Writing As My Own Astral Projection Device

Write what you know?  Is that the belief other crime writers go by? Most of us will never commit a crime worthy of a police investigation. We’ll never encounter a career criminal.

Although I’ve never been in a fist fight I can write a convincing street fight scene. I can also write a pursuit down a dark alley at midnight, because I have an imagination. We all have an imagination

Like an ability to sketch a landscape in front of us, some of us can do it better than others. Writing a fight scene requires not only imagination but the craft of animating characters into real people and giving them the reasons to bruise their knuckles.

I’ve never been shot, and never seen an actual gunshot wound. But how many times have we witnessed violence and death on TV and in the movies? Remember when Tony Soprano got shot in the stomach?  We all remember that.

I can imagine a fist coming at me. In my imagination I know the smell of gun powder, the sound, and can feel the kick of a gun.

I found this in the New York Times, Book Section:  Write What You Know’ — Helpful Advice or Idle Cliché? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/review/write-what-you-know-helpful-advice-or-idle-cliche.html?ref=books 

I’m quoting Moshe Hamid from this article. He writes:

But I also write about things I haven’t experienced. I’ve written from the point of view of a woman, of a global surveillance system, of a writer who is being beheaded. I write these things because I want to transcend my experiences. I want to go beyond myself. Writing isn’t just my mirror, it’s my astral projection device.

All crime writers have catapulted ourselves into worlds we will never know. I’ve written from the point of view of a Chechen gold digger, a homeless teenager, a Kurdish gangster. It all feels normal to me while I’m doing it. 

A well-practiced astral projection device is internet research. What would a storyteller do nowadays without Google where you can research your idea in ever-widening circles? I’m researching blue grass mandolin right now, as though people who are reading my books are breathless with anticipation to learn about what I’ve found. I’m unlikely to use a twentieth of what I unearth.

When are you simply procrastinating the writing by contacting yet one more expert? Reading one more website?  Listening to one more mandolin riff? After all, playing the mandolin is not what the story is about.

I love research. I made my living working on a series of academic research projects. It got a little stuffy and tedious after a couple of decades. That's where I learned how to launch into an unfamiliar topic and serve it up in digestible and enjoyable hunks. Readers have asked me how many times I’ve been to Chechnya and Turkey to write Rip-Off and On Behalf of the Family. Actually, never. But my books take you there.

Visit my website at http://marpreston.comfor a free introduction into my world as a mystery writer.

The Guilty Pleasures of Crime Fiction by Mar Preston

I never wanted to hang out in a cop bar, or be a cop, but I’ve always been fascinated with police work and that’s why I write police procedurals. Most law enforcement jobs offer burst of excitement, danger, and thrilling action—in sharp contrast to the way I made my living. For most of my working life I worked on academic social science research projects.

Wouldn’t say there were a lot of thrills and chills, would you?  Oh, the work had its own set of puzzles and intrigues, its own small excitements. Except for the earthquake that smashed through Los Angeles—and the University of Southern California where I worked for a generation—I felt pretty safe.

Cop life is anything but safe with a traffic stop or a felony pick up going sideways in a nanosecond. I’m not alone in my enjoyment of crime fiction with its thrill me, chill me, scare-me- to-death aspect of getting up close to Hannibal Lecter on the printed page. We love Halloween, death-defying roller coasters, tornadoes.  Don't we? Why do I feel such glee in learning new forensic details of death and dying?

I grew up with a mother who read them all and gave me the good ones. Had she lived longer I wonder if she wouldn’t have tackled one herself. I had good models—The McDonalds, Elmore Leonard, John Dickinson Carr, Ed McBain. I never liked the Grand Old Dames of mystery fiction, the Agatha Christies, or what came to be known as the “cozies.” I’m bored with Sherlock Holmes, no matter what contrivances they think up to make him new. I relish the dark side, a bit of noir, semi-hardboiled.

Crime fiction has its appeal because we’re assured that in the end goodness will prevail over evil and the villain will be punished. Things will end up right. I happily confess my guilty pleasure in crime fiction but I also know that murder in real life ripples outward and causes life-long misery and suffering in the lives of victim’s families.

Another pleasure of crime fiction is that I can dance on the dark side, speed into a dark alley after midnight, insult a gang banger or talk back to a cop with impunity. I can do things in fiction that would be unthinkable in daily life. In my fictional life I can be 32 and 5 foot ten. I can have curly blond hair and a romance with a hard-bodied cop who can dance the tango.  Sigh.  It all happens between my ears.


I can make things come out right. All the loose ends tie up. The villain goes to jail.

 What are your reasons for writing crime fiction? 

