Facebook: Not just another pretty (social media) face

Vicki Delany here to introduce my friend and fellow author Judy Penz Sheluk, who has a brand new book coming out at the end of the month.  

 Facebook has been in the news a lot in recent days, and not necessarily in a good way. I’ll also admit to having been a Facebook holdout before I became a published mystery author. The thought of sharing what I’d had for dinner, where I went for lunch, and how I spent my summer vacation didn’t appeal. But my publisher insisted on a Facebook presence, and so I reluctantly started a Facebook Author Page and posted generic content about books, writing, comics, and the like. Then, a couple of years ago, Facebook changed the rules, insisting that in order to have a Page, I also needed a “Friends” profile.  I complied, never dreaming that my “friends” would soon outnumber my Page Likes by a wide margin—many of those friends unknown to me on a personal level. But hey, I’m all in when it comes to shameless self-promotion. After all, I’m here, aren’t I?

That takes me to how Facebook first surprised me. I started posting pictures of my (now almost three-year-old) Golden Retriever, Gibbs (and yes, for fans of NCIS, he’s named after Leroy Jethro Gibbs). Lo and behold, the friends just kept on coming—and some of them actually started buying my books. In fact, Gibbs became so popular that he now has his own dedicated WEDNESDAY WAGGLES post on my author page, where he reports in (an NCIS Marine reference) and shares a photo or two and some doggie wisdom. It’s a bit humbling to admit that his posts typically get far more Likes and Comments than mine. If only he could write…but I digress. The point of this post was to tell you the way Facebook has worked for “Author Judy” beyond Gibbs. And it has.

Case in point is my most recent novel, Past & Present, the second book in my Marketville Mystery series, and the sequel to Skeletons in the Attic. The premise is that protagonist Callie Barnstable has started a new business, Past & Present Investigations, and her first client is looking for information about a woman who came to a “bad end” in 1956—a woman who immigrated to Canada from England in 1952 on the T.S.S. Canberra, and subsequently made the journey from Quebec City to Toronto by train to meet her fiancé.

Now, I know nothing about train travel but I suspected some of my Facebook friends might. I posted a photo of an old train on Facebook and included a message asking for any information on train travel from Quebec City to Toronto in 1952. The post met with multiple responses, some of which ended up in the book, including a detailed response from R. L. Kennedy, the man behind Oldtrains.com. It’s not a huge part of the book, but I’m a stickler for accurate research, likely because I spent the better part of 15 years as a freelance journalist.

I went on to post a couple more “research” questions, which also had the added benefit of creating some early buzz for Past & Present. The bottom line: this Facebook holdout is now a convert. I still don’t post what I’ve had for dinner or lunch, but I’ve learned that for authors, Facebook can be more than a marketing tool—it can be a source of information, some of which may actually find its way into your story.

It’s also a great forum to post pix of your furry friends. Trust me, they’ll be a lot more popular than photos of what you had for lunch. Semper Fi!

Judy Penz Sheluk’s latest book, Past & Present, will be released on September 21, 2018 in trade paperback and Kindle. Find out more about Judy and her books at http://www.judypenzsheluk.com.

Bouchercon Time

Hi, everyone. Sorry for the late and brief post. I'm in St. Petersburg, Florida attending Bouchercon 2018. As most of you know Bouchercon is an international mystery convention held in a different city each year.

https://www.bouchercon2018.com/


Having a wonderful time catching up with old friends, making new ones, and having a chance to meet with my agent. I'm not in the conference hotel (The Vinoy), but there are several hotels, including mine, that are located nearby. But most people are waiting for the shuttle bus rather than walking because we've been having afternoon rain for the past two days. And even without the rain, the humidity would make a mile walk unpleasant. But St. Petersburg is a lovely city. I wish I had more time to get out and see it, particularly the Salvador Dali Museum down the street.

I'm on a panel on "Amateur Crime Solving" on Sunday morning. Then I'm on my way back to Albany.

Mark Twain and Me

I (Donis) have been watching the PBS rerun of Ken Burns' documentary on the life of Samuel Clemens, the last episode of which ran last night. It is a most excellent documentary, I'm sure you agree, as are all of Burns' offerings. But this particular one speaks to me in a different way than the others. So let me tell you a story, Dear Reader.

Many long years ago, when the world was young and I was a slip of a girl, my husband and I lived for several months in a little apartment in a town called Cagnes-sur-Mer, which is located between Nice and Cannes on the French Riviera. Once a week, Don and I would hop on the local train and take the short, nine mile trip to Nice to visit the Anglo-American Library and check out a boatload of books.

The library collection at that time consisted mainly of English language and English translation classics, and it is there that I found and read so many old titles that are difficult or nearly impossible to find these days anywhere except in ancient dusty bookshops. For instance, I was able to read the entire eleven volume translation of the eleventh century Japanese novel The Tale of Gengi by Lady Murasaki, and was blown away by the fantastical world she portrayed. 

The library also owned the entire collection of Mark Twain's writings, and I read every one of them, in order, including the autobiography. Now, like all good little English majors, I had read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and analyzed the crap out of them. I was familiar with The Prince and the Pauper and A Yankee in King Arthur's Court, though whether I had read the books or seen the 1950s era movies I can't say. I can only remember that I thought that the Connecticut Yankee looked just like Bing Crosby.

But it was only when I read the entire body of work for my own pleasure rather than for academic analysis that I found myself falling in love. And I mean that. Especially after reading his late life works, I felt such a kinship with the man that I felt true grief that he was long dead and there was no possibility that I would ever get to meet him in the flesh.

It's cliche to say the man was a genius, but he had not only a beautiful facility with words, but he was so far ahead of his time in his thinking that it is startling. Some of the things he wrote about human rights would be controversial today–especially in this current political climate. So if you have not done so, do yourself a favor, Dear Reader, and read every Twain piece you can get your hands on. Whether he enlightens or offends, he'll rock your world.

Let me leave you with one of my very favorite pieces of writing and what Wright Morris called a 'triumph of the vernacular'.

This was authored by  Twain, not as any sort of literary enterprise, but as a letter of complaint to the Hartford Gas Company in about 1901.

