What Would You Do If It All Went Away?

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

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

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

Chris Casey

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

Weekend Guest Thomas Burns

 We're delighted to welcome Thomas to Type M for Murder.

Thomas A. Burns, Jr. was born and grew up in New Jersey, currently lives and writes in Wendell, North Carolina, and is the author of the Natalie McMasters Mysteries. Tom started reading mysteries with the Hardy Boys, Ken Holt and Rick Brant, and graduated to the classic stories by authors such as A. Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout, to name a few. Now that he's truly on his own as a novelist, he's excited to publish his own mystery series, as well as to contribute stories about his second most favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes, to the MX anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories.

 The Evolution of the PI Novel

I want to thank Donis Casey and Frankie Bailey for allowing me to do this guest post. Since my heroine, Natalie McMasters, is a private detective (trainee, to be precise), I’d like to briefly discuss the evolution of the PI novel in American crime fiction.

The private investigator can be distinguished from the amateur sleuth because investigation for hire is the PI’s profession, not avocation. I think the PI most responsible for the popularity of this genre was, of course, the master, Sherlock Holmes.

 It is arguable that Holmes, both in Doyle’s seminal works and in countless pastiches, is even more popular today than he was when the original stories were published. Evidence for this is provided by the MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, which have gone to 15 volumes since their first publication in 2015.

 After Holmes, the PI became much more popular in America than in England where police officers and amateur sleuths seem to predominate, with the notable exception of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. The popularity of noir in the early decades of the 20th century led to the development of the hardboiled PI in American crime fiction, typified by Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and Mickey Spillane’s epitomical Mike Hammer. All of these men were flawed, struggled to follow a rigorous code and meted out justice to wrongdoers despite their flaws—these characteristics doubtless accounted for their popularity. Notable exceptions to this archetype were Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, who were much more in the mold of Sherlock Holmes—eccentric to be sure, but neither struggled with ethical choices as much as the typical hardboiled PIs did. Stout also introduced one of the first woman PIs – the redoubtable Dol Bonner. Younger readers were lured into the genre by the boy detectives in the Stratemeyer syndicate’s series books featuring the Hardy Boys.

After WWII, a lighter, more happy-go-lucky type of PI became popular. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser is a good example, as are Jim Rockford and Thomas Magnum, who had their origins on TV. These guys had the same fierce independence as their progenitors, which made them attractive to an American audience, but seemed less tortured by personal demons. The first women PIs arose shortly thereafter, the most famous being Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, but Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski must also be mentioned.

I would like my Natalie McMasters to follow in these formidable footsteps, and it’s a daunting responsibility. When my series opens, Nattie is a pre-law student who’s moonlighting for her uncle’s 3M Detective Agency, surveilling insurance claimants to be sure they’re hurt as severely as they claim. It’s not long before she’s confronted by the ugly reality of a horrific crime, which results in a loss of innocence and ignites her innate sense of justice.

Nattie changes as the series progresses, and not always for the better, reinventing her career and discovering her sexual orientation is not what she first thought it was. Like many of today’s young people, she has a strong moral code, but she’s unsure of the basis for it and must constantly struggle to make the right choices as she encounters the evil in the world. For this reason, the stories are dark and gritty, definitely not cozies! Trafficked will be available on Amazon April 1.

I think the private investigator has always been an archetype of the American psyche—strong, independent and at war with traditional ideas while simultaneously embracing them, and driven to right the wrongs in the world, often to his or her own detriment. I deliberately chose a young American woman as the heroine of my new series, because I hope to bring a new generation of readers to this wonderful genre.

Not Again!

I was amused by the flurry of true confessions by my fellow Type M'ers. Donis Casey's contribution really struck home. She mentioned grammatical errors that were a source of deep embarrassment because she was an English teacher and dithering over lay, lie, laid, and lain. For some reason, I can't send a letter ending with "yours truly" without checking on line to see if truly needs an "e."

