Never let the truth...

 ...get in the way of a good story.  Mark Twain

Fiction requires the suspension of disbelief. If we pick up an epic fantasy, we have no problem accepting a world of orcs, dragons, and magic. But it seems the closer the story world is to our own, the more rigid our factual expectations from the author. Years back, I was engrossed in a WW2 historical thriller about a Nazi plot to kill FDR and was especially drawn in when the assassin crept into the US through Juarez. How often does my part of the country get mentioned in any book? Then, as the assassin journeyed north, listing towns along the way, the author made the mistake of writing "Truth or Consequences." That to me was a hard stop as back then, the town was known as Hot Springs. At that point, the author lost me, though in terms of the plot, the error mattered little.

In my current work in progress--a police procedural of sorts--I try hard not to go down the rabbit hole of research, a difficult challenge when digging through police operational manuals, court records, and news articles. I want to get the details right, then I remind myself when watching a show like Bosch, I don't know what's true or made-up. Just have it sound plausible, that's all that I need. It's fiction, not a documentary. 

Recently, I visited Mount Rushmore and naturally, when I returned home, I had to rewatch Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece thriller, North by Northwest. The climax of the movie is the final chase from the Vandamm House and down the face of Abraham Lincoln. For the sake of the story, the house is located a convenient running distance to the sculpted face of the mountain. Turns out, there was never a Vandamm House or anything like that ever built on top of Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock needed this plot device, and never mind the facts, poof, there it was on the screen. 

Writing fiction is a compromise. Gotta give the reader enough factual bread crumbs to keep them following the story yet not so much that you turn the narrative into a doughy mess. We're writing entertainment and so must focus on the emotional, vicarious journey that readers expect. Never let the truth get in your way.

No Good Tale Should Go Untold

Donis here. Sometimes, we writers wonder about the ethics of using a third party’s actual life experience as a plot line. I use real events, both historical and personal, all the time. When I have used personal events, I either disguise them or ask permission of the individual to whom it happened. I do have the writer’s mind, though, and when I hear an intriguing story, I do not forget it, though I ponder long and hard on whether or not I can use it in book. Sometimes I ponder long and hard for decades. 

The third book of my long-running Alafair Tucker series, The Drop Edge of Yonder, is a book that was thirty years in the making. There are at least two pivotal scenes in the book that owe their existence to newspaper articles that stayed with me all that time. I read the first story when I lived in Lubbock, Texas, back in the ’70′s. Two women, an elderly mother and her grown daughter, were out shopping together, walking down the street and minding their own business, when an insane person ran up and attacked the daughter without provocation. The old mother saved her daughter when she jumped on the  man’s back and pummeled him, and bit him, and basically beat the heck out of him.

Somewhere around the same time, I read in an interview with an old British soldier who had fought the Massoud in Palestine after WWII. He described a fighter who came at him tooth and claw and absolutely refused to be killed, even after he shot him and stabbed him and beat him with the butt of his rifle. The fighter finally sunk his teeth in the soldier’s foot and the soldier had to decapitate him to make him let go. The soldier said it was the scariest thing that had ever happened to him in his life. I took both these images and put them together to create one of the climatic scenes of the book.

The opening scene of Drop Edge isn’t quite as old an image in my head as the other two, but it is also a tale that took me a long time to tell. Seven or eight years before I began writing that particular book, I did a family genealogy for my sibs for Christmas, which is one of the things that inspired me to write my Alafair Tucker series in the first place. One of the things I learned while doing research on my family was the story of one of my a great-great grandfathers and three of his companions who were returning from the Civil War Battle of Pea Ridge when they stopped a few miles from home to rob a bee hive in a tree. While they were smoking the hive, they were ambushed by bushwhackers and killed. They were found by their families a few hours later but lay dead in the field over night, guarded from wild animals by their wives until morning, when they were buried where they fell.

The Drop Edge of Yonder came out almost 20 years ago, but I'm still using other people's experiences as plot jumping off points. I'm nearly finished with a first draft of a new novel with entirely an different plot, characters, eras. Yet as I go back and review what I've written, I see that the story is full of disguised events from my own life and the lives of many of my relatives, because no good tale should go untold.

The long journey

 This week, I decided to take up Charlotte's question about managing time and juggling the various aspects of a writer's career. My system has changed immensely over the years. My first novel, DO OR DIE was published 24 years ago, before social media, websites,  goodreads, etc. Many of the readers I was hoping to reach didn't even have email. It's difficult to imagine how we coped, but we did! I developed a database (using D-Base) of all my friends and family who might be remotely interested in reading my books, and I added each new contact and reader to this database. I could generate mailing lists and print address labels from that database. When I released a new book, I printed postcards and mailed them out, announcing the book and, if they were local, inviting them to my book launch. The book launch was a huge way to get the word out. I also connected with bookstores within a reasonable driving distance from Ottawa and tried to arrange signings. Signings had two purposes - to sell books and to make a connection with booksellers. Sybil's advice to treat editors with respect applies equally to booksellers and librarians. They are your biggest ally.

