Guest Blogger: SJ Rozan

(Hi! This is Rick here, deputized by John Corrigan to introduce his guest.) We are honored to welcome our guest blogger this weekend, the inimitable SJ Rozan. She’s a native New Yorker who is the author of 16 novels and 70+ short stories. SJ has won Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity Awards, as well as the Japanese Maltese Falcon. Paper Son is her latest book, just out. So grab a copy now! We guarantee you will not be disappointed.

What I Learned Writing Paper Son

I learned you can’t set foot in Mississippi without gaining five pounds.

While that may not be the most important lesson, it’s absolutely true. Cheese grits, pulled pork, blackened redfish with rice — damn, these people can eat. And drink: bourbon, beer, and moonshine. And sweet tea. Which is where I draw the line.

Southern hospitality is a real thing. The Deep South’s disastrous history of race relations — in many ways the actual subject of Paper Son — means that local folks aren't always welcome in one another’s homes. But a stranger, once introduced and vouched for, gets the red carpet rolled out, in many and varied communities. All of whom, I repeat, eat like crazy.

As anywhere, local manners and customs are unseen by the locals but must be carefully observed and parsed by outsiders. An example: In the South, when you pass people on the street, you meet their eyes and ask, “How’re you doing?” People you know, total strangers, doesn't matter. A reply's not expected if you don’t know one another — you just ask and get asked and walk on — but it’s considered rude not to ask. If you do know one another, you’re expected to actually answer, to stop and exchange a few words. We don’t do that up north. Here, looking a stranger in the eye as you pass is, while not quite a challenge, is odd enough to provoke a “Do I know you?” or What’s she looking at? Do I have scrambled eggs on my chin again?

And this is the point, the challenge, and the joy of setting a book in a place I don’t know well. It’s true up north, too — the local manners and customs of New York City are different from those of Boston (and Staten Island’s from those of Greenwich Village) but the differences in the US are broadest, I think, from south to north. Just as they're broad from New York to Hong Kong, as I found researching Reflecting the Sky, and from present to past with The Shanghai Moon. (The past is, after all, a different country.)

The joy is in getting out of my comfort zone, where I pretty much know what to expect in terms of people's attitudes, behaviors, and speech patterns, to a place where I have to consciously study those things to make my characters real. A lot of this kind of research involves just plain talking to people, or listening while they talk to each other. It’s watching them walk down the street (French women have a particular walk) or discuss something (Italians sound, half the time, as though they’re having a fight). It’s taking note of what time they eat dinner, go to bed, open their stores in the morning. This, along with the smells and quality of light, the kinds of birds that chirp at dawn in the different kinds of trees, the kinds of cars people drive and where they park them, are the small, critical details that, for me, make a place and the people in it come to life. Which is what I love about writing.

O for Organization

When I attended the Western Writer's of American convention last month, I had an opportunity to visit with David Morrell after a panel. David is the author of First Blood, a literary book which is nothing at all like the movie. There is some resemblance between Rambo in the book and Rambo in the movie, but not much. As to the actual story--no resemblance whatsoever.

David has a PhD in literature and left a tenured position at the University of Iowa to write full time. After our visit, I downloaded his non-fiction book, The Successful Novelist. I've read so many "how to write" books, that I wasn't expecting anything new. To my amazement, this was one of the best books on the art and craft of writing a novel I've ever read. I shouldn't have been surprised. This man certainly has the credentials, including a plethora of awards. 

When a book is this good I also want a physical copy. It will be here soon. 

Since I taught myself to write by reading books about writing, then optimistically attempting to do as the lessons instructed, I can say with some authority that older "how to write" books used be a lot more useful than contemporary books which are basically an overview of the industry. His book is the exception. It's wildly superior to books in print about developing craftsmanship.

The Successful Novelist is loaded with nuts and bolts advice. His chapters on plot, characterization, and structure are outstanding. 

Oddly enough, the chapter that threw me into a fit of anxiety was that of Frequently Asked Questions. The student wanted to know "Is it okay to throw drafts out after the book has been published?"

Morrell gives detail instructions for collecting and preserving various drafts. Forever. You start with a big box that includes all the drafts, correspondence with agents and editors, research, reviews and publicity materials. Everything. His advice is to save everything. At the end of each year, he sends copies of these materials to the Special Collections Department at the University of Iowa's library. 

Whew!

His advice threw me into high gear because I need to start organizing all of my stuff. After reading about his system, I found myself cherry-picking his methods. Yes to this. No to that. Absolutely yes to a file box with material regarding a specific novel. No to all the drafts. Wouldn't a memory stick work just as well? I don't have that much room. For that matter, why not scan all the information?

Thinking about it, won't get it done. I've tried that. 

Painting without a brush

Happy Fourth of July!

I've always been interested in looking at how things are created. This happens in the kitchen. If you cook a good meal for me, I'm going to ask how you made it. If you've got me on the edge of my seat as I read your book, I'm going to look at how you wrote it. This is just how I'm wired.

So, by nature, I'm very interested in how I write. I'm also very interested in being as efficient as I can be. This speaks to a theme that has probably emerged in several posts I’ve written recently. I’ve discussed outlining as a more expedient method, and considering I'm a guy that writes 400 pages to get a 300-page manuscript, this makes sense.

In my life as an educator, for the past several years, I have experimented with speech-to-text Google apps. I have discovered that these tools help me to give my students more detailed feedback faster. I like to leave long –– sometimes page-long –– comments on students’ papers. This led me to experiment with voice comments at first. Then I realized speech-to-text apps offer the best of both worlds –– I can speak my comments and students could receive a print version which they would (hopefully) refer to when they wrote subsequent drafts.

