I have made no secret of the fact that I'm setting up a blog tour to promote my new mystery, Safe House, which is coming out in print. As I was doing this, someone recommended to me that I ask to be a guest "chatter" at a site that even has Writer's Digest's recommendation. I resisted at first, since I have done chats before and worry about them. While I dithered, I decided to see if others included chats in their blog tours.
As I looked around, I seemed to find more and more chat rooms but most seemed to be hosted and attended by romance writers and their fans. Novelsisterhood is open to all genres and the chats are regularly scheduled by publishers as well as other groups, but there wasn't much in the way of participation by mystery folk, although I tend to believe there is a certain amount of cross-over readership. (I did see a few mystery authors book their time on Novelsisterhood's blog.)
I saw no chats on any of the mystery sites except for Crimespace where the chat room was so little utilized that it seemed to be growing cobwebs. An attempt to inaugurate a discussion on crimespace about chats as promo elicited some interest--if I wanted to set one up a few people would force themselves to promote at it. I figured that didn't sound as though it would be wildly sucessful.
When I last had a book to promote chats were required. My publisher set some up, but it was understood that I would do others too--it was as much a part of the promo responsiblities as book signings. I attended them and promoted at them and learned to avoid certain ones. (It's not that I'm exactly a prude but some of those romance writers can get to be pretty....vivid.) But I wasn't noticing this great divide between the genres. So now I'm wondering: Are mystery writers just not as chatty as romance writers?
Christine Duncan is the author of the Kaye Berreano mystery series.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Overlapping
How many of us read both mysteries and thrillers with equal enjoyment? What’s the difference? Well, according to International Thriller Writers, a thriller is characterized by "the sudden rush of emotions, the excitement, sense of suspense, apprehension, and exhilaration that drive the narrative, sometimes subtly with peaks and lulls, sometimes at a constant, breakneck pace."
From www.who-dunnit.com a mystery, in books, is defined as “mysterious, unresolved and unexplainable circumstances with which the hero or heroine comes in contact. This can be anything from the occult realms, strange disappearances, unexplainable sudden affluence or sudden monetary loss, psychological distortions, property destroyed or desecrated without known reason, suicide when no suicide seemed feasible, and of course, murder."
Those may, at first, seem very disparate, but any of the circumstances in a mystery can result in a thriller’s “sudden rush of emotions” and, while some cozy mysteries may not proceed at a “constant, breakneck pace,” most mysteries have a sense of apprehension and suspense. Without it, why would we worry about who dunnit?
Who are your favourite mystery and thriller writers – and who would you consider a crossover author?
From www.who-dunnit.com a mystery, in books, is defined as “mysterious, unresolved and unexplainable circumstances with which the hero or heroine comes in contact. This can be anything from the occult realms, strange disappearances, unexplainable sudden affluence or sudden monetary loss, psychological distortions, property destroyed or desecrated without known reason, suicide when no suicide seemed feasible, and of course, murder."
Those may, at first, seem very disparate, but any of the circumstances in a mystery can result in a thriller’s “sudden rush of emotions” and, while some cozy mysteries may not proceed at a “constant, breakneck pace,” most mysteries have a sense of apprehension and suspense. Without it, why would we worry about who dunnit?
Who are your favourite mystery and thriller writers – and who would you consider a crossover author?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The History of the Mystery
I was doing some online research on the history of the Mystery novel. Most sources credit Edgar Allen Poe as having penned the first American mystery book, Murders in the Rue Morgue, in 1841. But the grandfather of the mystery story in all recorded history? Oedipus Rex. Yep. Take a look at this, the general consensus "Top Ten Classic Mystery Novels" of all time.
- Oedipus Rex - Written by Sophocles in Ancient Greece.
- Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)- and all of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the collection of mystery horror by Edgar Allen Poe in America.
- The Woman in White- 1859 by Wilkie Collins in England.
- The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, written in Chinese in the 1700s and translated, with original English-language stories added.
- The Compleat Sherlock Holmes (written in the 19th and 20th centuries) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of the UK- all of the Holmes and Watson stories, especially The Hound of the Baskervilles. Of the pastichenovels based on these characters, two or three collections are also superb, including one written by a man from the old radio tapes and the scripts used by Basil Rathbone as Holmes. The author had listened to those very radio shows as a young boy.
- The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett in America. The film starred Humphrey Bogart, with Peter Lore in a humorous role and the film is still very entertaining as well as mysterious. This book and film are famous all over the world. See The Maltese Falcon for review, summary, and discussion.
- The Birdsby Daphne Du Maurier, England. Set in WWII, brds systematically attack people all through Europe during the war. Made into film by the famous mystery producer Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds is a horror mystery classic in many countries.
- Laura- Vera Caspary in America. Caspary was active in the Anti-Nazi group The League fo American Writers. A police detective investigates the murder of a newspaperwoman and falls asleep under her portrait in her home. He awakens to find her standing there before him. The film version co-starred mystery pro Vincent Price.
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens, 1870; England. A young man, Edwin Drood, is an orphan that grows up, becomes an engineer and plans to marry. The wedding is called off and he plans to go hiking, but disappears and is found murdered.
- The Mystery in the Yellow Room (1907) and The Phantom of the Opera(1911) - by Gaston LeRoux in France.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Mystery is Alive and Well in Los Angeles…
by Anne Carter...as evidenced by the crowds funneling through the Sisters in Crime/Crime Time Books booth this weekend at the L.A. Times Festival of Books! Despite a steady, slightly nippy breeze that threatened book cover stand-up displays and sent flyers and postcards airborne, the overall atmosphere was one of happy camaraderie and plain old “glad to be here” sentiments. But were they buying?
“Doing much better than we expected” was the most oft heard response. Attendance was also much better than expected. Still, the competition for a piece of the stimulus check was tough. Nearly 300 exhibitors--including booksellers, publishers, literary organizations and an estimated 450 authors--offered their wares to an as-yet unannounced number of patrons, expected to be around 130,000. Yes, it’s big, likely the biggest book festival of its kind in the U.S.
I sold my share of my lighthouse mystery, POINT SURRENDER, and my middle grade mystery, LOCKER SHOCK! It is always such a thrill to see a reader grasp a book and talk about their anticipation, most asking for an autograph and sometimes, a photo. It is also a gas hanging out with the other authors from my publisher’s house, Echelon Press. This weekend, we had Teresa Burrell (THE ADVOCATE), Gayle Carline (FREEZER BURN), Jeff Sherratt (GUILTY OR ELSE) and Melinda Richarz Bailey (WOOF: WOMEN ONLY OVER FIFTY), all touting brand new releases. Teresa and Gayle’s books were actually first day releases! Also on board was J.T. Turner (DFF: DEAD FRIENDS FOREVER), teen author Alyssa Montgomery (WHERE ARE YOU?), Alexis Hart (DARK SHINES MY LOVE) and me!
I always get a kick out of the variety of giveaways and promo items being handed out, and often wonder at the bottom line benefit of such practices. Handouts included everything from candy to free anthologies, sampler CD’s, coloring books, and (get this) knitted yarn necklaces. As a consumer, I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever had a freebie sway me toward making a purchase. But maybe I’m the exception.
One big beef I have with festivals of this type is the cost of food. Blatant price inflation is rampant. I went into the food court with $20.00, came back with two chipwichs, one ice cream bar and $8.00. Huh? Even one of my favorite food chains was offering an orange chicken-rice-veggie bowl for $7.50, when in their restaurants they offer the same dish for (typically) under $5.00. Isn't that extortion?
Today I am achy and hoarse. I think I made a small amount of profit on the weekend, if you don’t count the meals and the gas. Would I go again? Yes. But next year I am selling ice cream and rice bowls, too.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Wake up Your Characters
by Jean Henry Mead
Are your characters made of cardboard with no real distinguishing traits to separate one from another? Do they all sound alike when they speak? Are they just sitting around on the front porch sipping ice tea and discussing the garden show or their current problems? Get them up and moving.
Author Tim O’Brien once said, “Memory plus language plus imagination make spirits dance in your head.” I don’t think O’Brien meant to place your characters in a 60s disco, although I took my senior sleuth widows to a male stripper club in my mystery/suspense novel, A Village Shattered.
If your characters are sluggish and don’t seem to want to do what you want them to, write character sketches and give each of them a problem or a least a shared experience to look back on. When it comes to memory, no two people recall the same incident exactly alike. If it was a murder scene they remember, are one or more of them having nightmares about the victim? Did one of them kill that person and the memory’s haunting him or her?
How are you telling about the past experiences your characters have had? What kind of time lines are you using? Make a list of time lines that apply to your characters. By time lines I mean periods since an important event took place. One character might say, “I ain’t had a drink since me da’s wake. I was so sick I thought I was gonna die, and feared I wasn’t goin’ to." His English cousin may remember the same wake, saying, “Bloody hell, that was a pip of a party, eh?” You get the idea. Flesh out your characters and give them their own distinct traits and speech patterns.
Imagination may not come into play until you revise your manuscript, or what Toni Morrison calls the “delicious work of revision.” First drafts are usually a massive blob that need revising, polishing and refining. That’s when your dreary dialogue or cardboard characters are really brought to life.
Margaret Love Denman advises writers to turn off their computer screens while writing a new chapter or scene so that you won’t be distracted by punctuation or spelling errors. When finished, turn the screen back on and begin the rewriting process. Take your time and refine the work until you’re satisfied it’s the best you can do, and that your characters are as defined and different as you can make them.
Novelist Marlys Millhiser once told me that she likes to sit in restaurants, airports and other public places to eavesdrop on conversations. It’s a great way to pick up story ideas as well as a variety of speech patterns. Because no one speaks exactly alike, a good exercise is to close your eyes and listen to the different speech patterns of those around you.
While you’re at it, watch the way people walk and gesture. Notice the way they look when they express surprise, anger, sorrow and happiness. None of us are cut from the same proverbial cloth and none of your characters should exist as cardboard cutouts.
Are your characters made of cardboard with no real distinguishing traits to separate one from another? Do they all sound alike when they speak? Are they just sitting around on the front porch sipping ice tea and discussing the garden show or their current problems? Get them up and moving.
Author Tim O’Brien once said, “Memory plus language plus imagination make spirits dance in your head.” I don’t think O’Brien meant to place your characters in a 60s disco, although I took my senior sleuth widows to a male stripper club in my mystery/suspense novel, A Village Shattered.
If your characters are sluggish and don’t seem to want to do what you want them to, write character sketches and give each of them a problem or a least a shared experience to look back on. When it comes to memory, no two people recall the same incident exactly alike. If it was a murder scene they remember, are one or more of them having nightmares about the victim? Did one of them kill that person and the memory’s haunting him or her?
How are you telling about the past experiences your characters have had? What kind of time lines are you using? Make a list of time lines that apply to your characters. By time lines I mean periods since an important event took place. One character might say, “I ain’t had a drink since me da’s wake. I was so sick I thought I was gonna die, and feared I wasn’t goin’ to." His English cousin may remember the same wake, saying, “Bloody hell, that was a pip of a party, eh?” You get the idea. Flesh out your characters and give them their own distinct traits and speech patterns.
Imagination may not come into play until you revise your manuscript, or what Toni Morrison calls the “delicious work of revision.” First drafts are usually a massive blob that need revising, polishing and refining. That’s when your dreary dialogue or cardboard characters are really brought to life.
Margaret Love Denman advises writers to turn off their computer screens while writing a new chapter or scene so that you won’t be distracted by punctuation or spelling errors. When finished, turn the screen back on and begin the rewriting process. Take your time and refine the work until you’re satisfied it’s the best you can do, and that your characters are as defined and different as you can make them.
Novelist Marlys Millhiser once told me that she likes to sit in restaurants, airports and other public places to eavesdrop on conversations. It’s a great way to pick up story ideas as well as a variety of speech patterns. Because no one speaks exactly alike, a good exercise is to close your eyes and listen to the different speech patterns of those around you.
While you’re at it, watch the way people walk and gesture. Notice the way they look when they express surprise, anger, sorrow and happiness. None of us are cut from the same proverbial cloth and none of your characters should exist as cardboard cutouts.
Friday, April 24, 2009
These Pigeon Droppings Really Stink
By Chester Campbell
Several scams using the old Pigeon Drop routine were reported recently in Nashville. The question for any thoughtful person is how could someone fall for such a scheme? The answer, of course, is that the con men or women involved are quite skilled at their profession.
The name of the scam comes from the French word "pigeon," which refers to anybody easily flimflammed. Con men refer to them as "marks."
The recent scams in the news followed the typical routine. In one the pigeon was an elderly woman in the parking lot of a supermarket. After getting out of her car, she was approached by a smiling younger woman who asked what time it was. That led to a friendly conversation about the weather, then another woman walked up excitedly with a large envelope. She said she had just found it in the parking lot and asked if it belonged to either of the other women.
They both shook their heads and wanted to know what was in the envelope. The second scammer opened it to show them that it was filled with a large amount of money. She said it was probably lost by a drug dealer or somebody else involved in an illegal activity. There was no way they could find the rightful owner.