Sirs,

Someday you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off with giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners.  Several time you have come within an ace of smothering half this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours.  And it has happened again today.  Haven't you a telephone?

Yrs

S.L. Clemens

I consider this a prime example of how a great writer composes with language like a great musician composes with music.

More fun with names

It's fascinating to me how great Type M minds are thinking alike these days. Several of us are pre-occupied with characters - their names, their creation, and their centrality to the story - and several of us appear to be starting new novels, or even new series. Thinking up character names is is one of the first steps in beginning a new novel. Most of us choose names very carefully and deliberately. First of all the name has to be true to the age, ethnicity, and region of the character. Second, it has to have a certain rhythm so that it either rolls off the tongue or completely trips us up, depending on the traits of character we are creating. Some names sound soft and gentle, Justin, for example, while others sound more hard-hitting, like Rock. Third, it has to be distinguishable from the other characters in the book; so avoid having six one-syllable names that begin with J, like Jim, John, Jeff, etc. If readers can't keep characters straight, they'll get lost.

Fourth, and probably most importantly, we want the name to evoke particular impressions in the readers' minds. Certain names, such as Adolf, are forever fused with history. Others are associated with cultural stereotypes. I would likely not name my rural Eastern Ontario farm characters Nigel, for example. Jim, John or Bud for him. Unless I want his name to be an issue in itself.

Aline jokingly said no action hero would be called Cedric. I smiled because the hero in my Rapid Reads series for reluctant readers is named Cedric Elvis O'Toole. It's a weighty, tease-worthy handle that the shy, self-effacing young handyman has had to carry all his life. It forms a delightful contrast to who is he. Amanda Doucette is the series hero in my regular mystery series, and her name was chosen with careful attention to the rhythm of it, the combined impression of softness and toughness, and to some extent the ordinariness of it. Both Amanda and Doucette are names often found in Eastern Canada where she is from, and Amanda is a common but not too common name in her age group. I find the current tendency to give heroes, particularly female heroes, really quirky names annoying; to me, it detracts from the realism of the character.

One of the beauties of Canada is its cultural diversity. In addition to its Indigenous peoples, it is being settled by people from around the world, so there is a wealth of names to pick from, increasing the challenge of getting the right name for the age, gender, and ethnicity of the characters in a particular region. In FIRE IN THE STARS, set in Newfoundland, I had to make sure that all the Newfoundland names I used were not only genuine to the island but also to the specific part of the island. Luckily the Internet allows me to poke around in villages, websites, tourism ads, local news reports, and so on to poach the names I needed.

In THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY, I had characters from Vietnam, Haiti, Syria, and Nigeria, as well as French Canadians. Once again, the Internet to the rescue. It's still possible to get the name wrong - did I get the right regional/ religious affiliation for the Nigerian name I chose, for example - but I hope I've reduced my margin of error.

I am just beginning the earliest draft of my fourth Amanda Doucette novel, currently titled THE ANCIENT DEAD. It is set in southeastern Alberta, among prairies and badlands. Some of the characters are descendants of early settlers from various parts of Europe, and I will be picking surnames that are reported in the local history books from that era.

Characters appear unexpectedly during the writing of a book, and in each case, I pause to consider exactly what name to give them. At the end of the first draft, however, I have one final test for the entire cast. I list all the letters of the alphabet down the page, and then fill in each name, first and last, beside the letter it begins with. This allows me to see at a glance whether I have too many names beginning in M, or names that are too similar in appearance, sound, or length. Thus a character may find itself with a new name at the end of the process, which can be amusing when I forget who that character is. Usually fairly minor characters make this sacrifice.

Choosing character names is like choosing baby names. The writer wants the name to conjure up something about the character's nature. Emily is a very pretty, feminine name, ideal for a gentle, caring character. But all this care may be derailed by a reader's own experience. If your reader has been dumped by the love of his life Emily, he's going to have a very different emotion.

Getting it all correct at the beginning

by Rick Blechta

Stories, or plots if you will, are funny things. The correct balance must be struck at the beginning or the darn things won’t stick their hooks into readers (or listeners) and one’s audience, and well, then the writer has blown it. It’s not much good either to have a reader get to, say, page 50 in a novel and think, I’ll give this another 25 pages, and if I still don’t like it, I’ll toss the book. Talk about damning with faint praise!

So in last week’s post I revealed that I’m still having trouble with the beginning of my work-in-progress. I’d reworked it three times and at 12,500 words — where I normally stop to take a good long think about how it’s all going — something still doesn’t feel right.

The issue is a thorny one. I’ve got to introduce the two protagonists and a side character, another character who looks as if she’s going to be one of the plot’s main drivers, and of course, lay out what I hope are intriguing indications as to the excitement that’s going to follow.

After reading Tom’s most recent post, I suspected that my nascent novel might be suffering from the same situation — that the plot really wasn’t going anywhere — and if I ever wanted this to be the first book of a projected series, or even have a publisher agree to give me a contract for just this one book, I had to be on my A-game.

I read through what I had and formed a conclusion, but I also wanted someone else’s opinion before I went back to the beginning yet again. That night, I passed my laptop over to my wife and said, “Could you please read this?” It wasn’t all of what I’ve written, just those crucial first 12,500 words.

I took a walk around the block while she read. When I returned, she was back to the book she was reading when I interrupted her.

“So what did you think?”

“Overall, not bad. Was that a flashback in the first chapter? It wasn’t quite clear.”

I looked at the first chapter and because of a page break, the fact that this was a separate scene had no visual cue. Easily fixed.

“Would you keep reading this story? Were you looking for more when you got to the end of what I gave you?”

Long pause while she thought. “I’m not sure. I like the main character, at least I hope he is the main character, the retired detective?”

“Yes, but the pacing, the hints of the story to come, were they compelling?”

“There wasn’t a lot of that there as far as I could tell. It was more talk, talk, talk than action. I supposed you needed to explain who everyone is before the story can really get going.”

Bingo! I failed.

Here’s what I’d realized when I’d read it over: Is there any reason I need to explain character background and motivation right at the beginning? As long as the important things are revealed somewhere along the line before the story concludes, if the information is worked in well, who cares?