For the life of me I can't understand how proofing errors can slip by when I've read a manuscript a jillion times. My most frequent manuscript error is leaving out words. I could swear little articles (a, an, the, etc.) are there. Until someone points out they are not.

My most embarrassing error of that nature was a FB post lauding one of my dearest friends and explaining why I was unable to attend her birthday party. As luck would have it, FB turned on me that day and the post didn't go through. I hastily rewrote the darn thing and wouldn't you know, it flew right through this time. As "my dead friend" not "my dear friend." I had a lot of explaining to do. Especially to those who were alarmed by her demise so close to the party.

For some reason historical errors really bother me even though in a novel I'm supposed to be able to invent stuff. I make a heroic effort to keep everything in historical novels and mysteries accurate. But with my first mystery, Deadly Descent, I mentioned that people had stolen Matt Dillon's papers from the Dodge City court house. It's true that some of Wyatt Earp's documents went missing. But a former chairman of the Department of History at Fort Hays State University emailed to ask that I surely knew Matt Dillon was a fictional character?

Actually, I didn't. I was mortified! Gunsmoke was one of my favorite series. Naturally that meant Miss Kitty was also fictitious. I was grief-stricken.

Another error was in Hidden Heritage. I thought Laura Ingalls Wilder's father was John J. Ingalls and he wasn't. It didn't take long for fans to correct me.

I got my first taste of the perils of historical reference when I wrote my first historical novel, Come Spring. I mentioned the legal description of a land location. Made it up, of course. A man wrote to tell me that was his property and he didn't appreciate my using it. Who would have thought?

Historical and grammatical errors don't weigh on my soul forever. I'm over them, painful though they were at the time. But how about it, my darling Type M'ers? What was your most embarrassing moment as a writer?

I have to go down the list a ways. I'm willing to share my fourth most embarrassing moment.

 

Annie Hogsett, Guest Blogger

Type M is thrilled to welcome Annie Hogsett as our guest blogger this weekend. Annie has a master’s degree in English literature and spent her first career writing advertising copy—a combination which, in Annie’s opinion, qualifies her for making a bunch of stuff up. Her first published novel, the incredibly clever and entertaining Too Lucky to Live, #1 of her “Somebody’s Bound to Wind Up Dead Mysteries,” was released by Poisoned Pen Press in May 2017. Second in her series, Murder to the Metal, launched in June 2017. Third, The Devil’s Own Game, is set for this October. Annie lives ten yards from Lake Erie in the City of Cleveland with her husband, Bill, and their delinquent cat, Cujo. Unlike her protagonists, Allie Harper and Tom Bennington, she has never won a 550-million-dollar lottery jackpot.

My Partner Reader

My first mystery was published in June of 2017—Tom Kies and I share a “book birthday—and unless I misremember**—Donis Casey was present at the launch of both of our baby books at The Poisoned Pen. It’s all a blur. In spite of my longing for “real readers”—and although I was given to shouting out with no warning, “Hey! Somebody, somewhere, could be reading my book right now!”—I didn’t have a clue about the role readers were about to play in my writing life. I didn’t understand—until time passed and there was evidence actual human beings were reading my mysteries—my writing process had been incomplete.

In my first career, as an advertising copywriter, I thought of readers—or listeners or watchers—as the people I was addressing—a demographic based on age, gender, race, marital status, and so on, unto forever. I considered them to be people with needs or problems a product or service might fulfill or solve. I needed to understand them in order to sell them something. I thought, very tenderly sometimes, about what they wanted and needed, even their hopes and dreams, but at the end of the day it wasn’t a relationship. They were a target. I was writing “at them.”

When I wrote my first novel, a fantasy for young adults, those unfathomable alien beings were “my audience.” I was writing “for them.” I thought a good bit about what would woo and entertain them, but mostly I was in a warm, fuzzy relationship with my characters. One of whom was, in fact, warm and fuzzy. I followed my guys around, eavesdropped on them, admired how brave and funny they were. Their adventures unfolded in front of me and I wrote them down. Pantser? Yeah. Big time. No regrets. In truth, I was my reader then. I was writing for me. And she adored my story.