The two scammers began to talk about what they could do with the money. Their mark listened and quickly became drawn into the plan. Finally, one of them said she had a lawyer friend who could advise them on what to do. After a short cell phone conversation, she laid out the plan.
They would each put some of their own money into a good faith kitty before going to the lawyer's office where he would divide up the cash from the envelope. By this time, the pigeon was completely hooked on the scheme. She drove with the women to her bank and drew several thousand dollars out of her account. She placed it in a bag with the other women's earnest money.
They drove to a building where the lawyer supposedly had his office. The two scammers gave the mark the good faith money bag to hold while they took the envelope with their find into the building. After waiting and waiting for them to return, the woman looked into the bag and found it stuffed not with large denomination bills but with wadded up newspapers. The women had dropped their pigeon and disappeared with her cash.
Fraud investigators say there are many reasons why the scheme works, particularly when the target is an elderly woman. Her vision may be blurred by hopes of getting something for nothing. She may become concerned that resistance would result in physical violence. The scammers have perfected their pitch. They know what to say and who to say it to, and they typically target as many victims as possible in a short period of time.
And while older women are particularly susceptible, elderly men can fall victim to the scheme just as easily. If you know someone who isn't sufficiently sophisticated to recognize a pigeon drop when it occurs, you'd do well to give them a little education on how to spot the scam.
Several scams using the old Pigeon Drop routine were reported recently in Nashville. The question for any thoughtful person is how could someone fall for such a scheme? The answer, of course, is that the con men or women involved are quite skilled at their profession.
The name of the scam comes from the French word "pigeon," which refers to anybody easily flimflammed. Con men refer to them as "marks."
The recent scams in the news followed the typical routine. In one the pigeon was an elderly woman in the parking lot of a supermarket. After getting out of her car, she was approached by a smiling younger woman who asked what time it was. That led to a friendly conversation about the weather, then another woman walked up excitedly with a large envelope. She said she had just found it in the parking lot and asked if it belonged to either of the other women.
They both shook their heads and wanted to know what was in the envelope. The second scammer opened it to show them that it was filled with a large amount of money. She said it was probably lost by a drug dealer or somebody else involved in an illegal activity. There was no way they could find the rightful owner.
The two scammers began to talk about what they could do with the money. Their mark listened and quickly became drawn into the plan. Finally, one of them said she had a lawyer friend who could advise them on what to do. After a short cell phone conversation, she laid out the plan.
They would each put some of their own money into a good faith kitty before going to the lawyer's office where he would divide up the cash from the envelope. By this time, the pigeon was completely hooked on the scheme. She drove with the women to her bank and drew several thousand dollars out of her account. She placed it in a bag with the other women's earnest money.
They drove to a building where the lawyer supposedly had his office. The two scammers gave the mark the good faith money bag to hold while they took the envelope with their find into the building. After waiting and waiting for them to return, the woman looked into the bag and found it stuffed not with large denomination bills but with wadded up newspapers. The women had dropped their pigeon and disappeared with her cash.
Fraud investigators say there are many reasons why the scheme works, particularly when the target is an elderly woman. Her vision may be blurred by hopes of getting something for nothing. She may become concerned that resistance would result in physical violence. The scammers have perfected their pitch. They know what to say and who to say it to, and they typically target as many victims as possible in a short period of time.
And while older women are particularly susceptible, elderly men can fall victim to the scheme just as easily. If you know someone who isn't sufficiently sophisticated to recognize a pigeon drop when it occurs, you'd do well to give them a little education on how to spot the scam.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
What's the bad guy up to?
There's a passage in Michael Connelly's Echo Park that is directed to writers who might be reading the book.
This got my attention. Michael Connelly who created Harry Bosch was giving writing advice from Stephen J. Cannell who created The Rockford Files, Adam-12, Hunter and just about any other program worth watching on television.
Obviously, Connelly thought this was an important tip, one he found useful in his own writing. How did he come to possess it? Since he refers to it as Cannell's favorite piece of advice, I guessed it came from a public lecture or interview. Most public events find their way onto the internet, so I googled Stephen J. Cannell.
I found more than a tip. I found Stephen J. Cannell's Free Online Writing Seminar at http://www.cannell.com/television.php. If you click on the link, you will find it at the bottom of the page.
It's a five part seminar. The tip that Connelly thought important enough to pass on to us through Harry Bosch can be found in Part IV under "Tricks Of The Trade." It's offered as a solution to a problem many writers have -- a sagging middle. Here's Cannell's explanation for why it's a problem.
Act Two is where the antagonist's plan is revealed, or, if not revealed, we at least see the effects of the plan. Things happen to the protagonist that we may not understand, but, at the end of the story, we can go back and say, "I should have known."
Here's Cannell's tip:
Of course, you may still write the story in the protagonist's point of view, but you have plotted it from the antagonist's point of view.
Easy for Stephen Cannell and Michael Connelly. For the rest of us, it will require a lot of practice, but, if this is how Cannell and Connelly write, you can be sure I'm going to try it. Now, if I could just find a coffee mug with that great piece of writing advice to keep me focused, What's the bad guy up to?
Bosch suddenly had an idea about that but decided to grind it over for awhile before acting on anything. He put the questions aside for the moment and got up to refill his coffee mug. He was using a real coffee mug he had brought down from the Open Unsolved Unit because he preferred it over Styrofoam. His mug had come from a famous writer and television producer named Stephen Cannell who had spent time with the OU unit researching a project. Printed on the side of the mug was Cannell's favorite piece of writing advice. It said What's the bad guy up to? Bosch liked it because he thought it was a good question for a real detective to always be considering as well.
This got my attention. Michael Connelly who created Harry Bosch was giving writing advice from Stephen J. Cannell who created The Rockford Files, Adam-12, Hunter and just about any other program worth watching on television.
Obviously, Connelly thought this was an important tip, one he found useful in his own writing. How did he come to possess it? Since he refers to it as Cannell's favorite piece of advice, I guessed it came from a public lecture or interview. Most public events find their way onto the internet, so I googled Stephen J. Cannell.
I found more than a tip. I found Stephen J. Cannell's Free Online Writing Seminar at http://www.cannell.com/television.php. If you click on the link, you will find it at the bottom of the page.
It's a five part seminar. The tip that Connelly thought important enough to pass on to us through Harry Bosch can be found in Part IV under "Tricks Of The Trade." It's offered as a solution to a problem many writers have -- a sagging middle. Here's Cannell's explanation for why it's a problem.
Because Act Two is the hardest act to plot, most people give up on their ideas in Act Two; "This isn't working." "This idea sucks." Most of the time the reason we break down plotting Act Two, is that we tend to "walk" with the hero because we identify with the protagonist. We walk through the story inside his or her head.
Act Two is where the antagonist's plan is revealed, or, if not revealed, we at least see the effects of the plan. Things happen to the protagonist that we may not understand, but, at the end of the story, we can go back and say, "I should have known."
Once we get past the complication and are into Act Two, we sometimes get stuck. "What do I do now?" "Where does this protagonist go from here?" The plotting in Act Two often starts to get linear (a writer's expression meaning the character is following a string, knocking on doors, just getting information). This is the dullest kind of material. We get frustrated and want to quit.
Here's Cannell's tip:
When you get to this place, go around and become the antagonist. You probably haven't been paying much attention to him or her. Now you get in the antagonist's head and you're looking back at the story to date from that point of view.
Of course, you may still write the story in the protagonist's point of view, but you have plotted it from the antagonist's point of view.
"Wait a minute... Rockford went to my nightclub and asked my bartender where I lived. Who is this guy Rockford? Did anybody get his address? His license plate? I'm gonna find out where this jabrone lives! Let's go over to his trailer and search the place." Under his mattress maybe the heavy finds his gun (in Rockford's case, it was usually hidden in his Oreo cookie jar). His P.I. license is on the wall. Now the heavy knows he's being investigated by a P.I. Okay, let's use his gun to kill our next victim. Rockford gets arrested, charged with murder. End of Act Two.
See how easy it works? The destruction of the hero's plan. Now he's going to the gas chamber.
Plot from the heavy's point-of-view in Act Two; it is an invaluable tip.
Easy for Stephen Cannell and Michael Connelly. For the rest of us, it will require a lot of practice, but, if this is how Cannell and Connelly write, you can be sure I'm going to try it. Now, if I could just find a coffee mug with that great piece of writing advice to keep me focused, What's the bad guy up to?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
What Being a Published Author Has Done For Me
Though I've written all my life, starting with short stories when I was a little girl, plays for the neighborhood kids to perform, a magazine for teens, and after I had a family, PTA newsletters and plays for my Camp Fire Girls, I got a late start actually writing novels. Oh, I'd made a couple of attempts earlier in my married life, sent them off, they manuscripts were rejected--once each--and I threw them away. (Dumb, don't ever throw anything away. I could have fixed them later on when I actually knew more about writing.)
Just an aside, my first book that did get published when I was in my late forties was rejected nearly thirty times. I'd learned a lot more about writing and submitting by then and I didn't give up.
Now, twenty-five published books later--mostly mysteries--I can look back and see what being published has done for me. And no, it has certainly not made me rich. At least not rich in a monetary sense. However it has enriched me greatly as far as life experiences.
Traveling to interesting place that I would have never even considered visiting has come about because of attending mystery conventions and writers' conferences: Omaha, Milwaukee, Madison, El Paso, Seattle, Portland, Oklahoma City, Tampa, Orlando,Reno, Las Vegas, Monterey, Idaho, San Antonio, and Alaska twice.
My first time in Alaska I had an exciting adventure traveling to a tiny village in a big Suburban on the frozen river. I also met two young Native women and became friends with them. One of the gals and I exchanged emails and when I went back the second time, I stayed at her house and gave a talk to middle school kids in Wasilla.
Which brings me to the most important thing that being a published author has done for me, making lots of new and wonderful friends. Some have been other writers and some have been readers who have turned into fans of my mysteries. I've also met a lot of people on the Internet because I'm a writer.
Wherever I go now, I know I'll run into someone I've met before or who has read one of my mysteries, or I will meet someone new who will become a friend.
Though the writing is something I feel compelled to do, being published has enriched my life through the wonderful people I've met and spent time with in person and on line.
Marilyn a.k.a. F. M. Meredith
Just an aside, my first book that did get published when I was in my late forties was rejected nearly thirty times. I'd learned a lot more about writing and submitting by then and I didn't give up.
Now, twenty-five published books later--mostly mysteries--I can look back and see what being published has done for me. And no, it has certainly not made me rich. At least not rich in a monetary sense. However it has enriched me greatly as far as life experiences.
Traveling to interesting place that I would have never even considered visiting has come about because of attending mystery conventions and writers' conferences: Omaha, Milwaukee, Madison, El Paso, Seattle, Portland, Oklahoma City, Tampa, Orlando,Reno, Las Vegas, Monterey, Idaho, San Antonio, and Alaska twice.
My first time in Alaska I had an exciting adventure traveling to a tiny village in a big Suburban on the frozen river. I also met two young Native women and became friends with them. One of the gals and I exchanged emails and when I went back the second time, I stayed at her house and gave a talk to middle school kids in Wasilla.
Which brings me to the most important thing that being a published author has done for me, making lots of new and wonderful friends. Some have been other writers and some have been readers who have turned into fans of my mysteries. I've also met a lot of people on the Internet because I'm a writer.
Wherever I go now, I know I'll run into someone I've met before or who has read one of my mysteries, or I will meet someone new who will become a friend.
Though the writing is something I feel compelled to do, being published has enriched my life through the wonderful people I've met and spent time with in person and on line.
Marilyn a.k.a. F. M. Meredith
Monday, April 20, 2009
Please Welcome My Guest, Mystery Author Richard E. Roach
Pump Up Your Book Promotion
“We take books to the virtual level!”
http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/
AUTHOR BIO:
Suspense/Mystery author Richard Roach was born in 1931 in Galveston, Texas. Short stories of his have been published in Man’s Story 2, Happy 2007, Vol. 20 and Bibliophilos 2006, Vol. 42. His first novel, Scattered Leaves, hit the book stores on September 1, ’08, and his second novel, Scattered Money, will be published in 2009.
You can visit his website at http://www.richarderoach.com/.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
When Ben McCord comes home from a business trip to find his young wife raped and murdered, he starts out on a journey of death and destruction. Clues lead him to a dark world of drugs and violence in action that spans Texas, Colorado, and the Mexican border. McCord hooks up with a beautiful doctor, who was also victimized by members of the same drug cartel, and together they track down the killers, surviving bloody confrontations, and ending with a suspenseful climax in the Big Thicket of Texas.
GUEST POST:
How do you develop your main character for your mystery? I read the following some where:
One way to develop a main character is by introducing another main, secondary or minor character (love interest, family member, friend or villain) who either enhances or contrasts his personality. You’ll see the saving-herself-for-marriage woman paired with a slutty best friend. The street-smart guy with the 4.0 GPA buddy. The happily married accountant with 2.5 kids, living vicariously through his footloose, unfettered college buddy who’s been to every corner of the globe on one hair-raising adventure after another.