I went back to the first Nero Wolfe book Rex Stout wrote. The Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin was pretty well complete and ticking along. We really knew nothing about Wolfe’s amazingly varied background, ditto for Archie. And that lack of knowledge didn’t hinder the story one bit. We just go with what we’re being told with little thought to character motivation. At least that’s the way my wife and I (we both recently re-read Fer de Lance) responded to the story. Rex Stout just plops the reader down in the middle of his characters’ universe and tells us an intriguing story. As we go along, we get more and more engrossed in the finer details of character and place.

So I was left thinking about my own novel, why don’t I just do the same thing. I need to trust my creations, put them into the middle of an intriguing plot and let them do their own thing.

I’m now back to word number 12,500 and things are feeling a lot better. I’m also on Chapter 5 rather than Chapter 3, that’s how much I’ve cut out. Did I throw all that excess away, though? Absolutely not! The writing is good and it explains a lot about the characters. I’ll simply dole that information out at other places in the story, or maybe even keep it for another novel where it can be dressed in different clothes to fit the different production.

I sure wish it hadn’t taken me four tries to get to this point, however…

The Naming of Characters

What with the mysterious happenings in Sybil's car and the uncanny number of times another  post has exactly echoed what I was planning to blog about myself, I am beginning to wonder if a strange spirit of some kind is abroad on Type M.  As I'm starting a new book, finding the right names for the characters is at the forefront of my mind and I was planning to write about it when I read Sybil's post asking us what we felt about characters' names.

It's the old 'That which we call a rose' question.  Would the human love affair with roses ever have developed if it had been called a rutabaga instead?  Would the unromantic sound of the word have made the scent less seductive?

I wonder if anyone else has as many baby name books as I do?  Admittedly, one was inherited from my daughter after they had completed their family.  It's called 'A Thousand and One Baby' names and when I asked her  how they'd chosen their first-born's name she said that it was the only one they could both agree on.

Yes, we all have very definite views on names and I'm only thankful I don't have to consult anyone else about what to call my characters.  It's hard enough to satisfy myself that I've got it right.  I'm really, really fussy, so I spend a lot of time leafing through the books to find the name that will jump out at me for the character I have in mind.

The name of my first series detective, Marjory Fleming, was easy, though. It is a deliberate homage to a Scottish 19th century child poet.  She was wonderfully precocious, writing sharp and funny poems that caught the attention of Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott, but died before her ninth birthday.  I had always loved her and she came from the county of Fife, as I do - the saying has it that you need a long spoon to sup with a Fifer - and it seemed a good precedent for the name.  Fifers are a clannish lot, and the only other person to guess the reason for my Marjory's name was Val McDermid - another one of the tribe.

Her sergeant, Tam MacNee, came into my mind with the name attached.  Other names, I suppose, reflect my personal prejudices.  Marjory's  husband is stable and dependable; to me he's a natural Bill.  Charles Dickens obviously didn't think so; Bill Sykes was one of his nastier villains.

Opinions differ strongly but there must be some names we all agree on.  I doubt if many authors would call an an action man hero Cedric or Percy; you wouldn't call a mousy librarian Atalanta.  On the other hand, take Jessica, for example - to me that's a strong, professional-type name but a friend of mine thinks it's sort of mimsy and feminine, so not Jessica for my Detective Chief Superintendent.  My new detective is Kelso; I like  hard consonants for a strong character.

But in general it's very difficult to explain why one name is right and another isn't. I don't have a system of any sort. Rather feebly, I think I would say it's just that this character sort of feels as if they would have a name like this. I'd love to know how other people do it.

And I'd particularly like to know what readers feel about characters' names.  Would a name you don't like put you off?  Do you think as you read, 'Can't think why it should be that name.  That character is obviously a Jennifer not a Jane.'  It would be fascinating feedback.

Guest Post: Jackie Baldwin

Aline here.  I'm delighted to introduce Jackie Baldwin,  a Scottish author who is rapidly going places. With a background in criminal law, she moved from real life to fictional crime with a series of thrillers featuring ex-priest DI Frank Farrell and she joins us today with a contribution to the long-running Type M discussion about planners and pantsers.


Losing the Plot.

 I have written two books in my DI Farrell series but I approached the plotting in vastly different ways.  With Dead Man's Prayer, I knew how my plot would develop right from the start as it sprung from a very specific idea.  Essentially, then, I was viewing other characters from the start as red herrings and grafting suspicious behaviour on to them whilst knowing all along they were wholly innocent.  This felt contrived to me while writing it but apparently, according to my readers, I had gotten away with it.

My first book was ten years in the making with multiple drafts, including three years languishing in a drawer.  So you could say I had taken leisurely into a whole new dimension.  The offer of publication two weeks after submission was profoundly shocking.  There was a ridiculous amount to do in a very short space of time.  It felt like being put in an authorial car wash and I emerged buffeted, dripping wet behind the ears and rather stunned into publication six months later.

My editor wanted to meet me for a drink at Harrogate to discuss the second book.  What second book?  Already?  I rushed into an empty room, scribbled some stuff down on a piece of paper then went to meet her.  'Oh it's about blah blah' I announced.  She enthused.  I panicked.  I'd best get on with it then.

This time, remembering how I had felt about writing a plot when I already knew all the answers and how artificial that had felt to me, I decided to try a bold experiment.  Bear in mind her, I'm more of a mouse than a lion!   I decided to launch into my second novel, Perfect Dead, without a clue as to who the murderer or murderers were.    There were about six potential villains to play with.  I have to say this was a lot more fun to write and I found myself rushing forward almost in the manner of a reader myself.  It went faster because I wasn't second guessing every tiny thing.

Then the inevitable happened.  I hit the soggy middle.  Both the characters and plot were raging wildly out of control.  All those tiny decisions I had effectively deferred now came back to haunt me.  I felt paralysed with indecision.  I ate a discomfiting amount of cake.  I developed a passion for ironing.  On the verge of transforming into a domestic Goddess, I forced myself back to the book and the words started to drip if not flow.  The soggy middle firmed up and developed a six pack.  Once I had left that behind my fingers fairly flew over the keys until I typed my two favourite words in the English language, The End.

