Walking for mind and soul

Facebook is very useful for the random links it shares, sometimes posted by friends and other times by sponsoring companies. Facebook is also good at tracking what I like or might want, so I would never get a link to Rebel Media, for example. (if I did, it would be killed as fast I could click delete.)

Recently The New Yorker posted a link to an article about the connection between walking, thinking, and writing. I apologize if this link is behind a paywall, but the gist is that walking stimulates creativity and novel thinking by allowing the mind to drift in and out between the real world and our own inner world, and furthermore, that walking in nature does this better than walking in the city.

Other studies have confirmed the benefits to both physical and mental health of walking in nature, this at a time when more and more people live in clamorous cities and green spaces are fewer and fewer (because there are no property taxes to be collected on parks, for one thing). My city of Ottawa has an official city planning policy of "intensification", which means building more tall condos and multi-unit dwellings on lots where there used to be smaller homes on lots with lovely mature trees and gardens. But I digress.

The main interest for me in this article, and in similar ones, is that walking in nature stimulates creative thought. Scientifically, this is apparently because blood flow to the brain increases when we move and because our body, including our brain, tends to move in sync with our surroundings. Hence if we are listening to hard rock music or walking down a busy street, our body revs up. While this can be energizing and enjoyable at the right time, it is not conducive to creative thought, which needs a drifting openness of mind to allow novel, random thoughts to enter.

Like most authors, I suspect, I have always known this. Because I have dogs, I take long walks every day and that's when I do my best story development. If I have a plot snag or a character puzzle, I often take a walk just to "clear my head". I find the act of walking is a non-intrusive backdrop with just enough stimulation to keep me thinking. Have you ever tried to sit in a chair doing absolutely nothing except think? Chances are you start to doodle or jot down notes or pace from the kitchen to the office.

The walks in nature are by far the best. Distractions are fewer, you don't have to watch for street lights or dodge cars or pedestrians, you can look for occasional inspiration at the rustling trees and glistening lake. Or you can stay almost entirely inside your own head, imagining your story. Taking this nature walk idea one step further, another scientific benefit is that walking on uneven, unpredictable terrain like a hiking trail engages more parts of the brain than walking in a straight line along a flat path. This has limits for creativity, I find, because if you have to pay attention not to trip over a root or rock, you can't lose yourself as completely in your imagination, but in moderation, it can help get the juices going.

One worrisome thing I notice on my walks is how few people are actually enjoying just being in nature. Almost everyone is listening to something on their earbuds (audio books, music?). Since I find that disruptive to my thoughts, I never do, but I'd like to know if it helps or hinders "mind drift". Or if the walkers are not attached to earbuds, they have their nose in their phones, oblivious to everything around them. This transports them to another world, for sure, but not one of their own imagination. I am afraid that imagination and mind drift are becoming a lost art.

And what a loss that would be to our creative future.

The saddest thing

by Rick Blechta

Too often we crime writers get caught up in our own plots and either gloss over the tragedy of sudden death or decide the pressure of keeping our story zipping along require us to just move on and not acknowledge that the death of the victim has will most likely create a mountain of heartache for those who cared and have been left behind to deal with it. I know I’m more than guilty of doing this.

On the other hand, paying attention to documenting the emotional fallout that always follows a murder would become emotionally crushing after awhile. I’m certain it would turn readers off. To be perfectly cold about it, in many cases it does slow down the story. We often use the dodge that “the killer must be found!” (Whether we’re consciously using this as a dodge or just a plot convenience is a moot point.) If we did stop and weave the sadness into our plots as a matter of course, our books would become overly depressing. Readers like to be told a good story full of twists and turns, populated by interesting characters, and at the end, all would be explained and the miscreants brought to justice. Real life is so depressing these days that who wants more to be piled on when reading for enjoyment?

Yes, sensitive writers do try to work something of this personal tragedy into their plots where they can, and that can be a good thing, but by and large it’s glossed over.

Now here’s where real life comes into our discussion. I’m sure we could all come up with multiple instances of tragic death that we’ve heard about in only the past week. But as uncomfortable and depressing as it is, maybe there’s something that could be used as a quick snapshot to bring the suffering that is visited on those left behind when a loved one dies.

I have a story I’m going to share and it happened here in Toronto last week. It is heartbreaking, but there is also a sliver of something that is uplifting nonetheless.

Two victims of the shooting down of the Ukrainian flight out of Tehran on January 8th, mother and daughter lived just north of Toronto. Reera Esmaelion, 9 years old had tickets to  a performance of Hansel and Gretel with her mom this past weekend. It would have been her first opera experience and as a budding pianist, she was very excited about it. In the aftermath her father Hamed asked that their seats be left empty to honour them. Here is the result of that request posted on the Canadian Opera’s Facebook page:

“Reera Esmaeilion and her mother, Parisa, had been excited to join us this weekend for our final Opera For Young Audiences performance of HANSEL & GRETEL. We were heartbroken this week to learn of their passing in the crash of Flight PS752 on January 8, 2020 and kept their seats empty yesterday afternoon, in honour of their memory and shared love of music. Our thoughts and hearts remain with Hamed Esmaelion, who kindly shared his family photos, and all those touched by this tragedy.”

Absolutely heartbreaking, yes. But perhaps a similar scene, a mere paragraph or two, would help hammer home the grievous story beyond the recounting of a violent death in a crime fiction story and allow a bit more humanity to shine through rather than racing on to tell our story and glossing over something so important. We owe it to our “victims.”

Weathering the Weather

Here in Edinburgh the winter has been good so far. When the south was getting day after day of rain, we had those perfect cold winter days – frosty, the sky clear and brilliant blue, the air so cold it almost feels fizzy on your throat like champagne.

This weekend it all changed.  Violent winds, with 90mph gusts in some places, torrential rain which turned sleety and has now left a wet slushy coating on everything and outside now it's grey sky right down to the ground. I don't need to go out tonight so I can look for a good book and huddle by the fire.