It's probably a logical progression but one I had not thought of until very recently: use speech to text in my fiction writing. I’m an edit-as-you-go-writer. I talk myself into believing that a chapter is “finished” before I move on to the next. I'm using Speech Recognition SoundWriter to write this post. It allows me to put the clay on the wheel quickly. My goal this summer is to write a chapter a day, ala Robert B. Parker, who is said to have written five pages a day. I begin the next day by editing the previous day's work. This has been working well. After writing about 35 pages in a month, I’ve written close to 70 in the last two-and-a-half weeks. The prose seems more sparse, which I'm pleased with.

Of course, speed does not matter if the book is not a good one. I'm well aware of that. So once it is done I will send the manuscript to the usual cast of advanced readers, not tell them of the change in process, and see what they say.

When I began writing fiction, I would save manuscripts to floppy disks, back them up on floppy disks and leave a copy in the trunk of my car, one in my office, and one at my friend's house. (You only had to lose or erase one story to never make that mistake again.) The days of Google were somewhere far in the distance. When I worked as a newspaper reporter, I used pen and paper and tiny recorders. Now, my students use phone apps that not only capture what is said but preloads the quotes into a Google document for them.

I know some people believe writing longhand produces better prose than typing. But, in contrast to typing, speaking my story aloud and hearing it as a means of “writing” seems to be working well. I've always been an auditory learner. I'm dyslexic. Maybe this has something to do with it. However, as technology improves, I think it's good (at the very least interesting) to look at how we create.

I’d love to hear what others think about all of this.

Love Locks and Locksporting

One of the things I love about writing is that I have an excuse to learn about new things. “I’m looking into it for a book,” I say. “I’m not wasting time, I’m researching!”

In my reading journey over the last year or so, I read about love locks and the sport of lockpicking called locksporting. Ever since I read about it, I’ve wanted to put both of these things into a book. And now, I think I’ve found the story for them.

My current WIP, book 6 my Aurora Anderson series, is set in February so it seems like a great place to put in love locks. And, since my main character’s BFF, Liz, is really into lock picking, it seems like a good fit to me.

A love lock is a padlock that sweethearts affix to a bridge, monument or other public structure to symbolize their love. They usually place their initials or names and/or a date on the lock, then throw away the key (often into a nearby river or body of water) to symbolize their unbreakable love.

And, as you might guess, some cities have issues with this, particularly the keys being thrown into the water. The Pont des Arts bridge in Paris was a favorite location to affix locks. Until sections of the fencing started to crumble under the weight of all of those locks. So now, no more love locks on that bridge. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t love locks in other places. In fact, you can consult a map to find out where there’s a location near you by going to https://www.makelovelocks.com/locations/

 The other thing I’ve been researching is locksporting, the sport of lock picking. There are several organized lock picking contests each year. Lest you think that those who participate are all criminals, there are very strict rules they adhere to: “You may only pick locks that you own, or that you’ve been given explicit permission to pick by the registered owner.”

A lock that has been effectively abandoned by its owner and placed in a public place without securing anything (like love locks) may ethically be picked by a locksporter as long as it’s returned to its original locked position and state. As it turns out, a locksporter may also permanently remove or relocate the lock when lawfully and specifically sanctioned by an appropriate authority, like a city government and/or owner of the land the locks are on.

I figured it was important to know if owning lock picks is legal in the state of California where my series takes place. It turns out just owning them isn’t a problem as long as you use them as a hobbyist. If you pick a lock in exchange for money, even if it’s a friend who asked you to do it, you have to have a locksmithing license.

After all of this research, ideas are beginning to brew in my head and I think I may have a way to add love locks and locksporting to my story.

More on Plotters versus Pantsers

I thoroughly enjoyed Warren Easley’s guest blog about outliners versus pantsers.

Full disclosure, my wife and I had dinner with Warren and his wife, Marge, in Arizona while we were at the Poisoned Pen Press/SoHo Press Mystery conference last September.  They’re delightful people and Warren is an outstanding writer.

His blog made me evaluate what kind of writer I am…a planner or someone who flies by the seat of his pants.  I think I’m a little of both.

When I start a book, I try to write a slam-bang, grab em’ by the throat first chapter.  I don’t have a clue what the book will be about or who the bad guy is.  I will work on that first chapter over and over and over.  In my newest book, Graveyard Bay, I wrote the first chapter easily fifty times until I found what I was looking for.

Graveyard Bay was my biggest challenge so far.  My second Geneva Chase mystery, Darkness Lane, ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.  Geneva’s been entrusted with a notebook that incriminates nefarious Russian mobsters.  The third book had to be a complicated chess game on how that notebook both helps her and puts her in terrifying danger.

Another disclosure, the ARCs for Graveyard Bay are out.  This is the part that makes me really nervous.  That means the book is out for review. Fingers crossed. Oh, and the book launches September 10.

Once the first chapter is done, I move on to the second chapter, and then the one after that.

At some point, however, I have to write down the characters and what I think they’re up to.  There are blind alleys, twists, turns, plot threads that will have to be accounted for.

But even at that, the book is a journey for me.  As such, some of the plot twists and character dialogue is unexpected. I like that writing a novel is as much an adventure for me as I hope it will be when someone reads it.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King argues that he can tell whether or not a book was written using an outline. He thinks such books feel somehow "staler" than books that are written the "true way," which is by the seat of your pants, never knowing what will happen next.

William Blundell in his book The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, he said, “I’m a strong opponent of outlining.  It’s deciding in advance what the story will be, and then just bolting the whole thing together like something out of a hardware store.”