Living out a fantasy at the Writers Police Academy 2015

If you're just starting you might like to look at a series of 4 eBooks I’ve written which cover topics you need to think about in “Writing Your First Mystery.”

Here’s a link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mar+preston+writing

The overview “Writing Your First Mystery” is free on my website: http://marpreston.com

Better Conversations - Mar Preston

I was alerted to this TED Talk 10 Ways to Have A Better Conversation by a fellow who talks too much and thought, how ironic. How unaware we are of ourselves and our impact on people. Or is it only me who thinks he talks too much?

I’m fascinated with conversational styles because many times I feel pinned to the wall by one ear because I’m a good listener. I grew up in Canada, and most Canadians are “nice,” which means we don’t start wars, and we apologize a lot. It was also beat into me not to interrupt.

I’ve come away from “conversations” wondering why someone would consider the topic of their grandchildren, their health, buying a new smartphone, or the lives of people I don’t know and will never meet, issues of interest. Short of yawning in people’s faces or just walking away, how can I convince you I’m not utterly absorbed in your experiences with Windows 10?

I would never think of relating the entire plot of my current  mystery to someone in conversation. It’s probably boring to anyone other than me.

Celeste Headlee is a professional conversationalist, host of the Georgia Public Broadcasting program "On Second Thought." She has previously been the co-host of the national morning news show The Takeaway, from Public Radio International and WNYC.

She knows how to talk to people and here are some of her rules of conversation. In a time when we are so politically polarized and reluctant to make a mis-step, I for one took these rules to heart.
The overall theme is to listen more, talk less. That’s hard sometimes as you go glassy-eyed and rigid with boredom. We’d all rather talk and be the center of attention.

But here are some:
 Don’t multi-task. Don’t play Solitaire while you’re on the phone, read email, or make out your grocery list. Be present.
 Conversation is not a promotional opportunity.
 Don’t repeat yourself.
 Don’t pontificate, even if you’re an expert in something.
 Set aside your personal opinion about Trump or Bernie Sanders and listen to an opposing view. You might learn something.
 Realize you don’t know everything. Even the most boring person knows something interesting that you don’t know. Be prepared to be amazed.
 Ask open-ended questions.
 Don’t compare your experience with theirs. Everyone’s experience is unique, especially dramatically awful experiences. You don’t exactly know how they feel.
 Details are boring. It doesn’t matter the exact date something happened.
 Be brief.

Please listen to this 10-minute video for the full conversation with Celeste Hadlee. It’s worth it.

By the way, I'm off to Left Coast Crime Conference in Phoenix next weekend. Can't wait to meet up with old mystery writer pals. If we meet, let's have a conversation.

What happens after the book's written?

Writing a book is hard work. Lots of time alone in front  of a computer, crafting out characters, making sure your plot holds together. And when you're done, the editing process starts.

Many authors use beta readers to check out the story. Or they have critique partners who will tell them that it's great, but the first three chapters have to be re-written. If you're self publishing, you might hire a developmental editor at this point to flush out the flaws.

Traditionally published authors call these developmental edits and my editor does a great job of letting me know what worked, and what she felt could need some polish.

Your time's free so you start writing another book.

Then the first book comes home and you spend another block of time revising and editing what didn't work. You put book #2 aside and dive back into book #1.

You send book #1 off again, this time for copy edits, and you return to writing book #2, where you just get into the story, when book #1 comes back for page proofs.

Sighing this time, you set book #2 regretfully aside, as you're really loving the story and are connected to your characters, and read through the pages trying to catch every typo, formating issue, or just plain misused word.

After obsessing for a large block of time, you send the page proofs back. And try to get back into book #2 which you left off in the sagging middle, so your momentum is shot.

But you find the spark again, and you're just getting into the swing, when your publicist sends you a list of original blog posts she needs to promote book #1 which releases next month.

Sigh.

It's a wonder any book ever gets written.

But the good news, it does. And it gets releases. And after all that work, you get reader email saying how they read the book in a weekend, loved it, and when's the next one coming out?

For fans of the Tourist Trap mysteries, the answer is this month. June 23rd is release day for Dressed to Kill.

Jill Gardner—owner of Coffee, Books, and More in the tucked-away town of South Cove, California—is not particularly thrilled to be portraying a twenties flapper for the dinner theater murder mystery. Though it is for charity…

Of course everyone is expecting a “dead” body at the dress rehearsal…but this one isn’t acting! It turns out the main suspect is the late actor’s conniving girlfriend Sherry…who also happens to be the ex-wife of Jill’s main squeeze. Sherry is definitely a master manipulator…but is she a killer? Jill may discover the truth only when the curtain comes up on the final act…and by then, it may be far too late.