Since my books have rural settings, the weather always plays a big part. In Devil's Garden, the new book that's coming out in June, DCI Kelso Strang has to cope with the major storm that hit the country at the end of February last year, the one that became known as The Beast from the East.

It actually stranded me in London, with no trains getting through to Edinburgh until they could get snowploughs through the drifts that had shut the line at Carlisle, so I remembered it all very clearly. The only trouble was that when I was actually writing about it, it was sunny and warm and we were having meals in the garden and it was a real effort of the imagination to get back into feeling what my characters would be experiencing.

I've had that problem before, when the work is going well and I'm really absorbed.  When I reread, I find that I've described what I'm seeing out of the window instead of what the characters would be seeing – leaves on the trees, perhaps, which would be very confusing to a reader who has been under the impression that the action takes place in November. If I fail to notice even then – well, that's where the copy-editing comes in – see my last post!

One of the other problems is knowing what flowers or trees you can expect to be in flower at which time of year – I spend my life looking up botanical references. Birds too are a bit inconvenient – here we have a lot of migratory ones and you have work out when the ones you've chosen to feature aren't still enjoying themselves in sunnier climes.

Which brings me back to the book I need to take my mind off the weather tonight.  Out of Africa, perhaps – or would that just make me miserably discontented?. Maybe I'd be wiser to pick up T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, with all the horrors of desert heat to remind me how lucky I am to live where I do.

I find myself muttering a little rhyme my mother used to say provokingly when we were complaining about rain spoiling holiday plans: 'But we'll weather the weather whatever the weather, Whether we like it or not.'

Series Characters--To Cherish or Not?

One of the problems with a mystery series is that of reintroducing characters. Fans of the series don't want a detailed synopsis of each and every person who appeared in previous books. On the other hand, new readers will be quite bewildered when a person suddenly shows up with a built in role. 

In real life, I feel the same awkwardness when I'm supposed to know someone I've never been introduced to. One situation that was hilariously funny was when one of my daughters was married and no one introduced me to the father of the groom. We were across the room from each other at a party and nodded with weak polite smiles. I would like to think I finally resolved this by simply saying "Hello, I'm Charlotte Hinger. The mother of the woman your son is going to marry."

I probably didn't because I have a real talent for complicating matters. But really, our families would be joined for life. Surely we could do better than identifying one another through the process of elimination.

For once writing a series in first person helps solve this problem, because--as Lottie Albright--and by incorporating the blessed technique of projecting thoughts, Lottie can dread the volcanic disruption of a visit by her husband's daughter Elizabeth, or worry about his daughter, Angie, who falls for cruel men. 

With third person the process is more awkward, plus there is a danger of "spoilers." Revealing plots of previous books. As in, "you know, the evil psychologist we put in prison a couple of years ago." This isn't fair to the new reader who loves book number five, decides to read ALL of the series and discovers he or she already knows how previous books have turned out. 

There are four characters who simply must be in all of my books: the sheriff, Sam Abbot, Lottie's twin sister, Josie Albright, her husband, Keith Fiene, and Tosca, the adorable little Shih-Tzu who somehow wiggles her way into every plot. 

I would love to hear tips and advice from my savvy blogmates on reintroducing all the people we've managed to accumulate through the years. 

The light and the dark

Over the past month, I’ve read Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, and Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, by Walter Mosley. These are two great books, both. But they are entirely different and show us many things about where the genre is, has been, and will be.

Owens’s Crawdads is a perfectly plotted and insightful coming-of-age story about a young woman who is accused of a murder. The crime scene is well detailed but cozy-like in its descriptions. Owens plays fair with the reader, and the whodunit is answered on the last page. Agatha Christie could not have plotted it better.

Mosley’s Outgunned is Mosley at his best –– offering a glimpse into the African-American experience, shedding light on the results of incarceration, and the illusion-versus-reality of our criminal justice system. It is cruel, dark, and real.

I love both of these books. And I think each of them tells us something interesting about the state of the genre. Raymond Chandler said there are no dull topics, only dull minds. He was speaking of the concept of plot. Each of these books illustrate his point. And it’s a point worth making: any topic is a good one for a crime novel, in a capable writer’s hands.

Both of these books feel authentic and atmospheric and very real. They speak to the possibilities and the options of the genre, and to what is available to writers: themes in these books (I’m being careful not to give spoilers here) are both heavy and light. Reads find discoveries of identity; race and socio-economics in the criminal justice system; and violence is explored and handled differently by each writer.

So what does this say about the state of the genre? The options for you (and me) are endless. Write what you know. Or write what you’re scared to know. But as you go forward, remember Chandler’s quip. The concept is rarely bad. It’s only handled badly.

The Books of Dark Shadows

Lately, I've been rediscovering the books based on the supernatural soap opera, Dark Shadows, which aired in the mid sixties to the early seventies. I was one of those kids who "ran home" from school to watch it. Okay, I actually took the bus, but I ran into the house as soon as it let me off.

I read a number of these books (there were 33) when they came out starting in 1966. In junior high, when we had to do a dramatic reading of a book, I chose one of the DS books. I don’t remember which one, but I can tell you that the passage I read was a lot more interesting than anything others read. I’m pretty sure it involved a vampire and/or a werewolf.

The books were all written by Marilyn Ross, pen name of writer William Edward Daniel Ross. I guess the powers that be thought having a woman's name on the books was the best way to go. He was a Canadian author (among other things) who wrote over 300 novels in a variety of genres.

My home library includes some of the books I bought way back then for 50 cents each as well as others I found in thrift stores.

Recently I learned that they’re all being reissued in paperback and audio formats. I’m sure when “Marilyn Ross” wrote them, he thought they’d be forgotten once the soap ended. But Dark Shadows has never really been out of the public eye. Episodes have been syndicated as well as being released on VHS and DVD. There have been conventions. (I’ve been to quite a few.) And in 1991 there was a revival of the series, which was beautifully done, but had the bad luck of airing at the time of the Gulf War. The CW did a pilot of a new version, but it was never picked up. I hear someone else is giving it a go again.

