These days, can a thriller plot actually be too outrageous?

by Rick Blechta

Many years ago now, I remember hearing of a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a group of terrorists who hijack a plan and crash it into the US capitol building in Washington. I remember thinking at the time, How ridiculous. That could not happen!

Well, it did in 2001, and while the home of Congress was spared, two massive buildings in New York City came crashing to earth and a section of the Pentagon was destroyed.

No one in power seriously thought about the effectiveness of weaponizing commercial aircraft. No one seriously thought cars and trucks would be used for the same purpose, either, yet just this thing has been quite effective numerous times to our great sorrow and tragedy.

Now here’s the kicker: the book referred to in the first paragraph was declined by several publishers. All of them said (in effect) that the major driver of the plot was just too outrageous and subsequently unbelivable. I wonder how those publishers felt after 9/11?

I was sitting with some author friends recently and we discussed this topic. For about an hour, we amused ourselves with more and more outlandish plot devices. Some of them were utterly ridiculous, but two or three made us grow silent. Finally I said about an idea that on the surface seemed laughable, “Someone could do this. It could work.”

I won’t tell you what it was, because it was an “out there” idea, and I don’t want to supply anyone with any ideas. The outcome could be just too horrible.

But since the whole world seems to be going crazy, what’s to stop someone from releasing a doomsday device?

Thrillers provide a great, white-knuckle reading experience, but if fiction suddenly became reality, would we be able to deal with it?

I’ve just laid out one sort of plot device. What if my plot dealt with an enemy nation that tried to subvert the government of the United States by means of hacking into the election system and changing results so the candidate of its choosing would be elected president?

Nah. That is just too ridiculous…

Apology

Aargh! I've had a frantic week of house guests, I have the copy-editing for my new book, Carrion Comfort, to do and my family is descending en masse any time now.  If I don't make the two separate birthday cakes for the double birthday of my daughter and granddaughter, it won't be the end of the world - it'll be worse than that.  So I'm afraid this is it.  Sorry, guys!

Weekend Guest Tracy Clark

I'm delighted to welcome Tracy Clark, this weekend's guest blogger.
Tracy's novel Broken Places, featuring former Chicago Police detective turned PI Cass Raines, was released in May 2018.  Borrowed Time, book two in the Raines series, will be published next year. Tracy can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and on her website tracyclarkbooks.com.

Take it away, Tracy!





The Writer's Mountain

I’m neck-deep in rewrites for the third novel in my Cass Raines PI series. It’s going well. Today. Tomorrow? Who knows? That’s what I want to talk about. The writing process. That mercurial, quicksilver-ish, sometimey thing that blooms like a hothouse orchid one day and withers on the vine like a desiccated strawberry the next.

Maybe you guys are used to the ebb and flow, the ups and downs, but I’m only two and a half books in, so I’m constantly amazed that this writing thing isn’t getting any easier. I mean, you’d think it’d get easier. You’ve written two books, you got it done, so why is book three just as hair-pullingly impossible? Where’s my bell lap? The end of the rainbow? At what point can a writer say with confidence, “I got this, people. You need another book? No problemo. I know how to do this. Bam. There you go. Another book. You’re welcome, world!”

I’ve been thinking about the writing game a lot lately while muddling my way through book three, wondering where I took a wrong turn, knowing I’ll need to go back and save myself from embarrassment. Writing, I have decided, is a lot like mountain-climbing. Stick with me here.

The valiant climber of mountains starts off with the vigor of Sir Edmund Hillary—new rope, strong enough to suspend an elephant, at least for a time, new climbing shoes, those fancy little fingerless gloves that look so cool on Tom Cruise in those Mission Impossible films. The brave, dauntless climber is fresh, committed, intrepid, determined eyes fixed on the mountain in front of her. The summit is the goal, and she means to get there by hook or by crook. She starts up. All’s good. Then the mountain gets steep, the footholds iffy. Too late to turn back now, you’re up too high. The rope begins to fray. You call on Jesus. Those kickass climbing shoes get worn down and the gloves, cool on the car ride up, don’t do a thing for your bleeding, blistered fingers. You climb. You struggle. You retrace your steps when you can’t find a way through. Where is Tenzing Norgay, you ask. But don’t look down, don’t think about your trembling knees.

Somehow, sweat drenched and spent, you reach the top. You’ve made it. You did not give up. You did not falter, well, maybe you faltered a little bit, but though the effort was not graceful, you clawed your way to the end. You can now stand there at the summit, arms held high in victory, and breathe in the smell of sweet success. Surely nothing will ever be more difficult than this climb. You have arrived. You conquered the mountain!

Then you turn around and behold a vast mountain range—mountain after mountain after mountain. Your arms fall to your side. The smile of victory melts away and reality sets in and sinks to the pit of your stomach like a paving stone. You’ve climbed this mountain. There are dozens more. You will have to blister your fingers again, scrape your knees on jagged rock, fray the rope. Again.

