers to be “not so much in this world” for a little while? Or will they, too, find ways to weave in current events/world political tensions into their plots?

I think the world of crime fiction is about to get a lot more interesting. And that’s something to be optimistic about, isn’t it?

Reading Ourselves to Empathy

By Vicki Delany

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

I enjoyed Rick’s post about Entertaining Yourself.  I was also reminded of Neil Postman’s 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

In that book, Postman worries that we are relying too much on media for information and entertainment, rather than getting it for ourselves via reading and conversation. Postman is talking mostly about television…

“…what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment.”

… if anything, his theses seems even more valid today, in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and 24 hour news.

Sure we read books for entertainment, as Rick suggests, but in the pages of a good book, we can’t help being drawn into other worlds, other lives and other experiences. Watch a movie or TV and you see how someone else lives, whether a rich housewife of someplace or other  or a detective in pursuit of a master criminal, but you are NOT THAT PERSON. No matter how good the acting or how dramatic the music, all you are doing is watching someone else do something.

Whereas in a book you can BE THAT PERSON. The difference is critical. Within the pages of a good work of fiction (and heck, often within the pages of a poor work of fiction) you can genuinely be exposed to other people’s thoughts, feeling, and emotions. What that does, what that cannot fail to do, is to create empathy.

And empathy seems to be sorely lacking in some parts of our world today.

As are facts. If you want to understand a complex issue you won’t get it from the TV news or a tweet. You can get the information you need to understand the complexities of an issue and make a decision from a well-researched newspaper article, maybe a TV documentary, but once again, for real comprehension you need a book.

Want to understand the rise of fascism? Not only read fiction such as 1984, but some of the many historical fiction books set in Europe in the late 1930s, and then go on to non-fiction books about the early to mid-twentieth century. One book that got a lot of press late in 2016 is Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich.

A book I keep meaning to re-read is The Magus by John Fowles, which (if I remember correctly) deals with living under fascism and resistance to it.

Worried that maybe we’re slipping back a century to pre-1914? Try Margaret MacMillian’s The War the Ended Peace.

Read: you’ll not only be entertaining yourself but making yourself aware, as well.

P.S. yes, speaking to the choir here, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the things we know. 

When Mary Met Raymond

Mary Tyler Moore died on Wednesday, and I cried. I was surprised that the death of a woman I had never met hurt so much. Maybe because although I never met her, I felt I knew her. Whether she was "Laura Petrie" -- professional dancer turned suburban housewife -- or "Mary Richards" -- making her way up the very short career ladder of her TV newsroom -- she was someone I liked. I was one of the many young women who could imagine having Mary as my downstairs neighbor and BFF.

When I heard she was dead, I ran through my memory bank of favorite episodes of  The Mary Tyler Show. I still watch them in re-run. If you've read my post, you know by now that I love television. In fact, I even managed to make TV relevant to my academic research. I study crime and popular culture. But ask any baby boomer, and many of us will be able to describe episodes of our favorite TV shows scene by scene, even quote favorite lines. We can go down the list, calling out the shows that were the visual sound-track of our childhoods and that taught us important life lessons. We're no snobs. Many of us also love the great sit-coms that came later -- but the classics helped to shape who we are.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was special to a generation of women. Aside from what we learned from her about being single and pursuing a career, Mary taught us important lessons about grown up friendships with both women and men. Those friendships were messy and touching and complicated. We learned that it's okay if your best friend occasionally makes you crazy. Remember that episode when Rhoda, who was spending night at Mary's, left the dinner dishes in the sink "to soak" and Mary got up in the middle of the night to try to wash them without waking Rhoda. Mary and Rhoda always reminded me -- still do -- that friends don't have to be carbon copies. Friends can come from different worlds. The important thing about a good friend is that she is always there no matter where you are. She's the person who listens and understands, who you laugh with and cry with, and who always has your back.

And then there was what Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant, her boss in the newsroom, taught me about writing. When I was thinking about my favorite episodes of the show, I remembered when the one when Lou introduced Mary to Raymond Chandler. I found it again on YouTube. The title of the episode is "Mary the Writer." Mary persuades Lou to read a piece she is working on. It's a true story, but he thinks she's trying to write fiction. He opens his desk drawer -- where he also keeps his liquor -- and pulls out a book. In his gruff, tough-guy voice, he reads her the first paragraph of Chandler's "Red Wind." When he's done, he tells her that's great writing. Mary's response (that I appreciate even more now): "He writes well about the weather."

RIP Mary. Thanks for the laughs and the life lessons. And for sending me back to try Raymond Chandler again with Lou Grant's voice in my head.

Double Brain

By the time this post comes up, I will have launched my ninth Alafair Tucker Mystery, The Return of the Raven Mocker, on Tuesday the 24th at the fabulous Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale Arizona. I will have also appeared at three other venues and am looking forward to another two months of talk and travel. Yes, this is the merry-go-round of publishing. I'll be writing guest blogs and speaking to group after group about how I researched and wrote a book about murder during the great influenza pandemic of 1918.

The irony behind all this is that in my head is currently occupied by the tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, and sometimes I forget which book I'm supposed to be talking about. I call this "double brain".

Raven Mocker is a good book, even if I do say so myself. The next book is going to be even better. (How optimistic we writers are) It is going to have a bang-up ending, if I can pull it off as well as I envision it. A really good ending is wildly important to me, for as I've said many a time, a good beginning will make a reader want to read your current book but a good ending will make her want to
buy your next book.

I learned about the importance of a great end by reading Ellis Peters. She is the woman who inspired me to write the type of historical mystery that I do. She was very good at moral ambiguity, which is one reason I love her books, especially the Brother Cadfael series. The resolutions of those novels are usually very clever and perhaps not what you might have suspected. One of my favorite resolutions was in her novel Monk’s Hood. The victim wasn’t a pleasant man, but he wasn’t evil and didn’t deserve to die the way he did. The killer shouldn’t have taken the action he did. Cadfael figures out who did it and why, and confronts the killer, but in the end … well, let me just say, I was taken aback by what happened. Was it justice? I think yes, and mercy, too.

And that’s the mark of a truly successful mystery. We don’t just find out who did it. We are given a just resolution that satisfies us right down to our toes.

And if the author can pull off a big surprise, that's even better.

So how long did your new year's resolutions last?

Barbara here. Well, that will teach me to make new year's resolutions. On my last post, I resolved that in 2017, I would try not to miss my Type M posting day - every second Wednesday. And what did I promptly do? Miss the first two in a row! The problem lies with the essentially timeless nature of a writer's life. The day of the week is often meaningless to me. I write every day, unless I have other obligations or distractions, and these don't usually fall on any predictable schedule that would help me remember that today is in fact Wednesday. Having spent most of my life in the era before computers and other devices, I have two calendars – an old-fashioned book variety, which I still find far easier to use (no turning on a device, clicking through links, fumbling back and forth between days or weeks), and an electronic one, which usually I program to remind me of my dogs' tick and heart worm medicine. The advantage of the electronic is that it will beep a reminder. The book one, unfortunately, does no such thing, so the trick is to not only put an entry in the book, but also remember to look at it.

I think I will have to finally admit that I no longer can keep track of all sorts of things in my head. I reminded myself numerous times in the past few days about Type M, but in the end I was distracted by booking flights and airbnbs and rental cars and coordinating plans with others, while trying to find time to do my daily quota of writing. So guess what fell off my radar?

It's no excuse, of course, but outside obligations often fall off the radar in the life of a writer. We get so engrossed by the story in our head, even when we are driving in traffic or walking the dog, that we tend not to be aware of the the passage of time or the demands the outside world. "What, you mean it's dinnertime?" "Really, is it two weeks since I last phoned?" Absent-minded, thy name is writer.

In my defence, I come by my absent-mindedness honestly. The term may have been invented to describe my father, a university philosophy professor who inhabited a world of lofty thoughts. We children used to marvel that he found his way home every night, and managed to be on time for lectures and airplanes and such mundane but unforgiving things. He kept a little appointment book to help him keep track of his life, and even as an old man, he entered things in it, underlined them if they were important, and ticked them off once he'd done them. I remember looking at the little book one day late in his life, when he was mostly confined to home. "Brush teeth" was on his list, duly ticked off.

Most mornings I still remember to brush my teeth, even if I do forget to get out of my pyjamas. But I can see the future. And it starts with my opening up that tedious electronic calendar and entering "Type M post" on every second Tuesday, programmed to startle me with an annoying little beep every time I open up a device.

We'll see how that works. Can brush teeth be far behind?

Why I consider reading to be “entertaining myself”

by Rick Blechta

When we’re little, people (usually our parents) tell us far more often than we want to here, “I can’t always be entertaining you. Entertain yourself for a change.” This is usually followed by, “I’m far too busy right now.”

In looking back, I feel I did this far too often than I should have with my own sons, but those were busy times. With a grandson who is now three years old, I am keenly aware of this. Kids naturally come with a time stamp that runs out all too quickly. Said grandson will be starting junior kindergarten next fall, and once that happens, I might get to see him once a week if I’m lucky. So too will it be with our granddaughter. Now that I have more time, I’ve vowed to make the most of it.

Playing with Jackson, I’m always aware that part of what I’m doing is “entertaining him”. In his mind, I’m more his playmate than his grandfather at times. I enjoy setting free my “inner child”, too, when we play. My wife finds our games and the changes/amplifications we both make as we go along “very entertaining”.

On my daily rambles around our neighbourhood, I’ve found myself thinking about the difference between being entertained (passive) and entertaining oneself (more active). There are spaces where each of these works best, but (naturally) it seems to me the more valuable of the two is also the more active one.

So what exactly is “entertaining oneself”? It can be working, if you’re doing something you find enjoyable. It can be found in gardening, spending time at a hobby, all sorts of things. It certainly can be found in reading.

But that also seems counterintuitive to me. An example: If you were watching a movie, or attending a play or a concert, that’s you being entertained, isn’t it? Reading a book is the same thing to a great extent.

Last week, my wife and I both spent our late evenings reading. Far too often we close our days watching a movie. We’re usually too brain dead to concentrate on a book.

Anyway, one of those nights, Vicki turned to me and said, “It’s so much more enjoyable reading together rather than watching a movie, isn’t it?” I had to agree she was right.

More cogitation followed.

The difference between a book — and I’m meaning novel here more than anything else — and a movie (as an example) is that one’s brain is engaged to a far greater extent. You are lifting the author’s words off the page and your brain/imagination has to give them life. We don’t just understand the meaning behind the words but we can’t help creating visual images, too. You don’t do that with a movie. It’s all right there in front of you, the imaginative work has been completely realized for you.

Watching a movie, a play or a concert is a much different experience than reading. I don’t know about you, but I find a good book leaves me feeling much more enriched than a good movie does, generally speaking.

And feeling enriched is always a good thing.

Book Magic

I read Charlotte's last post wincing sympathetically. I too have fillings that are only just hanging on in there and despite a genius dentist who has somehow managed to keep them that way I know that sooner or later – very probably sooner – the sad wreckage will be beyond even his skills and it will be the full works. And when the day comes, I too will take refuge in books to take my mind off it.

Books are the stress meter in our household. When we're feeling relaxed on holiday we take on big books – biographies, thought-provoking novels, topical non-fiction, the odd classic we've always meant to read but hadn't got around to before. Normally we read an eclectic range of pleasurable  fiction of the sort you can pick up and lay down as time allows and get easily back into the story again. But when it's all just Too Much, there's only one solution.

Georgette Heyer. I've read her books so many times that I could just about recite some of them verbatim – large chunks, anyway.  For minor problems, the nearest one on the bookshelf is enough. For a major stress situation, only the strongest dose will do: The Grand Sophy, undoubtedly her very best book. Maybe you don't agree with me – my husband doesn't – but you're all just wrong. I'm on my third copy now and even that's starting to look a bit battered.

Many years ago when I was a student (make that many, many) I had a couple of summers as a camp counsellor in Connecticut. It was a wonderful experience and it has given me a life-long affection for Americans. I made great friends with a girl who lived in California and with the aid of a $99 bus ticket I set off to visit her by Greyhound. It took me, if I remember rightly, three nights and four days, only getting out to stretch my legs at bus stations.

You do see life on a Greyhound bus. I met all sorts and with the exception of the ratbag who when I was on the way back stole the bag containing my money, passport and air tickets, people were friendly and kind. But morale gets low at bus stations in the middle of the night and of course I was desperate for reading matter too. The book stands weren't exactly Barnes and Noble but one night I saw to my amazement a copy of I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, one of my very favourite books. (If you haven't read it, run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore and demand a copy.)

I was feeling tired and low and not a little homesick when I started reading. I don't know how long I read for but when I looked up I was completely disorientated by the view from the window of the Arizona desert. I was so caught up in the magic of the story that I was expecting to be passing through the English countryside.

I'm sure we've all had the exerience of getting  an email from someone who says that a book we have written has helped them so that they have briefly managed to lose themselves in the story as an escape from pain, worry or grief. This is the most precious reward a writer can have. How privileged we are to have been given the ability to do that.