Ray Bradbury said, “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.”

So, as I await the September launch of Graveyard Bay and I prepare for Thrillerfest in just a couple of weeks, I’ve gotten the green light by my editor to continue working on Shadow Hill after she’s looked over the first hundred pages.

I’m twelve chapters along and, yes, I’m already taking notes of the untied threads I’ve left and blind alleys that Geneva is going to have to explore before I figure out who the heck the bad guy or gal might be.  www.thomaskiesauthor.com

Guest Blogger Warren Easley

Type M is thrilled to welcome Warren Easley this weekend. Warren is the author of the wonderful Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries, featuring compassionate, guilt-ridden, crusading lawyer Cal Claxton and his precocious Australian shepherd, Archie.

My Kingdom for a Plot!

To paraphrase one of Shakespeare’s kings—you know, the one they found under a parking lot in Leicester a few years back—A plot, a plot! My kingdom for a plot! I love to write, always have. Give me a scene, any scene, and I’ll flesh it out for you. Give me two people caught in a face to face encounter, and I’ll capture their dialogue. Show me a setting, and I’ll bring it alive, replete with sights, sounds, smells and touch. But put all the elements of a novel together in a coherent, believable plot? That’s a task that gives me pause.

Plotting a mystery, you might argue, is easier than plotting, say, literary fiction. After all, there are some pretty clear rules in the mystery genre. For example, unless you’re a Louise Penny or a James Lee Burke, you had better kill someone off in the first fifty pages of your book, since the patience of your readers (and publisher) is notoriously short. And you also need to build-in an event that signals the approaching climax, and ensure that, in fact, you end with a bang, not a whimper. This leaves the “slushy middle”, which must never be slushy, so all manner of clever devices should be inserted to not only drive the plot but keep the pace brisk, the tone engaging.

Easy, you say?

One school of thought says outlining is the answer. Achtung! What we have here is a need for discipline, we’re told. Put your mind to it, and the plot will seamlessly unfold in an orderly sequence. This group of writers proudly refer to themselves as Outliners. I tried outlining in my early writing without much success. The experience was a little like driving in a dense fog. I could see a small distance ahead and very little from side to side. Sure, I could get something down on paper, but after a short burst of writing, the outline would have to be rewritten. Those pesky, unruly characters of mine kept asserting themselves in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The other school of thought says that the plot is an organic element that must be allowed to evolve as the story progresses. In other words, the plot builds outwardly, informed primarily by what has already been written. Enter the Pantsers, an equally proud group that flies by the seat of its pants, metaphorically speaking. This laissez-faire approach may sound appealing, especially to those like me who dislike planning ahead. But the other side of that coin is that the story can easily bob and weave itself into chaos, a kind of literary proof of the law of entropy. And I can tell you from experience, there is nothing more painful than backing out of a corner into which you have written yourself. It invariably involves trashing a lot of good work.

Of course, authors should adopt a strategy for plotting a novel that works best for them. I land somewhere between the extremes of rigid outlining and unfettered evolution, although I admit to being a Pantser most of the time. I didn’t plan on using a hybrid strategy. It turned out that was the only way I could get a book written and keep my sanity.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how the book I’m currently writing is going to end…

_____________________-
Warren C. Easley is the author of the Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press. Coming in October, book 7, No Way to Die.
https://www.warreneasley.com
facebook.com/WarrenCEasley
poisonedpenpress.com/WarrenCEasley

Summer Time and Writing

Barbara's post this week captured a bit of what I'm feeling at the moment. I'm having a hard time concentrating on all the work I planned to get done during the months from end of spring semester to beginning of fall. I have deadlines to meet and writing to be done. But the blue sky and the sunshine is calling to me.

This is rather odd because my favorite season is autumn. I love the chilly mornings and evenings, and the leaves changing colors, with the hint of smoke in the air, and the taste of hot apple cider, and the sense of snuggling in for the winter. Summer, on the other hand, leaves me anxious. I don't like heat and humidity. Dawn comes too early for a night owl. And -- worst of all -- I need to pay attention to the weather report. I don't like thunder and lightning, especially being caught outside or on the road when a storm sweeps in.

But I love the colors. I love looking across our one-way street at the lavender and other plants along my neighbor's walk. I love the yellow daffodils growing beneath my front windows. I have purchased seeds for wild flowers and waited for warm weather to sprinkle them. I intend to plant them in my pocket-size backyard. If the seeds become a riot of color, I'll be able to watch the butterflies who come to drink from them.

I'm thinking of putting up a bird bath. The birds would enjoy it, and so would my cat, Harry, who would sit in the window watching them with his tail twitching. 

Not an outdoor cat, my Harry, but he sits in the window, sniffing the air on summer mornings.

In summer, I want more color around my house and on it. My vinyl siding is a pale cream. Not a color I would have chosen. This summer, I want to paint my front door. Change it from teal to pink or orange or blue gray. Paint the steps slate gray or navy blue. And when I drive up to my house, my  house will make me smile. Maybe a pale yellow door. . . and more flowers in my front yard.

I think that the colors of flowers, houses, and clothing worn by people in sandals and sneakers are the best part of summer. That and ice cream -- a bowl of butter pecan or a fancy dish of vanilla with crumbled cake and nuts from the ice cream shop in the mall with the open design that is perfect for summer strolling.

If I have ice cream in summer, then a salad is all I need for dinner. In summer, even a small meal is sufficient when it has all of the colors of the season. 

Seafood, too. I'd like to take a walk along the shore and stop for lunch.

Maybe I should find a place to sit down in a park and write there. The best part of summer is that I can decide where and when I'll write.