At the beginning I was still working full time and had to find time to write as well as do all this promotional stuff in the evenings and weekends. Exhausting! Once I went down to part-time (and even more when I retired from practice entirely) I could use my off days to write and to travel around to stores, attend book clubs, and slowly learn about the internet. Email was a game-changer. As I accumulated the emails of readers, friends and families, I began to transition to emailing launch invitations and sending out announcements about signings and new books. Many of my colleagues, more savvy than me, developed newsletters and reader contact lists through platforms like mailchimp. I didn't. With my latest books, I did use Eventbrite and Facebook event invites to spread the word as well, but I still relied on group emails. I have come a long way into this technological age, but it's hard to make an old dog like new tricks!

My Facebook author page and my website are two other avenues through which I try to engage people and keep them up to date on my writing career. I cross-post info on Facebook and Instagram about book signings, launches, etc. When I look back, what a long way we've come in twenty-five years.

But the other aspect of my writing career - the actual writing - has barely changed at all. I write my first draft longhand using pen and pads of lined yellow paper. I began by squeezing writing time into the evenings once the family was settled, but since I've retired, I write every morning for three to four hours when I'm writing the first draft, saving the afternoon for the social media and promotional stuff. First I warm up my brain with coffee, social media browsing, and various internet fiddling, and then I get down to work. My goal is a scene a day, usually five to six handwritten pages. At that rate the first draft usually takes about four to six months. I do no editing until I have written "the end", and then my first task is to transcribe the illegible mess onto the computer. Initial editing occurs during this process, as well as creating a fat file of things that need to be fixed, added, changed, or deleted. Then comes all the rewrites to fix those. That process can take two to three months. I find the whole process from the first research to sending it in to the publisher takes about a year. 

Of course, I was usually contracted to one book a year, so this schedule was born out of necessity! Now that my most recent books are spread farther apart, I am enjoying a more leisurely pace, with time for other interests and fun while still getting the book done on time.

The Fun Begins

 by Catherine Dilts

Don’t we always want to skip the boring parts and get right to the fun? When I have a new idea for a story, I’m tempted to dive straight into the writing. But leaping from the dream phase to the manuscript rarely works out well for me. The same goes for my garden.

Gardening and writing fiction follow similar paths. Phase one is imagining the project. Dreaming. Phase two is preparing for the project. Planning, mapping, outlining. Phase three is where the actual fun begins. In gardening, this is planting. In writing, well, it’s the writing. Telling the story.

If you’re planting a garden, Phase Three is the fun part. You buy plants from the garden shop, order seeds online, or sort through your existing seed packets and saved seeds.

Starting my seedlings indoors is an exciting time, as I set up shelves and grow lights that will take up space in the dining room for the next several months. I prepare the soil for in-ground planting, and refresh the soil in my containers and flower pots. After the last spring freeze, I tuck future flowers and crops into their beds. Water, weed, and wait.

In writing, Phase Three assumes you now have an outline, if you’re a Plotter. Even a Pantser has an idea of where the story is going. You’re ready to start the story’s journey. Maybe you have some little rituals before you type the first word of a new story. You might have to set up a blank manuscript with the proper margins, font, and line spacing before you begin. Or you dive right in, knowing you’ll put it all in the proper format later.

Using the story outline as my map, I begin the journey to a rough draft. I usually have peripheral documents going at the same time. I keep digital research notes close at hand to verify facts as I write. A character list and a series guide are necessities. For my Rose Creek series, I have to keep track of a growing puppy, one character’s pregnancy, the dates and seasons, and names, names, names. Write, rewrite, edit, polish.

When the fun work begins, the garden will eventually bear fruit, and the manuscript will result in a completed short story or novel.

Bouchercon 2024

 By Thomas Kies

While it seems like a long time ago, it's only been a couple of weeks
that I had the pleasure of attending Bouchercon 2024. The Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Convention, is an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honor of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher, and pronounced the way he pronounced his name, rhyming with "voucher".Unarguably the world’s largest mystery writers’ conference, this year’s event was held in Nashville and was attended by over 1,700 participants. 

Every time I go to Bouchercon, I come back, review my credit card statement, and ask myself, “Was it worth it?”

Of course it was.

If only from the standpoint of seeing some old friends, making some new friends, and getting the latest “scoop” from other writers, readers, publicists, voice actors, and folks who just love mysteries.  

It was held in the world’s largest Marriott hotel--the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center is like something out of a science fiction movie.  It’s basically a small city under a glass dome, complete with a river and boat, waterfalls, fountains, restaurants, bars, swimming pools, water attractions, and live music. The hotel consists of 3.3 million square feet of space, 2,888 guest rooms, and event space for a capacity of 10,000 people.

The first few days, literally everyone got lost getting from point A to point B. The hotel has its own directional app you download on your phone.  

On Thursday, my publisher and publicists organized an afternoon long book signing session for Poisoned Pen/Sourcebooks authors.  Each one of us easily went through a couple cases of books.  I love my publicists, and it was great to have a couple of drinks with them later in the evening, along with some other writers, and learned that the same people who represent my books, also represent Freida McFadden (the hot new “it” mystery writer on all the best seller lists).  

The next day I was on a panel entitled “That’s One Body They’ll Never Find”.  The intent, I believe, was to talk about real life crimes that helped shape you as a writer or you incorporated in your books.  It took a strange and morbid turn when, instead, we started off by recounting crimes that still haunt us. Many of them are unsolved. It got so dark that one of the panelists was in tears.