That’s writing.

When you conquer one mountain (one book), the victory lap is short, because the next mountain looms. I’m new to the climbing thing, but I’ve already been asked more than once how I do it. How do you write a book? My answer is simple. I have no idea. I just climb, and I keep climbing till I run out of rock. The fact that I waltz knowingly up to the next mountain and do it all again, knowing what I know, is either a true testament to my mental instability or a confirmation that I was born to be a writer, just like Michael Phelps was born to swim or Muhammad Ali was born to knock a guy’s lights out in twelve rounds, or less. I write because I can’t not write.

Some days I write like the wind, scampering up that mountain like a freaking ibex, some days I waste paper and time and shave years off my life expectancy. That’s writing too.

I’ll eventually get to the top of the mountain I’m climbing now, but it won’t be seamless. I’ll breathe a sigh of relief when I’m done, though, and, hopefully, the story will be a good one. I just wish that reaching the top of Writer Mountain worked like a video game where you beat the challenge and then are powered-up with magic apples that make you a writing god, an expert, Superman. Maybe for some it does? Hope springs eternal. For me, I’m still writing myself into corners and getting myself out. I procrastinate. I write five pages, and then tear up two. Mountains are treacherous.

I’m sitting here now writing this blog post, eyeing Judge Judy on television. Some woman bought her new boyfriend of less than three weeks a car, and then he promptly broke up with her and now she wants her money back. I have pages to get to, but I’m not going anywhere until I find out what Judge Judy has to say about the whole thing. That’s writing too. It doesn’t take much to derail a work in progress. I’m also wondering about Tenzing Norgay. Wouldn’t it be great if every writer had a Tenzing Norgay?

Anyway, wish me luck. I wish the same for all of my fellow writers. Up the mountain we go!

Making gerunds history: tips from a summer spent revising

I’ve spent the past two months “streamlining.” Given a free moment here and there, I’ve reworked a draft of a novel, re-envisioning the plot, and trying to say more with less. The result is a book that entered the world weighing 85,000 words and now tips the scales at 65,000. And she’s a better read because of it.

In May, my agents called with “suggestions.” We spoke about ways to get to the ending quicker, and one way seemed obvious to me: eliminate one subplot; simply cut out one character altogether. So I sharpened my knife and went to work.

Cutting a character means retooling the plot, which might be easier than what I call “nickel and diming” the manuscript. In this stage, I examine the novel, word by word, sharpening and cutting, doing things like looking for gerunds and making those verbs active to eliminate “to be” phrases. (The book is written in first-person present tense, after all, so the “ing” phrases are glaring. He is waiting . . . No. He waits.) Sound easy? A quick search shows me there are still 2,234 uses of “ing” in the novel. Examining each is time-consuming (ridiculously so, in fact), but when it comes to writing, OCD pays off. I urge you to try this.

The other thing I focus on in any revision is trying to replace narration with dialogue. Are there places where one spoken line can replace 30 words describing the action? The beauty of dialogue is that it lets readers play a role in the book. Readers bring their own images of scenes and characters to the work as they read. As a writer, I want to use that. For instance, if I tell you the refrigerator is stainless steel, that’s enough. You will paint the rest of the picture of the kitchen for me, including a stainless-steel stove and granite counter top. I strive to always utilize the reader in this way. And dialogue works best for me. (He stepped back becomes “Why are you moving away?” she asked.)

Streamlining is a lot of work but gets me to a sharper finished product. I would urge any writer to look for places where action can become statements and where gerunds can become history.

*

Here are some pictures from summer moments spent away from the manuscript.

Running a 5K

With Keeley, Audrey, and Delaney (from right) at Passenger concert

The Artist Within

Not really a huge amount of time today so I thought I’d share some things I’ve seen recently you all might enjoy.

I believe there’s an artist in everyone. We all just express it in different ways. Some people bake, some people write books, some people draw and paint, etc. When I have the time I check out the boredpanda website and see what interesting things they’ve found. Here are a few that I’ve noticed lately.

When I think of bridges, I think of them as being functional, not terribly artistic. Here’s one that wowed me that’s in Vietnam: https://www.boredpanda.com/creative-design-giant-hands-bridge-ba-na-hills-vietnam/?utm_source=direct&utm_medium=none&utm_campaign=direct

And here’s someone who folded and decorated an origami crane a day for 1000 days. They’re so amazing. https://www.boredpanda.com/intricate-origami-cranes-1000-days-cristian-marianciuc/?utm_source=direct&utm_medium=none&utm_campaign=direc

Here are some very creative cupcakes. The strawberry one is my favorite.

And this guy created photographic art from his large library.

And here's my artistic endeavor:

My fourth book, Designed For Haunting, is now available for pre-order! It officially releases Oct 9th.

Some links:

Amazon: amzn.to/2M36ife
Barnes & Noble: bit.ly/2vphdIX
iTunes: apple.co/2O1iqxY
Kobo: bit.ly/2OxPZZf

A little about it:

October brings a message from Beyond The Grave...