When Too Lucky To Live was published, I’d still had very little experience of what it means for a writer to be in partnership with a body of readers. To be sure, I’d been revising my story to meet the standards of an agent, a publisher, an editor. Master readers. Learning from them how to listen to seasoned advice and smart suggestions, I began to understand the meaning and the value of collaboration. To see weak spots, fix them, feel the work getting better.

The door was open to a new way for me to experience the process, but my Partner Reader didn’t really show up until I started the second book in my series. I’m guessing she was always there, but at last I could hear her, and, now into the third book, I hear her better every day. She’s there as I write. As I reread what I write. As I slash, burn, and fine tune. Her presence is unconscious a lot of the time, but she’s plenty conscious enough to be Sacagawea for my expedition and save me from at least some of the bears.

American essayist, Rebecca Solnit, in her book The Faraway Nearby says, “A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.” I get that now. I got it, like a lightning bolt, from an article, the much revered and honored author, George Saunders wrote for The Guardian.*

He pictures the writer as an optometrist, constantly asking his reader, “Is it better like this? Or like this?” He insists that you imagine your reader as being “as humane, bright, witty, experienced and well intentioned as you.” And says that “ to communicate intimately with her, you have to maintain the state, through revision, of generously imagining her.” The result is, he says, “in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.” I can bear witness to the soundness of this advice.

I can tell you, too, that the more I write, the louder and more insistent my Partner Reader is. She’s sitting next to me right here, now, as I write this for you. She’s bright and kind. She doesn’t want me to make a fool of myself. And regardless of whatever personal pronoun you choose, she is you.

*P.S. The most valuable part of this post is the link. You can thank me later.
 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/what-writers-really-do-when-they-write

________
**You do not misremember, Annie. I was indeed present at the Phoenix launch of both yours and Tom's books -- Donis

Our Fascination with Bad Guys and Evil

I enjoyed reading the latest blogs from Donis Casey and Frankie Y. Bailey about their take on their literary villains. When blocking out a story, I often fixate on the villain and then I wonder why. Why do we have such a fascination with bad guys and evil?

I reached out and asked a number of writer friends who their favorite villains are. Some of the answers were quite interesting: Randall Flag (from Stephen King’s The Stand), Tony Soprano, Jack the Ripper, Long John Silver, The Joker, Draco Malfoy, Maleficent, the Pied Piper of Hamelin (well, when he wasn’t paid for eradicating the plague ridden rats from town, he reciprocated by stealing all the town’s children), Hannibal Lecter, Nurse Ratched, and of course, Darth Vader.

Some answers drew more than a one word answer. “Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. He could seem so normal as to be a sociopath. She really placed a light into that dark world. A villain…anti-villain.”

“Jack in Lord of the Flies. He is proof we are all base when stripped of rules, that hunger is what drives us all.”

“John Wilkes Booth…even though he killed Lincoln, he was a somewhat sympathetic character, a lost soul, pathetically delusional.”

When she mentioned John Wilkes Booth, it stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Booth thought what he was doing was the right thing. Don’t most villains rationalize their crimes as ‘doing what’s right’? Don’t they view their actions as beneficial for the greater good…even though their ‘greater good’ is criminal, repugnant, and destructive?

And the statement about Tom Ripley seeming so normal? The philosopher Hannah Arendt, while watching the Nazi engineer of genocide, Adolf Eichmann, stand trial in Jerusalem, realized that the most striking thing about evil was its banality. Eichmann looked like a bank clerk not a textbook villain. He was a bureaucrat who murdered millions of innocent people.

Ted Bundy, boyish, handsome, and charismatic, was a sadistic sociopath who confessed to thirty murders. But he looked so normal.

John Wayne Gacy tortured and murdered at least thirty-three teenage boys and young men. Before he was caught, he attended parades, children’s parties, and charitable fundraisers dressed as a clown. A CLOWN!!!! Okay, that’s pretty scary.

How many times have we heard the television interview with the neighbor of a serial killer who had been arrested say, “He seemed so normal”?