Looking Back At What I've Learned by Mar Preston

I took a break away from the hard work of writing another police procedural mystery when I’d finished the third in the series called On Behalf of the Family. At that point I was waiting for the proofreader to finish up.  I couldn’t look at the manuscript one more time. You may know the feeling.

My fictional detective, Dave Mason, is a composite of the homicide detectives I’ve known—and read about. I lived in Santa Monica for many years and love its glitzy mean streets as does my protagonist, Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department.

But while I waited for the proofreader to finish up, a compulsion came over me to tell everything I’d learned about the genre. I didn’t do any of the sensible things I should have done, for example, research the market, think about marketing strategies—any of that.

I just started writing: I. Writing Your First Mystery; II. Plotting Your First Mystery; and, III. Creating Killer Characters. Short eBooks of about ten thousand words.

The writing was a joy because it flowed so easily. None of that head-scratching anxiety of write three sentences, delete two. I discovered how much I’d learned in the process of writing four unpublishable novels, then four fairly successful whodunits. I had taught myself how to write, how to plot, and how to motivate memorable characters on the printed page.

I decided to make them eBooks and only then did the hard work of figuring out how to bring them to the attention of someone with a burning idea who doesn’t know where to start.

We’ll see how they do in terms of selling. In the meantime I’ve got another Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department with the proofreader. Sometimes it’s hard to measure where you came from. I can look through these craft books about writing mysteries and say yes, it’s been a helluva ride, but I’ve come a long way.

Hope you like them too. Stay tuned for a publication date. 

 http://marpreston.com/

Changing The Covers on My Books by Mar Preston

I liked the previous covers of my four books. But a smooth-talking Irishman, who presented as a social media expert at a conference I recently attended, persuaded me the covers looked amateur. I fell under his spell and found myself agreeing I needed to update them.

What do I know about covers? I read advice from the same marketing whizzes that you do probably. I know that it’s not an original idea to change a cover on a book that’s not selling well and promoting it as a new title.

I can’t claim that my earlier books are selling well. Don’t know about you.

So the Irishman connected me to a New York City cover designer and I browsed through his website. My previous cover designer is a hard-working, competent web developer and designer who has put up with me for years now and I feel a loyalty to him. However, the covers that I saw by the NYC designer dazzled me. His terms were affordable and I decided to give it a try with new covers.

On Behalf of the Family is a police procedural about an honor killing that takes place in glitzy Santa Monica. It’s long on characterization, short on car chases and explosions. My series detective is with the Santa Monica Police Department.

I am asking your opinion. Do you like the cover change?

So far the Buy Button hasn’t been clicking in huge numbers but I wouldn’t be a writer, would I,  if I weren’t hopelessly optimistic. 

What do you think?

                                      

Original Cover

                The Buy Button

             

                http://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B00I82BFVK 

 The New Cover 

                                             

Writing As An Astral Projection Device by Mar Preston

When a book comes alive it’s a wonderful feeling. Your words sparkle on the pages. The dialogue is snappy. You even laugh out loud at some of your one-liners. The characters leap off the page. You can’t wait to get back to working on it.

Well, I’m not there yet. This is my fifth murder mystery, the fourth featuring Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department.

I’m reading through the second draft connecting bits and pieces, finding notes to myself:  (Describe bedroom) and (More here.) You writers know what I mean.  Now it’s time to wrestle with exactly how the bedroom looks, what kind of comforter or curtains reveal the character of the protagonist, how her closet smells, what pictures are on the wall.

But there’s the fight scene I’m having terrible trouble with. I’ve never been in a fistfight, never been shot, and never seen an actual gunshot wound. But how many times have we witnessed violence and death on TV and in the movies?

I suppose this is why we are given an imagination. I can imagine a fist coming at me. In my imagination I know the smell of gun powder, the sound, and feel the kick of a gun.

Take today’s New York Times, book section:  Write What You Know’ — Helpful Advice or Idle Cliché? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/review/write-what-you-know-helpful-advice-or-idle-cliche.html?ref=books 

I take this from the second essay by Moshe Hamid. He writes:

But I also write about things I haven’t experienced. I’ve written from the point of view of a woman, of a global surveillance system, of a writer who is being beheaded. I write these things because I want to transcend my experiences. I want to go beyond myself. Writing isn’t just my mirror, it’s my astral projection device.

Ah, yes. We’ve all catapulted ourselves into worlds we will never know. I’ve written from the pov of a Chechen gold digger, a homeless teenager, a Kurdish gangster. It all feels normal to me while I’m doing it. You’ve done it too as writers.

Where have you soared in your imagination? 

My recent book about an honor killing in glitzy Santa Monica:

http://www.amazon.com/ebook/dp/B00I82BFVK/