I am now starting book 3.  I want to be through the first draft by the end of the year so I am already
feeling the pressure.  The aim is to keep the excitement of writing Perfect Dead but avoid the soggy middle.  To this end, I have a little more idea of who might have done what but nothing is pinned down too firmly.  I have vague suspicions of my characters but, as of yet, no proof of their wrong-doing.  Hopefully, DI Farrell will do all the investigating for me...

All About Awards

My latest book in the Lottie Albright series, Fractured Families, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. A friend asked me how books were considered for awards in the first place. 

Ha! One of the most humbling processes in this business of becoming a writer is screwing up the courage for BSP (blatant self promotion). There's the awkward feeling that one shouldn't have written the book to begin. A quick walk through Barnes and Noble and one realizes there are so many obviously superior books out there.

In the beginning, to believe your book is deserving of an award is an enormous step. But relax, you don't have to believe anything at all. Just enter the contest anyway.

It's your step to make. I've been the awards chairman for Western Writers of American and judged in all categories. Believe me, you care more about your book than anyone else. It's up to you to enter contests or suggest appropriate entries to your publisher. 

Winning a major award increases sales. Each genre has its own treasured equivalency of the Oscar. For members of Mystery Writers of America, its the Edgar, Romance Writer of America, the Rita, Women Writing the West, the Willa, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers, the Hugo and Nebula, Western Writers of America, the Spur award.

And of course there are the biggies, such as the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Pen/Faulkner Award.

There are many, many more categories, plus regional awards and specialized awards for particular subjects.

As a former awards chairman my best advice is to follow the rules. To the letter. Perfectly. Most writers can also read. Read the rules, then follow them. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

The previous chairman told me I would lose my respect for the publishing industry after serving as an awards chairman. It wasn't that bad, but honestly, to this day I cannot speak of certain company without wiping the froth off my mouth. They submitted a terrific book in the wrong category. It was a non-fiction book about school teachers. I called twice and told them it was incorrectly entered as a first novel. I was thoroughly bawled out and it goes without saying, the book was not resubmitted.

Read the rules! A book previously published in another form in an earlier year cannot be submitted for the current contest. The year it's copyrighted prevails. If forms are required, send them. Sign them. Missing information is a common slip-up. So is missing deadlines. So is sending the wrong number of books to the wrong judges.

Submitting books for awards can be really expensive. Many contests require an entry fee, plus a number of books. The highest number of books I've ever had to submit for an award is seven. For some reason, four sticks in in my mind as the average number. And then there's postage costs. Plus the trauma of wondering if your books have arrived at the destination. I always opt for tracking.

When in doubt, enter! You certainly won't win if you don't try. Writing is a rather lonely profession and there's nothing like an award to boost one's ego and bolster one's resolve to get back to work writing the next book.   

The benefits of writing the screenplay

Over the past year, I’ve had the good fortune of having a Hollywood group (a producer, a writer, a director, and an executive producer who brought them all together) believe Peyton Cote, my US Border Patrol agent and single mom, would make a good TV show.

It’s nice –– in a wave-from-the-shore kind of way.

They worked up a pitch, which I had nothing to do with, and now they’re making the rounds. No bites so far. My role has consisted of answering a couple questions. This is, I’m told, typical.

It’s also a little frustrating: Peyton Cote isn’t a PI or a cop. She’s a very thoroughly-researched (if I do say so myself) character from a division of the department of justice that operates under the radar (some say covertly), meaning learning the ins and outs of the profession takes years. You can’t do ride-alongs (anymore).

I played hockey with a handful of agents and parlayed that into hours spent with those men riding dirt roads along the Maine-Canada border in order to write the series. So it’s odd to sit on the sideline and hear a pitch was created. And then to hear that the pitch was made.

I’m grateful. Let me be very clear about that. After all, if Peyton Cote ever sees a TV screen, it could be a shot in the arm to book sales. But it’s also odd to have no voice in any of it.

While all of this has been going on, I wrote what I hope will be the first novel in a new series featuring a husband and wife team. A large departure from Peyton Cote, this is a novel set at a New England boarding school. With the first book finished, I’m trying to write the accompanying screenplay. The experience is fascinating. I’m reading screenplays, and reshaping a first-person novel into a cinematic story. Characters that had relatively minor roles now have leads. And the first-person voice, so important to the novel, is replaced by action scenes.

Stating the obvious: I have zero experience in this genre. So maybe this is nothing more than a 120-page writing exercise. But if it is, it’s a useful one. One that forces me to re-evaluate the original work, cut out anything not necessary, rethink how the story is best told on the screen, and write it with all of that in mind.

Would Sherlock Be Sherlock?

There’s a movement afoot in my part of the world to rename things. It started with the city of El Segundo renaming its portion of Sepulveda Blvd to Pacific Coast Highway.

Let me orient you a bit. Sepulveda is a very long, generally North/South street that runs for miles and miles. The portion I’m going to talk about starts just south of LAX. From there it runs through the cities of El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach, in that order.

For as long as I’ve lived in the area, the street has been named Sepulveda until it reaches Hermosa where it becomes PCH. Everyone’s used to that. Then El Segundo decided to change its portion (about 2 miles) to PCH as well. That means as you travel south from LAX you go from Sepulveda Blvd to PCH back to Sepulveda and finally to PCH again. For us locals it’s not an issue. It’s the same street we’ve always known. But I would think that could be very confusing for visitors to the area.

As far as I can tell the reason for the change is El Segundo felt they weren’t getting enough credit for being a beach city so they thought the name change would signal to everyone far and wide that they were a city along the coast.

Now a realtor in Manhattan Beach has started a campaign to rename the portion of the city east of Sepulveda (that darn street again!) from East Manhattan to Manhattan Knolls. The portions of the city west of that darn street have cute names like the Sand Section, the Hill Section and the Tree Section. These aren’t official designations, just convenient names used by residents and real estate agents to tell someone approximately where a house is located.

Doesn’t make a darn bit of difference to me what these places are called. It doesn’t change how I view them. I’m not that sure it’ll make much difference other people either.

But all of this kerfuffle did get me to thinking about characters and their names. Would Sherlock Holmes be the same character if he had a more ordinary name like John Smith or Ben Rogers? (I pulled those names out of the air; no offense to anyone with those names.) Would Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have given Sherlock the same personality if he’d given him a different name? I have no idea which came first for him, the name or the personality traits of the character, or if they arrived at the same time. I suspect, though, that he knew his character’s personality traits fairly early on.