So back to why we’re so fascinated with evil.

Carl Jung believed we need to confront and understand our own hidden nature to grow as human beings. Healthy confrontation with our shadow selves can unearth new strengths, while unhealthy attempts at confrontation may involve dwelling on or unleashing the worst parts of ourselves.

Sigmund Freud viewed human nature as inherently antisocial, biologically driven by the undisciplined id’s pleasure principle to get what we want when we want it. We’re born to be bad but held back by society.

In the early 1970s, Stanford psychologist, Philip Zimbardo carried out his infamous Prison Experiment. The mock jail he created in Stanford’s psychology building where “guards” abused “prisoners”, revealed the speed with which ordinary people can begin to carry out depraved acts in a toxic environment.

I’m certainly no expert, but is it possible the reason why we’re fascinated with bad guys is that the line that we need to cross to get to the Dark Side is incredibly narrow?

Or is it that being good is boring and being bad is wicked fun?

The Rise of the Foodies

The Type M'ers have gone temporarily nuts. Suddenly instead of discussing really cool ways to murder people some sort of fatal attraction to favorite recipes seem to have infected the faithful.

I've especially enjoyed Donis Casey's old recipes. In her latest book, Forty Dead Men, she includes a recipe for Red Eye Gravy. I've heard of it, but never tasted it.

In my own Lottie Albright series, Lottie as undersheriff doesn't spend much time in the kitchen so I really can't contribute recipes used by my characters. However, my family had a few that were really dillies when I was growing up. One of our favorites was Wacky cake. I've heard this cake called by a variety of names: Poor Man's cake, depression cake, hobo cake, war cake. The reason it was so popular was that it didn't depend on expensive ingredients. It's delicious. Here's the recipe:

1-1/2 cups flour (sifted)
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons Cocoa
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
Mix all together, then punch three holes in the mixture. Add the following ingredients (only one per hole)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup warm water

Mix by hand. Don't use an electric mixer. Bake in a 9 x 9 pan at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

And for Christmas I have the world's easier popcorn ball recipe. If you are ambitious, you can shape the popcorn into a miniature Christmas tree and add colored gum drops for ornaments.

I use one recipe per popper of corn:

1 cup light corn syrup and one 3-oz package of Jello. Bring to a boil over medium heat and pour over about 11 cups of popped corn. Mix very quickly and use butter on your hands (or gloves) to shape the mixture into balls. Be very careful. This concoction is really, really hot.

In a Writing State of Mind

I’ll admit, I’m a pantser. I don't plan ahead when I'm writing.  It's a discovery process.   I know what the first scene of my books look like and what I want my ending to feel like. Most times, I’m not even sure who the bad guy is.

That being said, I began this blog by typing it in my hotel room in Phoenix. My wife Cindy was still asleep, I had a cup of a coffee and a breakfast sandwich from the café downstairs, and the lights were dim. Later that day, I’d sit on two panels at the Poisoned Pen Mystery Conference. While in Arizona, I had a great time mingling with other novelists, and talking with readers and aspiring writers. And of course the highlight was spending some time with Ian Rankin and Hank Phillippi Ryan who are delightful individuals, as well as my Poisoned Pen family of wonderful writers. What was extra special was meeting fellow Type M for Murder contributor Donis Casey. It was so nice to meet you in person, Donis!

Even though I was in Phoenix, I did my best to work on my third Geneva Chase mystery. A couple of months ago, Annette (my editor) and Barbara (my publisher) signed off on the first hundred pages of Graveyard Bay. In the first chapter, two bodies are found chained to the forks of a mammoth forklift used in boatyard marinas. The tines of the giant machine are under the dark, gray surface of the icy bay leading to Long Island Sound.

Brrrrrr.

I’m thirty chapters into Graveyard Bay but in the back of my mind, I’d envisioned the ending and it was really messy. I was not satisfied, I hate messy. I’d wrestled with the ending for weeks and just hadn’t been able to envision an ending that both makes me happy and scares the bejesus out of me.