I finally offered to the audience that’s the reason we enjoy reading mysteries.  They have a satisfying ending.  The bad guy gets caught and justice is served.  

Wasn’t a lot of laughs on that panel. 

But the best part was hanging out with friends like Reed Bunzel, Tim Maleeny, John DeDakis, Terry Shepherd, and K.L. Murphy.  And running into some other old friends and catching up with Jeffrey Siger, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Reavis Wortham, Laurie King, and the legendary Martin Edwards. And then was special time meeting and getting to know Clay Stafford, the founder of the Killer Nashville Mystery Conference.  He’s an amazing guy. 

And of course, on Sunday, when the conference was winding down, I took an Uber into downtown Nashville to do some exploring.  It was blocks and blocks of bars and honky tonks.  All of them with live music and some with cowboys (or cowgirls) inviting you inside. 

Oh, if I was only my liver was twenty years younger.  

There were great panels and panelists and special events, but the best part was just being with other writers to talk about writing, publishing and how to hide the bodies.  Overall, worth the time and money.  Next year….New Orleans, baby.  www.thomaskiesauthor.com

Working With An Editor

 by Sybil Johnson

This week I'm working on edits to my short story, "Fatal Return," which will be in the latest Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles anthology, Angel City Beat. Our editor is the fabulous Barb Goffman, recent recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award. She’s also received numerous other awards for her short fiction.

I like being edited, but I've never had an editor go over one of my short stories before. The half dozen of my short fiction that have been published have only lightly been edited, mostly for grammar. That always disappointed me a bit. While I was happy the stories were thought good enough to be published basically as-is, I always felt a good editor would have made them better.

So I am very excited to work with Barb. She pointed out areas where something didn't make sense or didn't work, which I appreciate. I'm busy working on changes to the story.

This has all gotten me thinking about working with an editor. I don’t take criticism well so I usually have to take a deep breath before I open the file with the suggested edits in it. Still, I do appreciate being edited. I’ve worked with several different ones for my books. They've all been helpful and fun to work with. Here are my thoughts on working with an editor.

• Treat your editor with respect. They are not the enemy. They want to make your story the best it can be. I suppose there are some editors out there who have their own agendas, but luckily I haven’t worked with any of them. I feel like the ones I’ve had for my books have all treated me with respect and have considered it a collaborative process.

• Consider every edit carefully, even the easy stuff. You can often learn something about grammar or punctuation or writing that you can use in the future.

• Don’t immediately reject a suggestion. Sometimes I see one and my first reaction is “No, not a chance in heck.” Okay, maybe I’m a little more vocal about it, but I’m alone so no one’s listening. Often, though, if I sit with the suggested change a bit, I get where they’re coming from and agree that a change should be made. There has been the rare case where I don’t take a suggestion, but I have a reason for it beyond “heck no.”

• If you still don’t agree, look for a root cause for the edit. There’s often something that needs to be addressed, just not necessarily in the way the editor suggested.

• Be polite when asking the editor why they suggested a change. I’ll ask about a change when, even after I thought about it, I still don’t understand why it was suggested. I consider it a dialogue between us to help me make the story the best it can be.

Those are my thoughts on working with an editor. Now, back to those edits. I have a little thinking to do.

Writing Time (Or Not)

 by Charlotte Hinger

Last June I had the pleasure of watching my friend, Michael Gear, receive Western Writers Spur Award for Best Short Fiction. Michael is of one of favorite authors. Not only is he a mesmerizing speaker he is generous in giving other writers a boost. 

Seperately or with his wife, Kathleen, (both are renowned archaeologists)  he is responsible for over 70 novels. I was impressed with Michael's energy after the awards presentation. He greeted each person like they were a long lost friend.

Writing individually or as a couple, the Gears have over 17 million copies of their books in print world-wide which have been translated into at least twenty-nine languages.

The Gear's secret is hard work. According to their website, after a fairy tale romance and subsequent marriage in 1982, they spent the next three years in a primitive cabin, with no running water and only two wood stoves for heat. Mike wrote eight novels before he finally sold one. Kathy wrote five non fiction books, and sold the first novel she ever pitched.

Kathleen told me they each spent two hours daily on social media, fan mail, etc. Talk about hard work! And they write every day. 

There are many times during my life I’ve had to admit my usual modus operandi simply wasn’t working anymore. I’ve gotten trapped psychologically into believing I’m handling things when I’ve not. But it usually boils down to the fact that I'm not working hard enough. 

My latest pitfall is the myth of believing I can “clear time” for writing. I've written about that before. That has never ever worked for me. It’s not working now. It won’t work in the future. This summer has been especially disruptive. Something always happened to blow the “cleared time” sky high.

My best approach has always been to write five days a week. Naturally that expands to include weekends at certain stages.

There were many questions I wanted to ask the Gears. What about the business side of writing? Do they hire help for some of these tasks? 

Although I think my life needs more Tweaking, not Tweeting, I need to develop a consistent social media approach. 

Some people never write when they are promoting. Some, like the Gears, write every day no matter what the circumstances. Some take long breaks between drafts of a book. Some write in multiple genres.

So how do you do it, Type M'ers? Have there been times when you’ve had to switch your approach?