Summer still reminds me of when I was a child. The endless days filled with possibilities. Not a bad feeling when there is writing to be done.

What Would You Do If It All Went Away?

I (Donis) have been preoccupied with tech issues today, so I'm writing this entry later than usual. One of our laptops is about to give up the ghost, so we took it in to the Apple repair place, thinking the tech was going to tell us that it was too far gone and we should put it out of its misery and buy a new one. But to my surprise, he thought it could still be updated and last for a couple more years. We've never updated that computer because I'm always in the middle of some piece of writing and am terrified that I haven't backed it up in enough places to be able to get it back if I lose it in the update. I'm told this is paranoid. I don't believe it.

Sometimes I long for the days of the electric typewriter. Or maybe the quill pen.

Chris, my brother/web master and computer expert, lost several sites in a crash a few years ago and nearly had a stroke. I think of that often and resolve to print off every entry on this site and all other sites I've ever written for, since I’d hate to lose all these pearls of wisdom that I’ve posted over the past dozen years. After his disaster, Chris told me he immediately did a database back up, burned it to a CD (This was a while back. There was no cloud.), locked it in a lead-lined steel box and buried it in the back yard to be defended by his vicious guard dog.

Chris Casey

This just goes to show that technology ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m reminded of the old Twilight Zone episode in which every speck of human knowledge was transferred to a microdot, and then somebody lost the microdot. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if electricity went away.  What would you lose forever, and what would you no longer be able to do that you count on to live?  I’ll tell you one thing, I wouldn’t be able to live here in this giant metropolis in the middle of the Sonoran Desert without air conditioning.  I’m not nearly as tough as the native people and settlers who lived here before and endured the heat without even thinking about it, really.  Of course, I grew up without air conditioning in Oklahoma, which is no slouch when it comes to summer heat. I’ve grown considerably wimpier since I was young.

The extraordinary journey of the peony bud

Rick's Tuesday post made me smile. Distraction is the mood of the day. Are we all in the same boat? After a long winter of record-breaking cold and snow and a spring that sputtered and stalled, summer has suddenly burst upon us. At least in the past week, for those of us in Central Canada. I shouldn't cheer too loudly, lest summer decide to retreat back under its rock. But joy has overwhelmed us. People are flocking to patios, picnicking in the parks, painting their toe nails and hauling their flouncy summer frocks out of storage. It's hard to concentrate on anything serious.

Quite literally, after shivering in the endless, damp cold and struggling to poke their heads up, the flowers in my garden have exploded into colour.  It turns out all that rain was good for them, even as the grey days deadened our spirits. There are certain flowers in my garden that I wait for every year. I watch the buds of the peonies grow fatter and juicier for weeks, all for a few fleeting moments of glory. I watch the lilacs and the Siberian iris. I fuss over the early rose buds. Sometimes flowers surprise me. Plants I thought were dead, or at least unable to thrive, suddenly materialize where I least expect them.

There's a metaphor for life in there somewhere, and it is particularly apt for the writer's life. Perhaps we have to struggle through the darkness, not sure where we're going or whether the journey is worthwhile. Not sure we'll ever see the light at the end of the tunnel or the resolution at the end of our story. Not sure there IS an end. Nonetheless, possibly because we have a deadline and an expectant publisher, or simply because we're writers and we have to, we push on, trusting that the journey we're on will lead somewhere. After facing this angst through sixteen books, I know that despite all my misgivings this time, some sort of book will emerge at the end.

Rarely does the book suddenly explode in colour, sadly. Hey, the metaphor isn't perfect. But bit by bit, the bud opens. The story unfolds and its core is revealed – the high point towards which everything has been building. At that point, however flawed or muddled that high point is, I always feel a flood of relief. I have a book! The flower has opened. Light shines in, lifting my spirits and helping me to tackle all the flaws and messy bits. The rest is rewrites. I can prune and dead-head and fertilize until I've made it the best it can be.

This is a whimsical post, reflecting my mood as I sit in my garden enjoying all the colours. Savouring them to remember the next time the darkness settles in.

This sort of sums up where my WIP is at the moment

by Rick Blechta

I’ve got a busy week on the go, getting ready to leave town. To say the least, I’ve been rather distracted. Then, in the middle of all that, my music-reading glasses broke yesterday. I wasted a couple hours trying to jury-rig them and finally had to call my endeavors a failure, so that required a trip to the optometrist and spending $500. Sigh…

I always find the first thing that suffers in situations like this is my writing. I cannot find my “happy space”, try as I will.

Since I’m now even further behind in what I must accomplish by Thursday, I leave you with the following cartoon that perfectly reflects how my writing went last night before I gave up in disgust. Perhaps if I get enough done today on my huge list of pre-trip jobs, I’ll have better luck writing in the evening!

Alibis in the Archive

Rolling lawns, borders full of lupins, peonies and foxgloves, the background of a stately Victorian building, good friends, good conversation, good wine and three days of glorious sunshine in an otherwise miserably wet summer – my weekend in Wales at Alibis in the Archive was positively idyllic.

The place: Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, (www.gladstoneslibrary.org) was built by the family of William Ewart Gladstone – four times prime minister of Great Britain – around his own collection of about 30,000 volumes to provide accommodation so that serious students could study them. The library is greatly expanded now and the accommodation offers the sort of luxury those Victorian students couldn't have dreamed of, but it still operates on the same basis, though it is the venue for many conferences and events like this one too.