I know a character doesn’t truly come alive for me until I give him/her at least a first name. But, before that, I generally have some idea of the character’s personality. I do try to pick a name that goes along with them.

For my first book, Fatal Brushstroke, I named the murder victim that my main character finds in her garden, Hester Bouquet. This was a bit of an homage to Hyacinth Bucket, the main character in the British TV show, Keeping Up Appearances. Hester has some of the same personality traits as Hyacinth—she’s always worried about appearances and what people think of her and her family. If you remember, Hyacinth Bucket insisted on having her name pronounced “Bouquet”.

Probably the only character I’ve created in my books where the personality didn’t come first was my main character, Aurora Anderson. I just love the name Aurora so I wanted to use it and Aurora Amelia Anderson had a nice ring to it.

So here are a couple questions for all of you writers out there. Does it matter what you name your characters? Does the name influence the personality traits you give them or is it the other way around?

#

In other news, the phantom seems to have left my car. (Knock on wood!) No more mysteriously opened windows. It was pretty hot when the “peculiarities” happened so I figure the phantom didn’t want to be left in the car with the windows rolled up. Now that it’s cooler, it’s happier. That’s what I’m going with, anyway.

Creating characters: that sinking feeling

by Rick Blechta

What is the most important part of the creative process in writing a novel?

Some might say the plot; some might say the characters. I feel the correct answer has to be the latter. You could have the best plot in the world, exciting, innovative, edge-of-your-seat thrilling, but let’s face it, the characters tell the story, and if they’re no good, you’ve got a dud of a novel on your hands.

Tom’s excellent post yesterday talked about the importance of characters being under stress, and that’s a very good point. What I remember from a university class on writing is that “characters must change over the course of a novel.” What would cause those changes? Stress certainly would be critical in that.

My post last week was about Nero Wolfe and that caused me to think about digging out our old paperbacks from a carton in the basement. My wife saved me the trouble by purchasing two double-novel paperbacks for the first four Wolfe stories. First thing I’ve got to say is that Rex Stout was a damned fine writer. Even though these novels were written in the ’30s, they still hold up really well for the most part, even though society has changed so much.

But second is, while the characters are splendid, you could tell that Stout hadn’t fully formed them yet. Archie Goodwin and Wolfe are fairly well set, but the secondary characters aren’t. Example: Inspector Cramer actually smokes his cigars — in Wolfe’s office! That’s a small detail, but Stout used his cigar-gnawing to very good effect in later books.

I’m currently wading through what I hope will be the first book in a wildly successful series. (Hey! One should always hope.) It’s been tough and I’ve re-written the front of the book four times now because, to be honest, it just hasn’t felt right. I work best by feeling my way rather following an outline, and I also know how critically important it is to get the main character(s) correct in the first novel of a projected series. The thing I’m worrying most about is pacing. How much character development stuff needs to be shared in those critical first hundred pages?

Since I’m feeling my way forward with the characters as well as the plot, and I’m writing a thriller, you should be able to see the conundrum. The plot has to move like stink — but it’s the characters who will make it believable.

Then I read Tom’s post this morning and one comment really struck home: “Finally, my editor said that in the first hundred pages…NOTHING HAPPENS!” And for a writer, that is a surprisingly easy thing to do.

Back to the novel. Hmmm… I’m now thinking I’ve got the same problem and I’m going to have to go back again and set things up anew.

I have a plan for accomplishing what I need, but more about that next week!

Stress

Henry James said that plot is characters under stress.

When I began working on my second Geneva Chase novel, Darkness Lane, I sent the first hundred pages to my editor at Poisoned Pen Press. In it, Geneva is sober, cooking meals for her and Caroline (Geneva’s ward) in their warm, cozy kitchen, and she’s sworn off married men.

In the first chapter, I wrote about an abused woman who waits until her drunken husband has fallen asleep and then covers him with gasoline and lights a match. By the time the police arrive, the fire department is vainly trying to put out the blaze and the husband is long past screaming.

The cops find the woman standing on the curb with a plastic cup filled with Merlot. She looks at the officers and says, “I’m just toasting my husband.”

A page later, we find that a fifteen-year-old high school girl has gone missing. She happens to be Caroline’s best friend.

A good start? I thought so.

My editor, in her diplomatic but honest way, sent back a critique essentially saying that she could see how I was putting the puzzle pieces in place, but Geneva, my protagonist, was too suburban.

Oh my, God, I’d made her boring!

My editor went on to say, she hoped that the part of the abused woman torching her husband wasn’t being used as a ‘billboard’, a ruse to bring the reader into the story but once you’ve past it, no longer is part of the narrative.

Oh my, God. It was!

Finally, my editor said that in the first hundred pages…NOTHING HAPPENS!

Oh, my God. She’s right!

Two weeks later, I’d rewritten that first hundred pages. After review, my editor came back and told me that the first hundred pages are dark and it feels like everything is right on the edge of disaster. Keep writing.

Whew!

I put the characters under stress. I made the abused woman a secondary plot line, something that would merge with the disappearance of the high school girl. I brought in two characters from an earlier book I’d written but was never published, bad guys—really bad guys.

Geneva had to have it coming from all sides. Teenage Caroline became a pain in the ass. The publisher of the failing newspaper where Geneva is working is threatening to sell the publication to a media conglomerate, screwing his employees into the ground. A teacher at Caroline’s school disappears at the same time the high school student has gone missing. Geneva discovers the body of the student’s father, brutally murdered.

Geneva starts drinking again.

Characters under stress.

Australian writer, Ian Irvine said, “Conflict forces characters to act in ways that reveal who they are – and nothing tells us more about characters than how they deal with their troubles.”

He goes on to say, “Stories are about adversity. Happiness can be the ending of the story, but it can’t be the story itself. Why not? Because happy characters don’t want to change. Happiness doesn’t force the characters to act and thus reveal themselves and, if the characters are having a good time, the reader is not.”