It's a Miracle

 Donis here. I've just started a three month gig as Writer in Residence at the Glendale, AZ, Public Library, and the work on my latest manuscript has suffered a bit as I try to get things started and keep everything in order. This very day (Thursday Sept. 12), I'll be teaching a class on world building, and since I haven't done an in-person class since the pandemic, I've been spending the last week or so polishing up my presentation skills.

I'm getting to the end of my first MS draft, and am very anxious to finish. But there are only so many hours in the day. How, oh how, am I going to get everything done in good order and have it all look like something?

In the movie Shakespeare in Love, whenever things look absolutely hopeless, the theater owner, played by Geoffrey Rush, tells a concerned investor that "everything will turn out all right."

"But how?" asks the worried investor?

"I have no idea," replies the theater owner. "It just always does. It's a miracle."

This is the way writing is for me, at least up to a point. I don't outline the story before I begin. Usually start out with a juicy idea for a murder. For a couple of days thereafter, I ponder on what interesting and unlikely person may have committed this murder. Then I think about the setting and which characters will be involved. I so some research on what was happening in that place at that time, which usually gives me some really interesting story elements.

Then I sit down at the computer and go, go, go, from the beginning to the end. I never end up where I thought I would. I never go in the direction I planned. The story goes where it will and the characters behave however they darn well please. I have been known to be reading on the screen the words my flying fingers are typing and exclaim, "Holy crap!", because I had no idea that was going to happen before it did. Sometimes I get lost and am unable to figure out where I'm going or how I got there. Often I get horribly stuck. But I keep typing, even if I'm spending days typing nothing but drivel, because suddenly I realize that the drivel has given way to deathless prose, and I pound my forehead on the desk, because I don't have a clue how I did it. Then one day I come to the end, and lo and behold, I have a book. I put it away for a few days because at this point I've completely lost any objectivity about the thing whatsoever.

Then, I take it out and look at it with fresh eyes and say, "damn, this isn't bad!" Once again, everything turned out all right. I have no idea how. It just always does. It's a miracle.

The shifting season

 Labour Day weekend has been an annual turning point all my life. First as a child, when I had to give up carefree summer play, either on the city streets or at the cottage we rented. The rigours (and boredom) of school beckoned. Then later as a university student. It seems I spent endless years at university at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Fourteen years, to be exact. After I finally entered gainful employment, it was as a consulting psychologist to a school board. Although we worked part of the summer, without the demands of schools, parents, students, and staff, the pace was relaxed. On the Tuesday morning after Labour Day, however, we hit the ground running, and ran non-stop until the end of June.

I've been retired from "gainful employment" for some time now, so the months of the year, and indeed the days of the week, don't matter much, but I still find myself gearing up to start anew in early September. Mentally brushing off the pleasant languor  that settles in the summer as I spend most of it at my lakeside cottage. I read, I kayak, swim, and paddleboard; I enjoy friends and family; I sit on the dock to watch the sunset and listen to the loons; and I soak up the sun (although to call this summer's weather unpredictable is charitable). But once the calendar flips to September, I find myself mentally squaring my shoulders and saying "Right. Now what's next?" 

I can't spend the autumn in idle self-indulgence. My next book isn't due out until January 2025, and there's almost nothing for me to do about it for several months. I can slowly start thinking about book launches, signings and readings, and wondering what conferences, if any, I should register for. But nothing is urgent yet and I feel a need to do something new. January 2025 will mark twenty-five years since I published my first Inspector Green novel. In that time, I've published twenty-two books.  For twenty-five years I've been talking to book clubs, sitting in mall bookstores, and networking with librarians and booksellers. Beloved bookstores have closed, librarians have retired or changed jobs, reviewers have been axed, and many of my contacts have changed so many times I can't keep track. Sometimes it feels futile. Gone is that feeling of being thrilled to sell fifteen books at a store signing, that feeling that I'm on my way to fame and fortune. 

If I sound cynical, I'm not. Just wiser. I do love meeting readers and fellow book lovers. I love book clubs. I have an enthusiastic readership and I get respectable reviews. I've won awards and been nominated for even more. My publisher has been supportive since the beginning. But I am a mid-list author. I'm always happy when a new reader finds me, but I'm realistic that I have a comfortable place, not on the front table of the bookstore, but in the mystery shelves at the back. In respectable numbers, but not screaming for attention. I will do the launches and signings and social media blitzes when the time comes, but right now, with the arrival of September, I am saying "Now what?" 

I have an idea, but won't mention it until I've started to explore it a bit more. Meanwhile, within the next month or so, the review galleys for Shipwrecked Souls will be available for those interested, and probably pre-orders as well. So stay tuned.

Preparation

by Catherine Dilts 

Gardening and fiction writing both begin with a dream. In writing, it’s the spark of a story idea. In gardening, the dream is often born in the depths of winter, with a yearning for warm days and neat rows of green things. For either of these dreams to come true, you have to prepare.

What might sound surprising is that the preparation phase in gardening is not about seeds and plants. Not quite yet. Before ever putting a shovel in the ground, you plot out a garden. Measure your gardening space. How much room do you have? How many plants can you grow in that space? What variety will produce the number of tomatoes you hope to harvest? Will you really pick and use cilantro or dill? A certain amount of planning is prudent.

Fiction writing requires preparation, too. Writers have likely heard of the Panster versus Plotter techniques. Pantsers start on page one and just write, letting the story flow under its own steam. Plotters outline their story, like a driver marking their route to a destination on a map.