I think that sounds very good and I'm sure the person who wrote it had been trained in one of the better universities of our nation. However, (I bet you knew there was going to be a conflict, didn't you? After all we can't have a story if everyone agrees, now can we?) I do it a little differently . . . when I come up with the plot, I assemble all the people I have known over my lifetime and pick the one most nearly like the character I am trying to create. (I must admit with women it is somewhat harder because I haven't known many movie stars and all my female protagonis are nearly perfect specimens.)
For Ben McCord, SCATTERED LEAVES, I chose a melding of Hop Simmons, Duke Morrison, and Wade Kimeral. His physical size and good rugged looks came for Mr. Simmons, his acting ability from Duke, and his grit from Wade, a guy who played tight end on the football team back in my service days.
Of course, I know you don't need any advice from me because you wouldn't be a writer if you didn't have loads of imagination. This is for the tenderfoot that's just saddled up for their first journey up the trail.
Thank you and good luck with your writing.
Richard Roach
Comments are welcome.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Eenie Meenie Writing Method
From the Sunday morning mind of Earl Staggs
A few years ago, a writer I knew invited me to her debut signing event. She’d written three or four Romance novels which went unpublished before writing this one. It was her first Mystery and a small press published it. I was excited for her so I went.
She handled herself well in her presentation, I thought. She’s an attractive girl, bubbly in spirit, and well-spoken. Everything went along just fine until, in response to a question, she stopped me cold with this:
“I didn’t know who the killer was myself until the final chapter.”
I don’t know how the rest of the audience reacted, but I was numbstruck. How could this be? How could a writer put together a complete murder mystery without knowing who did the awful deed? Did she toss in a large number of red herrings and suspects, then draw a name from a hat at the end? After I read the book, I felt that’s most likely what she’d done.
She’d developed several viable suspects, but none more suspect than the others. There were a number of what seemed to be clues, but none pointed to anyone in particular and none were crucial to solving the crime. In the end, the protagonist somehow decided who dunnit, confronted her, and got a confession.
I felt cheated.
When I read a mystery, I like to stay in step with the protag as the clues and suspects are presented, weighing and assessing them until the stew boils down to a credible denouement. I don’t mind at all being surprised by a good plot twist as long as I can reconcile it with what’s gone before and it rings true. I can also understand how a writer can begin a novel with one perpetrator in mind and change to another one as the plot progresses. I’ve done that myself, but I’ve gone back and rewritten where necessary to make it work.
But to write a complete novel, then choose the killer with an eenie-meenie-minie-moe method and expect readers to be satisfied!?!?
Would someone pack all their belongings, hit the road making right and left turns at random, then when they run out of gas, that’s where they stay?
Would a builder accumulate a pile of boards, begin cutting and nailing them together, then when he runs out, decide whether he’s built a house, a garage, or a bridge?
Maybe there are people out there who do things that way. My only hope is that they don’t write mystery novels.
Earl Staggs
A few years ago, a writer I knew invited me to her debut signing event. She’d written three or four Romance novels which went unpublished before writing this one. It was her first Mystery and a small press published it. I was excited for her so I went.
She handled herself well in her presentation, I thought. She’s an attractive girl, bubbly in spirit, and well-spoken. Everything went along just fine until, in response to a question, she stopped me cold with this:
“I didn’t know who the killer was myself until the final chapter.”
I don’t know how the rest of the audience reacted, but I was numbstruck. How could this be? How could a writer put together a complete murder mystery without knowing who did the awful deed? Did she toss in a large number of red herrings and suspects, then draw a name from a hat at the end? After I read the book, I felt that’s most likely what she’d done.
She’d developed several viable suspects, but none more suspect than the others. There were a number of what seemed to be clues, but none pointed to anyone in particular and none were crucial to solving the crime. In the end, the protagonist somehow decided who dunnit, confronted her, and got a confession.
I felt cheated.
When I read a mystery, I like to stay in step with the protag as the clues and suspects are presented, weighing and assessing them until the stew boils down to a credible denouement. I don’t mind at all being surprised by a good plot twist as long as I can reconcile it with what’s gone before and it rings true. I can also understand how a writer can begin a novel with one perpetrator in mind and change to another one as the plot progresses. I’ve done that myself, but I’ve gone back and rewritten where necessary to make it work.
But to write a complete novel, then choose the killer with an eenie-meenie-minie-moe method and expect readers to be satisfied!?!?
Would someone pack all their belongings, hit the road making right and left turns at random, then when they run out of gas, that’s where they stay?
Would a builder accumulate a pile of boards, begin cutting and nailing them together, then when he runs out, decide whether he’s built a house, a garage, or a bridge?
Maybe there are people out there who do things that way. My only hope is that they don’t write mystery novels.
Earl Staggs
Friday, April 17, 2009
Bump 'Em Off, Eh?
by Ben Small
We all know somebody we want to bump off. Maybe the woman who waited to get to the Exact Change toll booth today before rooting around for change. Or maybe the father who brought his six screaming kids to McDonald’s and parked them at the table next to me. I do not enjoy having to dodge flying fries while I’m trying to eat a Grease-Burger. Or what about the woman who sat next to me on my last flight? She weighed over three hundred, I’ll bet, and she’d doused herself in chemicals I’m sure the EPA have outlawed. Getting up ― no doubt so she could splash on more Skunk-Scent in the bathroom ― she rocked the seat ahead of her so hard, she gave the poor schlub sitting there whiplash. You can imagine my thoughts about her return.
Why not just bump these folks off before they become a menace to society… or more particularly… me?
The problem is: How do I get away with it? There was that famous Hitchcock play where the little ole lady bumped off her hubby with a frozen lamb shank, and then fed it to the investigating cops. But how many times can one get away with that? And how does one keep the lamb shank cold when on the road?
Last week, I spoke about the problems of using a gun. Sure, one can get around these problems. Use cotton gloves to load your bullets and fire the thing, wear long sleeve shirts, ear and eye protection, and use a drop-in barrel in a semi-auto. But that’s all so much trouble, and even so, somebody may still see or hear you plug the deceased.
Chester Campbell suggested a smudge pot. Would that be called a “Smudgeoning?” Chester, we need to explore that crime a little further. Jean suggested a bathtub drowning, but what if the offender is bigger or stronger than I am? I’m not into role reversal here. Trevanian used a credit card, but that’s close-up work – kinda messy. Charlie Chan once investigated a series of murders where the killer put venom on a needle which was inserted into a doorknob or vending machine slot, or something like that. But how practical is that, Charlie?
Maybe I need to get in touch with my feminine side. Lucrezia Borgia got a bad rep, I’m told, but she may have been on to something. I picked up Deadly Doses, a Writer’s Guide To Poisons, by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner. Remind me not to have dinner with either of these ladies...
Seriously, a handbook of poisons should be on every murder writer’s bookshelf. All sorts of interesting info. And what could be better, if one truly has a murderous heart, but to sit and watch your target die an agonizing death? How fun! Pass the popcorn.
We all know somebody we want to bump off. Maybe the woman who waited to get to the Exact Change toll booth today before rooting around for change. Or maybe the father who brought his six screaming kids to McDonald’s and parked them at the table next to me. I do not enjoy having to dodge flying fries while I’m trying to eat a Grease-Burger. Or what about the woman who sat next to me on my last flight? She weighed over three hundred, I’ll bet, and she’d doused herself in chemicals I’m sure the EPA have outlawed. Getting up ― no doubt so she could splash on more Skunk-Scent in the bathroom ― she rocked the seat ahead of her so hard, she gave the poor schlub sitting there whiplash. You can imagine my thoughts about her return.
Why not just bump these folks off before they become a menace to society… or more particularly… me?
The problem is: How do I get away with it? There was that famous Hitchcock play where the little ole lady bumped off her hubby with a frozen lamb shank, and then fed it to the investigating cops. But how many times can one get away with that? And how does one keep the lamb shank cold when on the road?
Last week, I spoke about the problems of using a gun. Sure, one can get around these problems. Use cotton gloves to load your bullets and fire the thing, wear long sleeve shirts, ear and eye protection, and use a drop-in barrel in a semi-auto. But that’s all so much trouble, and even so, somebody may still see or hear you plug the deceased.
Chester Campbell suggested a smudge pot. Would that be called a “Smudgeoning?” Chester, we need to explore that crime a little further. Jean suggested a bathtub drowning, but what if the offender is bigger or stronger than I am? I’m not into role reversal here. Trevanian used a credit card, but that’s close-up work – kinda messy. Charlie Chan once investigated a series of murders where the killer put venom on a needle which was inserted into a doorknob or vending machine slot, or something like that. But how practical is that, Charlie?
Maybe I need to get in touch with my feminine side. Lucrezia Borgia got a bad rep, I’m told, but she may have been on to something. I picked up Deadly Doses, a Writer’s Guide To Poisons, by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner. Remind me not to have dinner with either of these ladies...
Seriously, a handbook of poisons should be on every murder writer’s bookshelf. All sorts of interesting info. And what could be better, if one truly has a murderous heart, but to sit and watch your target die an agonizing death? How fun! Pass the popcorn.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Get a Head Start - Cheap & Easy Tax Tips for 2009 by Christine Duncan
Since this post will be published the day after April 15th, I thought I would write about taxes. It's too late now to give you any tips for your 2008 filing but not too late to make life easier next year. And it doesn't have to take you a lot of time, money or trouble this year. Here's the deal.
I work as a tax preparer for one of those places you see advertised way too much on T.V. and I'm a bookkeeper. So I see folks come in all tax season long with their own businesses who don't have a clue what they made or spent. And believe it or not, if you write and are published, you have your own business. All you have to do is make 400.00 from writing for the IRS to want to hear about it from you.
But hey, you say, I spent a lot of money on the writing too! I hear you. But the IRS will want you to be able to prove it. And it is easy and cheap enough. How cheap? How about under ten bucks, is that cheap enough for you?
First off, get one of those free bank accounts. It doesn't have to be a business bank account. You can get one from your credit union or some bank close to you. Run all of your income and expenses out of it. In other words, don't just deposit the royalty check from your publisher there, but also that 60.00 bucks you made from selling books in the back of the room when you spoke at the Senior Center. And use those checks (or debit card) to pay all of your writing expenses.
If you have to loan yourself money--deposit it into that account with a note in the register to remind you at year end. Then you have a record of all your expenses.
Already opened the bank account? Then go to one of your favorite office supply stores.Buy one of those vehicle expense books. They usually run around 2.00. Put it in the car on the center console. Every time you go somewhere for your writing, record your mileage. Make sure you record this trip to the office supply store and the bank. While you're in the store, buy yourself one of those nifty accordion folders with sections. You need a place to store your receipts, like the receipt you're about to get. You don't need a big filing cabinet for this. If you don't feel like using an accordion file, just use an old 10 x 12 manila envelope. (I told you this was cheap.) But label the sections: office supplies, computers & equipment, advertising (oh yes you do--you have a website don't you? How about the Romantic Times ad?) Make other sections as needed.
Put this folder in your car trunk in that box where you store your extra books in case the bookstore runs out when you do a signing. Then when you make a purchase and throw your stuff in the trunk, make sure the receipt goes straight into your accordion file. That's it. You don't need a big accounting program. You have just made sure that you have a record of income and expenses for the year.
At the year's end, total the receipts (or have the person who does your taxes do it, but that will cost you.) and total the deposits in the bank account. Voila! You are ready to file a schedule C without much effort or expense. And then filing your 2009 taxes will be easy. Yeah, right!
Christine Duncan
Safe Beginnings, A fire, a murder, a battered woman's nightmare
Safe House, Life--and death--in a battered women's shelter.
In print soon from TrebleHeartBooks.com Rule of Three--3 writers, 3 countries--3 ways of doing things
I work as a tax preparer for one of those places you see advertised way too much on T.V. and I'm a bookkeeper. So I see folks come in all tax season long with their own businesses who don't have a clue what they made or spent. And believe it or not, if you write and are published, you have your own business. All you have to do is make 400.00 from writing for the IRS to want to hear about it from you.
But hey, you say, I spent a lot of money on the writing too! I hear you. But the IRS will want you to be able to prove it. And it is easy and cheap enough. How cheap? How about under ten bucks, is that cheap enough for you?
First off, get one of those free bank accounts. It doesn't have to be a business bank account. You can get one from your credit union or some bank close to you. Run all of your income and expenses out of it. In other words, don't just deposit the royalty check from your publisher there, but also that 60.00 bucks you made from selling books in the back of the room when you spoke at the Senior Center. And use those checks (or debit card) to pay all of your writing expenses.
If you have to loan yourself money--deposit it into that account with a note in the register to remind you at year end. Then you have a record of all your expenses.