Plus, stress and conflict create plot twists. When I write, at some point, the characters take on their own lives. I’m along for the ride. They seem to create their own dialogue, move through a scene without my guidance. And just like real life, things happen that I didn’t see coming. Some of my best plot twists just seem to have happened on their own.

Crazy? You bet. But aren’t all writers a little nuts?

And because your characters are under stress, it can feel uncomfortable to write the scene. It’s painful, not because it’s bad prose, but because your characters are struggling with the obstacles that YOU’VE given them. They’re your characters. You created them. You’re making them suffer.

Overcoming dire obstacles under stress is what draws the reader into your story, advances your plot, and makes your characters more sympathetic.

Have a great week and I hope to see you at either/or the Poisoned Pen Press Mystery Conference in Phoenix over Labor Day weekend and/or at Bouchercon, September 6-9 in St. Petersburg, FL.

A Vampire in Cowboy Boots

My newest novel is just out, book 7 in my Felix Gomez vampire-detective series, Steampunk Banditos: Sex Slaves of Shark Island from WordFire Press. This story has been ten years in the making. When the steampunk craze started I totally dug it and couldn't wait to craft my own take on the sub-genre. My agent at the time wasn't keen on steampunk and considered it a flash in the pan. I had just signed a contract for books 4 and 5 of the series, plus I had started on a graphic novel and so I let the idea languish for a while. Years, actually. Meanwhile I saw steampunk books zooming in sales. Part of the attraction was that science fiction had temporarily lost its sense of wonder and steampunk had all kinds of dazzling spectacle. But the sub-genre never grew much beyond its tropes. There were several bestselling books but steampunk failed to attract a mainstream audience. Hopes were pinned on a breakout steampunk movie to really inspire the masses but all those attempts fizzled. The authors I knew who were identified with steampunk eventually shed their corsets and goggles and moved on. But there's still enough of a following who revel in a quirky alternative world, providing the story is good. Which I trust mine is.

So why Steampunk Banditos? When I finished book 6 in the series, Rescue From Planet Pleasure, I thought I was done with the main story arc. Plus there were world-building elements that bothered me and I was looking for a way to discard them. Then it hit me to do a mashup of sorts, to put my Felix in the steampunk world I had set aside. As I constructed the plot I referred to a map and what did I notice in the Gulf of California (formerly the Sea of Cortez), but Isla Tiburón--Shark Island. How could I not have that place in my story? Truthfully, I planned to not emphasize the steampunk aspect by titling the book simply as Sex Slaves of Shark Island, until my publisher pointed out that the title would trip spam filters and several distributors might also object. So I hung the original title back on the book. My cover designer from Planet Pleasure, Eric Matelski, offered to work on the new cover. The obvious feature would've been a woman in a cage but that seemed too exploitative. So he and I went back-and-forth and interestingly, almost simultaneously arrived on an image focused on handcuffs and chains to portray a sex slave. The sharks circling menacingly was a given.

As I wrote the manuscript I found that my plan to streamline the story elements seriously backfired. What happens is that Felix is switched with another Felix in an alternative world. He arrives midway in an on-going adventure so the challenge was to build his relationships with the other characters. A big change is that now his side-kicks are not fellow vampires but humans. Though the female lead, Hermosa Singer, lacks supernatural powers, she has such a tornado of a personality that she practically wrenched the plot out of Felix's hands. And mine too. Since I love mysteries, be prepared for plenty of hidden agendas and double-crosses. Buy your copy here.

There Goes Summer

I am in that transitional time of year, when summer "ends" because school is about to begin.

I don't regret the passing of the season because I am not a hot weather person. I love cool, crisp autumn days. What I will miss is the sense of freedom that summer has brought since I was a child. I may be the teacher now but I still feel the same joy in May when the last class ends and the same longing for just a few more weeks of  vacation when it's time to go back.  It's always takes a month or so to get back into "school mode".

That said, it isn't as if I took the summer "off". I used the three months to do research and write. I finished my first draft of my nonfiction book on dress and appearance except for some tinkering I need to do before Monday. I finished a short story I promised to contribute to an anthology and sent it off to the editor. I'm working on the other short story I need to finish before the end of the month. And I can finally see the shape of the 1939 book.

And -- picking up on the discussion we've been having here -- I resolved my concept versus character dilemma. I did that today. This afternoon. I realized I need a prologue. Not a first chapter. An honest to-goodness prologue that sets the stage and provides context. I'm going to do that with a prologue spanning a week in the lives of three real people -- Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. What they were doing that week in February foreshadows the events and issues that are about to have a major impact on my fictional characters. I wish I had realized this a month or two ago instead of spinning my wheels trying to figure out how to introduce the main characters and also provide that context.

On the other hand, I did get to know the characters better as I was trying different points of views and experimenting with different beginnings. So the time was not wasted. I just wish I had more summer vacation writing time. But the looming first day of classes forced me to launch my August clean-up at home and in my office at school. I found some notes to myself that were really useful buried under piles of papers and books.

Three days and counting. But I'm going to make the most of what's left of my summer -- an afternoon off to read a book, a nap on Sunday afternoon, and some work on my website to get up those discussion questions that I didn't do the first time around for the reissue of my second Lizzie Stuart book, a Dead Man's Honor. I may even get the new shower curtains hung. 

And come Monday, I'll remind myself that it's a brand new (academic) year full of possibilities.

She Needs a Dog

My work in progress is beginning to take shape. This is a relief, because the WIP is the first book in what may become a new series for me. Over the past 13 years, I have written ten books in the Alafair Tucker series, which is set in the 1910s and features a woman with ten children. The first book, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, took place in 1912 and the most recent, Forty Dead Men, took place in 1919 and dealt with the aftermath of World War I. I’ve reached 1920. Most of the children are grown by now, and for some time I’ve been wondering about how their adult lives turned out.

So...in order to satisfy my own curiosity and shake things up a bit, I decided to follow one of the children into the Roaring Twenties and see what became of her. As it turns out, she left Oklahoma altogether and had a really exciting life.

A new series set in a new location and era means lots of research, and it also means that I have to get to know a whole bunch of new characters. As my blogmates have been so ably discussing over the past week, a good plot is an excellent thing, but memorable characters are the most important thing if you want your readers to keep coming back for more.