Halloween is fast approaching in the quiet Los Angeles County city of Vista Beach, home of computer programmer and tole-painting enthusiast Aurora (Rory) Anderson. While her painting chapter prepares to open its annual boutique house, Rory receives an unexpected email from Beyond The Grave, a company that automatically sends out messages when someone dies.

“I think I have a stalker,” the message reads. “If you’re reading this I’m either missing or dead. My life may depend on what you do. Please find out what happened to me.” Haunted by her friend’s disappearance and possible death, Rory begins her search with the help of best friend and fellow painter, Elizabeth (Liz) Dexter. Can they discover who has designs on the missing woman and uncover the truth before one of them becomes the stalker’s next victim?

We authors owe a great debt to Judith Appelbaum

by Rick Blechta

First, you need to read this: Judith Appelbaum, a Guide for Would-Be Authors, Dies at 78

Back when I was getting started in the writing game, I bought books on publishing and production. It seemed the best course since the model I adopted was to get my first novel out quickly. I had some background in print production and family/friends in the business and this seemed best. My first two novels were self-published and surprisingly successful for a small effort. In producing them, I learned a lot about how the business worked — and also how much work it took. With a young family and a very full-time job, one thing was clear, I needed to let the pros take over.

Enter Judith Appelbaum. I read her excellent How to Get Happily Published in one sitting. Then I read it again, slowly and with a lot of highlighting and margin notes. If you are an author, new or “well-seasoned”, you need to read this book! This woman had great experience and clearly lays out how the publishing game works. Literally, everything an author needs to know about getting started and dealing with the publishing industry is in this book.

I was sad when I saw her obituary in the New York Times. Then I got a little angry.

“Why?” you ask.

Because besides being a first-rate author guru, Judith Appelbaum did something else very important for us. I’m angry because this bit of information has been nearly completely expunged from the coverage of her passing.

Now, please read this: Author Takes On Publisher Over Royalty Checks

At the time the lawsuit occurred (in the early ’90s), it was a very big deal in the publishing world. As you can see, the information that is so critical to an author (understanding the royalty structure and royalty statements) was a huge problem even for this industry professional of vast experience. If Judith couldn’t make heads or tails of her royalty statement — what about the rest of us?

It was a long haul to get HarperCollins to come to the table and deal fairly with the issue. You can be sure other large publishers were backing them up, and as the article lays out, the back-up Judith was getting from writer organizations was pretty significant.

One detail not in the article was that HarperCollins admitted that they had no clear idea about her foreign sales (actually, this is was what the lawsuit was mostly about, if memory serves). How can this be? Are publishing houses really this bad about their accounting?

The second article quoted sort of soft-pedals this. I don’t believe for a moment that publishers are this sloppy. The way royalties are handled tilts the playing field heavily towards them. I’ve heard experienced and reputable agents admit they don’t completely understand everything on royalty statements. Having everything being so conveniently opaque allows publishers to be on the windy side of contracts with their authors. “We can’t come up with that information!” is a pretty poor excuse. Wonder how that would go over if the tax man comes calling?

If you ask me, holding HarperCollins’ toes to the fire and getting them to finally pay up is possibly an even more important legacy to leave her fellow ink-stained wretches than Judith’s wonderful how-to book.

It is also pretty damning that her obituaries (and I’ve read five of them) do not mention Appelbaum vs. HarperCollins. Most of the articles about her lawsuit have also disappeared. Wonder why that is?

In any event, thank you for what you did for all of us, Judith. We really appreciate it.

Writers Gotta' Write

Hello and welcome to my first blog. I’m extremely excited and honored to be joining the Type M for Murder family.  If you have any thoughts or suggestions about what you’d like me to write, please let me know!

Since the beginning is the best place to start, let’s do that. I’m going to make an admission, it took me 20 years to get published. When Cindy, my wife, and I were dating, and I was a single dad, she said, “Okay, your life is a do-over. What is it you want to be more than anything else?”

My reply was immediate. “I want to be a novelist.”

She quickly wrote it down on a cocktail napkin (we were at a holiday reception) and handed it to me. “Never lose this. This is who you are.”

Well, I lost it. Who keeps old cocktail napkins?

But I kept the dream.

Because I was still at the newspaper in Norwalk, Connecticut and raising my daughter, I could only write part-time. But write I did. My first attempt at a novel was entitled Crossbones. It was a historical novel about pirates and the destruction of Port Royal in Jamaica by an earthquake and tidal wave. I quickly discovered that historical novels are not my genre. It was awful.


By the way, NBC aired a television series by the same name in 2014. Not their genre either.

My second attempt at a novel was a mystery/thriller set in Connecticut called Pieces of Jake. I managed to land an agent from New York and I thought I was ready for the bestseller list. However, I discovered that this agent had little patience if one of the major publishing houses in Manhattan didn’t buy the manuscript. When we didn’t get a contract, he dropped me like a bad habit.