I have learned through trial and error that I need to outline heavily. Otherwise, I write myself into a corner. I spend hours returning to the beginning of the story to install the clues and red herrings needed in a good mystery. Outlining helps me avoid that.

Most writers aren’t 100% a Pantser or Plotter. Every Pantser I’ve talked to does have, at bare minimum, an idea of where the story is going. And although I tediously outline my stories from beginning to end, they frequently diverge from that carefully crafted path, taking a surprising and unplanned route.

Preparation to plant a garden or write a story can be agonizing for me. But tossing a handful of random seeds onto the ground will be unlikely to produce the vegetables I want. Likewise, throwing words onto my computer in any kind of order usually results in an unreadable mess.

Once the preparation is complete, and I have a map for the garden or the story, the next part of the work starts. Now the real fun begins.

(Note on photo: With preparation, I was able to start a second crop of lettuce in late August after harvesting zucchini.)

Farewell Mystery Magazine

 by Sybil Johnson

I've been writing a fair number of short stories recently so I've once again become aware of what markets I can submit them to. A lot of the places that have either published my work or that I've submitted to before have since folded. Among them are Spinetingler Magazine and Mysterical-E. Though I've seen nothing that officially says the latter is gone, the last issue was in 2022 so I'm assuming the market is dead

The latest casualty is Mystery Magazine, formerly Mystery Weekly, a Canadian publication that was available in both print and e-formats.

I was just thinking I'd submit something to them since they have a good reputation. Unfortunately, I won't get that opportunity.

According to their website: “Due to the subscription challenges we've faced following the closure of Kindle Newsstand, Mystery Magazine will cease publication with September 2024 being our final issue.” You can read the rest of the announcement here.

This makes me very sad. There seem to be fewer and fewer avenues for short mystery fiction that actually pay. Mystery Magazine was one of them. There’s AQMM and EQMM, of course, but they are harder to get published in. Still, I submit to them just in case they find something I’ve written interesting enough to want to publish it.

Anthologies exist as well. I’ve submitted to some of those, but haven’t had any luck until recently. My story, “Fatal Return”, will be in the Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles anthology, Angel City Beat, which should be out at the end of the year.

I really enjoyed reading the stories in Mystery Magazine. Lots of good stuff in there.

Farewell, Mystery Magazine. You will be missed.

When Writers Don't Have a Clue

 by Charlotte Hinger

I was intrigued with Thomas's discussion of viewpoints. My Lottie Albright delves into old murders which causes new murders. It's not really a cold case series, as it focuses on the present day murder. Thus it technically morphs into a suspense. Will my historian/undersheriff figure out who did it back then in time to prevent becoming the victim on the next page?

In some ways, a straight cold case would be easier to present because the Lottie Albright series is told in present day first person. I can't use flashbacks and have to depend on the back story emerging through historical investigation techniques.

My most dependable tool has always been microfilmed newspapers. The Kansas State Historical Society was founded in 1875. They have one of the world's most comprehensive collection of newspapers. All the papers are on microfilm and many are on-line through Chronicling America http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/#Kansas. Instructions for obtaining microfilmed Kansas papers can be found at http://www.kshs.org/p/newspapers-in-kansas/11528.

Since Lottie doesn't have access to the villain's mind the plot depends on her ability to connect the dots. Nothing is more valuable in both academic investigation and mystery plotting than knowing something is just not quite right. In other words, reading between the lines. Because usually newspaper items are objective.

Here's an example of what I mean by not quite right. An announcement in the 1950s local news item: "Lonnie Balfour and family will be moving to the Balfour homestead later this month. He will take over the extensive farming operation of his late father." Lottie thinks that's funny. Lonnie was a CPA and the second son. The oldest son, Jeff, was the obvious heir. He was a farmer. Was there tension over this? This leads her to the recorded deed and even more newspapers and death certificates. Aha! Lonnie died in a mysterious accident. His descendants are alive today. And so it goes. Diaries, letters, voting records, notes from organizations, and yearbooks have their own testimony.

Was one child consistently on the honor role and in every activity under the sun? And another in the same family barely mentioned in the high school newspaper or not a participate in any groups according to the yearbook? Why? With persistence, it easy to find this out.

It's easy to really keep the plot hopping through the protagonist's questions as long as the writer resists the temptation to inject a massive dose of history and cultural details. For instance, old newspapers show group pictures of students at events. The debate team is especially well-groomed, except for one member. Why was there no one looking out for this kid? Had his parents ever come to one of his debates?\

This series is written in first person. My historical novels are always limited omnicience and shifting third person. In a future post I'll try to explain all the pitfalls of limited omnicience and why I just jump right in anyway.

Being able to enter the mind of the first person protagonist is quite a lot of fun, because one can make this amazing sleuth really smart, not at all like the bumbling novelist who hasn't got a clue.

Writer in Residence

I enjoyed reading Tom's entry about critique groups. I've belonged to a venerable group for years, and they have been invaluable to me, especially by helping me decide which way to go on stories. One thing I've learned from allowing my work to be critiqued is that often what I think I wrote and what readers think I wrote are two entirely different things. One difference between my group and Tom's (besides the wine. I must make a note about that) is that my group is quite small and is made up of only traditionally published authors.

However, a good critique group is a fabulous resource for any writer! So if you write, find one that meets your needs!

Speaking of sharing knowledge, I'm going to be spending the next three months as Writer in Residence for the Glendale Arizona Public Library system. Writer in Residence programs are meant to inspire both budding and experienced authors. I've done WIR programs before, and sometimes I learn as much as the attendees! It's quite an intense experience, so check your local library's website to see if your town offers such a program! Residents can ask questions and bring writing for the WIR to review during free, half-hour consulting sessions at the library. The WIR also offers free writing workshops during their tenure.

Here are the workshops I'll be offering this fall at Glendale:

Creating the World of Your Story: Learn how to create a setting that is authentic as possible at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 12 at Heroes Regional Park Library, 6075 N. 83rd Ave.

The Plot Thickens: Learn techniques to maintain readers’ interest throughout the novel at 3 p.m. on Sept. 21 at Foothills Library, 19055 N. 57th Ave.

Dialog, Dialect and Voice: Discover how you can use dialog to reveal information about your characters at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 17 at Velma Teague Library, 7010 N. 58th Ave. 

Memoir and Autobiography: Learn how to use personal memories in powerful storytelling at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 21 at the Main Library, 5959 W. Brown St. 

Characters are Everything: Explore proven techniques for creating compelling characters at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 28 at Foothills Library, 19055 N. 57th Ave.

Getting Published: Delve into ways to get your book or story published at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 21 at Foothills Library, 19055 N. 57th Ave.

To learn more about the Writer in Residence and other Glendale Public Library programs, visit Home - Glendale Public Library (glendaleazlibrary.com)

 

A Different Kind of Energy

I am delighted to join the Type M for Murder crew with my second post! I’m finding a wealth of insights into the fiction writing process and the writer’s life in other authors’ blog articles. I hope I can contribute new ideas based on my own journey.

This spring and summer, I have been exploring parallels between my gardening efforts and my fiction writing. Writing and gardening share phases of development. Each phase has a different kind of energy. You don’t need to love each phase, but you do need to strive for competency in all the phases if you hope for overall success.

Let’s dig in to the starting point. If you’ve never gardened, this may surprise you.

Gardening doesn’t begin with plants, or even seeds. It doesn’t even begin with the soil. A garden begins with a dream.

During the depths of winter, gardening catalogs begin to arrive in the mailbox. From general commercial seed catalogs, to mom-and-pop gardening supply businesses, to specialty heirloom tomato seed companies, they all tempt with beautiful illustrations of possibilities. Experienced gardeners also have a stash of seed packets or saved seeds from past seasons.

In writing, this is the idea phase. Another sort of dreaming. An image pops into your imagination. A snippet of a scene. A character. A setting. Snatches of dialogue. Most writers struggle with the quantity of story ideas. Which ones will blossom into short stories or novels?

In the garden and in creative writing, you can’t do everything. My garden space is limited. I want to grow ten different varieties of pole beans, but I only have room for three or four. I’d like to grow pumpkins, but they take an enormous amount of unfettered space.

I have ideas for three new series and a stand-alone novel. I don’t have the energy or physical capacity to bring all of them to life. Not all at once.

You begin with the dream of the garden, or the story. Seeing what you want in your imagination. Lush. Potent. Compelling. The dream begins to take form. Let this phase take you to impossible places.

The dreaming phase is a different kind of energy. Done right, it can lead to amazing results. Ignore the dream, and nothing will bear fruit.

Next time, I’ll talk about phase two in gardening and writing.

Head Hopping

 

By Thomas Kies

For the last few months, I’ve been mentoring a critique group that meets every Monday night at a local wine bar.  The perfect location for the perfect Cabernet or Malbec and pleasant discussions about writing.

Most of the members of the critique group are holdovers from my last creative writing class. Once the class was over, they surprised me by offering to pay me (real money) to run a critique group.  I declined the cash but instead said that I’d run the group on one condition—that they critique chapters of the book that I was working on at the time. 

They accepted and we’ve been working together and drinking wine ever since.

One of the more heated discussions we entered was initiated by a writer who has self-published four books (a series of mysteries) and is eagerly looking for an agent and a traditional publisher.

When she read chapters from her new work in progress, I mentioned that she “head hopped” and I couldn’t get invested in the characters. 

I had warned them that I would be honest in my critiques of their writing.

Head hopping is when a story or a chapter is being told from a character’s perspective or point of view and then abruptly, it changes, and the story is being told from a different character’s perspective. 

When I mentioned this, she couldn’t believe that she’d done it.  I took her chapter home and physically marked off all the places she changed points of view…sometimes in the same paragraph.

She asked, “Why is that bad?  How else can I tell the reader what the characters are thinking?”

Let’s start with why it’s bad.  For one, it’s distracting as hell.  One of the reasons I was having a problem relating to the characters was that I was never sure who I was supposed to be relating to. When I read a book, I want to be immersed in that world, which means I’m seeing it through the eyes of the characters in that particular scene.  

You can’t do that if you’re flip flopping from character to character, hearing the thoughts of different people from one sentence to the next.

I suggested that the writer show me what someone is thinking.  If Sally is having angry thoughts, demonstrate it.  Have Sally throw a coffee cup across the room, screaming words that would make a sailor blush.