When I started out on the new book, I had what I though was a complete cast of characters ready to go, but as I write, new characters keep suggesting themselves. It’s interesting to see how every new character’s very presence affects the tale, just as the insertion of a real person into a group changes its entire chemistry and dynamic. Adding a new character into a book that is well underway gives me a jolt of writing energy. It’s amazing how little it takes to make big changes in the way a story unfolds.

This is not the first time added a new character in the middle of the process. Whenever I have done such a thing, it has been as though the character was on the sidelines the whole time, like a relief quarterback, just waiting to jump into the game and throw the winning pass. Usually it’s a person, but sometimes it’s an animal. I was busily typing along on the MS when it struck me like lighting that my heroine needs a dog, and that dog is going do something that saves the day. In my fourth book, The Sky Took Him, I added Ike the cat after the entire story was written. I had to go back and sprinkle Ike’s presence through the novel and it was a lot of trouble. And yet, I don’t know he did it, but that cat tied the action together with a big red bow. He was a magic character. I can only hope that my new guy has the same juju.

When you create new characters, either for a series or a stand-alone, you may feel a bit like God, making people behave like this or that and causing all sorts of unpleasant things to happen to them.  But no matter how much you think you’re in control, eventually some miracle happens and the characters develop wills of their own and don't listen to you any more.  I think this is not an uncommon experience for writers.  After a while, you can't force characters to respond to the action in the way you want them to any more than you could force a real person to do what you want.  When this happens, you know you've succeeded.  If your character behaves like a living person, then your readers are going to care about her like they would a living person.

The trouble with quirks and flaws

Can you take one more post about characters with flaws? It's a fascinating topic, but one that risks becoming a cliche. How many reviews and blurbs begin with the phrase "a flawed but likeable hero"? It seems as if nowadays the main character MUST have flaws in order to be weighty enough to carry a story or a series (not to mention land an agent or publisher). Those flaws are supposed to give them a uniqueness and humanity that sets them apart from the million other heroes striving to solve mysteries and save the world on the shelves of fiction. Sometimes in addition to flaws, the characters have "quirks" bestowed upon them by authors hoping to make them even more unique. Some quirks are endearing, such as feeding homeless cats, whereas others are more serious, like giving a character OCD or autism, for example, which somehow gives them special powers.

A relatable character with depth and flaws that give them humanity and create a quiver of tension –as in, "Oh no, is he going to screw this up again?"– is the centre point of a good story. If the reader doesn't engage with the hero, they will not engage with the book. But there's a risk that writers are using flaws and quirks as a substitute for real depth. Making the character an alcoholic or an abuse victim allows the writer to push certain well-worn buttons that create an instant, but superficial connection. Moreover, many of these standard flaws have themselves become cliches. In fact, the alcoholic, divorced, embittered cop is one of the most overused cliches in the business. It takes a very skilled writer like Rankin to get beyond the cliche. Unfortunately as standard flaws become cliches, writers are forced to forage farther afield in search of bigger and better flaws.

Real depth means layers of ambivalence and past experiences that inform how the character reacts on the page, even if the writer never tells us about those underlying influences. It means knowing your characters as well as you know your family; knowing how they will react, knowing how they feel in every situation you put them in, however mundane, and then allowing them to surprise you by doing something unexpected from time to time. Real people are often but not always consistent, so characters need that freedom too.

Some writers achieve this by creating detailed backstories and character sketches before they begin. Others get to know their characters along the way and then add depth and nuance in later drafts. I suspect most good writers do a combination. The experiences the character goes through at the beginning of the book will change them and affect how they react in later scenes. That's one reason I have trouble with outlining ahead of time. When I write a scene, I try to slip into that character's skin so that I feel, see, and experience that scene as they would. That's why I always try to walk in my character's shoes and experience the things I'll put them through, including subjecting myself to winter camping in order to write THE TRICKSTER'S LULLABY.

This "walking in their shoes" feeling doesn't occur during outlining, at least to the same depth. Only once I'm in that character's skin can I truly imagine how they will react, and that will inform how the scene unfolds. I may end up the scene in a very different place than I had planned (in that hypothetical outline), but if I've done it right, it should feel real, credible, and human to the reader.

My characters end up being flawed – Amanda Doucette can be reckless and infuriating, and Michael Green is always forgetting his family obligations  – but those traits grew out of my constantly asking "what would they do next?" as I am writing. It allows me the most delightful surprises along the way and helps the characters to evolve and grow. Michael Green in NONE SO BLIND (tenth in the series) is a very different person from DO OR DIE. Amanda is also growing. I think this evolution is one of the strengths of a series. Readers want to engage with an interesting character, and they want to follow along in their life and watch not only what happens to them, but also how they change.

Inching towards perfection, but never attaining it. That would be the end of the series, not to mention boring.

Old Friends

by Rick Blechta

First off, I’m referring to books as old friends in this post, and readers, all of us have these I’m sure. You know the sort of book you reach for when you’re sick or depressed, the ones that have a real resonance for you, the book that would accompany you to a desert island. These are the sort of books that you can slip into like a pair of comfortable slippers.

In the case of crime fiction, those old friends might come from a very large family. With Sherlock Holmes, or Miss Marple or any number of series, you could be sick for several months (God forbid!) and still have lots of reading material.

This past summer, in casting around for audio books to listen to on one of our many trips to the New York City area, I stumbled on a webpage with all thirteen of the Nero Wolfe radio plays produced in 1982 by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Gold mine!

Starring Canadian actors Mavor Moore as Wolfe and Don Francks as Archie Goodwin (and they are both utterly fabulous in their roles), the plays were fully dramatized and had terrific casts made up of acting veterans of the day. When they were first broadcast, I can remember hurrying our two sons to bed so I could give my undivided attention every week when the next one was on the air. These dramas are something I’ve remembered so fondly for many years. Around 1998 I actually contacted CBC to find out if they were available for sale. No dice. While they apparently were available from a company called DH Audio, they no longer seem to be available. (I’d be more than happy to purchase them, so if you happen to discover where I can do that, please let me know.)

But here’s the bottom line on this one. My “old friend” is available as free listening (or downloading if you know how to do it) from this website: https://archive.org/details/NWolfeCBC. Give a listen if you will.