But, up until now, the books haven’t been easily available. Kathryn Leigh Scott who played Maggie Evans plus other characters on the original series, does a nice job reading them for the audio versions. Even if you know nothing about the soap, they are still fun reads. They certainly bring back fond memories for me.

Dan Curtis, the creator of Dark Shadows, never expected it to have the longevity it’s had. None of the actors did, either. There’s a newly released documentary on Curtis called Master of Dark Shadows that’s worth watching.

All of this just goes to show you that no one knows what’s going to catch the public eye and be successful. I’ve never been one to chase trends, anyway. I intend to write what I want to write and see what happens.

Falling in love with characters

by Rick Blechta

It’s a fact of life that we writers must find a connection with our characters in order to write effectively. Basically, if we don’t feel something about them, how can we expect anyone else to care, and care they must, or they won’t continue reading.

The second favourite child of my novel output, Cemetery of the Nameless, started life as a completely different story. I wrote nearly 70 pages with a totally different protagonist. After working for nearly two months on the manuscript, I crashed into a hard stone wall that would not budge.

The reason? I really disliked my protagonist. No matter what I did, he complained. He whined. He whinged. And I couldn’t stop him. Lord knows I tried! To borrow a somewhat rude British term, David was a total wanker. I knew wouldn’t be able to restrain myself and would likely bump him off before reaching the end of my story. Not a good situation when the narration is first person!

I’ve documented this several years ago in a post here, so I won’t belabour the point, but the solution was to keep the main idea of the story (a lost Beethoven manuscript) but change out the protagonist to one with whom I was more simpatico, one whom I liked better.

While this is the opposite end of what the title of this post indicates, I felt my personal story about a writer’s relationship with main characters in a work would illustrate why it’s important to have some kind of feeling for the people who populate our plots. Let’s look at two of the crime fictions more notable citizens.

It’s well known that Dorothy L. Sayers was more than a little in love with her creation, Lord Peter Wimsey. Read a few of these (excellent) novels and you can’t fail to see it.

Agatha Christie on the other hand came to hate Hercule Poirot — even though she wrote 33 novels and 50+ short stories about his exploits. In a matter of 10 years, she found her creation to be a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. Even so — probably with one eye on her bank account — she continued to write about the “insufferable” detective for another 45 years!

Why were both these series so enjoyed by readers even though one writer clearly loved her character and the other hated hers?

Because these talented writers made their readers feel something compelling about them, despite how they personally interacted with their creations.

And aren’t love and hate opposite sides of the same coin?

Nervous About Teaching Creative Writing.

Tonight I’m teaching my first Creative Writing class at our local community college. It’s a continuing education program so I won’t be grading papers or scoring tests. It’s purely for people who are interesting in learning about being better writers.

I’m a bit nervous because, while I’ve taught a couple of college courses in the past and given writing workshops, I’ve never taught a course on Creative Writing.

To be sure, I can offer advice on the mechanics of writing. How you can go about developing characters that are interesting and memorable. I can show ways to create a protagonist who is relatable. I can talk about how you should “show” rather than “tell”. I can offer my thoughts on plot structure and even a few tricks about plot twists.

We can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of narrative viewpoint and how to write believable dialogue.

I’ll suggest that they read aloud what they write. It’s a great way to “hear” what’s been rattling around in their heads and then hammered out onto their laptops.

I’ll let them know that often it’s a good idea to leave your manuscript in a drawer and walk away from it for a few days or even a week or two. Then when you’re ready to write a revision, open the drawer and you’ll have a fresh set of eyes critiquing it.

But what I’d like them to do, more than anything, is to bring in some of their works in progress and read selected passages from them aloud to the class. I’m hoping the feedback they get will help them become stronger writers.

I’ve taken creative writing classes and was scared out of my wits to read what I’d written to a room full of people. Even to this day, I can speak to an audience about my books and my thoughts on writing, but reading from my novels still makes me nervous.

But the great thing is, in a creative writing class, you’re in a room full of people who share your passion. Everyone there has a joy for writing.

So, I think I can do a good job helping them with the mechanics of writing. But can someone teach creativity?

I’ve read articles that say that it can be taught and some that say that it can’t. There are exercises that can help strengthen someone’s creativity. But as an adult (and all my students at adults), unless you are already endowed with it, is it really possible to suddenly grow creativity if you don’t already have it?

Tonight, I’m going to ask each student what they hope to get out of the class, who their favorite writers are, and tell us about their ‘work in progress’? And if they tell me they don’t have a WIP, I’m going to have to ask them, “Why the hell not?”

Now, I’ll end this blog with three quotes:

“It aint’ whatcha’ write, it’s the way atcha’ write it.”—Jack Kerouac

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”—Ernest Hemingway

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do for them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”—Dorothy Parker

Guest Blogger Judith Starkston

Type M is thrilled to welcome our guest Judith Starkston, whose historical fantasy series is set in the most fascinating place, in the most interesting era, and features the most original protagonist you can imagine!

Murder and Magic in the Bronze Age

Thank you, Donis Casey, for the invitation. I’m delighted to be here and to introduce you to my historical fantasy series set in the distant Bronze Age past of the Hittite empire that once spanned the area covered by modern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.

Type M for murder, you say? That was the easy part: the murder, I mean. What about the other m’s? The murderer, the motive, and the muse? I studied classics. I believe in muses.

I’m not sure if I discovered my particular muse because I love to explore archaeological ruins, or if the muse decided to make herself known in the person of Puduhepa because the long-forgotten queen was tired of waiting more than three thousand years for someone to pay her proper respect. Puduhepa ruled the huge Hittite empire for decades. The legacy she left behind survives today inscribed on clay tablets. Through these writings I’m able to “listen” to her across time in her prayers, letters, judicial decrees, and diplomatic skirmishes with her various foes, particularly Pharaoh Ramses II (of Biblical fame). She had a brilliant mind and a tough but gracious manner. Reconstructing her ancient world so my readers live there for a time—see, smell and taste it—is one of the pleasures of writing fiction based in a culture unfamiliar to most of us. Queen Puduhepa became the inspiration for my priestess Tesha in the series. The Hittites became my Hitolia.