If Charlie is embarrassed, have him blush and turn away, staring at his own shoes.

Head hopping keeps the reader from becoming emotionally invested in a character and, worse yet, is confusing.

So, can you change POVs?  Of course you can.  Especially if you’re writing in omniscient third person POV.  But when you do, you should do it in some kind of scene break or in a new chapter.  Otherwise, it’s jarring and confusing.

So, that was a discussion that lasted over more than one glass of wine. 

Same writer, different discussion was the value of plot over character.  We’ll save that for another blog.  That also was a two-glass discussion.

The Purge

 One of my writer fantasies was the world honoring my life and publishing accomplishments with the Mario Acevedo museum, a must-visit shrine for every wannabe scribe looking for encouragement and inspiration. Here are Mario's desk, laptop, printer. Here are his journals. His coffee cups where he kept his pens and paperclips. His pocket knife. His stacks of reference materials. My wish would be of people culling through my archives, searching for unfinished stories and manuscript drafts that would point to even bigger story ideas and insights into me as a writer sage.

Kevin J. Anderson, who took on the Dune series, told of digging through boxes and discarded files tucked away in Frank Herbert's home to discover, YES! notes and sketches about characters and narratives that helped steer the Dune legacy. This is what I wanted from posterity. Not so much, really.

Harboring my dream was the big reason why I hung onto my research files, background material for novels that ultimately went nowhere. Part of the process in your journey as a writer. At the time, I fancied myself stepping into the shoes of Jack Higgins or Alistair MacLean, hoping that my World War Two pot boilers--Torpedoes Los! (A Nazi U-boat at Pearl Harbor comes close to changing the fate of the war) Midnight in Morocco (An American mercenary spoils Nazi plans in North Africa) The Last Warlord (The same mercenary causes more mischief in China)--would get me rich and famous. But God had other plans.

These papers come from my research pre-Internet when you had to write and mail letters requesting info. The US Navy, National Geographic, Boeing, and the British archives at Flypast were more than generous. I got photos, maps, schematics, reprints, unit histories, all for free. 

As I'm getting older, with the days forward considerably shorter than the days behind me, it's time to start downsizing and decluttering. Purge. Besides these documents, I'm also pitching old manuscripts marked up by my critique group. Farewell, fond memories.

My Reading Buckets

 by Sybil Johnson

Whenever I finish reading the first book in a series, I mentally place the series into a bucket. I never actually write this down anywhere. I just keep track of it in my mind. These buckets are:

1. Loved it so much I’m going to (a) immediately read the next book if it’s available, (b) talk about the series to anyone who will listen, (c) pre-order the next book. 
   
2. Liked the book enough to want to read the next book in the series at some point, just not immediately. I won’t pre-order a book, but I’ll keep track of when the next book comes out. 
3. Found it interesting, but didn’t really care about the characters or the setting. Might read the next book. Might not. 
4. Didn’t really like it, but finished it. Not worth reading any more books in the series.
5.  Didn’t like it. Didn’t finish it. Won’t even consider reading another book in the series.

I don’t reread books very often, but when I do they’ll come from the first two buckets I described above. Series can move from bucket to bucket as time goes on. After a dozen books in a series, I might get tired of it or it might move down the list for something newer.

Does anyone else do something like this? Or is this just me being odd? I guess it’s my way of bringing order to my world. 

As a writer, I aspire to being in that top bucket or at least the top two. I can’t control this, though, so I’ll just keep on writing stories that I would enjoy reading. Hopefully, I’ll make it into a reader’s top buckets.

Treasure Hidden in the Weeds

 

by Catherine Dilts

 

Gardens need to be weeded. So does fiction.

My garden is in a wild state of growth. There are only six weeks left until fall, and plants are hustling to produce seeds.

The weeds are in high gear, as anxious to propagate themselves as the tomatoes, peppers, and greens.

After a rain is an excellent time to pull weeds. The soil is softer. I’m less likely to damage the roots of the plants I want, as I remove the plants I don’t want. A weed is a plant that doesn’t belong in a particular area. If I plant lettuce, I don’t want it competing for sun, soil nutrients, and water with marigolds.

While I was on my hands and knees, delicately removing unwanted grass from a vegetable bed, I thought about how weeding words, scenes, even chapters, from a novel is a similar process. You don’t want to rip out the good stuff along with the bad.

I tend to write long. I love lengthy novels. I’m sure I’m not the only reader who does. At the 2024 Pikes Peak Writers Conference, I learned the economic reason why you see so few novels over 400 pages. Printing costs.

Even though many readers consume literature on e-readers where paper costs have no effect, the publisher knows a certain percentage of hardcopy books will be printed. The high cost of paper makes the printing and pricing of books a problem.

My publisher Encircle confirmed this when they told their authors the sweet spot for a novel is 90,000 words. More than 100,000 is unlikely to get published. Not because of the quality of the writing or whether the story is compelling or not, but for harsh economic factors. Printing costs.

Kind of like when you have limited garden space. You can’t afford to let the weeds run riot when you’re trying to get a crop of tomatoes to grow. Those weeds compete with the domesticated plants.

We have one garden plot we’re considering converting to a flower bed. We let it lie fallow this year, and the weeds took over. I had extra cucumber plants this spring, so I stuck a couple in this bed. When I got around to checking on them a few weeks ago, I was surprised they were surviving.

Then I took a closer look. Hidden among the weeds were healthy cucumber vines, and one cucumber. That’s when I got busy weeding around the plant. I might as well give it a fighting chance.

I use that approach with my fiction. Sometimes I need to take a shovel and a hoe to the mess I’ve made. Other times, I use a delicate hand to weed out the excess words, the blathering and repetition, to get at buried gems.

By carefully weeding out our writing, we can reveal hidden treasures to readers.

 

 

Writing is Rewriting

 Donis here. First of all, let me join the chorus of delight and welcome our newest Type M author, Catherine Dilts! Oh, how glad we are to have you!

On a less joyful note, I’m still slogging along in the jungles of the first draft of a new novel. When I’m trying to get a first draft to look like something and having a tough time of it (which is always), I often wonder why I put myself through it. But then if I didn’t have a first draft I wouldn’t have anything to revise. I much prefer doing revisions to writing the first draft of a novel. In my metaphorical little world, writing the first draft is a coarse, rough, sweaty process. You slap that gesso on the wall by the bucket load and slather on the background paint. It’s messy and hard and, for me, a daily act of will to accomplish. But rewriting takes skill. It requires a true eye, real delicacy and finesse to shape that big old expanse of plaster into a work of art.

With rewrites, you get to see the story change shape and, if you’re lucky and skilled enough, grow into something beautiful. Of course, there are those horrible moments when you realize that you’re going to have to lose a scene that you really liked, or that word of which you are so enamored because it no longer fits the picture. Perhaps that’s when you know you’re a real writer, when you can cut good stuff for the greater good of the story.

I'll let you in on a little secret, Dear Reader. I keep a file of great lines/scenes/chapters I've had to cut inhales of finding the perfect home for them in some future story. In fact, some of those cut lines/scenes/chapters had led to a future story on their own.

Now I'm facing the ending of the book and wondering if I can pull it off. It's horrible to know exactly how you want it to come off and not be sure you have the chops to do it. I've never quite achieved the brilliant, knock-your-socks-off triumph that I had envisioned, but I'm usually pleased enough in the end. I often don't know exactly how it's going to end, myself, until it does. Once I do finish a book, I love to go back over it and fiddle with it, changing a word here, a sentence there, like polishing a new-made piece of furniture.  Pulling off a great ending requires not only skill, but insight and not a little luck!

Maybe this time!

Now that I think about it, I have to admit that I don't readily feel disappointment when something doesn't pan out, nor am I particularly elated by success. I've had a lot of both success and failures, and when the dust settles, nothing much is changed and I am still me. Another author told me once that she shopped a novel around for eight years, and she grew so calloused by rejection that when her agent did sell it, she felt nothing. I can easily be seduced by praise, though, and I wouldn't say no to a Pulitzer Prize. Something has to keep you going in this business, because the likelihood is that it won't be riches.

Dear Reader

First of all, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Catherine Dilts, whom Charlotte so eloquently introduced in yesterday's post. We're all very excited to include Catherine, who will bring a fresh voice and perspective as she shares her own writing journey. I feel as if I have been posting on the blog for eons, and sometimes I wonder whether I have anything new to say.

That said, I don't believe I have ever talked about the "Dear Reader" letter my publisher always asks me to write as a preface to the Advance Reader copies sent out to reviewers, book sellers,  and others in the book world ahead of the release of a new book. The letter is intended to introduce the book and provide readers with some personal information that the author wants to share. It could be the reason for writing the book, some interesting research that contributed to the story, or a pivotal scene or character.  I don't know whether all publishers do this but Dundurn Press has been including the letter for quite a while. It's usually my last task before the book leaves the editorial phase and enters the publication phase. SHIPWRECKED SOULS is still a long way from appearing on retail shelves in January, but copies will be available for review in a few weeks. I miss the days of old-fashioned, physical "ARCs" as they are called because that was always my first glimpse of the book in its final state. The thrill of seeing the finished book, complete with cover, never grows old. But nowadays, most publishers release the book in digital format on Net Galley, which speeds up the process, saves trees, and saves money on shipping. It also makes the book accessible to more reviewers, including bloggers, thereby extending its reach. 

So without further ado, here is the Dear Reader letter that will introduce the ARC of SHIPWRECKED SOULS. 

 

 

Dear Reader,

SHIPWRECKED SOULS is the twelfth in the Ottawa-based Inspector Green series and Michael Green’s most powerfully personal case yet. 

As he nears the end of his career, he finds himself sidelined into paperwork hell far from the life and death street dramas he loves. He’s drawn to the mystery of an unidentified elderly woman who’s recently arrived from Ukraine. Who is she, and how did she end up dead in a remote back alley? Because his own parents survived the Holocaust and came to Canada to find a new life, he feels a kinship with her.

SHIPWRECKED SOULS is about lives shattered by the trauma of war and persecution and the struggle of survivors to find hope amid the detritus. For Green, it’s also an emotional  journey of discovery into his own past. 

While the story is fictional, I tried to ensure the historical events and the emotional cost are accurate. Although the story is about trauma and loss, I hope readers close the book with a sense of hope and renewal.  

Thank you for coming with me on the journey.

Barbara Fradkin