But it came at four o’clock that Phoenix morning. I got up out of bed, went into the hotel bathroom and wrote it all down in my notebook so that I wouldn’t forget it once the sun had come up over the Arizona landscape.

And guess what? It was the ending I’d been looking for.

What precipitated my epiphany? One, I was at a conference filled with mystery writers and readers. I was surrounded by creativity and those who appreciate it. That has an incredibly positive effect on the writing process.

In addition to that, however, my wife, who has a PhD in Psychology, and after she had her first cup of coffee, explained that it might have had something to do with time of night when the ideas came to me, that nether world between dream and reality. She says it’s called hypnagogia.

What?

When I Googled it, this is what I found: Hypnagogia is a well described neurological phenomenon that can occur when one is waking up (hypnapompic) or going to sleep (hypnagogic). It is an in-between state where one is neither fully awake nor fully asleep.

The term hypnagogia comes from the Greek words for “sleep” and “guide,” suggesting the period of being led into slumber. In this state, which lasts a few minutes at most, you’re essentially in limbo between two states of consciousness.

According to Carlolyn Gregnoire in an article for Huffington Post, surrealist artist Salvador Dali called hypnagogia “the slumber with a key,” and he used it as creative inspiration for many of his imaginative paintings.

“You must resolve the problem of ‘sleeping without sleeping,’ which is the essence of the dialectics of the dream, since it is a repose which walks in equilibrium on the taut and invisible wire which separates sleeping from waking,” Dali wrote in the book 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship.

Mary Shelley, too, said she got the inspiration for Frankenstein from a “waking dream” in the wee hours of the morning, “I saw with eyes shut, but acute mental vision.”

To what extent, then I wonder, are we in a waking dream state while we’re writing, even in the cold light of day? At some point, don’t we find ourselves immersed in the scene we’re writing? When we’re driving to the grocery store, aren’t we listening to dialogue between characters in our head? During a particularly stressful point in our story, don’t we feel what our protagonist is feeling?

Stephen King once described his writing process in this way:
“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write…I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning…I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon.”

I guess ultimately, it’s difficult to be creative if you’re trying too hard. Sometimes you just have to let it flow, and, once every so often, it comes to you when you’re half awake.

Happy writing, happy dreaming.

Summer Reading and What's Hot Right Now

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

By Vicki Delany

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting Yourself Out There

Staying connected

Very interesting posts this week on the joys of being a writer. John wondered about the effectiveness of social media, Sybil pondered the usefulness of going to conferences. When it comes to promotion, what one writer is willing and able to do may be quite different from another. I enjoy conferences and think they're very useful for making connections. But I don't go to many, one or two a year if family health and finances permit. I'm not a particularly shy person, and I'm not at all bothered about speaking before a group. But I'm slow to warm up in a social situation, at least until I feel I have a handle on whomever I'm talking to. I told a friend once that I think I was born to be an observer in this life. This is a great quality to have if you're a writer, but not as useful if you need to work the room. I actually do make the rounds at every conference I attend and talk to as many people as I can, but I'll never be as effective at it as someone as outgoing and naturally talented as, say, Louise Penny. However, I'm guessing I'm a much better schmoozer than J.D. Salinger, who could buy and sell me. So as effective as that technique is, it must not be the end-all and be-all.

I've been doing this author thing for years, and I keep trying a little of this and a little of that, and attempting to judge what promotional activity works best for me. Other writers have been extraordinarily helpful to me, but I can't afford to go to as many conferences as I'd like in order to make those connections. I'm much less promiscuous with bookstore signings than I was when I started out. After sitting in lonely solitude behind a table a few times, I now choose my bookstores and signing times with great care, and do everything I can to publicize the event beforehand. For every other bookstore I come across, I find it much more effective to talk to the booksellers.