It also houses the archive of the Crime Writers' Association and the Detection Club and this weekend's event, Alibis in the Archive, was set up by the indefatigable Martin Edwards (author of The Golden Age of Murder) three years ago with a programme mainly highlighting the history of crime writing with particular emphasis on the novels of the twenties and thirties It's been sold out well ahead of time each year.

The speakers included Peter Robinson, Frances Fyfield, Michael Ridpath, Alison Joseph, Janet Laurence, David Whittle, Martin Edwards and me. The topics ranged from my own, The DNA of Tartan Noir, to Frances Fyfield's memoir of her friendship with PD James, by way of items about classic crime, travelling for research, and finding the real Agatha Christie through her romances, not to mention the Carry On! theme music composed by Edmund Crispin in his other life. The audience discussions were lively and thoughtful, and the pub quiz night revealed how much more readers know about crime than the authors themselves!

And we all talked books, books, books as old friendships were renewed and new ones made. As an author, it's such a comfort to discover that even people like the wonderful Peter Robinson sometimes gets stuck too and is haunted by that awful thought, 'Am I just wasting my time on this?' When he comes in with That Look on his face, his wife Sheila says, 'Page 184, right?'

It was such a happy way to celebrate the summer solstice. I'll never forget us all lingering on chatting around the table with our glasses of wine, reluctant to leave the lingering warmth of the evening until the sun set around 11.30.

Heavenly!

Sad to say, normal service has resumed today. Flash floods and thunderstorms in the south, damp and miserable here. Sigh.

Does Length Matter?

I’m chipping away at my project at hand this week, following my 48-chapter outline (and adlibbing here and there) and found myself wondering (panicking?) perhaps for the first time (for me) ever: How short is too short?

I’m 15,000 words in, and I feel like I don’t have a lot of filler. But I can’t see the book topping 100,000 words. It’s moving well, and the outline is helpful. But . . . is it on pace to hit even 70,000?

It has me thinking back to some of my favorite novels, particularly those by Ross Macdonald. The Lew Archer classics are short but far from small. They are existential and deal with moral ambiguity in ways even Chandler did not. Some weighed in at 180 pages, but the tale of the tape doesn’t mean much when you hit as hard as Macdonald.

Therefore, the question quickly becomes: Regardless of length, is the book satisfying for the reader? I’ve read several 800-page books that should have been 400 pages. Conversely, I love all 900 pages of Moby Dick (yes, even the middle 200 about the whale). But Gatsby is fewer than 200 and is one I would take on my island to reread until eternity.

One thing I know about myself is that I have a habit of putting lots of players on the stage. That leads to the danger of not fully developing them all. As I’m re-examining my outline, keeping track of who is allowed to sing loudly for all to hear and who fades into the background is useful. As is considering which questions were asked and not answered. I’m not talking about the plot here, but rather who made a cameo and never got back on stage.

Author's Best Friend or Bored Reader?

As you can see, for me, it comes back to the outline. I am holed up in Maine for the week with my dog, doing home-owner work and writing. We will get back to work, starting by revisiting the outline.

Excitement And Fear

Starting a new book is usually a mixture of excitement and fear for me. Right now I’m in the dreaded “why did I ever think I could write another book phase.” This lasts until I finally feel like I’ve figured out the general direction I’m going in. It usually takes me several months to make my way through this period of unease as I slowly figure out my characters and the story they want me to tell.

It’s a phase that feels a lot like designing software. You do a lot of thinking, head scratching, walking up and down the hallway, and drawing diagrams. It always feels like I’m not accomplishing anything. I have to constantly remind myself that I really am getting something done. That all of this thinking and tossing ideas back and forth in my head is actually accomplishing something. That it’s all part of the process.

Talking to other writers about writing helps to remind me that I’m not alone. That other people find the beginning of a project difficult as well.

I got the opportunity to talk with a lot of writers (some who I’ve known for a while, some who I just met) at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, CA a couple weekends ago, two days of workshops and panels on topics related to crime writing. So many things going on at the same time that it was hard to choose what to go to.

I was on a panel called “Built to Last: Creating a Series” with Rachel Howzell Hall, Sheila Lowe, Keenan Powell and Faye Snowden. We had a great time talking about our experiences writing a series.

Ellen Byron interviewed Private Eye Nancy Swaim about her experiences. I also learned about Medieval Weaponry from Swordmaster Roberta Brown. And attended a panel with Joe Broido, Phoef Sutton, Gillian Horvath and Carlene O’Neil about Hallmark Mysteries. And, and, and...lots of lots of different things were available on the business side of writing, craft, forensics...

Plus we were treated to workshops and keynote addresses from Guests of Honor Tess Gerritsen and Catriona McPherson. And fed lots and lots of food. I admit that I ate way too much.

But probably the best part was the chance to hang out with fellow writers and talk about writing and the writing business.

The next CCWC will be in 2021. (It takes place every other year.) Consider going if you get the chance. It’s well worth it.

In other news, I now have the cover for Book 5 in my Aurora Anderson series, GHOSTS OF PAINTING PAST. It’ll be out November 19th, pre-orders start the week of August 28th. Thought you might be interested in seeing it. It takes place around Christmas as you can probably tell from the cover.

A story in search of a location

by Rick Blechta

Once again I’m spinning off one of Tom’s Monday posts. You should read this one. It’s really good!

Unlike Tom, I often use locations for my novels and novellas in places where I’ve never lived. I generally set them in real locations, but in one instance (Orchestrated Murder) I used a nameless city, although it was based on Toronto where I live. In the subsequent two novellas in this series (The Boom Room and Rundown), my editor asked that I identify the location as Toronto. Now I wish I could go back and fix the first novella to reflect this!