As for the easy part, the murder. In Priestess of Ishana, an unsuspecting shepherd discovers a charred dead body in a dank hillside cave and, lying next to it, the murder “weapon”: “…a black lump of bitumen, the size of a man’s thigh. Even with its arms and legs partly melted, the tarry figure formed an evil effigy.” I borrowed this murder method directly from the Hittite records written in cuneiform on clay. They had some fantastical beliefs—an obsession with sorcery and curses, for example—that make great source material for murderous plots that combine mystery, romance, political intrigue, and magic. I use these tantalizing ancient descriptions as the base from which my fiction grows.

Then there are the murderers and their motives. The villains step into my books from the fascinating conflicts of this empire. Some reflect the deadly disagreements within the royal family that the tablets hint at. Some march in from rival empires and bring international intrigue in their wake. Some more fantastical foes arise from the Hittite penchant for the supernatural and afflict their victims from within. Thus, I craft historical fantasy from both specific rites or customs found in the records and from the broader sweep of events suggested there. I allow full range to the magical beliefs arising from this world and that produces the fantasy amidst my historical grounding.

The initial two books of the series are available now, Priestess of Ishana and Sorcery in Alpara. Sign up for my monthly newsletter and/or my weekly blog posts to download a short story set in this world and updates on my latest history and archaeology finds that could wind up shaping one of my future plots.
__________

www.JudithStarkston.com
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And Life Goes On

One of the facts of a writing life -- as I and my blogmates have noted -- is that life goes on even when we would rather be focused on a work in progress. I'm having one of those weeks. Last week, we learned of a reorganization that is going to affect my academic unit at school. That has meant meetings and discussions and the need to re-orient before we move on. The fact that all this is happening during one of our gloomier weeks here in Albany has me thinking of Shakespeare's  "winter of our discontent" or Melville's Ishmael "growing grim about the mouth."

School is closing this afternoon because of the weather. It looks like rain from my dining room window, but obviously more is happening. So I may not be able to make it to the post office to mail out some paperwork about reissuing the next book in my Lizzie Stuart series. And I won't be able to get to Best Buy to pick up a printer and take it to my computer tech to be programmed. (I ordered a new Dell to replace my ancient desk top, but I was so focused on choosing the right computer that I neglected to order the speakers and a new printer). My computer tech has the speakers waiting to be picked up. But it looks like a few more day without sound on that computer.

Getting back to Ishmael and his gloomy mood. Last night I was looking up that paragraph from Moby Dick -- one of my favorite first paragraphs even when I'm in a good mood. I clicked on one of those sites with quotes from famous authors. I had never done a search for quotes from Melville before. After reading a few, I wanted to post them over my desk. 

I share below three quotes from Melville that sent me back to my keyboard feeling inspired and invigorated:


I try all things, I achieve what I can.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. 

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. 

So I am going to venture out to see what I can get done before the weather gets worse. Then I am going to spend the afternoon and evening trying to "achieve what I can."

(And the rain just turned to snow, so now I'm in for the day. But I'm ready to work).

Hamster on a Wheel

As usual, I'm under a deadline and feeling desperate to finish the second installment of my new Bianca Dangereuse series, which is ironic because I just finished the launch events for the first installment, The Wrong Girl. But that's the way it is on the writing merry-go-round. At this point I don't have many launch events left to do - a couple of local talks on Mar. 11, which is the day before I fly off to San Diego for Left Coast Crime, one of the premier author/reader mystery conferences! I'll be on a panel called Hooray for Hollywood: Tinsel Town as a Setting (and what a setting it is!) on lucky Friday the 13th at 4:00 p.m. along with fellow mystery authors, multiple-award-winner Kellye Garrett, Sherri Leigh-James, and Phoef Sutton. I don't get to go to many conferences, so I'm crossing my fingers that everyone who lives in my house stays healthy and nothing weird happens so that I have to change plans at the last minute, which has happened to me far too often.

Speaking of weird things that interfere with one's writing but must be dealt with - February is going to be very doctor-y around here. My husband is having minor surgery on the 12th (pacemaker replacement), and I'll be chauffeuring him to surgery, the follow-up appointments, and a couple of eye-shots (yes, if you have certain eye problems, the current treatment is to get shots in you eyeballs.) on Feb. 17th, 19th, 25th, and 27th. He actually was scheduled for a different minor surgery last Monday, but (long long story) it ended up getting cancelled at the last minute. We're looking forward (irony alert) to having that rescheduled.

Ending on a much more fun note, I recently got to do a Page 69 Test for The Wrong Girl, my mystery set in 1920s Hollywood. What is the Page 69 Test? It's a test to see if page 69 of your novel is representative of the rest of the book. Marshall Zeringue posted my page 69 test - and guess what? Yes, page 69 is an important turning point for the main character in The Wrong Girl. You can read my page 69 test, which of course includes the entirety of page 69, here - https://page69test.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-wrong-girl.html

I read Canadian

A very special day is coming up on February 19, 2020: the very first I READ CANADIAN day celebrating Canadian authors and stories coast to coast. Why this blatantly nationalistic hype? As a true Canadian, I apologize in advance. Canada is a modest, relatively unassuming but awesome country full of diverse regions and cultures. Proudly, it has many voices, but with the exception of Quebec, its literature is mainly in English. It is stuck between two English-speaking cultural behemoths – the UK and the US – which have a far larger readership and much larger budgets to reach that readership. The population of the UK is 67 million, and the US 328 million. Canada's is 38 million, of which 20% are French-speaking.