I'm very lucky to live within driving distance of Poisoned Pen Bookstore, which is owned by my editor (whose husband happens to be my publisher). Whether I can travel or not, most mystery authors eventually find their way to Poisoned Pen for an event. This a a wonderful way for me to keep in touch with the many author friends I've made over the years. Witness the above photo of Yours Truly, Ann Parker, and our own Vicki Delany, having lunch after their event in Scottsdale this month. Then we did a library panel together, below, looking much more proper, and as we know, looks can be deceiving.

Ann Parker, Vicki Delany, Donis Casey

I find that the more I speak to groups, the more I'm asked to speak. I get a lot of library business. I was a librarian for 20 years, so I know a lot of library types all over the country. Book clubs are good. If you can find a non-book group to talk to that has some sort of connection to what you write about, that can be fabulous for your sales. History groups are good for me. I know another writer who used to sell her books at an annual zoo event and cleans up. (Makes money. Though I think she does actually volunteer to muck out cages.)

My husband, however, would rather stand on his head in a mud puddle while poking himself in the eye than speak in front of a group. I understand that most people are terrified of public speaking, so my publicity plan, such as it is would be torture for them.

The internet is a godsend, if you know how to work it, though less so for us Luddites. I try to do something on Facebook, author page or personal page, every day. I don't tweet. This may be a big mistake, but the very idea makes me tired. It would be hard for me to host an internet radio program, because I simply don't have the technical skills--or the interest. My webmaster, who is also my brother, told me that my website should be "all Donis, all the time", and not concentrate solely on my books. This gives you leeway to change your focus, if you decide to do something other than what you have been doing. Change genres, for instance, or become a playwright, or an actor. Do working actively on blogs and Facebook and Goodreads and BookBub increase my readership? I don't know, to tell the truth. But I'm a writer, damn it, and more writing is always better than less. On my own site, I've more or less kept a public diary of my experiences as a novelist, and whether it's instructive to others or not, after a dozen years I have written enough material for a book.

This writing game is tough. And when it comes to selling yourself, you just have to put your head down and go. What works for one may not work for you, so you try everything you can manage and do the best you can. The really important thing, though, is to do the best you can without making yourself miserable. Life is too short.

p.s. and aside: This has nothing to do with the price of tea in China, but I tend to write short. Or, more accurately, I write long manuscripts and end up whittling them down to the nub. I want to get to the point.

Endings

Well, this is embarrassing. I thought I had written my Type M entry and scheduled it to post this morning, but apparently that was somebody else posting at some other venue. Since I only manage to write about one book a year, every book launch is a big circus for me and I have to be very careful not to forget where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing for whom. Therefore I apologize for my tardiness, but better late than never. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

My official book launch party on February 24 at the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale Arizona went off very nicely, thanks for asking. In fact, the bookstore recorded the whole thing and posted it on their Facebook site. You can check it out by going here and scrolling down to Feb. 24. To tide you over, here is a photo of the evening.

Dennis Palumbo, Priscilla Royal, Donis Casey, Barbara Peters

In more writerly news, a couple of weeks ago my Type M blogmates were discussing a thread on endings, which is a topic near to my heart. I am speaking about the end of a novel, but a few years ago I was thinking about the end of life, and in that vein I read a wonderful book called Being Mortal, Medicine and 
What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande. If you’re interested in managing your own demise, I would recommend it.

But even when planning my own induction into the choir invisible, I can’t help but think like a writer. Toward the end of Dr. Gawande’s book, he quotes a study done by Daniel Kahneman, who says something to the effect that it doesn’t matter too much how much pleasure or pain we endure, it’s the ending of the experience we remember. As an example he cites the experience of watching an exciting sports match, when your team, “having performed beautifully for nearly the entire game, blows in the end. We feel that the ending ruins the whole experience…The experiencing self had whole hours of pleasure and just a moment of displeasure, but the remembering self sees no pleasure at all.”

What does that tell you, Mr. or Ms. Writer?

We are told that we must have a gripping beginning to our novel in order to engage the prospective reader as soon as possible. Then we have to keep drawing the reader on, keep him interested as we work our way through the long middle of the story. All excellent advice.