I had a chance to review the rejection comments from the editors and they primarily talked about the lack of character development. That’s when I started work on Providence and Random Road. Initially, the book was in two first-person voices. Two protagonists, one a male, the other a female. Then I discovered that the most interesting of the two was the female and opted to write the entire novel in the voice of Geneva Chase. I still couldn’t manage to get an agent interested. But I thought the character development was miles ahead of anything else I’d written.

Moving on, I tried my hand at horror. Also, not my genre.

Then a straight-out thriller. So bad my own wife wouldn’t read it.

Back to Providence and Random Road. I had a good feeling about it, I liked the main character, Geneva Chase, and felt the story had good bones. I shortened the title to Random Road and rewrote the hell out of it. Then, rather than take the shotgun approach, I painstakingly researched agents. I started by Googling and using the criteria: literary agents, debut authors, mysteries.

About thirty agents popped up. I learned about each one, who they represented, what they were looking for, and tailor-made the query letter to each. I made certain that if they were looking for 50 sample pages, I sent 50 sample pages. If they were looking for a synopsis (which I hate doing), I sent a synopsis.

I got four requests for the entire manuscript! To make a long story short, I signed with the incredible agent, Kimberley Cameron, and I’m working on my third Geneva Chase mystery for Poisoned Pen Press. In September, I’ll be on a panel at a Mystery Conference in Scottsdale honoring Ian Rankin and then at Bouchercon, I'm on a panel entitled “In the Papers—Journalists in Fiction.”

Recently, I gave a talk to about 50 people and I told the story about how it took 20 years to finally get published.  Someone in the audience asked, “Wasn’t it hard to write all those books over all those years and not get published? Didn’t you ever feel like giving up?”

My answer was, “A writer’s gotta’ write.” And my wife, Cindy, wouldn’t let me give up.

I might not have physical possession of that cocktail napkin, but I have what was written on it tattooed on my memory. I want to be a novelist.

Future Crime, Again

My favorite stories are crime stories. I've binged on Forensic Files, Dope, Inside the American Mob, Casino, the Godfather trilogy, and my shelves are packed with crime novels and true-crime books. What I like about crime stories is that they represent the breakdown of society at the micro-level. Our construct of laws and conventions crumbles to the basest of human compulsions. Whenever I read about the brave new world of tomorrow and all the fancy gizmos that will supposedly create this utopia, I have to ask, what about crime? What in this fantastic world will address the human failings of lust, greed, avarice, and mendacity? At what point will we expect people to act only and always out of the goodness of their collective hearts? Add to this mix the truly psychotic and on top of that, new and more potent drugs that will knock the sane straight into the category of insane.

In science-fiction we have the race to keep fiction ahead of the science and that's proven to be a challenge. The appeal of science-fiction was its exploration of the what-if? Today, we're introducing the "what" at a dizzying rate, so fast that we barely get to the "if" part before reality outraces what we imagine could happen.

Dovetailing with crime stories is my love of unintended consequences. People think they have something all figured out, then wham! Oops! What interests me is the growing controversy regarding smart speakers that are always on and eavesdropping. The issue is that the police have submitted warrants asking for the parent companies to provide transcripts of what the smart speakers heard during a homicide. Who saw this coming? Could Perry Mason ever get Alexa to crack in the courtroom?

Robots are another keen example of the "what" getting ahead of the "if". Recently, Knightscope introduced a series of autonomous robo-sentries with the promise that they are a cost-effective solution to fighting crime and maintaining order. It doesn't help their cred that the machines resemble a cross between a home appliance and a sex toy.

According to company press releases, the robots "detered" homeless encampments in San Francisco. Which I found laughable. If you dig deeper into the news, you'd find out that, not surprisingly, the robots had little chance against the city's rabble of petty criminals and heroin addicts. The robots were ignominiously smeared with feces (the now ubiquitous San Francisco treat), wrapped in tarps, and upended into Dumpsters, their pathetic electronic cries for back-up ignored. And worse, criminals are actually ahead of the technology curve, using flying drones to deliver drugs, cell phones, and other contraband directly to their incarcerated buddies.

It's no secret that today our records and bank accounts are more vulnerable than ever. The cat-and-mouse game between security and hackers never ends. And the criminals exploit every possible vulnerability. For a while, here in Colorado, credit-card readers at gas pumps were secured by three padlock keys. If you copied one, then you had access to one third of all the outdoor pumps in the state. What the crooks did was open the reader's compartment and piggyback another reader that stored your data on a thumb drive.

With all the video and tracking monitoring today you would assume that people would behave themselves. But no. What that surveillance has done is allowed folks to document what fools they can be. However, you'd think that committing a crime on video would be enough to convict you, but that's not the case. Because at that point the lawyers step in and reality is turned into legal pretzels. Which is another topic that science-fiction doesn't bother with--the shysters of the future.