Already opened the bank account? Then go to one of your favorite office supply stores.Buy one of those vehicle expense books. They usually run around 2.00. Put it in the car on the center console. Every time you go somewhere for your writing, record your mileage. Make sure you record this trip to the office supply store and the bank. While you're in the store, buy yourself one of those nifty accordion folders with sections. You need a place to store your receipts, like the receipt you're about to get. You don't need a big filing cabinet for this. If you don't feel like using an accordion file, just use an old 10 x 12 manila envelope. (I told you this was cheap.) But label the sections: office supplies, computers & equipment, advertising (oh yes you do--you have a website don't you? How about the Romantic Times ad?) Make other sections as needed.
Put this folder in your car trunk in that box where you store your extra books in case the bookstore runs out when you do a signing. Then when you make a purchase and throw your stuff in the trunk, make sure the receipt goes straight into your accordion file. That's it. You don't need a big accounting program. You have just made sure that you have a record of income and expenses for the year.
At the year's end, total the receipts (or have the person who does your taxes do it, but that will cost you.) and total the deposits in the bank account. Voila! You are ready to file a schedule C without much effort or expense. And then filing your 2009 taxes will be easy. Yeah, right!
Christine Duncan
Safe Beginnings, A fire, a murder, a battered woman's nightmare
Safe House, Life--and death--in a battered women's shelter.
In print soon from TrebleHeartBooks.com Rule of Three--3 writers, 3 countries--3 ways of doing things
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Spring Cleaning for the Writer
It’s the time of year everyone gets the itch to get outside, clean up all the sticks and leaves in the yard, look at what’s popping up in the garden, sneak in that first sit on the deck or in the yard with the warm spring sunshine on your back. You might even be moved to clean some windows, wash the car or sort through what’s accumulated in the garage over the winter. It’s spring, at least on the calendar and it’s the time of year that burst of energy called spring fever hits!
For writers, this is a good time of year to spring clean as well. Take a look at the project ideas you’ve been stockpiling in a file cabinet or on your hard drive. Pull out those index cards with character outlines. Do you have a notebook with plot sketches, timelines, lists of red herrings or clues? What about that storyboard you started a couple of years ago?
This is a great time to sift through those – you could find a gem that gets your mind working on your next mystery, or find a great twist for the current manuscript. You could discover the perfect villain for the story you’re outlining. Or you could even discover a series in what someone else might call clutter, but we all know is research and planning!
Take some time to let the sun shine on some of your archived ideas, plots, characters and outlines and discover what great material you’ve had hibernating over the winter.
Let us know – what did you discover during your writer’s spring cleaning?
Libby McKinmer
www.libbymckinmer.com
libby@libbymckinmer.com
For writers, this is a good time of year to spring clean as well. Take a look at the project ideas you’ve been stockpiling in a file cabinet or on your hard drive. Pull out those index cards with character outlines. Do you have a notebook with plot sketches, timelines, lists of red herrings or clues? What about that storyboard you started a couple of years ago?
This is a great time to sift through those – you could find a gem that gets your mind working on your next mystery, or find a great twist for the current manuscript. You could discover the perfect villain for the story you’re outlining. Or you could even discover a series in what someone else might call clutter, but we all know is research and planning!
Take some time to let the sun shine on some of your archived ideas, plots, characters and outlines and discover what great material you’ve had hibernating over the winter.
Let us know – what did you discover during your writer’s spring cleaning?
Libby McKinmer
www.libbymckinmer.com
libby@libbymckinmer.com
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Don't Get Blogged Down
Nowadays a great deal of authors, in any genre, especially those who are still trying to make it big and are not yet a household name, are bloggers as well. I know I blog a lot. A whole lot. There are many advantages to having a well read popular blog. It is a great way to build up a readership and following. It provides a discipline, if you take it seriously, of writing on a regular basis. If you have more than one blog or one that covers more than one topic it broadens your writing abilities. It also is an effective medium for getting immediate feedback on how well your writing is received. More so than the book, a blog is a quick, lively, and continuous interaction with your readers. It also, when done well, helps you sell more books, and that is after all what we as authors are trying to do - sell books!
But like anything else, blogging can become too much of a ... hmm, do I dare say - addiction? Yes, addiction. I was going to say passion, but addiction is more on the point I'm
I came to this conclusion, about needing to get a grip on my running out of control blogging habit, at the end of a month-long blogging binge, the consummation of a desolate period of my life. My rampant run amok blogging had ruined me. I had lost my wife, my family's respect, my WIP's had mildew on them, the house and car had been repossessed, I was drinking myself to death with cheap bourbon during the day and Pepsi at night, and so broke I was having to dance at a strip bar to make the money I needed to keep my cable internet going so I could write one more blog. Didn't need food. Just my blogs.
My publisher, in a fit of outrage, hunted me down, pissed with me for having missed my last deadline again, and saved my life by having me committed to a BA (Blogaholics Anonymous) Rehab clinic. It was there, when I finally got sober and realized how far I had fallen, that in a fit enlightened inspiration I penned this poem that I wish to share with you all today. Enjoy, take serious note, and then please share your thoughts in the comments afterward.
Ode to the Blogaholic
(You Know Who You Are)
I thought it best to start out my day-
Working on manuscripts when,
In a fit of addictive behavior I must say,
All did I was just blog instead.
By noon, I resolved, I would certainly have-
A thousand words WIP penned,
But I swear I didn't know the time had all passed ...
By the time I finished blogging again.
Mid afternoon certainly productive must be-
Occupied with writing, swore I then,
But great god almighty and good golly gee ...
By four I had only blogged again!
At dinner I ate quickly and did firmly resolve-
Early eve not one email to send.
In this I can say I was able - but not proud,
For though no emails, I did blog ... shan't pretend.
As midnight approached my manuscripts did so vie-
For attention from me before bed.
But try as I might, and Lord knows I did try,
Before sleep I had blogged once again.
I now lay me down to sleep with a prayer-
For all my good bloggers and friends.
That their days be not lost as mine in thin err-
Whilst blogging o'er and o'er with no end.
***
(You Know Who You Are)
I thought it best to start out my day-
Working on manuscripts when,
In a fit of addictive behavior I must say,
All did I was just blog instead.
By noon, I resolved, I would certainly have-
A thousand words WIP penned,
But I swear I didn't know the time had all passed ...
By the time I finished blogging again.
Mid afternoon certainly productive must be-
Occupied with writing, swore I then,
But great god almighty and good golly gee ...
By four I had only blogged again!
At dinner I ate quickly and did firmly resolve-
Early eve not one email to send.
In this I can say I was able - but not proud,
For though no emails, I did blog ... shan't pretend.
As midnight approached my manuscripts did so vie-
For attention from me before bed.
But try as I might, and Lord knows I did try,
Before sleep I had blogged once again.
I now lay me down to sleep with a prayer-
For all my good bloggers and friends.
That their days be not lost as mine in thin err-
Whilst blogging o'er and o'er with no end.
***
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Mysterious Hot Toddy
by Anne Carter“I wanna sing. I wanna dance. I wanna ha-cha-ha.” –Thelma Todd, as Lucille, in Monkey Business, 1931.
There’s no question that 29 year old screen star Thelma Todd liked to party. Such was the case on the weekend of her death in December, 1935, when “Hot Toddy” was found dead in her 1932 KBV12 Lincoln Phaeton, parked in the garage of her lover’s wife. To this day, her death remains a mystery to most.
I’ve been intrigued by this story since I first heard the many conflicting details surrounding the events of December 15-16, 1935, which occurred in a neighborhood I often drove through as a teen on my way to the beach. 73 years after that fateful event, movie buffs and historians still debate whether or not Todd took her own life, was a victim of a horrendous mistake or was flat out murdered. Headlines of the era reveal a trial that, for a brief time, rivaled that of O.J. Simpson’s notorious courtroom fiasco. The suspects were many, and included her lover and business partner, director Roland West; her abusive ex, Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco; even infamous mob boss, Charles “Lucky” Luciano.
What makes this story even more enticing is the wide variety of “facts” that surfaced in the days, months and even years after the “Ice Cream Blonde’s” unlucky demise. Even the condition of her body has been widely disputed, ranging from “a trickle of blood and a dislodged dental filling”—supposedly due to her mouth hitting the steering wheel--to “broken ribs, broken nose, and numerous bruises.” She was witnessed banging on her and West’s locked apartment door during the wee hours, yet her alcohol-laden body was found in a garage on the street above, 300 concrete steps and one block away. Her shoes did not indicate the wear that would have resulted from such a drunken climb, a fact verified in a reenactment by a woman of similar build wearing like-styled shoes. Time of death was placed on Sunday morning, yet witnesses reported seeing her and hearing her voice on the phone later in the day. Even the car has been largely remembered as a convertible Packard, when photos indicate a Lincoln with the roof in place.If she didn’t walk up those crude stairs in the middle of the night, how did she get into the
garage? If she was so inebriated, how did she manage to get into the car, close the garage door, start the car—and if she did start the car, why was she sitting in the passenger seat? Again, reports that she was “slumped over the steering wheel” are misleading; photos taken at the scene clearly indicate the contrary.“Carbon monoxide poisoning” is listed as the cause of death. Although there were those who wanted to contest the court’s ruling and pursue a case against gangster Luciano, it is said that Hal Roach lobbied against such action for fear of a backlash against his studios. Luciano himself kept silent. While it was well known in Todd’s circle that the mob wanted her to partner with them and open her nightclub to their gambling activities, some say that their reportedly public tiff at the Brown Derby (wherein Luciano threatened Todd) was only a myth.
It is rumored that on his deathbed, Roland West “confessed” to locking Todd in the garage that fateful morning. One version is that he didn’t know she was inside; another, that he wanted to teach her a lesson. He knew nothing of carbon monoxide poisoning, and was angry over Todd’s frequent partying and late night hours. However, West’s 1952 confession to actor Chester Morris has never been independently confirmed; West had suffered a stroke and a nervous breakdown.
Today, visitors to the Pacific Palisades locale where Todd and West lived and ran their roadside café are treated to visions of Thelma, sounds of a car running the smell of automobile exhaust.
If I’ve piqued your interest, read more at:
http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/t/Thelma%20Todd/thelma_todd.htm
http://www.prairieghosts.com/hollywood8.html
"You're a woman who's been getting nothing but dirty breaks. Well we can clean and tighten your brakes, but you'll have to stay in the garage all night." -- Groucho Marx to Thelma Todd in Monkey Business.
Anne Carter is the author of paranormal romantic mystery, POINT SURRENDER, from Echelon Press, Amazon and Fictionwise. Visit Anne at The Word From Beacon Street.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Deadlines and Procrastination by Chester Campbell
I can sympathize with the plight Dana described last Sunday regarding her efforts to coordinate a blog book tour for a bunch of romance authors. I'm working on one for only yours truly, but it has become a real time-consumer. If you're new to the breed, here's what is involved. First you need a blog of your own. I participate in three other group blogs like Make Mine Mystery, but until a couple of months ago, I didn't have one of my own.
It's tough enough to keep up with when I'm scheduled on various blogs, but with my own, it means writing something every day or two. In getting ready for the tour, I was encouraged to post something everyday. I did that for a month, sweating down to a pint-sized figure of my former self (just kidding, I haven't lost a pound). Since then I've attempted to compose something scintillating at least three days a week, something that would attract the attention of the casual reader.
My problem now is that I'm currently immersed in getting ready for the blog tour, which starts next Wednesday. I'll appear as a guest on 15 sites between April 15 and May 1. So far I have finished only six of the posts. Not a good feeling less than a week before the starting gun fires.
Not to worry. I cut my teeth in the writing business as a newspaper reporter. I work best in the face of deadlines. My wife, bless her understanding soul, puts it a little differently. She says I procrastinate. What could be further from the truth? I finished doing my taxes a few days ago. Haven't sent it in yet, but I've still got five days.
When writing a novel, the ideas seem to pour out through my fingers in an unending stream. I've done a lot of thinking beforehand, and the general idea of the book keeps me on track. For the tour, I set up a daily schedule with a subject to be covered in each day's post. They're all related to my new book, The Surest Poison, but some are tailored to the particular blog site. One wants an interview, another wants something on promotion. When I start writing those, I have a pretty good idea of where I'm heading. My tour schedule is posted here.
It's my other committed posts that keep popping up on a regular basis where I've begun to wrack my brain for subjects. After stewing around a bit for something to write about on my Mystery Mania blog two days ago, I came up with the title "You gotta Noah 'bout the Ark." I then proceeded to tap out a humorous piece comparing the building of Noah's Ark to pursuing the fiction writer's "story arc." It brought a few laughs.
The bottom line is that all this wrestling in the blogosphere, plus my other efforts to promote the new book, has left me no time to get busy on my next project, a fifth book in the Greg McKenzie series. Maybe if I live till May 1 I'll find an opportunity to write "Chapter 1" and start creating a new mystery. Anyone like to join me?
It's tough enough to keep up with when I'm scheduled on various blogs, but with my own, it means writing something every day or two. In getting ready for the tour, I was encouraged to post something everyday. I did that for a month, sweating down to a pint-sized figure of my former self (just kidding, I haven't lost a pound). Since then I've attempted to compose something scintillating at least three days a week, something that would attract the attention of the casual reader.