But, by God, the ending better deliver. Because as we all know, a great beginning makes a reader want to read your current book, but a great ending makes her want to read your next book.

Little Venues

 

 

This week my very good friend Donis Casey wrote about preparing for the launch of her new book Forty Dead Men. This book was released in February and won a rare starred review from Publisher's Weekly.

 

This very prestigious magazine is read by bookstores and libraries across the county to determine which books to purchase for sale to customers or shelve for library patrons. PW had this to say about Forty Dead Men:

 

"In Casey's excellent 10th Alafair Tucker mystery (after 2017's The Return of the Raven Mocker), 22-year-old George W. "Gee Dub" Tucker, a WWI vet scarred by his war experiences, returns to the family farm in Boynton, Okla., run by his parents, Alafair and Shaw, with the aid of their large brood of children....Casey expertly nails the extended Tucker family - some 20 people - and combines these convincing characters, a superb sense of time and place, and a solid plot in this marvelously atmospheric historical." (starred review) (Publishers Weekly)

 



For those of you who are not familiar with this terrific series, it begins with The Old Buzzard Had It Coming in the Oklahoma Farm Country in 1912.

 

Donis's launch was held at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale Arizona and she was joined by two other Poisoned Pen authors, Dennis Palumbo (Head Wounds) and Priscilla Royal (Wild Justice). It was combined with a tribute to the late Frederick Ramsay.

 

I participated in a couple of co-interviews with Fred and he was a great writer, a wonderful person, and I felt greatly honored just to set next to him. 

 

Being interviewed by the famous Barbara Peters (owner of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore and Editor-in Chief at Poisoned Pen Press) is one the most sought after experiences for authors. I was so in awe of her that I could barely remember my own name during my first visit to the store.

 

If I could have, I would have gone to AZ to applaud Donis's launch. But last year, I went to five libraries in Kansas and four major conferences. 

 

Looking back, I honestly have to say my favorite experience, the one that was a truly joyful event was speaking at the tiny library in Blue Mound Kansas. Thirty-seven persons attended. Later my nephew argued that there weren't thirty-seven persons in Blue Mound. But there were! And they were glad to see me. Happy that I came bearing books. Happy to buy them. Happy to listen to whatever I had to say.

 

With my next book, Silent Sacrifices, I'm going to spend more energy seeking out these rewarding little venues.   

 

Another Year, Another Book, a Whole New World of Self-Promotion

Donis here,  kicking off my new year. My tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men, will hit the streets on February 6, 2018. You can pre-order here. I am particularly proud of this book, which deals with the psychological effects of warfare on a veteran of the First World War. They called it shell shock back then. Now we call it PTSD. The early reviews have been stellar. Publishers’ Weekly starred review of Forty Dead Men says “Casey expertly nails the extended Tucker family—some 20 people—and combines these convincing characters, a superb sense of time and place, and a solid plot in this marvelously atmospheric historical.”

The official launch party for Forty Dead Men will be at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, on February 24 at 2:00 p.m., when Poisoned Pen Press hosts Yours Truly, Dennis Palumbo (signing Head Wounds, A Daniel Rinaldi Mystery) and Priscilla Royal (signing Wild Justice, A Medieval Mystery) for a three author signing party! We will also be remembering another wonderful Poisoned Pen author, Fred Ramsay, who passed away late last year.

Trying to publicize a new book is a new adventure for me every time. Forty Dead Men is my tenth book in almost thirteen years, and just in that short time things have changed so much that I have to re-learn how to do it with each release.

Do you remember, Dear Reader, when authors had hard-copy press kits that they used to give to prospective agents and editors and to bookstore managers? That is a photo of mine, above. This is a left-over from the press kit batch I used to publicize of my third book, The Drop Edge of Yonder, a mere 10 years ago. NOBODY that I am aware of uses a physical booklet like this anymore. No, now it's either promote yourself on line or in person, and in person is becoming harder and harder to arrange. I have a website and a blog. I don't know how much either helps, but it can't hurt, right? This time I’m doing something most authors these days do automatically, and that is set up an author page on Facebook. It’s hard to believe, but Facebook was less than a year old when my first book was published in 2005, and nobody had an author page. I was finally convinced to create one because I can use it to push promotions and announcements. We shall see how this turns out. In the meantime, Dear Reader, if you would be so kind as to visit my Facebook author page, here, and give it a “Like”, I would be most appreciative.