Waiting for It

I don't have a long post today because I need to get back to writing. I'm moving back and forth between two first drafts. The nonfiction book about dress and appearance is almost done. The 1939 historical finally feels do-able.

This comes after days, months, years of struggle with both books. Books that simply refused to be written. This breakthrough on both fronts seems to suggest that some books can't be written until we believe they should exist. I started out with two ideas that I thought were good, that I thought would be great books. I wanted -- really, really, really wanted -- to write both books. I did research. I wrote. I edited and revised and tried again. I tried to pin down the elusive themes in each book. I kept telling myself and other people that both were coming along.

And I kept pulling my hair out. Then this summer both came together. That happened when I looked at the world and realized what it was that I needed to say. Once I knew that -- once I stopped playing it safe and making it pretty -- I could see both books as if they already exist. It isn't about outlining. It's about tuning in. I'm finally in flow.

For example, on Wednesday, I was at the ATM. Directly across the street, a blind man was walking into a restaurant on the arm of a younger man. That evening, I had a twist for the 1939 novel that fell into place because I had happened to re-watch a 6-minute documentary the day before. And then I saw the blind man going into the restaurant. I don't know if I will use the scene that I wrote and that now opens the book. But I now have the twist that will get me through the middle of the book.

With the nonfiction book about dress and appearance, I kept telling myself there was no reason I couldn't finish the last three chapters and the conclusions. Both were outlined. I had done the research. Why couldn't I write? And then I was watching the news. And I realized that I couldn't finish the book -- as much as I had struggled -- because I needed that moment when my theme fell into place. If I had finished a year or two ago, I wouldn't have understood what I needed to say with such clarity.

I'm sure I'm not the only writer who has had this experience. Anyone else have a story of struggling even more than usual with a first draft. Then finally having a moment of clarity when it all fell into place?

Back to work.

Life Intervenes Yet Again

I was really looking forward to my upcoming trip this Wednesday from my home here in southern Arizona (where the temperature is 116º F as I type) to my native Oklahoma (where it's only in the upper 90s), where I was scheduled to do two library events with friend and colleague Mary Anna Evans at libraries in Woodward OK, Aug.2, and Watonga OK, Aug. 3.

But guess what? My darling yet troublesome husband took a header in the kitchen yesterday morning (Tuesday the 24th) and broke his right arm in two places. We spent most of yesterday in the emergency room, a very familiar venue for us. This latest round of trouble and strife started on Monday morning July 9th, when he went in to see his ophthalmologist for a routine eye shot and ended up having emergency eye surgery that very afternoon.  The doc said that his eye pressure had risen so much in six weeks that he had to get it fixed RIGHT NOW before it damaged his optic nerve. Seems new blood vessels have grown to take the place of the broken one in his right eye, but they inconsiderately grew over the place that drains the fluid in the eye and blocked it. Of course the only surgical center that could do it on such short notice is an hour away from where we live, so we raced up there and he had the outpatient operation at about 4:30 that Monday afternoon during a raging thunderstorm. They put in a permanent shunt to drain the eye. We had a couple of follow-up exams, but all was progressing nicely.

Except for the fact that he'd reach for something and have to try a couple of times before he could grasp it. Its seems that the vision in the healing eye is distorted and his perspective is off. It was all kind of funny until he took a wrong step and careened into the wall.

Everything seems to have gone well and we're home. They set and splinted his arm and immobilized it, and he didn't have to stay overnight. He's not in terrible pain, just uncomfortable. Can't dress himself or drive, of course.We're going in for a follow-up with the orthopedist on Friday and go from there. This is his tenth operation in nine years. My sister-in-law told me I should be in the Guinness Caretaker Book of Records.

But I say he's the one who should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Nobody can deal with adversity with as much equanimity as he can. He says that getting all upset about unfortunate things just makes them worse. If only I could be as sanguine.

So long story finally to the point, I've had to cancel my trip to Oklahoma, which has been in the works for months. This is not the first time I've had to do this. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to make plans. Everyone has been very gracious, but I don't care how good your excuse is, it isn't fun to have to back out at the last minute. Fortunately, the libraries are far from left in the lurch. They still have the wonderful Mary Anna, and that is enough to make up for everything. Here's a link to the event in Woodward: http://woodwardlibrary.okpls.org/category/author-visit/

As for me, I'll be spending the cruel month of August nursing, chauffeuring, and trying to finish the first draft of my work in progress.

p.s. I'm so happy that Tom Kies will be joining Type M 4 Murder!

Hitting the road

Barbara here. One of the great joys of being a writer is getting the chance to travel, whether it's into the head of a person very different from yourself or to a physical place you've always wanted to see. We writers can go anywhere, at least in our heads.