My problem now is that I'm currently immersed in getting ready for the blog tour, which starts next Wednesday. I'll appear as a guest on 15 sites between April 15 and May 1. So far I have finished only six of the posts. Not a good feeling less than a week before the starting gun fires.
Not to worry. I cut my teeth in the writing business as a newspaper reporter. I work best in the face of deadlines. My wife, bless her understanding soul, puts it a little differently. She says I procrastinate. What could be further from the truth? I finished doing my taxes a few days ago. Haven't sent it in yet, but I've still got five days.
When writing a novel, the ideas seem to pour out through my fingers in an unending stream. I've done a lot of thinking beforehand, and the general idea of the book keeps me on track. For the tour, I set up a daily schedule with a subject to be covered in each day's post. They're all related to my new book, The Surest Poison, but some are tailored to the particular blog site. One wants an interview, another wants something on promotion. When I start writing those, I have a pretty good idea of where I'm heading. My tour schedule is posted here.
It's my other committed posts that keep popping up on a regular basis where I've begun to wrack my brain for subjects. After stewing around a bit for something to write about on my Mystery Mania blog two days ago, I came up with the title "You gotta Noah 'bout the Ark." I then proceeded to tap out a humorous piece comparing the building of Noah's Ark to pursuing the fiction writer's "story arc." It brought a few laughs.
The bottom line is that all this wrestling in the blogosphere, plus my other efforts to promote the new book, has left me no time to get busy on my next project, a fifth book in the Greg McKenzie series. Maybe if I live till May 1 I'll find an opportunity to write "Chapter 1" and start creating a new mystery. Anyone like to join me?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Mysteries, Mysteries Everywhere by Vivian Zabel
Mysteries come in all shapes, sizes, level of violence, and degree of suspense. Mysteries have had so manly titles or labels attached over the years. Many people have tried to classify the genre -- basically the mystery or crime story.
Essentially, detective fiction, crime fiction, thrillers, mysteries all have been used to describe, or try to describe the genre.
Let's look at some the sub-genres for mysteries (remember that all "experts" don't always agree on the classifications, but this give us an idea):
Straight Mysteries are character driven. Action happens to center around a crime.
Puzzle Mysteries or the classic detective involves a problem and the writer "toys" with reader, matching wits with clever detectives.
Novel of Pursuit often involves espionage. The protagonist getting out of a situation is the foundation of the writing. Action, terror, often technology, methods of pursuit, as well as entrapment or capture are more important than internal motivation and psychology of characters - plot driven, rather than character-driven. This sub-genre has several sub-genres:
Spy Novel
Man-on-the-Run Mystery
Metaphysical Mystery - Gothic or occult in nature
Doomsday Mystery - threat is global
Hard-boiled Mysteries are adventure stories focused on the exploits of the protagonist, such as a private detective of nearly super-hero status.
Whodunit Mysteries are character-driven mysteries where the solution of the crime comes as a surprise to the reader, but the detectives or more featured more than the deductive process.
Sub-genres of this mystery include the following:
Caper Mystery - reader is knows the perpetrator and all details of crime.
Cozy Mystery - an amateur detective solves a mystery, usually without graphic violence.
Romantic Suspense Mystery
Period Mystery - takes place in the past
Western Mystery - has a western setting
Police Procedural Mystery
Private Eye Mystery
Camp Mystery - of any sub-genre presenting in a comical way.
Finally we have Thrillers, characterized by fast pace, frequent action, and resourceful heroes. Suspense, red herrings, and cliffhangers are found often. Sub-genres include many variations of the thriller concept.
I hope you enjoyed our foray into types of mysteries.
Vivian Zabel
Brain Cells & Bubble Wrap
4RV Publishing
Midnight Hours
Prairie Dog Cowboy
Essentially, detective fiction, crime fiction, thrillers, mysteries all have been used to describe, or try to describe the genre.
Let's look at some the sub-genres for mysteries (remember that all "experts" don't always agree on the classifications, but this give us an idea):
Straight Mysteries are character driven. Action happens to center around a crime.
Puzzle Mysteries or the classic detective involves a problem and the writer "toys" with reader, matching wits with clever detectives.
Novel of Pursuit often involves espionage. The protagonist getting out of a situation is the foundation of the writing. Action, terror, often technology, methods of pursuit, as well as entrapment or capture are more important than internal motivation and psychology of characters - plot driven, rather than character-driven. This sub-genre has several sub-genres:
Spy Novel
Man-on-the-Run Mystery
Metaphysical Mystery - Gothic or occult in nature
Doomsday Mystery - threat is global
Hard-boiled Mysteries are adventure stories focused on the exploits of the protagonist, such as a private detective of nearly super-hero status.
Whodunit Mysteries are character-driven mysteries where the solution of the crime comes as a surprise to the reader, but the detectives or more featured more than the deductive process.
Sub-genres of this mystery include the following:
Caper Mystery - reader is knows the perpetrator and all details of crime.
Cozy Mystery - an amateur detective solves a mystery, usually without graphic violence.
Romantic Suspense Mystery
Period Mystery - takes place in the past
Western Mystery - has a western setting
Police Procedural Mystery
Private Eye Mystery
Camp Mystery - of any sub-genre presenting in a comical way.
Finally we have Thrillers, characterized by fast pace, frequent action, and resourceful heroes. Suspense, red herrings, and cliffhangers are found often. Sub-genres include many variations of the thriller concept.
I hope you enjoyed our foray into types of mysteries.
Vivian Zabel
Brain Cells & Bubble Wrap
4RV Publishing
Midnight Hours
Prairie Dog Cowboy
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
She said, He said
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. They don't speak the same language. Really? No, not really. Men and women understand each other very well, in spite of a pop psychology industry determined to convince us otherwise. Nevertheless, there are some differences in the way men and women use language in conversation. These are not big differences, more like subtle tendencies. Men tend to do more of this, women tend to do more of that. Writers can add more authenticity to their dialogue by paying attention to these subtle differences. Let's look at an example.
The relationship between Spenser and Susan Silverman is one of the most enduring relationships in literature. They've been together for 35 years since 1974 when God Save The Child was published. Here's the scene where it began.
Notice that Susan has six turns to speak and Spenser has five. Susan utters 58 words; Spenser utters 27. Susan's extra turn, which has 13 words, doesn't account for the difference in total words. Susan says an average of 9.7 words each time she speaks compared to Spenser's 5.4.
We're not going to fall into the old stereotype that women talk more than men. We want to know where the extra words come from. We can see that Susan's speech is more complex than Spenser's. Remember, both of them are very literate people. Spenser reads books that most people would never pick up. Nevertheless, Susan utters eight complete sentences and four fragments compared to Spenser's three complete sentences and four fragments. Correct grammar simply uses more words than incorrect. So one difference between men and women is that women's speech tends to have more complete sentences than men's. Note that both men and women pepper their dialogue with sentence fragments. The difference is simply in the ratio of sentences to fragments--two-thirds of Susan's utterances are complete, whereas only half of Spenser's are complete. So to make your character's speech more masculine, spice it with more fragments. To make it more feminine, check the grammar.
The "do drop." English speakers commonly drop the "do" or "did" from certain kinds of sentences ([Do] You want to get something to eat?) This is another gender marker. Susan retains it when she asks if Spenser works with weights. Spenser drops it in his answer. While both men and women commonly drop the "do," men drop it more often than women.
Women use language to connect, men use language to communicate. Certainly men connect, too, just as women communicate, but women's speech contains more connectors. When Susan says, "I don't think. . ." she is making a connection between herself and Spenser. She could have said, "You don't need to look taller," which would have been straightforward communication and is the way Spenser probably would have said it. Susan makes another connection when she says, "I must admit. . ." Phrases such as "I think," "I believe," "I feel" preceding a statement of fact serve to connect the speaker to the hearer. Such phrases are not exclusively female, but occur with greater frequency in women's speech than in men's.
The art of seduction. Man-to-woman speech is often more wordy than man-to-man. A man seduces a woman by telling stories and jokes about himself. Remember when Eddie Valiant, the detective in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? asks Jessica why she stays with Roger? She answered, "He makes me laugh." I'll bet our caveman ancestors did not club fair cave maiden on the head to get her onto the animal skins. Instead, he probably spun a tale about the hunt and maybe tossed in a joke about stepping in the mastodon dung. Spenser makes a play for Susan with a joke on himself about the coat making him look taller. It earns him a smile from Susan.
There are, of course, no absolutes. You can find men who never utter a sentence fragment (Barak Obama?) and women who always drop the "do." How your characters speak is part of their personality and the more you understand their personality, the more authentic their speech will sound. However, counting words, fragments, "do's," and qualifying phrases can help you add more feminine or more masculine attributes to your dialogue.
For more on this topic, see my Hawaiian-eye blog.
The relationship between Spenser and Susan Silverman is one of the most enduring relationships in literature. They've been together for 35 years since 1974 when God Save The Child was published. Here's the scene where it began.
"Why don't you take off your coat?" she said.
"Well, it's supposed to make me look taller," I said.
"Sitting down?"
"No, I guess not," I said and stood up and took it off.
"I don't think you need to look taller, Mr. Spenser," she said. When she smiled, the color of her face seemed to heighten. "How tall are you?"
"Six one," I said.
"Really? That's surprising. I must admit you don't look that tall."
"Even with the raincoat?" I said.
"Even with that," she said. "You're so wide. Do you work with weights?"
"Yeah, some. How could you tell? Your husband lift?"
"Ex-husband," she said. "Yes, he played tackle for Harvard and stayed with the weights afterward."
Robert B. Parker, God Save the Child.
Notice that Susan has six turns to speak and Spenser has five. Susan utters 58 words; Spenser utters 27. Susan's extra turn, which has 13 words, doesn't account for the difference in total words. Susan says an average of 9.7 words each time she speaks compared to Spenser's 5.4.
We're not going to fall into the old stereotype that women talk more than men. We want to know where the extra words come from. We can see that Susan's speech is more complex than Spenser's. Remember, both of them are very literate people. Spenser reads books that most people would never pick up. Nevertheless, Susan utters eight complete sentences and four fragments compared to Spenser's three complete sentences and four fragments. Correct grammar simply uses more words than incorrect. So one difference between men and women is that women's speech tends to have more complete sentences than men's. Note that both men and women pepper their dialogue with sentence fragments. The difference is simply in the ratio of sentences to fragments--two-thirds of Susan's utterances are complete, whereas only half of Spenser's are complete. So to make your character's speech more masculine, spice it with more fragments. To make it more feminine, check the grammar.
The "do drop." English speakers commonly drop the "do" or "did" from certain kinds of sentences ([Do] You want to get something to eat?) This is another gender marker. Susan retains it when she asks if Spenser works with weights. Spenser drops it in his answer. While both men and women commonly drop the "do," men drop it more often than women.
Women use language to connect, men use language to communicate. Certainly men connect, too, just as women communicate, but women's speech contains more connectors. When Susan says, "I don't think. . ." she is making a connection between herself and Spenser. She could have said, "You don't need to look taller," which would have been straightforward communication and is the way Spenser probably would have said it. Susan makes another connection when she says, "I must admit. . ." Phrases such as "I think," "I believe," "I feel" preceding a statement of fact serve to connect the speaker to the hearer. Such phrases are not exclusively female, but occur with greater frequency in women's speech than in men's.
The art of seduction. Man-to-woman speech is often more wordy than man-to-man. A man seduces a woman by telling stories and jokes about himself. Remember when Eddie Valiant, the detective in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? asks Jessica why she stays with Roger? She answered, "He makes me laugh." I'll bet our caveman ancestors did not club fair cave maiden on the head to get her onto the animal skins. Instead, he probably spun a tale about the hunt and maybe tossed in a joke about stepping in the mastodon dung. Spenser makes a play for Susan with a joke on himself about the coat making him look taller. It earns him a smile from Susan.
There are, of course, no absolutes. You can find men who never utter a sentence fragment (Barak Obama?) and women who always drop the "do." How your characters speak is part of their personality and the more you understand their personality, the more authentic their speech will sound. However, counting words, fragments, "do's," and qualifying phrases can help you add more feminine or more masculine attributes to your dialogue.
For more on this topic, see my Hawaiian-eye blog.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Sisters in Crime
Saturday I went to the San Joaquin chapter of Sisters in Crime that meets in Fresno. I was one of the founding members of that chapter and try to go as often as possible.
Over the years they've had a wonderful array of speakers, many authors, but also D.A.s, the County Coroner who showed us slides of the most gruesome murders, one of the investigators on the O.J. Simpson murder case who brought along Nicole Simpson's autopsy report, various police officers, detectives, P.I.s, a female Police Chief, narc officers, and so on. I've gleaned lots of information from these talks and used some in my mysteries.
One time we went on a field trip to the airport to see the police helicopter and the sheriff's helicopter. We also heard many exciting tales about crimes they've stopped. Once the helicopter chased a motorcyclists, landed and made the arrest. The officer who was showing us around asked me to write a fiction story centered around him. If I'd lived in Fresno I would've taken him up on it--and unfortunately this was long before emailing was such a common practice.