Who knows? You may find a new “old friend.”

Developing Character

I was interested in John's post last week, talking about character-driven versus concept-based writing. The books I enjoy most have always been the first of those, so it's probably inevitable that the ones I write come down on that side. Indeed, once I have the character and the environment set up I do have exactly the feeling John mentioned: that even between times, when I'm not there, they go on with their own life.

It started me thinking about how you begin to set up a character with a life of its own. Before I ever start, I like to know a great deal about their background, probably much more than will ever appear in print. I want to know where they've come from, what they've done, their likes and dislikes, their upbringing and genetic inheritance.

It's been interesting having that on my mind this week when I've had my grandchildren visiting. They live a long way away so I don't see them every day, just about six or seven times a year, so the differences as they grow are very visible. They're aged 11, 9 and 7, just beginning to develop their own ideas, but you can still clearly see the inheritance both of looks and abilities. One has her father's beautiful brown eyes and scientific interests. The boy has his paternal grandmother's auburn hair and his maternal grandfather's mathematical ability. The third one has big blue eyes like her mum and likes writing stories which I like to think just might come from me. It's a genetic cocktail which contains all sorts of other components from ancestors I've never even met.

But then you add in, for instance, place in the family. The oldest one, like my older sister, has a highly developed sense of responsibility; the youngest one very much sees himself as being there to be looked after. (And, confession time, as the youngest in my family, I do still, even at my advanced age.)

Then you chip in the outlook of their parents and their philosophy of child-rearing (an awesome success, given the kids' behavior – I am a very lucky granny). This will be a huge important influence, especially on their happiness and well-being, but nothing is certain and as they grow up and become independent, they could react to it positively or negatively.

This is all the sort of stuff that I need to know about my characters before I set out and on that I can base what will happen to them and how they will react. In writing a book you can do that.

With grandchildren not so much. For they, as Kahlil Gibran put it, 'dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit, even in your dreams.' Frustrating, and fascinating.

Pitch Perfect or Perfect Pitch

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how TV shows are pitched, and, subsequently, thinking of the differences between TV content and the material I typically put in my novels.

Obviously, there are similarities between TV series and book series, but the differences, I’m learning, are striking. And most of them have to do with content.

As a reader, I’m all-in on character. Give me a compelling character, and I’ll watch him take out the garbage or sit with her in a cafe as she reads. The plot is secondary. When the great man himself was writing the books, I would buy each Robert B. Parker Spenser novel each year –– would eagerly await it, in fact –– to see what the characters have been up to since we last spoke. TV is different. Characters need to be compelling, yes, but there’s only so much time between commercials. So content carries the viewer. Plot. Tension. And the content needs to be current and relevant.

My Peyton Cote series stars a female US Border Patrol agent, who’s also a single mother. I can do a lot with that in 80,000 words. What’s her mother like? What’s her learning-disabled son dealing with at school? Why’s her ex such an asshole? And where’s this new relationship with the State Trooper going to go? Was that comment at work a gender-related micro-aggression?

But the demographics of readers (and, as a teacher, it pains me to say this) is different from the typical makeup of the TV viewer. When was the last time you saw a teenager on the train reading a book? Peyton Cote on TV needs to be newsworthy, her conflicts timely. That is, she needs to be someone we might see dealing with issues we hear about on the news. On TV, Peyton’s gay sister might also be one of Putin’s spies, something Peyton won’t find out until season three. And that new man in Peyton’s life, the State Trooper we all love? Well, the gay sister is seducing him to learn something about a Maine politician. A stretch? Maybe, but you get the point. Timeliness and relevance trump character. In fact, that quaint northern Maine town where Peyton is stationed? Well, that might be home to Chinese spies. ISIS is old news.

Anyway, all of this has me thinking. How much can I add to my books? Where do I draw the line between character-driven work and concept-based work? And, more importantly, where will you?

I’d love to hear others weigh in on this topic.

Investigation Discovery Channel

When I’m on vacation, time seems to stand still. Then I get back and reality sets in and I realize I have a blog post to write with no idea what to talk about. I figured I’d think about a topic when I was on vacation but did I? Noooo!

I could talk about my trip up the West coast of the U.S. Not much to say there other than it was hot everywhere and California, Oregon and Washington all seem to be on fire.

Or I could talk about the phantom that has suddenly taken up residence in my car. I lock the car and everything seems to be hunky dory, windows rolled up, etc. Then I go back to it later and find the doors still locked, but the windows rolled down. Kinda creepy.

Instead, I think I’ll talk about my recent obsession with the Investigation Discovery Channel. Have you all seen this channel? It’s a gold mine for mystery writers. Just full of reality crime shows. Some of them are a bit cheesy, but I’ve found several of them worth watching.

I had never heard of this channel, and didn’t realize I received it as part of my cable package, until a friend told me she was appearing in one of the episodes of Nightmare Next Door as a crime commentator. That’s when I discovered I received the channel and the obsession began.

I don’t watch all of the shows just some here and there, but I’m still rather obsessed with ID. Some of the show names are a little too much for me: Fatal Vows, Evil Lives Here, Evil Kin, Deadly Dentists... I mean, how many dentists are there involved in crimes that they can create an entire series about it? I did watch an episode of Evil Kin, though, since it talked about a Kansas case that Charlotte has discussed in some of her blog posts – the Bloody Benders. It was quite interesting.

The shows I particularly like on ID are People Magazine Investigates and Breaking Homicide. The former covers fairly recent high profile crimes and the latter pairs a former police sergeant with a forensic psychologist to re-examine cold cases.

The most recent show I’ve started watching is The Coroner: I Speak For The Dead. I probably wouldn’t have watched it except one of the actors who appears in the reenactments in the shows lives in the same apartment building as a friend of mine so I became curious. The crimes all come from the files of Dauphin County, PA coroner Graham Hetrick.

Sometimes watching these shows triggers an idea in my head that helps me solve a plot problem or come up with a new character. Plus I do find the cases interesting.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who is obsessed with this channel. There’s a contest currently going on for a chance to win a walk-on role called ID Addict of the Month. I think I’ll skip it though it would be fun to appear in one of their shows.

Have any of you watched this channel? Any favorite shows?