Also, please remember that especially if you like a book, it is very helpful to the author if you write a nice review for it in Goodreads or on Amazon.

This writing game is tough. And when it comes to publicity, you just have to put your head down and go. What works for one may not work for you, so you try everything you can manage and do the best you can. The really important thing, though, is to do the best you can without making yourself miserable. Life is too short.

Traveling and Talking Books

Carolyn Hart and Hannah Dennison

I've just returned from Huntington Beach, California, where I participated in the third annual Ladies of Intrigue event, which is sponsored by MysteryInk bookstore. It was a day-long conference featuring more than 15 women mystery writers. including Carolyn Hart and Robin Burcell. This was, according to her, Carolyn's career event finale, and since she has no plans to travel out to this part of the country again, she particularly asked me and former Type M-er Hannah Dennison if we would participate in the conference this year. Of course we said yes. Carolyn has been a mentor and a friend from the beginning of both of our mystery writing careers, and we would both do anything she asked. So off we flew for one day in California, where we mingled and served on panels along with eleven other fun and fabulous authors*. Then Carolyn, Hannah and I schlepped back to Phoenix for an appearance at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore last night.

Carolyn, Hannah, Donis at Poisoned Pen
photo by Judith Starkston

I wonder sometimes how cost-effective it is for an author to spend her time and money traveling around the country appearing at bookstores and events and conferences. I know that every appearance gains at least a couple of new readers, who will spread the word, we hope. But as Rick said in his post about book launches (below) doing events with other authors is always a celebration. The mystery community is nothing but kind and supportive, and it's always nice to know that even authors who are infinitely more well-known than I have the same problems with their writing.

The view of the Pacific from my hotel balcony was worth the trip

I was interested in Aline's post (below) about audiobooks. I've met many a "reader" who prefers the audio version of a book to the print version, and I've been lucky that my publisher has sold the audio rights to all my books--but one! The audio version of my latest, All Men Fear Me, has not come out yet. According to Blackstone, the publisher who does the audio books for Poisoned Pen Press, the audio version of my previous Alafair book, Hell With the Lid Blown Off, did not sell well enough. This surprises me, since the paper version of Hell did very well. Also, I loved the audio version of that book. Hell is the only book in the Alafair Tucker series that has some first person narration, and when I first heard the character of Trent Calder (who had been a secondary presence in all the previous books) speak for the first time, I was bowled over. It was as though Trent, who had only lived in my head, was suddenly a real person.

Perhaps it was more expensive to make because Blackstone had to pay two narrators for Hell instead of one. I have been told that Blackstone is waiting until the audio of Hell makes a profit (Hmm. Hell Makes a Profit. Sounds like a book title to me.) Therefore, Dear Readers, next time you’re at your local library, please do me a favor and check to see if they own a copy or two of Hell With the Lid Blown Off in audio. If they do not, I would be grateful if you would request that the system buy one. Most public libraries have a mechanism for users to request titles. If you'd like your own download, check it out here. Once Blackstone makes money off of Hell, they’ll do an audio of All Men. I hope they do one eventually, since the ninth Alafair book, The Return of the Raven Mocker, will be out in January, and I don’t want to get several titles behind when it comes to audio books.

*Attending authors at Ladies of Intrigue this year were Carolyn Hart, Robin Burcell, Rhys Bowen, Kathy Aarons, Lisa Brackmann, Ellen Byron, Donis Casey, Hannah Dennison, Kate Dyer-Seeley, Earlene Fowler, Daryl Wood Gerber, Naomi Hirahara, Linda O. Johnston, Carlene O’Neil, Laurie Stevens and Pamela Samuels Young.