This last Saturday there were two guest speakers at the meeting, retired police officer Denny Griffin who is now an author and has written mysteries and also the history of law enforcement in Las Vegas which led to him writing about Frank Culotta, an infamous Chicago mobster who also operated in Vegas. (Think Casino, the movie.)
With him was reformed gangster, Henry Hill of GoodFella fame. Ray Liotta played Henry in the film by that name.
I sat next to Henry during the lunch and I can tell you that he's a most charming man and after listening to his speech, he's led a fascinating (albeit scary) life, from gangster to informant to being in the witness protection program. He also served time in several California prisons also in protective custody. Besides writing GoodFella he also wrote a GoodFella CookBook and is writing another about his life.
You can see and hear part of their speeches here:
Certainly made for an interesting day.
Marilyn
a.k.a. F. M. Meredith
Over the years they've had a wonderful array of speakers, many authors, but also D.A.s, the County Coroner who showed us slides of the most gruesome murders, one of the investigators on the O.J. Simpson murder case who brought along Nicole Simpson's autopsy report, various police officers, detectives, P.I.s, a female Police Chief, narc officers, and so on. I've gleaned lots of information from these talks and used some in my mysteries.
One time we went on a field trip to the airport to see the police helicopter and the sheriff's helicopter. We also heard many exciting tales about crimes they've stopped. Once the helicopter chased a motorcyclists, landed and made the arrest. The officer who was showing us around asked me to write a fiction story centered around him. If I'd lived in Fresno I would've taken him up on it--and unfortunately this was long before emailing was such a common practice.
This last Saturday there were two guest speakers at the meeting, retired police officer Denny Griffin who is now an author and has written mysteries and also the history of law enforcement in Las Vegas which led to him writing about Frank Culotta, an infamous Chicago mobster who also operated in Vegas. (Think Casino, the movie.)
With him was reformed gangster, Henry Hill of GoodFella fame. Ray Liotta played Henry in the film by that name.
I sat next to Henry during the lunch and I can tell you that he's a most charming man and after listening to his speech, he's led a fascinating (albeit scary) life, from gangster to informant to being in the witness protection program. He also served time in several California prisons also in protective custody. Besides writing GoodFella he also wrote a GoodFella CookBook and is writing another about his life.
You can see and hear part of their speeches here:
Marilyn
a.k.a. F. M. Meredith
Monday, April 6, 2009
Killer Career
Sometimes I think my secretarial career is killing me, but thank God I have my writing career to fall back on. Right now I'd like to write full-time, but can't afford to give up my day job and follow my passion.
Julie McGuire, the lady lawyer in my new mystery, Killer Career, can afford to do so, but other obstacles stand in her way. One's her mentor, the psychotic best-selling mystery author, Tyler Jensen. The other's her best friend and law partner, Dade Donovan, who thinks she's got a screw loose for wanting to abandon her lucrative law career. Of course, both guys are jealous as hell of each other. Also, there's the matter of some unexplained murders going on.
Can Julie safely make the transition? How many people will die in the process?
You'll find out when my new mystery gets published, which should be some time this summer.
What about you? Do you write full time? Would you like to? Please share.
Julie McGuire, the lady lawyer in my new mystery, Killer Career, can afford to do so, but other obstacles stand in her way. One's her mentor, the psychotic best-selling mystery author, Tyler Jensen. The other's her best friend and law partner, Dade Donovan, who thinks she's got a screw loose for wanting to abandon her lucrative law career. Of course, both guys are jealous as hell of each other. Also, there's the matter of some unexplained murders going on.
Can Julie safely make the transition? How many people will die in the process?
You'll find out when my new mystery gets published, which should be some time this summer.
What about you? Do you write full time? Would you like to? Please share.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
It's a Mystery...
...that my head is still attached to the rest of me.
Apologies for late posting - I'd posted last week and failed to notice that today was the first Sunday of the month. I suspect I missed a board meeting about guest posts, since I just realized all the posts last week WERE guest posters. Which means...oh, heck, it means I'm overworked, confused and need to take more gingko biloba herbs for my poor smoking brain pan...
Being a writer is a tricky thing (or 'tricksy', if you're Gollum) in that there are so many things attached to the job other than writing. This isn't even taking into consideration day jobs, which so many writers, published or not, have to maintain to do things like pay their rent. If you've been a regular visitor to this blog or any other blog on writing, you've no doubt read about the trials and tribulations of publicity and marketing, which has become more and more of a 'do it yourself' thing over the years. Nowadays, unless you're Stephen King, Dan Brown or any of the other airport bookstore rack authors, you will have to put massive amounts of time into pushing your own work, even with a larger publisher. It's just the way things are.
Some writers thrive on the marketing side of things - I personally love speaking engagements and library panels. I don't mind the online social networking - sites like Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the blogosphere, make the job a lot easier if you can resist the maelstrom-like time suck that can happen. One 25 Random Things About Me tag or meme is an hour or two of my day that I choose to spend writing, thank you. In theory I'm all over things like that because it's fun to learn things about my friends and fellow authors. In reality, I don't have time.
The last month I've been setting up a blog book tour for 11 authors from Ravenous Romance (I'm one of the authors) to help publicize Ravenous, a relatively new e-publisher, and my fellow authors who've bravely joined me on this whirlwind visit through cyberspace. I thought it would be relatively simple, having done two of my own blog tours for Murder for Hire.
Hah. Hah hah. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! Yes, this is the sort of laughter that rises into a maniacal scream.
Time suck anyone?
Without boring you with the tedious details, I have put in a good 20 hours of my free time setting up this tour and if I ever make noises about doing something like this again, please feel free to whack me upside the head. I think overall the work will be worth it and I don't think anyone's done a blog book tour with so many authors at one time. Maybe something for the Guinness Book of World Records. If I have any hair left after tearing so much of it out trying to coordinate this, I'll look at it as a good thing. If not, let me me an object lesson to any of you planning your own tours. Ultimately, it's a good example of the time marketing and publicity can take if you're trying to do it right.
Okay, and if you're mildly insane.
Apologies for late posting - I'd posted last week and failed to notice that today was the first Sunday of the month. I suspect I missed a board meeting about guest posts, since I just realized all the posts last week WERE guest posters. Which means...oh, heck, it means I'm overworked, confused and need to take more gingko biloba herbs for my poor smoking brain pan...
Being a writer is a tricky thing (or 'tricksy', if you're Gollum) in that there are so many things attached to the job other than writing. This isn't even taking into consideration day jobs, which so many writers, published or not, have to maintain to do things like pay their rent. If you've been a regular visitor to this blog or any other blog on writing, you've no doubt read about the trials and tribulations of publicity and marketing, which has become more and more of a 'do it yourself' thing over the years. Nowadays, unless you're Stephen King, Dan Brown or any of the other airport bookstore rack authors, you will have to put massive amounts of time into pushing your own work, even with a larger publisher. It's just the way things are.
Some writers thrive on the marketing side of things - I personally love speaking engagements and library panels. I don't mind the online social networking - sites like Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the blogosphere, make the job a lot easier if you can resist the maelstrom-like time suck that can happen. One 25 Random Things About Me tag or meme is an hour or two of my day that I choose to spend writing, thank you. In theory I'm all over things like that because it's fun to learn things about my friends and fellow authors. In reality, I don't have time.
The last month I've been setting up a blog book tour for 11 authors from Ravenous Romance (I'm one of the authors) to help publicize Ravenous, a relatively new e-publisher, and my fellow authors who've bravely joined me on this whirlwind visit through cyberspace. I thought it would be relatively simple, having done two of my own blog tours for Murder for Hire.
Hah. Hah hah. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! Yes, this is the sort of laughter that rises into a maniacal scream.
Time suck anyone?
Without boring you with the tedious details, I have put in a good 20 hours of my free time setting up this tour and if I ever make noises about doing something like this again, please feel free to whack me upside the head. I think overall the work will be worth it and I don't think anyone's done a blog book tour with so many authors at one time. Maybe something for the Guinness Book of World Records. If I have any hair left after tearing so much of it out trying to coordinate this, I'll look at it as a good thing. If not, let me me an object lesson to any of you planning your own tours. Ultimately, it's a good example of the time marketing and publicity can take if you're trying to do it right.
Okay, and if you're mildly insane.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Women Serial Killers
by Jean Henry Mead
We rarely hear about female serial killers. They usually maintain a lower profile than their male counterparts, and they’re generally more efficient, according to Sean Mactire's book, Malicious Intent. They’re also just as lethal. Mactire lists them in four categories: black widows, nurses, terrorists and assassins.
Black widows murder their own husbands and children, as well as other relatives. They’ve also been known to kill their employees and tenants. Remember the Sacramento landlady who planted her boarders instead of flowers? And the film, "Arsenic and Old Lace"?
Nurses are the most prolific serial killers, Mactire says, because of their unlimited opportunities to murder without detection. Many consider themselves angels of mercy. Terrorists, on the other hand, kill for political reasons while assassins murder for money. The latter categories have increased in numbers at an alarming rate.
Body counts average 8-14 victims, higher than the male serial killer’s tally of 8-11, and they’ve been known to kill for as long as 30 years. The average age of FSKs is 32, and they’re intelligent. In fact, most are white, middle to upper class women. Surprisingly, they’re not only nurses, but debutantes, housewives, farmers, waitresses, college students, business owners, housekeepers and career criminals.
Women murderers have been recorded throughout history, but none more frequently than during the Roman era. Prior to the advent of Christianity, women held positions of near equality with men and, in matriarchal societies, even higher because their wisdom and skills were considered superior. When emerging western societies gradually eliminated women’s influence and power, the murder rate increased. During the ninth through eleventh centuries in Normandy, poison was known as the “widow maker” because it was frequently used by disgruntled wives, who preferred widowhood to divorce. Poisons still account for half the murders committed by FSKs in this country today. We'll never know how many.
The primary reason female killers have escaped attention is that society’s perception of women is one of caretakers and nurturers. Many find it difficult to believe that women are capable of murder, other than an impromptu domestic killing. Known FSKs are few because they’re almost impossible to detect. They’re quiet killers and usually don't take part in wild killing sprees unless they’re suffering from severe psychosis.
Serial killers, regardless of gender, prefer to prey on the weak and helpless: children, elderly women, and hospitalized patients, but they’ve also been known to kill politicians, policemen, hitchhikers and landlords. Many have killed husbands for their insurance payoffs. One black widow killed a number of her husbands with stewed prunes generously seasoned with rat poison. When she ran out of husbands, she poisoned her mother, sisters, grandson and nephew. By then she had probably run out of prunes.
We rarely hear about female serial killers. They usually maintain a lower profile than their male counterparts, and they’re generally more efficient, according to Sean Mactire's book, Malicious Intent. They’re also just as lethal. Mactire lists them in four categories: black widows, nurses, terrorists and assassins.
Black widows murder their own husbands and children, as well as other relatives. They’ve also been known to kill their employees and tenants. Remember the Sacramento landlady who planted her boarders instead of flowers? And the film, "Arsenic and Old Lace"?
Nurses are the most prolific serial killers, Mactire says, because of their unlimited opportunities to murder without detection. Many consider themselves angels of mercy. Terrorists, on the other hand, kill for political reasons while assassins murder for money. The latter categories have increased in numbers at an alarming rate.
Body counts average 8-14 victims, higher than the male serial killer’s tally of 8-11, and they’ve been known to kill for as long as 30 years. The average age of FSKs is 32, and they’re intelligent. In fact, most are white, middle to upper class women. Surprisingly, they’re not only nurses, but debutantes, housewives, farmers, waitresses, college students, business owners, housekeepers and career criminals.
Women murderers have been recorded throughout history, but none more frequently than during the Roman era. Prior to the advent of Christianity, women held positions of near equality with men and, in matriarchal societies, even higher because their wisdom and skills were considered superior. When emerging western societies gradually eliminated women’s influence and power, the murder rate increased. During the ninth through eleventh centuries in Normandy, poison was known as the “widow maker” because it was frequently used by disgruntled wives, who preferred widowhood to divorce. Poisons still account for half the murders committed by FSKs in this country today. We'll never know how many.
The primary reason female killers have escaped attention is that society’s perception of women is one of caretakers and nurturers. Many find it difficult to believe that women are capable of murder, other than an impromptu domestic killing. Known FSKs are few because they’re almost impossible to detect. They’re quiet killers and usually don't take part in wild killing sprees unless they’re suffering from severe psychosis.
Serial killers, regardless of gender, prefer to prey on the weak and helpless: children, elderly women, and hospitalized patients, but they’ve also been known to kill politicians, policemen, hitchhikers and landlords. Many have killed husbands for their insurance payoffs. One black widow killed a number of her husbands with stewed prunes generously seasoned with rat poison. When she ran out of husbands, she poisoned her mother, sisters, grandson and nephew. By then she had probably run out of prunes.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Getting Into the Grit of Your Story by Gina Panettieri -- Reprise
Note: Gina Panettieri posted this article on April 1, but because of fears of a worm that was set to waken up on that day, many people may have stayed away from the internet and missed it. Therefore, we're repeating the article today, but because we want to have new content everyday, I have included a short article on finding an agent at the end. -- Mark
I can always tell the difference when an author’s done first-hand research in writing a mystery or true crime. Whether the writer’s knowledge comes from reading a newspaper account or from a face-to-face interview with a witness or survivor. Clearer still is when the author’s sat across a bolted-down table from a killer and seen insanity, or delusion, or even a frightening, disarming charm ooze across. But all too often, I find myself scrawling in the margins of a manuscript I’m reading ‘it feels like the author’s info only comes from other writers’ work’.