Canadians have many influences. In many ways we float midway across the ocean between the two powerhouses. A bit British, a bit American, with lots of other colours thrown in. American culture swamps our TV, our airwaves, our movie theatres, and our bookstores. UK culture acts as a kind of counterweight to this, providing another voice that seems familiar, at times nostalgic, to our ears. In this clamouring of cultural offerings, Canadian offerings find it hard to be heard. I have been doing book signings across Canada for over twenty years, and I am often discouraged that readers who express an interest in crime fiction often can't name a single Canadian crime writer. This despite the fact there are about 300 active published authors who are members of Crime Writers of Canada.

In the music industry, there are Canadian content requirements for radio stations that have nurtured a world-class Canadian music industry. Some Canadian content regulations also exist for TV and film. But sadly there are none for books. No requirement for Canadian writers to be included in school curricula, no requirement or even incentive that they feature prominently in bookstore displays, alongside the "Scandinavian Noir" or "James Patterson" piles. The big publishers are international businesses, and they don't make their money on Canadian authors, but rather on international best-sellers  Independent Canadian publishers don't have the money to compete with them for space.

Hence this grassroots social media campaign by authors, publishers, and literary organizations aimed at raising awareness. Hey, Canadian stories exist, and they're actually pretty good! Although the focus is on children's books and the campaign is aimed at school and library participation, the idea is gaining traction within the broader community. So with any luck, on February 19, there will be events in schools and libraries across the country, and blitzes on social media as well as traditional media. All authors are encouraged to wave the flag. If Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are suddenly awash in I READ CANADIAN slogans and stories, that's why. Please share them, and I hope they will inspire some of you to pick up a Canadian book from your library or bookstore.

As a lead-up to that big day, a more modest campaign will be held this upcoming weekend, February 7 - 9, to celebrate that subcategory of books called "High interest/ Low vocabulary". Although most of these books are aimed at struggling or emerging young readers including middle school and YA, some imprints are written for adults who for whatever reason are looking for a quick, easy read. Some are busy or have short attention spans, some just want a quick read for the airplane or the doctor's office, while others, such as ESL, LD, or the elderly, enjoy the simpler format. Orca Books is a leader in HiLo books for all ages, and my Cedric O'Toole series is from their adult Rapid Reads line. Their mission is to develop a love of reading that lasts a lifetime. So if you see a flurry of posts and conversations with #GetToKnowHiLo or @GetToKnowHiLo, please share and join the conversation. Spread the world.

Let's Hear It For Copy-Editors.

The copy-edited ms of Devil's Garden, my new book, arrived this week so I've been head-down for the last few days.

Usually the copy-editing is a straightforward matter – I just work through to the comments, change if I think it's necessary, explain why I'm not going to change if not. There are usually only a handful anyway – and I'm particularly grateful when they pick up on the fact that I have somehow not noticed using the same word three times in as many lines or contradicted what I had said in Chapter Two when I reached Chapter Eleven.

This time I was surprised and not a little dismayed when there were three pages of queries as well, nearly all of them relating to a time problem, where they couldn't work out what day it was meant to be – the evidence was contradictory.

Most of my books have a tight time schedule, and in this one the whole action unfolds in the course of a week, on the basis of real time, so trying to unpick it all looked as if it was going to be a major nightmare to sort out.

My copy-editors had meticulously gone through the whole book, quoting and highlighting phrases where the time was mentioned. I hate to think how long it must have taken and when I got down to studying the comments I could see why it was a problem.

Then I started working through the book and I realised the whole thing had stemmed from one word. I remembered considering whether the junior detective should arrive on the scene on the Monday or on the Tuesday. I'd thought at first it should be Monday but then as I wrote on the action dictated a Tuesday arrival and somehow in the revision I didn't notice what I'd done.

With the change in that one word, it all worked, with only a very few minor tweaks of the 'last night' when it should be 'two nights ago' variety. (At least I hope it has – they'll be checking it next week!)

When I was small and learning to knit I would get it into a bit of a mess and take it to my grandma. She would painstakingly rip a bit back, pick up the dropped stitches and give it back to me – sorted.

That's what copy-editors do. I'd like to say a great big thank you to mine, and a great big apology too, for giving them so much trouble by my carelessness.

Going back to the beginning

Michael Sears

This weekend, I'm delighted to welcome guest author Michael Stanley, who is actually two fabulous writers in one. To make matters even more amazing, they manage this collaboration while living on two different continents. Here, they talk about why, after writing six books in the Detective Kubu series, they went back to the beginning. Take it away, you two!

Stanley Trollip

In most cases, the writer of a series has from the very beginning a good grasp of the protagonist’s character, personality, and skill set. And has a general idea of how he or she will develop over time.

In our case, things happened very differently.

First, our motivation to write a mystery was largely to see whether we could do it. The catalyst was a trip to Botswana’s wonderful Chobe National Park to watch birds and animals. During the visit, we watched a pack of hyenas attack, kill, and devour a wildebeest. In a matter of hours, there was nothing left because hyenas eat both flesh and bones. 

That gave us the idea for a new way to get away with murder – leave the corpse for the hyenas to dispose of. No body, no case. We decided to take the idea and try to write a complete novel. For ourselves. Certainly, there was no thought of a series, so we put only a little effort into planning our protagonist.

We’d been advised by experienced writers to write what we knew. Because both of us were professors, it made sense to have our protagonist be a professor—in his case, a professor of ecology at the University of Botswana.

So, in chapter one of our mystery, titled A Carrion Death, our ecologist and a game ranger stumble upon a human body being eaten by a hyena. It was immediately obvious to our smart professor that the absence of clothes and teeth suggested that this was no accident. It was murder. So, he had to call the police in to investigate.

We decided to have some fun with this policeman. We made him a very large man, so large, in fact, that his nickname was Kubu, which is the local word for hippopotamus. He packed ample food before he jumped into his Land Rover, as well as cassette tapes of his favorite operas. Then he set off for the Kalahari to inspect the half-eaten corpse.