Each one of my Amanda Doucette novels is set in a different iconic location in Canada. I did this quite deliberately, because Canada is an extraordinarily varied country spanning seasides, forests, deserts, mountains, and northern tundra as well as charming villages and dynamic cities. I wanted the chance to visit it all, as well as the chance to share my discoveries with others. Canada is a modest place, inclined to say sorry and not at all inclined to toot its own horn. We have cultural, historical, and geographical treasures that we are too modest to brag about.

So the Amanda Doucette series began in Newfoundland, continued on in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec and to Georgian Bay in Ontario, an unsung paradise of thirty thousand islands in a bay big enough, but for a technicality, to qualify as the sixth Great Lake. During the writing of each book, I read books on history, culture and current events, consulted sources, and spent time visiting the location and walking in Amanda's shoes. I wanted readers to feel as if they were there, and I wanted each nuance to be as vivid as possible. The bonus – each book has enriched my understanding and love of the places.

Amanda is now heading west into the Alberta badlands for book #4, and I am having a wonderful time learning about Alberta. I am currently working my way through 13 books on the prairie province's history, politics, and people. Going to school in Montreal during the fifties and sixties, I learned almost nothing about the settling of the west, and everything I learned about the history of Quebec and the Atlantic provinces was heavily Anglo- and Euro-Centric. Looking at all this information through twenty-first century eyes, as well as the wisdom of over half a century of my own lived history, has been a gift that goes far beyond the writing of my next crime novel. It enriches me as a person and a citizen, and helps me interpret events in the world. We should never stop learning.

I still have not yet set pen to paper on this book. Nor do I actually know what it's going to be about, but all my stories are rooted in place and history, and this research, along with discussions with people who live there, will eventually yield up the seeds of a dramatic story. My next step will be to travel there in person, so that I can visit the places, fill all my senses, and see for myself the nuances that make the badlands unique. Maybe even hear the stories that the badlands themselves tell. I am planning this research trip for September– two weeks in a rental car visiting Dinosaur Provincial Park, the Royal Tyrell dinosaur museum, horseback trail riding, Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, and reconnecting with my cousins in Lethbridge and my writer friends in Calgary.

By the time I finish the Amanda Doucette series, I hope to have visited most corners of Canada and stood in the shoes of people from all different places and walks of life. If through those journeys I can share a bit of what I've learned with readers, I will be delighted. Imagination and empathy are two priceless qualities that writers bring to a world much in need of both. And travelling opens the way to both.

Please welcome Thomas Kies!

by Rick Blechta

Type M for Murder has a new member! We are most pleased to welcome Thomas Kies. Tom will begin work next Monday and alternate weeks with our delightful Aline Templeton. Please be sure to visit on Monday, July 30th to read Tom’s inaugural post!

In the meantime, here’s some biographical information he’s provided.

Thomas Kies

Tom Kies has wanted to be a mystery writer since he was a little boy, cutting his teeth on every John D. MacDonald novel he could get his hands on. But real life got in the way – working for newspapers and magazines for 30 years and raising three children. So his dream of being a novelist took a back seat.

Tom’s current day job is as the President of the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce on the beautiful coast of North Carolina. At night and on weekends, he writes about murder. His Geneva Chase series starts with Random Road and six naked bodies found hacked to death on an island. Written from the first person point of view of a female alcoholic reporter, Tom says, “I didn’t start out writing as a woman and, frankly, it’s a challenge. But she’s such a snarky smart ass, she gets to say things I wouldn’t dare and that makes her a hell of a lot of fun.”

His second book in the series, Darkness Lane opens with an abused woman torching her sleeping husband. When the police arrive, she’s drinking wine and watching the firemen vainly attempt to douse the fire. “I’m just toasting my husband,” she says.

Concurrently, a fifteen year-old high school student vanishes. The two plots appear to have nothing to do with each other but as Geneva chases down leads, she finds that they are dangerously related.

Tom’s given workshops for various state writers groups as well as the NC Writers Network Fall Conference. Working on Graveyard Bay, he lives on Bogue Banks, a barrier island with his wife Cindy and Lilly, their shih-tzu.

Working for Other People.

I went shopping today. When I went to the checkout, only four manned tills were open, all with a long queue, so of course I went to the self-check-out instead. You notice I call it 'self-checkout', not 'automated' checkout. It's not automated. If I didn't operate it, it would just sit there. So the supermarket obtained my work free, and pocketed the profit.

Then I went to fill up the car. It was raining; I stood outside filling up with the smelly nozzle and then went across to pay the cashier who was sitting there, warm and dry. Remember the days when you sat in your car, warm and dry and with nice clean hands while the paid assistant filled it up, wiped the windscreen and collected the cash? 'Self-service' – huh! We're not serving ourselves, we're serving the company. More free labor, done by muggins here.

Never mind the customer. Now it is all about the big companies' profits while down at the bottom of the food chain, we suckers give our services free. Or, moving into the area closest to our hearts, or at least our wallets, for derisory financial return.

A comprehensive report on authors' earnings in Britain disclosed that since 2005, authors have seen a 42% drop in earnings. The average annual income is now £10,500, and only 50% of authors rise above that figure.

Well, we often have it explained to is that it's because there's is no money in publishing. But let's take the example of Penguin Random House. (A random example, you could call it. Couldn't resist that – sorry.) Profits in 2005 were $1.828 m. And in 2017? $3.359m.

Book sales in Britain are booming – up 7% this year. That's on the back of our work – no authors, no book sales. I guess if you work in publishing, you can expect an increase in wages which will already be well above the minimum wage level, and possibly a bonus as well, but I doubt whether many of us will find this reflected in our own income. Happy, indeed, the author who, for hours worked, earns anything approaching the minimum wage.

Books are cheaper than ever before and Amazon takes care that it will stay that way. It makes more profit when it sells more books and sees to it that publishers fall into line. And of course the royalty on every £10 book sold is less than if it were £12. So, just like the supermarket, just like the gas station, the big company benefits from our loss.

We go on doing it for a number of different reasons. Most of us feel driven to write. Most of us get huge pleasure out of seeing our books in print and get real joy from hearing about the pleasure we give to others. Most of us like earning such money as we are offered.

But sometimes, on a curmudgeonly day when figures like these come out, I do feel really quite cross about it. Quite cross.

Weekend Guest Blogger: Reed Farrel Coleman

Called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the noir poet laureate in the Huffington Post, Reed Farrel Coleman is the New York Times-bestselling author of thirty novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. He writes the Jesse Stone novels for the estate of the late Robert B. Parker and has been hired by film director Michael Mann to write the prequel novel to the movie Heat. Reed is a four-time Edgar Award nominee in three different categories and a four-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year. He lives with his wife on Long Island.

Bob’s Company

By Reed Farrel Coleman

Recalling those days in 2013, I realize what a risk we were all taking. Probably a good thing I didn’t overthink it back then. Also a good thing that neither the estate of the late Robert B. Parker nor GP Putnam Sons had a bout of buyer’s remorse. I had hired on to take over the authorship of the bestselling Jesse Stone series. When I was offered the chance, not only didn’t I overthink it. I guess I didn’t think about it at all. I jumped. And as with many of the best things in life, jumping was the way to go. But you can’t avoid the thinking forever.

Having taken the gig, I had a lot of things to figure out. Should I try to imitate Bob’s writing style? How could I be true to Jesse and yet make him my own? These two questions are actually bound together, because the language a writer uses, the style he chooses, affect how the reader sees the character. And believe me, when you take on a beloved character, one portrayed on TV by Tom Selleck, you better have some idea of what you’re doing. You see why it was a good thing I didn’t overthink it before saying yes?

I’ve told the story many times about how my conversation with my friend and colleague Tom Schreck helped me decide how to handle taking on this responsibility. Tom is a huge Parker fan—even has a cat named Spenser—and an even bigger Elvis Presley fan. When I told Tom that I wasn’t sure if I should try to imitate Bob Parker’s style, he said this: “Reed, I’ve seen the best Elvis impersonators in the world. Some of them are really amazing, but there are two things I can’t get past. No matter how good they are, I never forget it isn’t really Elvis up there and they can never do anything new. They’re trapped.” Those words decided how I would handle the series. I decided to be true to the characters and to the format—short chapters, lots of dialogue, lots of banter between Molly and Jesse—but that the style would develop as I wrote the novels.

Well, my fifth Jesse Stone novel, Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind, is due out on September 11, 2018. The first four I’ve done have all made the New York Times list. I give the credit for that to how well the reading public loves the Jesse Stone character and, I guess, to the fact that I’ve made some good choices. Still, through the first three books, Jesse never quite felt like my character. I was always very conscious as I wrote of Bob Parker’s presence. It wasn’t quite like asking myself what would Jesus do, but it was something like that. Not until I wrote Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet, my fourth Jesse novel, did Jesse begin to feel even a little bit like my character. Oddly, I hope he never feels totally like mine. I enjoy Bob’s company and would hate it if he ever stopped looking over my shoulder.

This week in the life of an American and an American Writer

I’m away from home this week, on a consulting job in central Massachusetts, where I’m leading a workshop for a group of excellent high school teachers. After a long day on Monday, I returned to my hotel room, sat down with a sandwich (a consultant’s dinner, for sure), and turned on the TV, to see the media reaction to President Donald Trump’s presser following his “summit” with Vladimir Putin.

I clicked from CNN to MSNBC to Fox. Many were calling Trump’s decision to side with Putin rather than his top justice department officials a low point in the history of the presidency. I do not disagree, and I will position myself here in the name of transparency: I am a registered Independent who did not and will not vote for Trump.

However, a funny thing happened on the way down my liberal road.