We’re all too familiar with the editor’s plea for ‘something fresh’. My own ‘wish list’ is to learn something from reading your work I could not have learned anywhere else, and to be taken somewhere (mentally, emotionally, psychologically) that I’ve never been before. What might surprise many writers is that those objectives can be accomplished even when covering familiar and well-trod paths.
A client of mine, Ron Franscell (www.ronfranscell.com) tells me Texas journalists have a term, ‘caliche dust’, named for the gritty alkaline dust carried on the wind down there, settling on and in everything. It’s also used to describe a level of depth of detail, of knowledge and attention, that can transport a story from simple reporting of facts to true story-telling. Ron certainly had ‘good caliche dust’ on his work in The Darkest Night (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), when he spent a cold, black night huddled on the steep walls of a river canyon beneath a bridge outside Casper, Wyoming, hoping to gain some insight into the terror his childhood neighbor must have felt as she clung to those same rocks some thirty years earlier, battered, freezing, waiting for dawn and not knowing if the light would bring rescue, or her waiting killers back to finish the work they’d begun when they’d hurled her and her baby sister from the trestle a hundred feet above. It’s the type of insight a writer only gains with first-hand research.
As a writer, you must never rely on images from television, movies or current fiction to be a source of accurate information. Want to learn how a victim of a violent assault might react? Interview crime survivors, emergency room staff, psychologists, and hotline workers. Want to get a feel for courtroom action if you’re not an attorney yourself? Sit in, often, on different judges, different types of cases, in different settings, as well as interviewing legal professionals. Make notes of small details that will help you create setting and characterization, the grooves worn into the stone steps by decades of use, the fatigue of the overworked court clerk as yet more files are piled on her desk (so easy for one to slip away, to be overlooked), and ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall that sounds deafeningly loud in the silence before a decisive moment.
Use multiple first-hand sources. Just as a number of witnesses to an event may remember the incident differently, each source may also remember or stress a specific detail no one else observed. Attention to small details will layer on that caliche dust a writer needs to make his story stand out. It might mean a road trip to a seemingly minor setting, or a face-to-face meeting rather than a long-distance phone call, but you’ll bring away a wealth of grit and texture you would have otherwise missed.
Even in an historical piece, it’s possible to use first-hand sources to help develop a depth of authenticity. First-hand period accounts, like diaries and journals, and even information gleaned from archived copies of period publications and even commercial catalogs (Sears & Roebuck is an amazing time capsule), will help establish details of your characters’ lives. But don’t stop digging simply because you’ve located the answer to a question you had. Successful writers often gather and study ten times the amount of research materials they eventually use in their stories, and that depth of knowledge and understanding subtly enriches and educates the work, and often becomes the grist and inspiration for future projects.
Never shortchange your story, or yourself, by relying exclusively on someone else’s footwork. In seeking first-hand knowledge, you’ll bring a fresh perspective to a story (your own!) that will make all the difference.
My Five Steps to Finding an Agent by Mark Troy
Step 1. Write a great book. This should go without saying, but I am always surprised when I meet writers who are looking for an agent before finishing their book. Not only should the book be finished, it should be the best you can make it.
Step 2. Write a killer query. For a light-hearted but informative article on query letters, see Nathan Bransford's blog,
Step 3. Compile a list of agents. Helen Ginger has some good suggestions for compiling your list. Other sources of agents are Agent Query and Jeff Herman's guide to literary agents.
Step 4. Send queries in batches of 10. Revise your query letter until three or four out of ten yield requests for more material. Now you know the query is effective, do the same with the requests for partials.
Step 5. Don't give up. You might have to contact 100 agents, but persistence will pay off. Look on each rejection as an opportunity to revise the book and make it better.
I can always tell the difference when an author’s done first-hand research in writing a mystery or true crime. Whether the writer’s knowledge comes from reading a newspaper account or from a face-to-face interview with a witness or survivor. Clearer still is when the author’s sat across a bolted-down table from a killer and seen insanity, or delusion, or even a frightening, disarming charm ooze across. But all too often, I find myself scrawling in the margins of a manuscript I’m reading ‘it feels like the author’s info only comes from other writers’ work’.
We’re all too familiar with the editor’s plea for ‘something fresh’. My own ‘wish list’ is to learn something from reading your work I could not have learned anywhere else, and to be taken somewhere (mentally, emotionally, psychologically) that I’ve never been before. What might surprise many writers is that those objectives can be accomplished even when covering familiar and well-trod paths.
A client of mine, Ron Franscell (www.ronfranscell.com) tells me Texas journalists have a term, ‘caliche dust’, named for the gritty alkaline dust carried on the wind down there, settling on and in everything. It’s also used to describe a level of depth of detail, of knowledge and attention, that can transport a story from simple reporting of facts to true story-telling. Ron certainly had ‘good caliche dust’ on his work in The Darkest Night (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), when he spent a cold, black night huddled on the steep walls of a river canyon beneath a bridge outside Casper, Wyoming, hoping to gain some insight into the terror his childhood neighbor must have felt as she clung to those same rocks some thirty years earlier, battered, freezing, waiting for dawn and not knowing if the light would bring rescue, or her waiting killers back to finish the work they’d begun when they’d hurled her and her baby sister from the trestle a hundred feet above. It’s the type of insight a writer only gains with first-hand research.
As a writer, you must never rely on images from television, movies or current fiction to be a source of accurate information. Want to learn how a victim of a violent assault might react? Interview crime survivors, emergency room staff, psychologists, and hotline workers. Want to get a feel for courtroom action if you’re not an attorney yourself? Sit in, often, on different judges, different types of cases, in different settings, as well as interviewing legal professionals. Make notes of small details that will help you create setting and characterization, the grooves worn into the stone steps by decades of use, the fatigue of the overworked court clerk as yet more files are piled on her desk (so easy for one to slip away, to be overlooked), and ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall that sounds deafeningly loud in the silence before a decisive moment.
Use multiple first-hand sources. Just as a number of witnesses to an event may remember the incident differently, each source may also remember or stress a specific detail no one else observed. Attention to small details will layer on that caliche dust a writer needs to make his story stand out. It might mean a road trip to a seemingly minor setting, or a face-to-face meeting rather than a long-distance phone call, but you’ll bring away a wealth of grit and texture you would have otherwise missed.
Even in an historical piece, it’s possible to use first-hand sources to help develop a depth of authenticity. First-hand period accounts, like diaries and journals, and even information gleaned from archived copies of period publications and even commercial catalogs (Sears & Roebuck is an amazing time capsule), will help establish details of your characters’ lives. But don’t stop digging simply because you’ve located the answer to a question you had. Successful writers often gather and study ten times the amount of research materials they eventually use in their stories, and that depth of knowledge and understanding subtly enriches and educates the work, and often becomes the grist and inspiration for future projects.
Never shortchange your story, or yourself, by relying exclusively on someone else’s footwork. In seeking first-hand knowledge, you’ll bring a fresh perspective to a story (your own!) that will make all the difference.
My Five Steps to Finding an Agent by Mark Troy
Step 1. Write a great book. This should go without saying, but I am always surprised when I meet writers who are looking for an agent before finishing their book. Not only should the book be finished, it should be the best you can make it.
Step 2. Write a killer query. For a light-hearted but informative article on query letters, see Nathan Bransford's blog,
Step 3. Compile a list of agents. Helen Ginger has some good suggestions for compiling your list. Other sources of agents are Agent Query and Jeff Herman's guide to literary agents.
Step 4. Send queries in batches of 10. Revise your query letter until three or four out of ten yield requests for more material. Now you know the query is effective, do the same with the requests for partials.
Step 5. Don't give up. You might have to contact 100 agents, but persistence will pay off. Look on each rejection as an opportunity to revise the book and make it better.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
INTRODUCING GUEST BLOGGER PJ NUNN
By Earl Staggs, her biggest fan
Ask around the writing community who’s the go-to girl if you want to publicize your book and yourself, and you’re sure to hear the name PJ Nunn and her company, BreakThrough Promotions. Visit her website at www.breakthroughpromotions.com and you’ll see many familiar names among her clients. When I invited her to be a guest blogger, she asked, “What should I talk about?” I suggested, “Why Earl Staggs is the most talented writer on the planet.” Instead, she decided to talk about how she got into the publicist business, how she goes about it, and passes on some great tips for authors. Even though she ignored my suggestion, I still love her to pieces and so will you.
And now, since she does such a great job telling you about herself, how she became a successful publicist and how she has helped so many authors become successful, the only introduction I have to make is. . .
. . .here’s PJ.
*****
Fifteen years ago I’m not all that sure I’d even heard of a publicist. I’m sure I had no thoughts of becoming one. Some days I still wonder how I ended up here!
I started out in pre-med school, determined to get my MD. I got sidetracked and got the proverbial MRS degree instead and started a family. Five children later, after building a reasonably satisfying career as a high school teacher and then principal, I branched out into working with the local police department and serving on the County Child Welfare Board. From there, I decided to go back to college and a few years later, completed my Masters degree in counseling psychology. Some transition, eh?
After moving back to Dallas, I secured a position teaching on two campuses of the Dallas County Community College District and, in my off hours, completed my first mystery novel and plunged into the world of writing online where I made lots of good friends, including the incorrigible and ever-supportive Earl Staggs. If I remember correctly, we met for the first time in person at a Boston Market restaurant and we’ve been fast friends ever since.
When circumstances precipitated me pausing in my teaching career to stay home and care for one of my children, I needed to replace that teaching income so I started freelance writing. I love writing – always have – but didn’t like the constant querying and deadlines. I made pretty good money, but it always seemed like feast or famine.
One afternoon, a friend who was trying to arrange a book tour for her newly released novel expressed her discouragement at the response she kept getting when calling booksellers. I offered to try and set something up for her. One phone call was all it took. Thinking it must’ve been beginner’s luck, I tried again. Another call, another signing on the schedule. I found the whole concept fascinating!
A couple of months later, after a lot of research, I launched BreakThrough Promotions and the rest, as they say, is history. My first month open for business, I started with a single client, and ended the month with nine. I worked alone. Today, I have 87 active clients on my list, but the numbers change almost daily as we finish packages for some and begin new campaigns for others. And I definitely don’t work alone anymore!
One of the most frequently asked questions I’ve had over the years is What can a publicist do for me that I can’t do for myself? My answer is pretty much the same as it’s always been.
There’s not a lot I can do for an author that a savvy author couldn’t do for himself. The difference is usually time and desire. In the ten plus years I’ve been doing this, I’ve built up an extensive database of contacts of all kinds all over the country and some that are out of the country. I have a working relationship with thousands, many of whom we’ve worked with for years. Because they know my name and recognize my email address, I’m less likely to wind up in the circular file or spam filters. Because I work in the industry every day, I know a lot of the ins and outs that many authors don’t know. Could they learn them? Sure. But it takes time.
And let’s face it, it’s easier to make a good presentation when you’re talking about someone else’s work. It just doesn’t come across the same if I tell you: "Hey, you should have me on your program because my book is great and I’d make a fabulous guest!" I’m much more readily received if I can call and say, "Hey, I represent Jane Doe and I think she’d be the perfect guest for your program!" I’m sure you get the drift.
I don’t do the same thing for every client, though. There are some authors who are great at setting up their own store and library events. Chester Campbell is one. He’s perfectly at ease doing that and does it well. Why pay me to do what he doesn’t mind doing? But there are other authors who are totally uncomfortable setting up signing events. They can use my help. Many have publishers who’ll set up store events but don’t have time to pursue media (it can be incredibly time consuming just to catch the right person on the phone). So they do the one and I do the other. Others are ok talking with broadcast media, but get frustrated trying to work with print journalists. Every area has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies.
The important thing is to make sure you’re covering all the bases and that you staff your weaknesses. Do what comes easiest to you and get help for what doesn’t. A professional publicist can be a good thing, but maybe all you need is to hire a marketing student from your local community college. Or even a mature high school student to do your mailing and some light phone work. I love what I do and I’m good at it, but it’s not rocket science. And while I think there’s probably something I could do to help just about every author, I’m in it for the love of the game and am happy to help whenever and wherever I can.
A few tips I’ve picked up along the way:
• Every author needs a good, professional headshot. Too many make do with snapshots and it can cause some doors to be shut to them.
• If an author thinks he knows all he needs to know about promotion, he’s probably wrong.
• A professional website is vital to an author hoping to build a career.
• Many authors wait too late to get started promoting their new books. Twelve months before release is not too early to get started.