But in all my novels, they are firmly set in real-world locations. One unintended benefit of this is that in setting them in far-away places, I have to visit them to make sure everything I include is correct and accurate. So far, we’ve (of course I’m accompanied by my wife who acts as my editorial assistant and translator) been “forced” to visit various places in England, Scotland, Wales, Austria, France, and Italy, not to mention several American cities and towns. Incidentally, the cost of these research trips is tax-deductible which is a very nice thing. Hey, there have to be some breaks for us poor ink-stained wretches, right?

In order to make this foreign-setting thing work, I’ve found it really helps to do a ton of “Google research” and use that to at least have a somewhat workable first draft or a very detailed sketch of your work-in-progress. That way, you know what you need in the way of useful research and can focus on that. It is also pretty well mandatory to make friends with people who live in that location to be able to help with supplemental information after you return home.

The only other thing I do which helps keep me out of trouble is that the story is told by a person who is an outsider. I think it would be the height of idiocy to think that I could pull off writing through the eyes of someone who lives in one of those locations. Inevitably, I would write something that would go clank in the minds of people who actually inhabit or know these places well, and I’m sure you’ll agree this wouldn’t be an ideal thing.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

How important is location?

A long time ago, I picked Fairfield County, Connecticut as the setting for my Geneva Chase mystery series.  The primary reason was that I know the area, working at a newspaper there for eighteen years. I’m familiar with the roads, the towns, the time it takes to drive from place to place, the restaurants, the stores, and companies doing business there.

Full disclosure, I don’t live there anymore.  As many of you know, I live on the coast of North Carolina.  Someday I’ll set a story here, but for the time being, I’ll just enjoy the beaches, the fabulous food, and the lack of traffic (except for tourist season).

I picked Fairfield County for other reasons as well.  It’s a bedroom community near New York City and much of the area is extremely affluent.  You have pockets of wealth such as Greenwich, Westport, New Canaan, Easton, and Ridgefield.

Fairfield County is home to CEOs, movie stars, Broadway actors, best-selling authors, rock-stars, and famous athletes.  The attraction is its proximity to Manhattan.  It is also far enough away that paparazzi aren’t usually an annoying factor.

But when you have affluence, you often have crushing poverty.  One of the most economically challenged cities in Connecticut is Bridgeport in the southeast corner of the county.  That kind of extreme diversity in an area makes it attractive to me as a writer.

And you have some pretty gruesome crimes that take place—in real life.

Just this past January, the body of a twenty-four year old woman was found stuffed in a suitcase in Greenwich.  The cause of death for the bookstore clerk from New Rochelle (neighboring Westchester County…also affluent) was deemed “homicidal asphyxia”.  The ex-boyfriend of the young lady was arrested after using her ATM card.  He claimed that the young woman fell and hit her head during sex at her apartment.  He admits that he bound her hands and feet, placed tape over her mouth, shoved her into a suitcase and left her in a “forest”.

This kind of thing ain’t supposed to happen in Greenwich.

In December of 2011, a friend of mine was murdered in his jewelry shop in Westport. Yekutiel Zeevi (known to his friends as Kootie) was the owner of Y.Z. Jewelers.  It was a fascinating place that wasn’t always open to the public.  You had to get past his security system and be buzzed in.

When I first met him, he had a small, glittering pile of diamonds on a table in front of him and a jeweler’s loupe in his eye.  The first thing he did was ask if I smoked.  I did at the time.  Then he bummed a cigarette.  We became friends after that, even inviting me to go to Africa with him on a diamond buying trip.

I never took him up on the trip.

In December, 2011, Kootie and an associate met with a buyer who we later found out was a half million dollars in debt.  He shot and killed my friend, wounded the associate, and left with $300,000 in diamonds.

That kind of thing ain’t supposed to happen in Westport.

  The killer was captured in Spain, where while awaiting extradition to the United States, he took his own life.

On May 24 of this year, Jennifer Dulos of New Canaan, 50, mother of five, went missing. 

Her estranged husband, Fortis Dulos and his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, were arrested for tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution.  According to prosecutors, Jennifer’s blood mixed with her husband’s DNA was found on the faucet in the kitchen of her home.

Police continue to look for Jennifer Dulos…or her remains.

The point is that bad things can and do happen even in the best neighborhoods. That kind of juxtaposition makes for jarring news stories, but can make interesting fiction.

How did you pick the place where your books take place?

This and That

I'm later than my usual late this morning because I wasn't sure I could get to the blog. I changed my gmail password, then tried to log in yesterday and got locked out. Then I had to wait for my verification. Of course, my memory lapse has a lot to do with the reason I woke up early and then -- to my cat Harry's dismay -- gave him a snack and went back to bed for another nap. It's summer, my writing plate is running over and before I can settle in, I need to catch up on my sleep.

But I didn't mind the early mornings I had from last Friday to this Tuesday. I got a chance to spend five days in New Haven, Connecticut taking part in the Yale Summer Writers Workshop. Session II is devoted to genre writing, and I was invited to be this year's faculty instructor for Mystery and Crime Fiction. Eleven students were enrolled, several had been in Session I with more general instruction on the craft of writing, one was international. Some were writing psychological suspense or genre-blending. All were talented writers. I was only hoping I would have something useful to bring to each of them. But the best part of the experience was watching how they bonded as a group and provided each other with constructive, supportive feedback.

I'm now back in place, and having read Donis's post about what she has seen writers doing wrong in about-to-be published books, I'm thinking about what I said to the student writers in the workshop and what I'm doing in my 1939 manuscript in process. I think by now I have gotten beyond rookie mistakes. But that means I'm more prone to make the mistakes that come with being too comfortable. Or, I would if I were ever comfortable.