In 2014, writing as D.A. Keeley, my novel Bitter Crossing was published. It was followed by two more mysteries featuring protagonist Peyton Cote, a single mom and a US Border Patrol agent. There was a little chatter four years ago about making a TV show based on the books. Of course, and as anticipated, nothing came of it. Fast forward to 2016 and the un-presidential Presidential election: Trump’s rhetoric had US borders on everyone’s mind, and a little more TV-series chatter was heard. Then, in early 2017, a producer got involved. Months later, there was a director and a writer. This spring a pitch was created. And late last week, I was told multiple networks wanted to see/hear the pitch.

What does any of it mean? Not a hell of a lot, not at this point, anyway. But it’s interesting to me for a couple reasons: border issues mean plot ideas for me. For instance, Peyton, a single mom, would have strong opinions about separating parents from children. She would, as an agent, also be required to toe the company line. There’s something else that's interesting here as well, and you’ve probably picked up on it: I’m no fan of Trump; however, border issues, even if raised by someone I don't much like can mean relevance for my series. And I don’t know what to think of that.

As an aside, I’m re-reading The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in hopes of teaching it in my class this fall. It’s fast, accessible, and offers a rich sense of place, if you’re looking for a summer read.

Characters On Vacation

Apparently, my characters have all taken the summer off.

Not sure where they’ve gone. Maybe they’re at the beach or they’ve gone to cooler climates. All I know is, I’m trying to work on the next book in my series, Ghosts of Painting Past, and I’m having a doozy of a time.

Perhaps they’re refusing to cooperate because it’s summer and this is a Christmas-themed book. Not usually a problem. I’ve been known to listen to Christmas music or read Christmas-themed mysteries in July. Maybe it’s because we had a heat wave a while back. Kind of hard to write about Christmas when it’s 87 inside the house.

I go through something similar to this at the beginning of every book. Barbara did a great job talking about what it’s like to write a novel in her post last week. Right now I’m in the hair-pulling frustration phase.

Even though I really like my ideas for Ghosts, I still feel a bit uneasy. It’s one thing to have an idea, it’s another to create a 75,000 word mystery out of it. It does help, though, knowing other writers have similar problems.

I’m more of a plotter than a pantser though my outlines are fairly minimalistic. Before I can begin writing, I need to know how the story starts, how it ends, and some major plot points along the way. I also know who my major characters are (my suspects, victim(s) and my recurring cast) and what their secrets are, what they’re trying to make sure no one knows about in the story.

This time around because of the deadline noise swishing around in my head (you should be further along, you won’t make your deadline, etc.), I tried to take a shortcut, to start writing before I really knew all of my characters. Didn’t work out very well. So I’ve gone back to thinking about all of them and writing bits and pieces of scenes as they pop into my head.

I know I’ll eventually get to the point where the story is getting down on the page faster, but it’s still an uneasy place to be. All I can do, though, is take one day at a time.

Summer Reading and What's Hot Right Now

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

By Vicki Delany

I read far more in the summer than the winter. I like to sit outside in the sun by the pool with my book whereas inside over the winter I seem to be doing things.  This year I have a brand new deck and the weather has been fabulous (hot and sunny) and so I’ve been plowing through books.

This week I've read The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware (loved it) and Forty Dead Men by our own Donis Casey (totally different than Westaway but also great).  As an aside, let me say that I think Donis is one of the best writers working today who can really (and I mean really!) capture the times and the people she’s writing about, which is a farm family in 1910s Oklahoma.

As a reader my favourite type of book is the ‘modern gothic’ or standalone psychological suspense, and right now there’s an overwhelming number of them out there.  If we can get away from the “Girl Who” or “The Woman in” titles these are basically domestic thrillers in which women, mostly, are faced with a sudden, unexpected threat that turns their world upside down.  The threat often comes from the past, as long buried secrets are revealed.  Writers like Ruth Ware, Paula Hawkins, Kate Morton, Tana French, Cate Holahan.  Prince Edward County’s own Linwood Barclay has been writing this sort of book for a long time. It was with Linwood’s work that I first came across the phrase “domestic thriller” although being about men dealing with family life, his books don’t quite hit the group I am talking about.   But they’re always good and no one does twists quite like Linwood.

As always when a particular type of book suddenly becomes popular the market is flooded and some are a lot better than others. I didn’t get very far with The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn because I found it so very derivative.

As a writer, I seem to have been ahead of the curve. I’m very happy these days writing cozy mysteries and I love the characters and worlds I’ve created, but I can’t help but think I might have been too early for the boat.

My first two novels were exactly what’s so popular right now: standalone domestic thrillers with dual storylines (i.e. something that happened in the past affecting events of today). Scare the Light Away and Burden of Memory were published by Poisoned Pen Press in 2005 and 2006. After that I switched to the Constable Molly Smith series, because everyone said you have to have a series. I tried my hand once again with a modern gothic in More than Sorrow, which sorta sunk without a trace.

I might not be writing that type of book anymore but I’m glad so many people are. I’m looking forward to some great reading this summer. Tell me, readers, any books or authors you can recommend along the lines of what I’m looking for?