It was a long way to drive, and Kubu mused about how his bushman school friend had shown him things in the desert that other people overlooked, and how that had sparked his interest in being a detective. By the time he’d arrived at the scene of the crime, Kubu had made it clear to us that he had to be the main character. That came as a complete surprise. We thought we were in charge of the story.

So Kubu was even less planned than our ecologist.

We wrote away, and three years later we had a manuscript. We’d accomplished what we’d set out to do. We twisted the arms of some of the friends who’d been with us in Chobe and asked them to read our magnus opus. They obliged and liked it. So we decided to see if we could get it published.

Forty rejections later, we landed an agent in New York, who, in a matter of weeks, landed a conditional offer from HarperCollins. The condition was that we write a series.

And so from wondering whether we could write a mystery for ourselves with an academic as a protagonist, we ended up with a contract for a series with a protagonist we hadn’t planned.

We were delighted that Kubu won readers’ loyalty, but how well did we actually know him? He was smart and good at solving problems. Unlike many detectives in police procedurals, he was happily married and sober almost all of the time. Of course, during the series his character developed, and his relationships with his wife, parents, and colleagues deepened. There were clues about his childhood in the books—things that had come up as we wrote. We knew he had loving, traditional, but Christian parents and knew of his Bushman friend. We knew he loved to do puzzles with his father. We knew where he’d met his wife. But there was nothing that explained how he’d gone from school to being the star detective in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. 

Since the seventies, diamonds have been Botswana’s most important export and allowed the newly independent country to flourish. The richest diamond mine in the world is there, owned by a joint venture between the government and the giant De Beers. The fact that the country was almost totally reliant on diamonds for its success made us wonder about the impact of a massive heist. Could it shake the country’s financial foundation?

We decided to explore both the issue of Kubu’s early role in the CID and a robbery at the height of the diamond boom by writing a prequel to the series—a Kubu mystery that starts the day he joins the CID as a new detective straight out of university. 

Kubu’s first case is a minor matter, yet it’s a challenging puzzle, and he loves it. However, he has to struggle to find a place for himself in the CID. Sometimes his new boss, Assistant Superintendent Mabaku, seems disappointed in him. Then a massive diamond robbery takes place and suddenly everything changes. Everyone is thrown into the case, even the raw detective in his first week on the job.

As we wrote the prequel, we were delighted to watch Kubu develop, having insights, but also making the mistakes that only experience can avoid. He earns respect, but also opprobrium. And as Mabaku comes to appreciate his talents, Kubu becomes more and more central to the case. Eventually, they deduce who the mastermind behind the robbery actually is, but they have no strong evidence. Now they have to find some way to catch him, and Kubu and Mabaku both find their careers on the line—in Kubu’s case, before his career has even begun. 

By the end of the book, Kubu has learned a lot about being in the CID and how to interact with his colleagues and his superiors. He has also fallen in love with a wonderful women and sees some hope that his feelings are reciprocated. 

Writing Facets of Death was a very enjoyable journey of exploration for us. We learnt a lot about how Kubu became the CID’s best detective and about who he is as a person. We know him better now. 

Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip write under the name Michael Stanley. Their award-winning mystery series, featuring Detective Kubu, is set in Botswana, a fascinating country with magnificent conservation areas and varied peoples. The latest book in the series is a prequel, titled Facets of Death. Their latest thriller Shoot the Bastards introduces Minnesotan environmental journalist Crystal Nguyen. Set mainly in South Africa, it has as backstory the vicious trade in rhino horn.

Michael has lived in South Africa, Kenya, Australia and the US. He now lives in Knysna on the Cape south coast of South Africa. Stanley splits his time between Minneapolis, Cape Town, and Denmark. To learn more about them, check out their website.

The Roller Coaster

One of the best talks I've ever hear about writing was given by Wister Award winner, Win Blevins, at a Western Writers of America conference. It was superb. Even if the audio of his presentation had been recorded it would not have been adequate to convey his emotions to the listener.

The title was Give Your Heart to the Hawks. He spoke about the dangerous rise and fall of fortunes for those of us who write professionally for many years. He spoke of falling from the sky to the rocks below. He spoke of ascending once again on the wings of a hawk to a cloudless blue sky.

Writing is like being on a perpetual roller coaster. Yesterday I received an invitation to participate in a collection of novellas featuring myself and three other writers. I was absolutely thrilled. I said yes immediately. What a great boost.

Since the first of the year, I've been writing steadily, at my most workable pace of five pages a day, five days a week. I'm sure of the book. The plot is sound, and I'm comfortable with my characters. But I'm not sure how well it will be received by my editor.

So I'm happily putting the Work In Progress aside for a different Work In Progress. One that's a sure thing and requested by a publishing house that is terrific to work with.

Recently I watched a YouTube presentation that featured three agents from my new agency, Folio Literary Management. I was struck by the fact that agents experience many of the same problems faced by their authors. Agents might love a book and be shocked that their favorite editor does not.

Just doesn't. Isn't going to buy it either.

Agents are on a roller coaster too.

Nevertheless, it's winter now. And the rise of hope whether induced by hot-house tulips in the grocery store or an ego-boosting email from my favorite editor is mighty pleasant.

Spring is coming!

Travel and writing, not travel writing

I have the good fortune this week to be writing this post from Morgan Hill, California. I arrived Saturday afternoon, got my rental car at the San Francisco International Airport, and drove an hour south to Morgan Hill, taking in the scenery (and the traffic) all the way.

One of the interesting things about stepping into a new location is that your perception of your surroundings becomes heightened.

I called my wife from the car, passing San Jose, and said the area felt a little like El Paso, Texas, where we lived for three years. When I arrived in Morgan Hill and spent time driving around the town, I told her it felt like a combination of Bend, Oregon (big-money, outdoorsy), and El Paso (mountain ranges, farm land). Being in a new place forces me to observe, and being forced to do that makes me think about how and where I incorporate setting details into my writing.