Right now, I'm working on a reference book for my academic publisher about gangsters in film. I need to get the first half of that done and signed off on. Then I need to return to the first draft of my dress and appearance to tinker some more while waiting for my agent to shop the proposal. And after that get back to my 1939 historical. Of course, there is also the research project that a couple of colleague and I are trying to launch this summer with a community organization.

So I'm catching up on my sleep. When its's my day to blog again, I'll have something more interesting to write about. Meanwhile, I hope everyone is having a great summer -- although I guess it is still spring on the calendar. That means I may still have time to get started on my container garden. Bought all the seeds. Haven't done anything at all with them.

What Not to Do

Donis here. I may have mentioned previously that besides writing mysteries, I have a side gig as a free-lance mystery reviewer for Publishers' Weekly Magazine. I don't choose the books I'm going to review. The editor at PW sends me three or four advance reading copies (ARCs) a month to review. Usually these books will not be available for purchase for several months, and an ARC is not the final version, so I don't pay undue attention to typos or other minor flaws that will more than likely be corrected before the book hits the shelf.

I try never to be mean with my reviews, because as a writer myself I know how that feels. Besides, just because I don't enjoy a particular type of character/plot/setting/time period, that doesn't mean it's not well executed, and other readers may love just that kind of thing. But I know an epic fail when I see one, and when I do, I'm honor bound to tell the truth. I've been doing these reviews for about three years now, and I've seen the best of the best and the worst of the worst, and both have taught me a lot that I've tried to apply to my own writing. In fact, I'm currently in the midst of getting a lesson on what not to do. I'm reading the second or third installment of a series in which some loose ends are left from earlier books, and the author keeps interrupting the action to catch us up on what went before. Now, it has to be done, but said author does it with such lengthy digressions that when he returns to the action, I've forgotten the details of the story.

As I read, I'm furiously taking "what not to do" notes, because I'm in the midst of writing the second installment of a mystery that contains loose ends from the first. How do you catch the reader up on what has gone before without bogging down your momentum? Do it in short intervals, I think, and try to work it into the action naturally. That's what I'm going to shoot for, anyway.

Here are some other comments I've sent to the PW editor about fails in books I have reviewed that I believe all writers would do well to watch out for. None of these comments actually showed up in the review I wrote for publication, and the names, situations, and details have been changed to protect the guilty.

"The plot had so many holes that I have a headache from slapping my forehead so many times while I was reading."

"She had an idea for a plot and bent all her characters out of shape to fit it."

"This is a historical, but I couldn't tell what the year actually was and the author never actually said. From things the author wrote in the beginning I thought it must be in the 1850s or so, but I kept revising my estimate forward as more and more modern items kept showing up. I think maybe the 1870s."

"The sleuth's method of detection consisted of basically going from suspect to suspect and loudly accusing him or her of murder in hopes someone would crack. The motive was stupid and the killer was stupid for falling for (X's) lame trap."

"No proper English lady would go on 'vacation' with a single male acquaintance in 18--. No English person would even say 'vacation'."

"Great characters and deft handling of the mores of the time. But I wish (X) hadn't cleared (Y) of the murder by having the coroner pinpoint the murdered woman's time of death within half an hour! In the 19th century!"

"I like the unusual setting and the characters are fun, but I would have liked it better if the big showdown between the sleuth and the murderer hadn't ended with a slapstick food fight."

"She certainly studied the manual on how to write a cozy, so cozy lovers will find much to like. But that ending! The protagonist and her sidekick lay a trap, then hide in the bushes to eavesdrop on the conversation between the killer and the person who agreed to be bait. I always get annoyed when the killer confesses all in excruciating detail, and at the drop of a hat!"*

But really good characters cover a multitude of sins: "Her editor would have done well to have her condense the beginning quite a bit, but it eventually picked up nicely and the main character was well drawn and realistic. She was actually emotional about the deaths! It wasn't hard to figure out whodunnit, but there's enough atmosphere and crafting and eccentric characters (and a hunky detective and a kitty) that cozy lovers won't care."
______________
*This is a pet peeve of mine. Can you tell?

From zero to sixty and back again

AKA the ebb and flow of a writer's life. There is a schedule in the lives of writers. For me, it is this. I have about a year to fifteen months between book deadlines, and find it usually takes me a year to write a book. More if there is a substantial amount of research. I usually start almost as soon as the previous book is handed in to the publisher, and the early weeks consist largely of thinking. And chewing my nails. What should I write about? What should I explore next? What do I want to say? And what kind of trouble can I put my characters through this time?

During this time, ideas slowly begins to form and I push them around, looking at them from various angles, fleshing out the barest bones to see if there is enough meat. Kicking the tires, so to speak. After I settle on a promising, bare bones theme, I start to research. I visit the library, I search Amazon and order obscure books from ABE, I scour the Internet. I read and read, taking lots of notes while the bare bones take on more meat in my head. And because my head has only so much room, I start to jot ideas down in a file called "plot and research notes". I like Aardvark better, so may steal that for my next book.

Eventually the starting point for the book emerges out of the mists, and once I have that toehold, I start to write. Still researching, still groping forward, and with only the vaguest idea where I'm going. The plot and the ideas evolve as I write. I try to write every day, usually for the morning, and always try to finish a scene. The book and I lurch along in this haphazard, step-by-step fashion for several months, by which time I am about halfway through the books and six months from D Day. Deadline Day, or Dreaded Day, or whatever it feels like at the moment.

At that point I start thinking backwards from that D Day. I need to give my Beta readers at least a month, preferably six weeks, to critique my manuscript and I need at least two weeks to incorporate their critiques and do final polishing. Before I give it to the readers, I need at least a month to fix up the rough first draft and make it the best I can. There is no point in wasting readers' time with a book I know is still full of plot holes and crappy characters. Which means if I want to meet deadline, I need to finish my first draft three to four months before D Day.

Which gives me two to three months to write the second half of the book, when I have only the foggiest idea where it's going!

Yikes.

These past three months I have been in that boat, madly rushing to complete the first draft and fix it up to send to my beta readers. Which I finally did – yesterday. It's a very odd feeling. I've been desperately yearning for this day. Dust balls and dog fur balls have accumulated in my house, weeds have taken over my garden, the fridge is empty, and most of my friends think I've died or moved to Australia. I've had my pedal to the floor for several months, with the storyline and the characters in my head all day and feeling guilty whenever I couldn't give them the time they needed.

And now, suddenly, the foot is off the accelerator and I am coasting to a dead halt. The book is in "rest" mode for four to six weeks while I wait for the verdicts of my trusted readers. Now I have time to look around at the dog fur and the weeds, the full laundry basket and the empty fridge, and I don't even know where to begin. The morning stretches ahead, unstructured and without demands (except those listed above).

I know I will revel in the slower pace and the empty brain, and I will start to do all the things I have been neglecting. But for a week or so at least, the absence of "being a writer" is discombobulating. And I feel vaguely itchy.

As if I should be writing something. This blog, for example.

When memory fails

by Rick Blechta

Yesterday was a very busy day with hours of driving around the Toronto area. First, we had to pick-up our grandson (PA day for school) in neighbouring Mississauga and bring him back to our place — in rush hour, not a pleasant thing since we can’t use the highways at that time (or most of the time given Toronto’s horrendous traffic congestion).

Then I had to pick up one of our sons way downtown at a job interview and drive him to his apartment to change for his current job. It was pouring rain (good that I did him this favour!) and the downtown traffic was its usual horrible mess.

Fortunately in an earlier part of my life, I drove a cab nights for about a year-and-a-half, so I know the city rather well. Yesterday, I called heavily on that knowledge through a host of dekes and shortcuts to get it all done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Finally it was back out to the west end of the city to pick up my granddaughter and take her from her morning program to her caregiver for the afternoon.

All-in-all I was in the car from 6:45 to 12:45 and never got farther than 20 miles from home! Actually, I felt like I was driving a cab again — which I guess was what I was doing.

Now here’s my tale of woe: While waiting for my son’s interview to finish, I had a terrific idea for my novel, a little something to plant in maybe the third chapter, just a word in passing really, that could take root and blossom towards the end of the story. As I sat there, I could see it branching all over, possibly becoming Very Important in the end.

Then my son came out, and since time was tight, we hot-footed it for his apartment. I had no time to write down my clever idea on a note in my smartphone. I have a good memory, I thought, I’ll be sure to remember something this good!

Wrongo. By the time I got to my son’s apartment, I’d forgotten it. All the way to pick up my granddaughter I cast back into my memory to pick up the dropped thread that would lead me to writerly nirvana. No luck. Not even an glimmer of the trail.

I spent an hour this morning right after waking up — when things tend to float up in my mind — and my terrific idea has completely and depressingly disappeared.

Time was, I used to carry around one of those little recorders. It was always stashed in a cup holder when I was driving or in my pocket or briefcase when I was teaching. Click it on, say a few words, and put it away again. Easy-peasy. My idea was safe until I could write it down that evening.

I am so depressed! Think it’s time I dug that recorder out again.

A Thank You to My Computer

I have frequently written blogs about all the things I don't like about computers. It's not that I have any nostalgia for the typewriter, the carbon paper between the sheets, the typex, and the retyping of the whole sheet – and sometimes more than one – when you wanted to change anything, but I admit that I do get distinctly tetchy when the thing inexplicably freezes, or the great Gods of Technology decide to update the system in a way that is infinitely less user-friendly than the previous one.

Today, though, I decided I would be cheerful and positive and write for once about the features that I am grateful for, sometimes even very grateful for.

Spellcheck, of course, comes in at the top of the list since I'm an extremely careless typist. I even forgive it for changing my perfectly correct English spelling into American (we did it first, after all) because it definitely means well. ( Even in my present charitable frame of mind, though, I can't feel warmly towards the interfering grammar check which I have firmly switched off. My grammar is better than its is.)

Cut and Paste is another benevolent feature, particularly for what I call Cut and Stash. How often I deleted a passage in an editing frenzy and regretted it afterwards when I realised I could have used it somewhere else, and now I never will recapture that first, fine careless rapture! Now I have a document where all the cut passages are pasted in case they are needed later. I like it to come up handily at the top of the file list so it's called Aardvark. Endlessly useful.

I love Find. This is what stops me endlessly repeating my favourite phrases; I realised that I used 'obviously' far too much when the message came up that there were, frankly, too many to enumerate. It's also handy linked with Replace when I want to change a character's name, though I do always click it one at a time. A doctor who was replacing the letter 'B' that had represented a family's name in a redacted report used Replace All to restore the family's real name for circulation to the services directly involved and received several confused calls about the new disease, Hepatitis Blenkinsop.

And I am very particularly grateful for the Schedule panel. That is what allows me to write this now and tuck it away for a date when I shall be sitting on a terrasse in the Dordogne, without a thought in the world beyond wondering vaguely what time it would be reasonable to pour the next glass of a cheeky little Sauvignon Blanc Semillion. Cheers!