• There are many myths about book promotion that are prevalent in online venues.
• When in doubt, ask a professional. Or two or three.
• A background in product marketing or advertising doesn’t mean expertise in book promotion.
• If you can’t enjoy doing it, you’re probably not doing it as well as it should be done.
• What works for one doesn’t always work for another.
• Never judge success or failure from a single event; promotion is always a cumulative process.
• Media blitzes are not very effective in the long run. They happen fast and are soon forgotten for the next big splash. Slow and steady exposure is what creates name recognition.
• A campaign may be complete, but effective promotion never ends. There’s always another reader to entice.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. Best of luck to you in promoting your novels!
PJ Nunn 469-245-6202
BreakThrough Promotions www.breakthroughpromotions.com
There's a Dead Guy blog http://heydeadguy.typepad.com/heydeadguy/
Criminal Pursuits www.criminalpursuits.com
Ask around the writing community who’s the go-to girl if you want to publicize your book and yourself, and you’re sure to hear the name PJ Nunn and her company, BreakThrough Promotions. Visit her website at www.breakthroughpromotions.com and you’ll see many familiar names among her clients. When I invited her to be a guest blogger, she asked, “What should I talk about?” I suggested, “Why Earl Staggs is the most talented writer on the planet.” Instead, she decided to talk about how she got into the publicist business, how she goes about it, and passes on some great tips for authors. Even though she ignored my suggestion, I still love her to pieces and so will you.
And now, since she does such a great job telling you about herself, how she became a successful publicist and how she has helped so many authors become successful, the only introduction I have to make is. . .
. . .here’s PJ.
*****
Fifteen years ago I’m not all that sure I’d even heard of a publicist. I’m sure I had no thoughts of becoming one. Some days I still wonder how I ended up here!
I started out in pre-med school, determined to get my MD. I got sidetracked and got the proverbial MRS degree instead and started a family. Five children later, after building a reasonably satisfying career as a high school teacher and then principal, I branched out into working with the local police department and serving on the County Child Welfare Board. From there, I decided to go back to college and a few years later, completed my Masters degree in counseling psychology. Some transition, eh?
After moving back to Dallas, I secured a position teaching on two campuses of the Dallas County Community College District and, in my off hours, completed my first mystery novel and plunged into the world of writing online where I made lots of good friends, including the incorrigible and ever-supportive Earl Staggs. If I remember correctly, we met for the first time in person at a Boston Market restaurant and we’ve been fast friends ever since.
When circumstances precipitated me pausing in my teaching career to stay home and care for one of my children, I needed to replace that teaching income so I started freelance writing. I love writing – always have – but didn’t like the constant querying and deadlines. I made pretty good money, but it always seemed like feast or famine.
One afternoon, a friend who was trying to arrange a book tour for her newly released novel expressed her discouragement at the response she kept getting when calling booksellers. I offered to try and set something up for her. One phone call was all it took. Thinking it must’ve been beginner’s luck, I tried again. Another call, another signing on the schedule. I found the whole concept fascinating!
A couple of months later, after a lot of research, I launched BreakThrough Promotions and the rest, as they say, is history. My first month open for business, I started with a single client, and ended the month with nine. I worked alone. Today, I have 87 active clients on my list, but the numbers change almost daily as we finish packages for some and begin new campaigns for others. And I definitely don’t work alone anymore!
One of the most frequently asked questions I’ve had over the years is What can a publicist do for me that I can’t do for myself? My answer is pretty much the same as it’s always been.
There’s not a lot I can do for an author that a savvy author couldn’t do for himself. The difference is usually time and desire. In the ten plus years I’ve been doing this, I’ve built up an extensive database of contacts of all kinds all over the country and some that are out of the country. I have a working relationship with thousands, many of whom we’ve worked with for years. Because they know my name and recognize my email address, I’m less likely to wind up in the circular file or spam filters. Because I work in the industry every day, I know a lot of the ins and outs that many authors don’t know. Could they learn them? Sure. But it takes time.
And let’s face it, it’s easier to make a good presentation when you’re talking about someone else’s work. It just doesn’t come across the same if I tell you: "Hey, you should have me on your program because my book is great and I’d make a fabulous guest!" I’m much more readily received if I can call and say, "Hey, I represent Jane Doe and I think she’d be the perfect guest for your program!" I’m sure you get the drift.
I don’t do the same thing for every client, though. There are some authors who are great at setting up their own store and library events. Chester Campbell is one. He’s perfectly at ease doing that and does it well. Why pay me to do what he doesn’t mind doing? But there are other authors who are totally uncomfortable setting up signing events. They can use my help. Many have publishers who’ll set up store events but don’t have time to pursue media (it can be incredibly time consuming just to catch the right person on the phone). So they do the one and I do the other. Others are ok talking with broadcast media, but get frustrated trying to work with print journalists. Every area has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies.
The important thing is to make sure you’re covering all the bases and that you staff your weaknesses. Do what comes easiest to you and get help for what doesn’t. A professional publicist can be a good thing, but maybe all you need is to hire a marketing student from your local community college. Or even a mature high school student to do your mailing and some light phone work. I love what I do and I’m good at it, but it’s not rocket science. And while I think there’s probably something I could do to help just about every author, I’m in it for the love of the game and am happy to help whenever and wherever I can.
A few tips I’ve picked up along the way:
• Every author needs a good, professional headshot. Too many make do with snapshots and it can cause some doors to be shut to them.
• If an author thinks he knows all he needs to know about promotion, he’s probably wrong.
• A professional website is vital to an author hoping to build a career.
• Many authors wait too late to get started promoting their new books. Twelve months before release is not too early to get started.
• There are many myths about book promotion that are prevalent in online venues.
• When in doubt, ask a professional. Or two or three.
• A background in product marketing or advertising doesn’t mean expertise in book promotion.
• If you can’t enjoy doing it, you’re probably not doing it as well as it should be done.
• What works for one doesn’t always work for another.
• Never judge success or failure from a single event; promotion is always a cumulative process.
• Media blitzes are not very effective in the long run. They happen fast and are soon forgotten for the next big splash. Slow and steady exposure is what creates name recognition.
• A campaign may be complete, but effective promotion never ends. There’s always another reader to entice.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions. Best of luck to you in promoting your novels!
PJ Nunn 469-245-6202
BreakThrough Promotions www.breakthroughpromotions.com
There's a Dead Guy blog http://heydeadguy.typepad.com/heydeadguy/
Criminal Pursuits www.criminalpursuits.com
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Getting Into the Grit of Your Story by Gina Panettieri
I can always tell the difference when an author’s done first-hand research in writing a mystery or true crime. Whether the writer’s knowledge comes from reading a newspaper account or from a face-to-face interview with a witness or survivor. Clearer still is when the author’s sat across a bolted-down table from a killer and seen insanity, or delusion, or even a frightening, disarming charm ooze across. But all too often, I find myself scrawling in the margins of a manuscript I’m reading ‘it feels like the author’s info only comes from other writers’ work’.
We’re all too familiar with the editor’s plea for ‘something fresh’. My own ‘wish list’ is to learn something from reading your work I could not have learned anywhere else, and to be taken somewhere (mentally, emotionally, psychologically) that I’ve never been before. What might surprise many writers is that those objectives can be accomplished even when covering familiar and well-trod paths.
A client of mine, Ron Franscell (www.ronfranscell.com) tells me Texas journalists have a term, ‘caliche dust’, named for the gritty alkaline dust carried on the wind down there, settling on and in everything. It’s also used to describe a level of depth of detail, of knowledge and attention, that can transport a story from simple reporting of facts to true story-telling. Ron certainly had ‘good caliche dust’ on his work in The Darkest Night (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), when he spent a cold, black night huddled on the steep walls of a river canyon beneath a bridge outside Casper, Wyoming, hoping to gain some insight into the terror his childhood neighbor must have felt as she clung to those same rocks some thirty years earlier, battered, freezing, waiting for dawn and not knowing if the light would bring rescue, or her waiting killers back to finish the work they’d begun when they’d hurled her and her baby sister from the trestle a hundred feet above. It’s the type of insight a writer only gains with first-hand research.
As a writer, you must never rely on images from television, movies or current fiction to be a source of accurate information. Want to learn how a victim of a violent assault might react? Interview crime survivors, emergency room staff, psychologists, and hotline workers. Want to get a feel for courtroom action if you’re not an attorney yourself? Sit in, often, on different judges, different types of cases, in different settings, as well as interviewing legal professionals. Make notes of small details that will help you create setting and characterization, the grooves worn into the stone steps by decades of use, the fatigue of the overworked court clerk as yet more files are piled on her desk (so easy for one to slip away, to be overlooked), and ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall that sounds deafeningly loud in the silence before a decisive moment.
Use multiple first-hand sources. Just as a number of witnesses to an event may remember the incident differently, each source may also remember or stress a specific detail no one else observed. Attention to small details will layer on that caliche dust a writer needs to make his story stand out. It might mean a road trip to a seemingly minor setting, or a face-to-face meeting rather than a long-distance phone call, but you’ll bring away a wealth of grit and texture you would have otherwise missed.
Even in an historical piece, it’s possible to use first-hand sources to help develop a depth of authenticity. First-hand period accounts, like diaries and journals, and even information gleaned from archived copies of period publications and even commercial catalogs (Sears & Roebuck is an amazing time capsule), will help establish details of your characters’ lives. But don’t stop digging simply because you’ve located the answer to a question you had. Successful writers often gather and study ten times the amount of research materials they eventually use in their stories, and that depth of knowledge and understanding subtly enriches and educates the work, and often becomes the grist and inspiration for future projects.
Never shortchange your story, or yourself, by relying exclusively on someone else’s footwork. In seeking first-hand knowledge, you’ll bring a fresh perspective to a story (your own!) that will make all the difference.
We’re all too familiar with the editor’s plea for ‘something fresh’. My own ‘wish list’ is to learn something from reading your work I could not have learned anywhere else, and to be taken somewhere (mentally, emotionally, psychologically) that I’ve never been before. What might surprise many writers is that those objectives can be accomplished even when covering familiar and well-trod paths.
A client of mine, Ron Franscell (www.ronfranscell.com) tells me Texas journalists have a term, ‘caliche dust’, named for the gritty alkaline dust carried on the wind down there, settling on and in everything. It’s also used to describe a level of depth of detail, of knowledge and attention, that can transport a story from simple reporting of facts to true story-telling. Ron certainly had ‘good caliche dust’ on his work in The Darkest Night (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), when he spent a cold, black night huddled on the steep walls of a river canyon beneath a bridge outside Casper, Wyoming, hoping to gain some insight into the terror his childhood neighbor must have felt as she clung to those same rocks some thirty years earlier, battered, freezing, waiting for dawn and not knowing if the light would bring rescue, or her waiting killers back to finish the work they’d begun when they’d hurled her and her baby sister from the trestle a hundred feet above. It’s the type of insight a writer only gains with first-hand research.
As a writer, you must never rely on images from television, movies or current fiction to be a source of accurate information. Want to learn how a victim of a violent assault might react? Interview crime survivors, emergency room staff, psychologists, and hotline workers. Want to get a feel for courtroom action if you’re not an attorney yourself? Sit in, often, on different judges, different types of cases, in different settings, as well as interviewing legal professionals. Make notes of small details that will help you create setting and characterization, the grooves worn into the stone steps by decades of use, the fatigue of the overworked court clerk as yet more files are piled on her desk (so easy for one to slip away, to be overlooked), and ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall that sounds deafeningly loud in the silence before a decisive moment.
Use multiple first-hand sources. Just as a number of witnesses to an event may remember the incident differently, each source may also remember or stress a specific detail no one else observed. Attention to small details will layer on that caliche dust a writer needs to make his story stand out. It might mean a road trip to a seemingly minor setting, or a face-to-face meeting rather than a long-distance phone call, but you’ll bring away a wealth of grit and texture you would have otherwise missed.
Even in an historical piece, it’s possible to use first-hand sources to help develop a depth of authenticity. First-hand period accounts, like diaries and journals, and even information gleaned from archived copies of period publications and even commercial catalogs (Sears & Roebuck is an amazing time capsule), will help establish details of your characters’ lives. But don’t stop digging simply because you’ve located the answer to a question you had. Successful writers often gather and study ten times the amount of research materials they eventually use in their stories, and that depth of knowledge and understanding subtly enriches and educates the work, and often becomes the grist and inspiration for future projects.
Never shortchange your story, or yourself, by relying exclusively on someone else’s footwork. In seeking first-hand knowledge, you’ll bring a fresh perspective to a story (your own!) that will make all the difference.
Gina Panettieri has twenty years experience as a literary agent. She is President of Talcott Notch Literary, a full service literary agency representing Chick Lit, True Crime, Mystery, Horror, Commercial Fiction, Western, Historical Fiction, Thrillers/Suspense, Children's, Adventure and Middle Grade. In nonfiction, Gina is particularly interested in seeing parenting, career, and relationship books. Visit the agency webiste at http://www.talcottnotch.net or see the agency listing in Publishers Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/wynterwood/)
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