I love atmospheric books. James Lee Burke’s rich portrayal of New Orleans. Robert B. Parker’s depiction of Boston. Alexander McCall Smith’s use of Mma Precious Ramotswe to offer insights into Botswana. Even settings that can’t be described but are present, like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, the physical structure of which I can’t explicitly describe but I feel the weight of the lighthouse on the characters on every page of the novel, nonetheless. (I’m still not sure how she does that.)

The settings in these books offer a layer of richness and nuance that readers might not even notice as they follow the plot and grow attached to the characters. And writing setting details is never easy. Hemingway said, Writing is always architecture, never interior design.

Likewise, the “clever” metaphor is only clever if it helps the reader by saving her time. Symbol, unless you are Steinbeck, is a critic’s word, not a writer’s.

So the use of setting to enhance a work can be a tightrope walk. I find myself often adding and just as often cutting in the same scene. A brushstroke here. A cover-up there. How much is too much? Am I writing that because I like it or because it will add something to the scene? (Be honest, John!) All are questions I struggle with as I go.

I’d love to hear what others think about setting and the place those details play in one’s work.

How Cozy Mysteries Changed My Life

Awhile back—don’t ask me how long ago because I’ve forgotten—I was on a panel titled “How Cozy Mysteries Changed my Life.” As you can guess, the topic was about writing cozies, although I don’t remember directly addressing the question mentioned in the title. Still, it did start me thinking about how they’ve affected me, both as a reader and a writer.

I’ve read cozies for most of my reading life, though I don’t think I’d heard the term “cozy mystery” until well into adulthood. I don’t know if that’s because it’s a newer term or if I was just oblivious to the different categories of crime fiction and what “everyone” called them until then.

I find reading cozies a very calming activity. There’s generally an interesting puzzle, characters and settings plus the killer is always identified and brought to justice. By the end of the book, the world is righted once again. Something that brings me great comfort and doesn’t always happen in real life.

I’ve also learned new things. I wrote a post for Chicks on the Case awhile back titled Unexpected Influences where I talked about how reading has influenced me to learn about things I would either never have known about or never have thought to study. You can read the full post here.

While I love reading, I never intended to be a writer, particularly of mysteries. I always thought it would be too hard. But when I woke up one morning with an idea for a book, I immediately thought it would make a good cozy so I decided to give it a shot. I believed because I’d read so many that I understood what made them tick. While that was partially true, I soon realized I still had a whole lot to learn. Still, if I hadn’t read a lot of cozies, I wouldn’t have had the courage to try my hand at writing one.

Writing cozies has changed the way I read them. I still get immersed in the stories and characters and enjoy them, but now I also notice things—how a book is structured, how a character is described. Sometimes I jot down interesting lines and paragraphs so I can study them later to see how the writer works their magic.

Probably the biggest change is that I get out of the house more and attend local events. I’m pretty much a homebody. I live near the beach because I prefer the weather, not because I’m into swimming, surfing or sunbathing. I’m not super fond of crowds, either. Here’s where you ignore my love of Disneyland and Las Vegas, which tend to attract lots of people. Somehow, I’m not as bothered by them in those two places, although I do avoid the busier times of the year.

Since my series takes place in a beach city similar to the one I live in, I like to put in events in the books similar to the ones that happen in my area. It’s fun to create my own version of a fair or festival. But to do it justice, I feel I need to see what the real events are like, which often means attending them. Sometimes I can get enough info from videos on YouTube or pics on a website, but that can only take you so far. It’s not the same as attending the event itself. Some I would have gone to anyway, but others I probably would have avoided if I weren’t writing my series.

When I found out my city holds a pumpkin race every year, I knew I had to go and see what that was all about. It’s a short walk from my house to downtown so we’ve attended a few times. The race is an all-day event. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it, but enough to create my own version for my book Designed For Haunting.

An event that I probably would have avoided because of the size of the crowd was our annual pier lighting ceremony. I was writing a Christmas book at the time so I decided I needed to see what it was like. The husband and I walked down to the beach so I could get a feel for it. I’m glad I did. I got a lot of good ideas from attending, things I wouldn’t have known about or thought of if I hadn’t been there. My own version of the pier lighting ceremony appears in Ghosts of Painting Past and is one of my favorite scenes in the book.

When I was in junior high and high school, I was a “joiner”. In junior high, I was in FHA (Future Homemakers of America, now known as Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA)) plus I worked on the student newspaper and yearbook. In high school, it was FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America, now known as FBLA-PBL where the PBL is Phi Beta Lambda), student government, worked on the yearbook for one year and was part of the Bicentennial Quiz Team. (Not hard to guess what year that was.) But in college I was too busy studying and working to join anything.

But when I started writing, I decided it was important to join a group of like-minded people so I joined my local chapter of Sisters in Crime, which led to my being on the board for six years as Recording Secretary, Vice President and President. It also led to my co-chairing the California Crime Writers Conference in 2011 and doing a stint as We Love Libraries! coordinator for SinC National. I wouldn’t have had any of those experiences if I hadn’t started writing cozies.

What about you? How has writing the kinds of books you write or reading the kinds of books you read changed your life?

Accompanying your writing

by Rick Blechta

I’m still working on my promised post (more research than I expected!), so I’m filling in with this post idea instead since it’s getting pretty late in the day to post.

I’m finding more and more that I like listening to music when writing. Somehow it helps to “grease the wheels” creatively-speaking. I have no idea why this is, but most days, I’ve got music on in the background as I work.

That being said, there are some very strict rules applied (through trial and error) if music is going to work its magic on my deathless prose:

• No music with vocals in English! If it’s in a language I don’t know, lyrics don’t bother me; in fact, I listen to a lot of opera. But if the singing is in English I’m in trouble. On more than one occasion I actually listened a bit too hard and included a phrase or two of lyrics in my writing. It’s easy to spot the next day, fortunately, but it’s pretty jarring to see.
• No music I’ve never heard before. I’m sorry. I’m a musician and it’s easy for me to get caught up listening to something new. Then I realize I haven’t written a goddam word for the past half-hour. That sort of defeats the whole exercise.
• I have to pick out all the music beforehand. If the music runs out, then I start hunting for something else which means opening a browser window. Then I’m lost. YouTube is especially bad for this. All of a sudden I’ve wasted 15 minutes just looking at choices. It’s best to bring a few CDs into the studio with me. And no covers or program booklets to tempt my wandering eye! Just the CDs.

So that’s what works for me.

Oh, one more thing: it seems to help if the music I listen to is complimentary to the mood of the scene I’m working on.

And there are days I find I’m just too distractible so I remove the earbuds and work in silence.

Does any of this resonate with you folks? It doesn’t have to be fiction writing. Really, it can be any sort of work.

Let us know!

The Movie 1917, Action, and Characters

In my last blog, I talked about how and why you need tension to keep a story moving forward.  A week ago, my wife and I saw the movie 1917.  The action was so non-stop,that at the end of the movie, while the credits were rolling, I felt myself exhale.

Had I held my breath for two hours?  Of course not.  But it felt like it and I know I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire film.

So, what worked for the movie and what didn’t?

1917 has already won the Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture and Best Director as well as a slew of other awards.  It’s nominated for 10 Academy Awards and a ton of nominations from such organizations like BAFTA and dozens of film critic associations.  The movie has received numerous glowing reviews.

However, the New York Times was less complimentary, “The idea behind the camerawork seems to be to bring viewers close to the action, so you can share what Blake and Schofield endure each step of the way. Mostly, though, the illusion of seamlessness draws attention away from the messengers, who are only lightly sketched in, and toward Roger Deakins’s cinematography and, by extension, Mendes’s filmmaking. Whether the camera is figuratively breathing down Blake’s and Schofield’s necks or pulling back to show them creeping inside a water-filled crater as big as a swimming pool, you are always keenly aware of the technical hurdles involved in getting the characters from here to there, from this trench to that crater.”

The review continues, “In another movie, such demonstrative self-reflexivity might have been deployed to productive effect; here, it registers as grandstanding. It’s too bad and it’s frustrating, because the two leads make appealing company: The round-faced Chapman brings loose, affable charm to his role, while MacKay, a talented actor who’s all sharp angles, primarily delivers reactive intensity. This lack of nuance can be blamed on Mendes, who throughout seems far more interested in the movie’s machinery than in the human costs of war or the attendant subjects — sacrifice, patriotism and so on — that puff into view like little wisps of engine steam.”

In a review by Peter Sobczynski, he says, “… the film is so obsessed with its particular technique that it doesn’t leave room for the other things we also go to the movies for—little things like a strong story, interesting characters, or a reason for existing other than as a feat of technical derring-do. Sitting through it is like watching someone else playing a video game for two solid hours, and not an especially compelling one at that.”

Two weeks ago, in my blog about building tension into a story, I wrote that the readers must be invested in the characters.  I was invested in the action and wanted the characters to complete their important mission (saving 1600 British lives) but didn’t know much about the protagonists at all.

Giving the movie credit, you can make some suppositions about the lead characters through their actions.   That’s not a bad thing at all.  It's just that throughout the movie, I was more invested in the mission rather than the protagonists.

I mentioned in my blog how you have to ratchet up the tension. Just when you think things are bad, you have to make them worse.  1917 certainly does that.  However, it's lucky for the good guys that the  bad guys are such bad shots.

There should be an ebb and flow in the tension.  1917 is shot brilliantly, seemingly in one long seamless take, one breathless action shot after another.  There’s nearly no place for breathing space.  Like I said at the beginning, I exhaled at the end of the movie as if I’d held my breath for two hours.  If it hadn’t been such a dark tale, it would have felt a lot like an Indiana Jones movie.

It all worked, though and I predict the film will collect a whole basket of awards.  I highly recommend you see it, if for nothing more than the cinematography.

Wokeness Killed My Favorite Movie

On the off chance you don't know what "wokeness" is, it's viewing the world through the lens of whatever is currently deemed politically correct. And being "woke" killed my appreciation for one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man starring John Wayne. It's a saccharine homage to Ireland in which Wayne plays an Irish-American boxer who killed a man in the ring and out of guilt, decides to return to his ancestral homeland and start over. The screenplay lards on the clichés so thick that it's a wonder that a real Irishman didn't lob a firebomb onto the set in protest. I realized those shortcomings the first time I saw the movie but gave it a pass because why let reality interfere with a good tale? If nothing else, what I most admire about the Irish is the way they let everyone mangle their heritage and customs, but buy them a pint and they shrug it off. The rest of us should live by their example. In The Quiet Man, Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne play their roles in a typical romance-movie template of cold-warm-cold-warmer-colder-hot-coldest-hotter-happily ever after. For me, the wokeness part comes in when after a spat, O'Hara locks the door of her bedroom. Wayne kicks it open, demonstrating that he will not allow anything to come between them. When he did that, I immediately thought of "Domestic violence. He's off to jail." The movie had plenty of other period tropes that are now painfully uncomfortable to watch.

A couple of TV shows that trigger wokeness are Cheers and Frasier. Both sit-coms depend on double entendres, sexual innuendo, and outright come-ons that would get you hustled to HR and then right onto the street. What blunts the offense are the sharp put-downs and physical reprisals, though I would not suggest acting this way in any professional setting. At least, not without legal representation.

The one author who most activates my personal "wokeness" meter is John D MacDonald. As a teenager I loved his Travis McGee series but on a recent revisit, his women characters are decidedly milquetoast. On the other hand, Mickey Spillane would today be pilloried for his lack of political correctness, though at the time, he was his own brand of woke. Plus his women characters tend to be as dangerous as the men and that trumps any level of wokeness. Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow.