L'Envoi

by Janis Patterson

I wish I could play the violin - I’d play something slow and sad and which plucks the heartstrings.

Saying good-bye is always so hard. 

I have blogged on Make Mine Mystery since 15 August 2012, at least once a month, and for a few years twice. It’s been a big part of my life for over a decade.

However, over the last few years - since the covid crazies, really - things have changed. One by one the other bloggers have dropped away. The readership has declined steadily. The very concept of blogging isn’t the bright shiny thing it used to be. I’m the only one who has posted here in at least half a year, and though I love it, there is only so much time and there are so many demands for my time that it is with great reluctance it is time to let it go.

The lady who owns the blog is a writer herself and she understands, so we have come to the decision that Make Mine Mystery is better off going dormant. We are going to leave the blog up, so if you want to go back and read past entries or if something so wonderful (like a new release or a big award) comes up we will be able to share it with you Make Mine Mystery will still be there. It just won’t be on a regular schedule.

Like I said, Make Mine Mystery has been a big part of my life for a loooong time. I have loved sharing my joys and problems and techniques and a lot of other things with you, have loved the interaction with you, have loved hearing what you have to say. I have loved it so much that in spite of diminishing interest this has not been an easy decision for me. 

But there are so many demands on my time - I’m doing a lot of public speaking/teaching now. I still try to do three to five books a year. (Last year was anomalous with just two, but I did rerelease 23 of my backlist!) My husband is now retired and we are doing a lot of the things we have dreamed of for years. And... just Life. You know what I mean. 

I appreciate your attention, your comments, your friendship over all these years. And you will be missed.

Like I said, saying good-by is always so hard. I will miss you all.

The Continuing Evolution of Genre

by Janis Patterson

If you talk to the oldtimers, life used to be simpler, and in publishing I guess it was. Publishers published books. Some non-fiction, of course, but fiction… ah, to hear some people talk it was a halcyon time. There were the standards, of course – romance (which was waaaay different from what we call romance today), mysteries and westerns, horror and science fiction, even tales that were unclassifiable – but the publishers were open to different kinds of fiction. They even took chances on the kind of things they’d never published before.

Then came the feeding frenzy of publishers acquiring publishers. The small, family owned publishing house almost vanished from the earth and though we have all kinds of imprint names they are all controlled by the Big Five publishing houses. Or maybe the Big Four. Or whatever it is this week. And suddenly publishing was being run not by people who loved books but by bean counters who viewed books with the same attitude as widgets. They said, “If number 36 is selling well, let’s do it in pink and purple and green…” That is, offering exactly the same thing with only slightly different variances. And so hardcase genre publishing was born and the requirements of publishers narrowed down to tight, pure little pigeonholes. 

To tighten the noose even more, publishers began to send out ‘Tip Sheets’ – little roadmaps telling exactly what a particular line wanted, especially in romance. And they continued to tighten. Some even gave what should have happened by what page. While it didn’t quite die, creativity was most definitely stifled. What was worse, readers had to choose from what the publishers offered. Choices – other than the basics – dried up.

Then the upheaval of self-publishing happened and real choice became available again. Want a western with a female heroine instead of a taciturn drifter? You got it. Want a squeaky clean – or definitely erotic – romance? You have choices. Mystery fan? There’s hard boiled, cozy, cats-and-shoe-fetish cutesy, female sleuth, male sleuth… whatever you want.

And more. As the respectability of e-publishing expands, it is becoming more complex as readers and writers conspire to push the envelopes. Genre-bending has become a fine art, some as intricate as any Cordon Bleu recipe. There are mysteries with long-dead sleuths solving current crimes, romances between Earthers and alien species, talking animal sleuths, just about any permutation you can think of – including nymphomaniac vampire nuns from the planet Zeon.

All of which is great for the reader and the writer. Genre shouldn’t be a pigeonhole – it should be a doorway… or maybe a hall with lots of doorways leading off it. The only thing that should control what content is available is what the reader wants to read and the writer wants to write. 

Back to the Grindstone

by Janis Patterson 

For those of you who don’t know, my mammoth 22 novel republishing blitz ended on October 25. Thank Goodness! Re-releasing a book every other Wednesday for most of a year was exhausting. I managed to keep going through about half of November, but was so wrung out that with the holiday season coming up my wonderful husband put his foot down and told me I was taking the rest of the year off. 

His dictum was a blessing - and a curse. I did sneak in some writing, something which I had neglected shamefully during the constant work of the blitz, but also managed a strange and rare pleasure - rest. After far too many frozen dinners, take-out and restaurant meals I rediscovered the joys of the kitchen. And the first part of December we went to Germany for a tour of Bavarian Christmas markets, one of our favorite trips.

Until Lufthansa got involved. I am still at war with that *^$#@^ airline. Our luggage had been checked through to Stuttgart, but along the way we were informed that the last leg of our trip had been cancelled, meaning we stopped in Frankfurt Airport (itself one of the Seven Circles of Hell) but our bags went on to Stuttgart - except they didn’t. I got my bag back - I snatched it from the hands of a thief, no less - but The Husband’s never appeared, meaning we had to spend the first day of the tour buying him new clothes and other essentials - an expense we had not anticipated.

Over a week after we got home Lufthansa called, saying his bag had been found, but we couldn’t have it because we hadn’t filled out a certain lost-bag form that none of the half-dozen Lufthansa employees we talked to ever told us we should fill out. When we found this out, we of course tried to fill out the form only to find that it would not accept the dates of our flights. Lufthansa still has the bag, they know it is ours, but they refuse to send it to us because we have not filled out a form that their lost-bag system refuses to accept. Wonder how much Lufthansa makes from the sale of ‘unclaimed’ luggage? After all, it is ‘found money.’ Just be very careful if you ever are cursed to fly Lufthansa or its cohort United. And it’s not just us - I was surprised to find their customer service satisfaction rating is in the cellar.

So after my December ‘vacation’ I have to get back to writing... and it’s hard, harder than I expected. I have gotten to like sleeping late in the morning, and being able to do things during the day besides staring at a screen. And I do have ‘encouragement’ in the form of deadlines - my blogs, my newsletter, two novella contracts (which are due alarmingly soon) to say nothing of the books I want to write on my own, two of which are so tantalizingly close to completion. But still it is so hard to sit down at the one-eyed monster of my computer, open a file and create something from nothing but imagination - and caffeine. Never forget the caffeine!

I have written professionally for most of my life (I was first paid for writing when I was nine years old) and on the whole loved it. Writing is part of my being, as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or the shape of my chin. I cannot imagine living the rest of my life without writing... just the next few weeks. Leisure is so insidiously addictive. 

But, like cranky old wells, one sometimes has to prime the pump to break the vacuum and make the water flow, and that is what this ill-tempered screed has appeared to do. The act of writing this blog, of seeing my fingers move over the keys and the black squiggles of letters and words appear on the screen, is both soothing and invigorating. I might even open up one of my novella files and see if the feeling continues.

Or I might just go take a nap. 

The End Is Nigh

by Janis Patterson

For every beginning there is an ending... and conversely, for every ending there is a beginning... and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

This year has been a landmark year for me - it’s been one of the lowest output years for me in well over a decade (only two books as opposed to the four or five I usually do) and yet I’ve been busier than I ever have.

In case you have been living under a rock and not heard about my republishing blitz I’m going to give you a quick précis...

During the covid crazies I got very lazy. The Husband was home - and even retired during this time - s0 we had things to do and my writing business came in a distant second to being with him. I knew that rights on previously published books were coming back to me, but being distracted by other things I just let the reversion letters pile up on my computer.

Until January of this year. Life was returning to a semblance of normal and I realized I wasn’t getting any younger (are any of us?) and if I wanted to get back into this writing thing I had to get busy, so a good start would be republishing those reverted books through my own company. A quick wander through my hard drive shocked me, because there were 26 (yes, TWENTY SIX) of the little beasties. Gulp.

A quick perusal decided me that for various reasons four of them were going permanently ‘under the bed,’ hopefully never to be seen again. That left 22 to be republished. As I am lazy, doing that could possibly take a couple of years, years which I might not have. As I was raised in advertising and journalism, the fact that deadlines are sacred is bred into my blood and bones. My father taught me that (to use his words) “There is only one excuse for you to miss a deadline, and that is death. Yours.”

So I set myself a deadline - I would release a book freshly edited, freshly formatted and most with new covers every other Wednesday until all were out, starting on January 15. MISTLETOE MAGIC, the last book, comes out October 25. 

22 books released every other Wednesday, each on schedule, each reworked as promised and all without missing a single release day. (Actually, there were 24 released - one through one of my publishers and the other as an outlier which appeared suddenly through a set of circumstances too complex to go in to... neither of which I counted as part of the blitz.)

I’m exhausted. I would love to take a few weeks off away from the computer, but I have deadlines... one for a July 4th mystery anthology, one for my new Flora Melkiot book and one for a summer Regency romance anthology. Sigh. Even though we spend our days pretty much in the same room (the den) The Husband says I spend more time with the computer and my invisible friends than with him and lately he’s been right. I’ve taken my computer along on every trip we’ve made this year - and it saved my sometimes tenuous sanity the days we were holed up in a motel in Mississippi when he fell ill on our way home from NINC!

Anyway, the blitz is now over and the encroaching deadlines await. It doesn’t get any easier, people. It really doesn’t.

And now for some good news! EXERCISE IS MURDER is now available in audio from Audible! (The ebook is available from Amazon and will hopefully be available in paperback before too long... it is the first appearance of the redoubtable Flora Melkiot!)

The Dead Zone

by Janis Patterson

We’ve all been there. We’re writing along happily on a book when suddenly - ZAP! - everything stops. It doesn’t matter if you have a minutely detailed outline or are a free-wheeling pantser or anything in between. Everything just stops. The well is dry. Ideas are things that happen to other people. The storyline that has carried you along so wonderfully, the storyline that was perfect and carefully crafted suddenly becomes a mis-matched pile of unconnected - and unacceptable - actions that have no relationship to each other or to any coherent tale.

Determined to work your way past this bump, you stare at the computer screen.

Like the single eye of a particularly malign deity, the computer screen stares back at you.

Impasse. 

The reasons for this sudden and apparently impassible roadblock can be legion. The idea you thought was so perfect has suddenly revealed its hidden and insuperable flaws. You’re coming down with something. Influences/events in your real and everyday life are taking precedence. There are more valid reasons, almost as many as there are writers, and most of them are very real. Admittedly, some are conscious or unconscious excuses, but some are completely, sadly, totally real. Those are the ones we have to look out for. 

It is hard to concentrate on creating a fictional problem among fictional people who live in a fictional world - one that you created - when in your real actual life someone gets sick or your job goes away or there is a disaster threatening or perhaps even destroying your property or your life (metaphorical or physical). Fortunately, though, it seems that most of these distractors are, while distracting, are not so overwhelming.

Some call this sudden and absolute stoppage writer’s block. I don’t, but I don’t have a better term. Others call it burnout, which I don’t think it is. My problem is with this particular manuscript, not the process of writing as a whole. Either way, my go-tos are a cup of coffee, maybe a couple of hours of mindless TV or a nice long soak in the hot tub - which right now, sadly, is denied to me as it is on the fritz. Sob. Others may play with the children/grandchildren, take in a movie, take a nice long walk, go into a cooking frenzy, or anything else that particular person chooses. Often this works, and if it does you’re lucky. 

Sometimes, though, it doesn’t. Two or three or more days go by in this eyeball/screen staring contest and no progress is made. After a while, some writers simply put this project aside and go on to another, something new and shiny and so perfect it will never shatter so spectacularly on them. (Yeah.) Some writers will grit their teeth and forge on through, putting down word after painful word with all the same speed and ease as pulling teeth, even as they know it is garbage that will have to be deleted. Other writers will... well, there are as many answers to that as there are writers.

And perhaps, just perhaps, this death of a manuscript is normal and necessary. Not all projects can be or should be brought to fruition. 

But how do we know? I dunno. I can’t really answer for myself, let alone for all writers everywhere. I just know that everything I have said is at some time, in some place, to some (most? all?) authors true. And we just have to deal with it to the best of our abilities at the time.

After all, if writing were easy, everyone would be doing it.

And for those of you following my republishing blitz, all is going just as planned. Today’s release is a contemporary romance called CHRISTMAS CACTUS. THE HOUSE WITH THE RED DOOR, a gothic/ghost story set in contemporary South Carolina, releases August 30. A traditional Regency romance called THE RESURRECTION OF REGINA releases September 13. Annnnnnnd - an international romantic adventure called THE JERUSALEM CONNECTION is on sale for only 99 cents from now through Saturday, August 19. 

The Horrors of Homophonic Mayhem

by Janis Patterson

Their going to brooch the door, and it will phase them awl if they find the diamond pen.

Nonsense, right? Definitely, though apparently not a growing number of ‘writers.’ I put writers in quote marks, because an alarmingly growing number of scribblers are putting such egregious mistakes all through their books. How can you expect a reader to stay in a story when clangers like this have to throw them out?

To elucidate using the example above - their (possessive which should modify/define something as in their boxes or their time) versus they’re (contraction of they are, a plural with a verb).

Or - brooch (a decorative piece of jewelry, usually large, and pinned onto a piece of clothing) versus broach (to open, as in door or cask or subject).

Or - phase (a measurement of time or behavior) versus faze (disconcert or disturb or sometimes startle).

Or - awl (a tool for piercing something, usually leather or wood) versus all (the whole quantity).

Or - pen (a writing implement) versus pin (a pointed piece of metal used to fasten things, or a piece of jewelry fastened to a garment with such a thing). 

Though to be fair, though, in the last example one could have a pen (writing instrument) decorated with diamonds, though I expect it would be most uncomfortable to use. Another reason one must be careful in delineating exactly what one is talking about.

As the first sentence proves, depending on the usage of words and spelling a sentence can have a totally different meaning from what the writer intended or even become completely incomprehensible. No one should ever expect their reader to translate their work!

For example, I read not long ago about a character that was trying to describe a crime scene as ‘grizzly,’ which jerked me right out of the story. What on earth, I wondered, was a bear doing in there? I even looked back a few pages to see if I had missed the inclusion of an ursine character. Of course, it finally dawned on me that the writer was so disrespectful of her readers she didn’t bother to differentiate between ‘grizzly’ - a large brown bear native to North America - and ‘grisly’ - which describes something of horror or disgust.

Now some may say that I am being too pedantic, that such nicety of meaning is meaningless. Once on a romance critique eloop I made a suggestion after reading a sample that to make the book better the writer might wish to pay more attention to her grammar and word choice. I was astonished at the vituperation such a truthful - and practical! - comment engendered. One which I remember to this day castigated me as a bitter failed writer (I had published over 30 books at that particular moment in time) and that this (incorrect) writer’s emotion and honesty would touch more people than I ever could.

Well, maybe, but only if they could translate the writer’s gibberish into sensible prose. And they didn’t specify which emotion - heartfelt romantic resonance or disgust at such a mangling of the English language.

As writers our job is to communicate, and that can only be done when there is a common, understandable language. One of the difficulties in translating a work of either prose or poetry into another language is that of nuance; differing definitions render such a task impossible. On a less literary note, I can testify to this. For reasons I won’t go into now I read a Belgian newspaper daily; it is written in Dutch (it’s complicated) a language which I do not speak, so I use the automatic translator on the internet. The results are usually pretty good, but sometimes almost incomprehensible and others downright hilarious.

We shouldn’t have to face the same difficulties in our own language.

There are lists of words of homophones (sound alike but different meanings) and homonyms (spelled alike but with different meanings and pronunciations) and they are impressively long. I’m not suggesting we as writers should have to memorize them, but it would be better for our readers and for our own image as communicators if we at least learned to use the correct word with the correct meaning in the correct place.

After all,  when we brooch a knew subject we don’t want to create a grizzly mess and brake our readers’ trust!

The Terror of the Blank Page

by Janis Patterson

If there is anything that delineates the professional writer from the hobbyist scribbler, it is the respect of a deadline.

I will say here that there is nothing wrong with being a hobbyist, unless you misrepresent yourself as being a professional writer. While both professionals and hobbyists work at building things with words, there is a vast difference. The hobbyist either waits until his Muse (Calliope for epic stories/poetry or Erato for things pertaining to love, or even Sheshat, if you prefer the Ancient Egyptian pantheon) deigns to grace him with driblets of what the writer will doubtless regard as deathless prose. (It is odd that the hobbyist almost always regards his output as deathless and perfect, in contrast to the professional who more often than not never believes that his results are as good as they should be.)

By contrast, the professional knows that by a certain time he has to produce a certain number of words of a certain quality on a certain subject no matter if his Muse is standing over his shoulder or is on vacation in Barbados.

And that involves staring at a blank page, which sometimes resembles nothing so much as a hungry maw demanding to be filled. You stare at the page (or screen) and it stares back at you. It can be terrifying. Behind that blank page stands an editor waiting for the agreed-upon copy, or fans, or even enemies, all ready to pounce on your work and express their opinions. Even worse, they are all - metaphorically, one must hope - breathing down the neck of the poor writer.

Deadlines have variable beginnings - imposed by an editor, or in the case of the self-published or those writing on spec, by oneself, by long-standing contract or to be honest by just about anything. Their one constant is that by a particular time, market, circumstance and/or contract, or Heaven-only-knows what else, they are demanding taskmasters which must be fulfilled.

Oh, there can be certain exceptions where a deadline is either extended or vacated, but the time gained is hardly worth the bother. My own personal periods of grace have been granted because of severe illness in the family, a near-fatal car wreck, the death of a dear one, and other but similar disasters... Like I said, not worth it. I would rather fulfill a deadline no matter what the cost than face those horrors again.

So what is the poor professional to do? If you are worth your salt, you sit in the chair, put your hands on the keyboard and start churning out the words without regard to what siren call is trying to distract you. It doesn’t matter if the first few hundred words are total dreck. There truly is a reason the ‘delete’ key was invented! I regard this as sort of like priming the pump. (Do today’s people even know what that means? Putting water down an old-fashioned lever pump in order to create a sort of suction so pumping the lever will raise the water. TMI? But we gotta fill that word count however we can!) Remember the prolific Nora Roberts said, (paraphrasing) write, even if it’s garbage - you can fix garbage but you can’t fix a blank page. (Told you those blank pages could be terrifying!)

Once primed, the writer’s training and practice and determined professionalism should kick in and the words start to coalesce into a sensible form that fulfills the parameters of your project. And eventually - hopefully! - you will finish it to your satisfaction. A goal you must reach whatever it takes.

The resultant feeling of satisfied euphoria usually lasts until the next time, the next deadline, so always remember that terrifyingly empty blank screen will be waiting for you - but you can master it, with or without the assistance of your Muse. You are a professional.

A Peroration on the Stylization of - - Oooh! Shiny!

by Janis Patterson

Pundits say that in this modern world of soundbites our attention spans are getting shorter. That’s not a new thing. Some writers have had it since forever. While this problem affects all writers at one time or another, it does seem to afflict amateurs more than professionals. Of course, with professionals not getting paid until a project is finished is a great incentivizer to complete things. 

Professional or amateur, we have all experienced the ‘shiny’ moment. We’re working along on our current project when suddenly a wonderful new idea - the idea we’ve been waiting for, the perfect story, our ticket to fame and fortune - pops into our mind. As seductive as chocolate, it winds its way around our brain, whispering absolutely perfect scenes, introducing fascinating characters, spinning an intriguing storyline that is incredibly original...

So what do we do? Lots of us drop the story we’re working on - and probably struggling with - to pursue this new idea. We don’t stop to think of the litter of partially finished manuscripts that lie in our wake, as this new idea is The Story. We also tend to forget that the one we’re abandoning might have appeared as The Story at the beginning, as probably did all the others.

That’s why a lot of stories remain unfinished, and why many amateur writers never seems to complete a project. Professionals have to, or they don’t get paid, but I know professionals who have their share of abandoned/postponed projects lurking metaphorically ‘under the bed.’

Perhaps I should make a confession - I am a professional writer, and have been for decades. Because I bore easily, I never have fewer than four projects going at once. When the well dries on one, I simply switch to another and eventually they pretty much all get done. It’s very rare that I completely abandon one, but it has happened.

Let’s face it - writing is hard work. Creating worlds and populations and situations out of little but imagination and caffeine (in my case) takes dedication, application - and a lot of sitting and banging on the keyboard. The siren lure of the ‘perfect story’ that would be so easy to write is almost irresistible. We tend to forget that the current story with which we are wrestling probably first appeared as the ‘perfect story’ in an attempt to seduce us away from what we were working on at the time.

So what to do? It’s easy to say that we should ignore the siren whisperings and doggedly continue with the current project, but that’s pretty much what is necessary - especially if we want to finish it and get paid. That’s what separates the professional from the hobbyist. 

On the other hand, this upstart new idea really might be the one that makes a difference in our career. Can we afford to ignore it and lose a potential success?

My solution is a common one. At first I just ignore it as the ravings of a brain bored with what I really have to do now and continue on with my current project. It’s difficult, but I do it. And you know what? After a while the perfect story, the new bright and shiny idea starts to fragment and fades away like the distracting shadow it really was.

But not always. If the idea refuses to go away, I’ll take an hour or two or three from the current project and write a boatload of notes - sometimes as many as 20-25 pages. The basic idea. Character ideas. Conflicts and resolutions. Ideas for scenes and settings and any other tantalizing things that explode in my brain. Then I put it in a ‘Future’ file and, cracking the metaphoric whip, go back to the work-in-process.

After a test of time, these ‘bright and shiny’ ideas don’t usually hold water, though there are always a couple of nuggets in each that eventually find their way into another work. Sometimes, however, about 1 out of every 8-10 or so, the idea retains its shape and luster and proves itself worthy of the prolonged attention and work necessary to make a handful of ideas into a book. That’s when ‘shiny’ becomes ‘sweet.’

Unless, of course, the writing is interrupted by a shiny new idea forcing its way into my mind, an idea that I just know is going to the The Book, the idea I’ve been waiting for, the Perfect Story, my ticket to fame and fortune...

Yeah. Sure.

On Organization and Ivy

by Janis Patterson

How on earth did it get to be the 15th of December of 2021? In contrast to last year, which seemed to go on for aeons with no end in sight, this year has whizzed past like a hummingbird who spots a newly filled feeder - and not nearly as prettily!

Don’t worry - I’m not going to wax sarcastic or angry about politics (at least not here) - I’m just saying that time didn’t go as quickly when I was younger. In my defense, as a full-time writer I tend to live my life in a cocoon - The Husband says I live only half-way in the world of reality - and that makes time slip away even more easily.

All my writing life I have been sort of a do-it-now and bounce-from-one-project-to-another kind of person. Great fun, but not very businesslike. Disorganization is not efficient, but although I could set up really nifty organizational systems (something I used to do for all different kinds of businesses) but after setting up one for myself (one of many over the years) would never keep up with it once it was done. Sigh.

You might know that I have been a very happy member of Novelists, Inc. (NINC) for years, and have learned so much from it. However - this last conference I attended a workshop that literally changed my life. I don’t remember the speaker - a very nice woman writer who is apparently quite successful - but she spoke on organization and one of her centerpieces was a planning board. Apparently these organizational boards have been around for a number of years in all kinds of industries, but I confess I had never heard of such a thing.

It’s a fairly big whiteboard, divided into 9 boxes of equal size. The three vertical columns are for the months - her version of the board was set up to cover a quarter, which makes sense to me. The horizontal columns are (going down) To Do, Doing, Done. How incredibly simple!

After NINC I bought a piece of whiteboard and some thin, pretty lining tape. After a lengthy session with a tape measure (you do know that I am numerically-challenged, don’t you?) I divided the board into 9 roughly equal oblongs. As the quarter had already started, I slapped a bunch of stuff up, thinking that was all that was needed.

It was not. Oh, the board was nice-enough looking, if somewhat amateurish. There are very pretty boards, all color coordinated and perfect-looking available on line, but - hey! - I’m a writer, and therefore poor. I did spring for some colored post-its and markers, which made the board look sprightly. Blue for the first month, pink for the second, green for the third, all with matching felt tip pens. Very impressive.

But I am learning that there is more to organization than just slapping down some things I want to have done, which is very different from actually doing. Now that there is a fresh quarter to say nothing of a fresh year staring me in the face, I’m giving more thought to what I want to put on my board. Not what I want done, but what I should do. And what I can do.

I find myself breaking down each task into component parts. Instead of just ‘publish My New Book’ I find it much more helpful to have a post-it for doing final edit, one for getting copyright, one for setting up ISBN, one for cover, one for uploading, one for deciding on pre-order and release dates... all the necessary minutiae for a release. So much easier than trying to remember everything at once - you can’t afford to miss a single step, and yet private life is a beast which sometimes seems determined to upset everything.

As I begin each step I move it into the Doing box. When the task is completed, the post-it is moved into the Done box. Maybe it’s a small thing, somehow related to the pretty stickers given out by kindergarten teachers as a reward for each task accomplished, but it gives me a little lift to see the Done box filled up with completed post-its.

Nor do I wait until the night before to work out my quarterly board. Remember I said I was a do-it-now and bounce-around type person? I find that in trying to fill out my board with the next quarter’s tasks I find I have been making notes (albeit general ones, to be fleshed out when I actually write up the post-its) in a dedicated notebook. Apparently organization is like ivy - once it gets a foothold it spreads everywhere! I have even been found recently cleaning out the kitchen cabinets!

Now I fully admit that this last quarter’s board was an intense learning curve, punctuated with several Family Situations that had to be attended to. Life happens. The board helped to keep me on track, as winding and overblown as it was. I expect better from next quarter’s.

It’s true - you are never too old to learn something, and when you learn something that actually works it’s wonderful. I greatly anticipate what this next quarter’s board will do for me.

PS - this is my last blog of the year. I want to thank you for your support this past year and look forward to seeing you all next year. I wish all of you the Happiest of New Years!

The Wages of Sloth

by Janis Patterson

I’ll admit I’ve never been much of a go-getter. There are so many more attractive things to do than work; I’d rather do what I want to do (and I’m the only one who feels like that, right?) Fortunately for me, most of the time I want to write; writing is what keeps me as sane as I am, whatever that is. And let’s face it, the insane covid idiocies haven’t helped anything at all!

However, even I was shocked last week when after vowing to get my act - and my desk - cleaned up I found eight (I think) finished manuscripts, needing only covers and ISBNs to release, plus half a dozen novellas which I had planned to make available in paper - not counting the six or seven (can you tell I’m hazy on numbers?) books I have had reverted from trad publishers.... all waiting to be covered and released.

Holy guacamole! I knew there were a couple of releases I should attend to, but I swear these have been multiplying on my hard drive like mushrooms in the dark! 

Not that I have been totally remiss - I just put up my very first Vella serial novel (GHOSTS OF BELLE FLEUR - 36 episodes, first three free and releasing today - hint, hint!) and am still hard at work on a non-fic history book to say nothing of having a life, but good grief! 

I can see a lot of publishing going on in my future, so be prepared for a release blitz that rivals my first foray into self-publishing in 2014. The Husband is not happy. In 2014 I had gotten back all the books I thought I would ever get returned, so knowing I don’t respond well unless I have a deadline I decided to give myself a strict release deadline. I come from a newspaper/advertising background where there is only one excuse for missing a deadline - death. Yours. 

In 2014 I released a book - freshly edited, formatted for ebook and paperback and with a brand new cover - to every major etailer every two weeks from 1 June to 31 October. It almost killed me, and The Husband got so tired of seeing nothing but the top of my head as I bent over the computer he literally kidnapped me for a weekend in Vegas to celebrate my birthday. That was fun, but it made one release day two days late, and my newspaper/advertising blood cringed. Thank Heaven the shade of my father didn’t rise up and haunt me for such egregious behavior! (Actually, that wouldn’t have been so bad - I still miss my dad even after forty plus years and would love to talk to him again, with or without him having a physical body.)

If there is one thing obvious from this little tale, it’s that I like writing. I don’t particularly like the work of self-publishing. But - I like the unholy circus of rewrites, more rewrites, waiting, and pittances for payments less. I do like the control and the money of self-publishing. True, I have never sold as much with selfing as with trad, but I’ve made equal or better money. Hey - I can be bought!

So... for far too long I have lounged around doing fun things like writing, cleaning the house, travel, excavating the library, in other words living a life, and must now buckle down to business. Those books are not going to publish themselves, and I (1) can’t afford to hire some company to do it for me and (2) wouldn’t even if I could because I have become accustomed to the bliss of pure control. Unfortunately, bliss comes at a price. I am prepared to pay it. 

After some foot surgery a couple of years ago I had to stay in bed for over a week. The first day was unbearable, but after that I came to like the enforced inactivity - I could feel all virtuous for doing basically what I liked to do - nothing. I even coined a word for it - slothing - and claimed the sloth as my spirit animal. Even though I’m now about to embark on this publishing marathon I’m not giving him up. Sloths are cute. Let’s see if I can teach mine to run.

The Curse of the Blank Page

by Janis Patterson

This isn’t a post about writers’ block. I don’t really believe in writer’s block. The mind is always going, always creating, always fabricating, always dreaming. There’s no shortage of ideas or knowledge of exactly where your story is going to go.

No, this is a post about ... I don’t know. Ennui is as good a word as any. I have two books both almost finished. I know just what needs to happen in both of them. I also know exactly what is going to happen in two more books that are both about half finished. (Yes, I almost never have fewer than four projects going at once. Weird, I’ve been told, but this is the way I have always worked.) Pages of dialogue flow through my mind. Descriptions of settings are firm in my mind, some of them clearer than actual places I have physically visited.

So what is the problem?

Ennui. Or perhaps accidie.

I guess I just don’t want to write the words even as they are yammering in my brain. I sit down at the computer, open the current file and sometimes get a couple of hundred words done before being startled to find myself playing a killer game of solitaire MahJongg or working an electronic jigsaw puzzle - both guilty pleasures. Or finding that I really need to clean the gasket on the dishwasher with a Q-Tip to make sure it’s really clean - right now! (If you saw the perpetually chaotic state of my kitchen you’d know how insanely weird that is.) 

In talking this phenomenon with my writer friends I’ve been given the usually sage diagnoses/advice to burn out (take a couple of hours or even days off), to adjourn for a session in the hot tub (which I do every morning and have for ages), of boredom with the project (I have four going, remember, all in different genres), to relax and read more to refill the well (done that, and lack of ideas/settings/plots is not my problem) and to get a physical checkup to make sure nothing physical is wrong with me (done that, all okay).

No, I have come to the conclusion that the problem is me. I don’t know what it is, but it comes from me. I’ve been a professional writer of one kind or another for most of my adult (and some of my younger) life and have always - always! - made my deadlines. I’ll make these too, but it will probably be a close thing. At my age the inevitable thought of retirement comes to mind, but even in this weird time it is met with horror and denial. I love writing and honestly can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. (Except be a movie star, maybe, or an astronaut... see? My imagination is alive and well and overactive to boot.)

It would be tempting to blame this condition on the plague hysteria that has destroyed our lives for the last year and a half, but that’s the easy way out. To be honest, my life didn’t change that much from pre-plague life to current plague hysteria. I have always worked at home. My commute is from the kitchen to my office, which is just the length of the house. 

No matter how enthused I am when I wake up in the morning (after coffee, of course) and rush to the computer, by the time I get there and turn it on, finish with my emails and go to Word I just sit there and stare at that big blank screen, and that big blank screen just stares back at me like some omnipotent empty eye. I know what I should be putting down - my characters and my actions are ready and I’ve been polishing them in my head all night - but suddenly I realize I need to scrub the refrigerator right now!

Perhaps a part of it is a kind of fatalism, a foreknowledge that it will be a waste of time. The money just isn’t there. My sales have fallen so far down the return is minuscule, hardly worth the electricity it takes to run my laptop. Of course, I don’t write just for the money, but it is a consideration. The old reward-for-value thing - in other words, no reward, no worth. And that’s a hard thing to face, especially for one who used to make respectable money. What has changed? The market or me?

I’ve even thought of changing formats when I write, though I’ve used a word processor/computer since the early 1990s. While I loathe writing anything by hand and absolutely refuse, I have thought of digging out my old manual typewriter, but realize that would take too much energy. Besides, I’d have to clean out the storage closet where it lurks in the back with the other things I keep for sentiment’s sake. Then I would have to put everything back, and by then it would be time to fix supper.

I apologize for dumping on y’all, but several people have asked me when my next book would be out and quite frankly I don’t have the slightest idea. Sigh.

So - it all comes down to ennui (boredom) or accidie (sloth), and both devolve on me. Apparently the only cure is discipline, something I have always been lacking. But I will get better. I promise. Besides, The Husband has promised me a blow-out steak dinner at our favorite steak house when I get back on track. It should work. Hey - I can be bribed!

Coincidence - Friend or Foe?

by Janis Patterson

While there are those who say coincidences don’t happen, we all know they do. In real life, that is. In fiction one has to be very suspicious of them, especially if they providentially happen just in time to resolve all the complications of a book and bring about a happy ending. That’s cheap writing. 

Yes, I will say that again - coincidence to wrap up a complicated story in a quick, neat and tidy bow is cheap writing. I don’t care if your Great-Aunt Edna on the way to her reasoned but passionless marriage to a man she didn’t love just happened to run into her high school flame who had moved to Australia years before or a real-life detective on vacation in a far-away country just happened to meet the one real witness to an unsolved crime which happened two years before. I know things like that do happen (albeit rarely) but that’s real life. You see, fiction has rules; real life doesn’t.

That said, a coincidence can be a great starting point for a story. There’s no backstory to consider, no chain of events necessary to make the coincidence happen, no complicated explanations, no convoluted chain of action. Coincidences do happen. Two people from the same small town in Texas can meet on the Spanish Steps in Rome after many years without seeing each other. (This happened to my mother.) When stranded in a tiny Mexican coastal town you can run into a local frog-leg farmer who just happens to have been a member of the Boy Scout troop you began in North Texas over 40 years previously. (No kidding - this actually happened to my father.) But just try putting either of them into a book!

While admittedly coincidences do happen, at least in real life, imagine all the work and machinations and plot-twisting it would take to make a plausible ‘coincidence’ wrap up all the plot threads at the end of a story. That would be the worst kind of plot-driven story and every crack and seam would show. The ancients used to do it, of course, with the Deus ex Machina. The story would become so convoluted and so knotted that it would never work out. Thus the Deus ex Machina, a god who conveniently comes down from wherever and, rather like a second grade teacher with an unruly class, ruthlessly give orders that would sort out all the problems and misunderstandings. Such a device does get the story to the desired, but how very unsatisfying to a modern reader.

So feel free to use your chosen coincidence - but just to start a book. Be very leery of using one to end a book. And stay away from meddling gods! 

Publishing - A Basic Primer - Part Two

by Janis Patterson

 

Happy New Year! Hope your year is starting well and that all things are good with you.

As promised, this column is going to talk about the newest iterations of publishing - Self and Hybrid.

Self publishing has been around for centuries. Some of the very earliest novelists - such as Fielding and Richardson - Self published, but that was a very different time and a different business model. In the last century Self publishing was pretty much limited to Vanity publishing - see last month’s column - but thanks to the technological revolution Self publishing has become its own respectable and sometimes very profitable industry.

Ebooks have changed the face of publishing. No longer do writers need the heavy hand of a Trad publisher to shape and validate their work, nor do they have to put up with the Trad’s domination of the distribution system. Someone can write a book and put it up by themselves on several electronic vendor platforms. Easy-peasy! That is not to say, however, that they should.

A Self publisher is exactly that - a publisher, and he should take on the duties of a publisher - all the duties. Get a good editor and cover artist and, if putting books out to a lot of vendors, a formatter. And yes, you will have to pay them money, because professionalism and quality are not free. 

Ah, you say, didn’t I tell you that money should always flow TO the author, not FROM the author? It’s still true - but when you are publishing your book you are the Publisher You, not the Author You. Publisher You is responsible for everything, from getting a very good editor to make Author You’s book the best it can be (and no one should ever put out a book without having an editor look at it!) to getting a cover artist to getting a skilled formatter to uploading to the vendors to doing the publicity necessary to get the book in front of the public. Now there are those who are talented enough - or have friends/family who are - to do the covers and formatting and publicity themselves. Most of us are not. Don’t rely on a friend or relative to do your editing, though; get a professional.

Publisher You also has to take charge of the niggling but oh-so-important details of publishing - do you need an ISBN? Should you copyright through the government? Do you go exclusive with Amazon/KU or do you go wide? Should you put out a paper version as well as an ebook? And those are just the beginning of the decisions you need to make. Are you going to use your name or a pseudonym? Do you/should you have a website? What kind and how much publicity should you do? Do you hire a publicist? And the list goes on...

I will admit that I am a great fan of Self publishing; it takes you out of the unholy circus of rewrites and endless edits to tailor your story to the (occasionally unreasonable) demands of traditional agents and publishers and all too often leaves you with a product that has only a passing resemblance to your original work. You also make a great deal more money per individual sale than with Trad publishing. The downside is that whatever is done has to be done by you - or at least, by someone you hire. All the responsibility for quality and opportunities for success and failure resides squarely on your shoulders. 

People beginning in the Self pub market now are so fortunate - there are books and groups and FB pages and eloops centered on the Self pub industry from which the novice can learn just about everything necessary. When I first Self pubbed in 2013 I couldn’t find any of them; there may have been some, but I couldn’t find them, so in my usual heedless fashion I jumped in feet first and forged on. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned. And some of my ‘mistakes’ turned out to be blessings in disguise. Some turned out to be... not. Still, I am glad I went ahead.

Above I said ‘opportunities for success and failure’ because there is always what Mary Roberts Rinehart called the Blind Villain - chance. You can do everything just right - writing, editing, covers, publicity - yet still there is the possibility that your book will just lie there like a dead flounder while other books, not as good in any or all ways, will take off to the stratosphere. Just do the best you can and accept the chance of this outcome, because there are some things in this world that are uncontrollable. It’s sad but very true, and must be accepted. The only answer I know is to keep going on and write more good books. 

Most of Self pubbing is relatively simple - mechanical and very picky, but still basically simple once you understand and accept the principles. I believe that anyone who really wants to do it can master the production end. And probably the publicity end, too, though that is my personal bête noir.

You see, with every other aspect of Self pubbing, each task is finite - writing, editing, formatting, cover selection - but publicity is ongoing. Sometimes I wonder how some writers manage to do all the publicity they do and still have time to write, let alone have a life. Yes, some do employ Virtual Assistants or Public Relations companies, but the affordable ones are so booked they have waiting lists of potential clients and others are so expensive they are out of reach of anyone but the highest of best sellers.

Not long ago I looked into a PR company to boost the sales (embarrassingly small) of my favorite book, perhaps the best book I’ve ever written. Not only was the basic campaign eye-wateringly high, but it cost more for one month than that book had earned in the past year! Needless to say, it was beyond my means and I politely declined. That said, I am blessed that my newly-retired, science-oriented husband has stepped in and taken over my publicity, learning the job as he goes. It is an interesting journey!

So - if anyone is looking for a ready-made niche, a true bird’s-nest-on-the-ground, may I suggest starting an AFFORDABLE publicity firm for writers. They will have potential clients lined up out the metaphoric door.

Ooops! I have made a mistake - something you get used to when you Self pub. Last month and even above I said I would cover Self pubbing and Hybrid pubbing in this post. Well, this post has gone on much too long, so I will save Hybrid for next month. Hope your New Year is starting out well, and 2021 is the best year ever for all of us! 

The Diversity Paradox

by Janis Patterson

Can I make a confession? I love Thanksgiving - the family, the excitement of the beginning of the holiday season, the Americanism of the day, and yes, of course the food - but I hate turkey. Oh, I know people rave about it, how good it is and how good for you it is, and some people (including The Husband) eat it all year around. I just don’t like it. Badly cooked it tastes like fibrous cardboard. Even when well cooked it tastes like a slightly off chicken. But that doesn’t change the fact I love Thanksgiving - I just don’t eat the turkey.

Which is a rather clumsy way of saying that there is room for all opinions in this great big world, even in publishing as in food. There is something for everyone. Don’t like science fiction? Don’t read it. Don’t like romance? Same. Don’t like an alternative history mystery suspense set on Alpha Centauri with a cast of half-humanoids/half-reptiles? Don’t pick it up. 

Every permutation of genre has someone who wants to read it. That’s one of the glories of self-publishing - as a writer you can hit that special niche, no matter how small or restricted it is. The big commercial publishers, bound by the sheer economics of distribution and print runs and storage, can’t. They have to hit the broadest audiences possible in order to make a profit - which, unfortunately, is the bottom line for corporations. 

However - there is a disturbing sub-current swelling through the writing world. Instead of allowing the writer to create the story he wants, there are those urging that stories must glorify and showcase ‘diversity’ no matter if it suits the writer’s vision of his story or not. (Don’t get me wrong - I am in favor of diversity; it is a good thing, but only when it happens naturally and organically instead of being forced down writers/readers throats as a mandate.)

Neither do readers escape this dictate; they are very strongly urged to spend money which they might not have to buy books they might not be interested in and use time they might not have to read books by people they’ve never heard of - all in homage to the god of diversity. Reading is many things to all people, but in my opinion non-scholarly reading is for most an escape, a time of fantasy where I can go to a place untainted by the myriad complexities of the modern world. And I don’t think that’s wrong.

A nationally-known writing organization recently turned itself inside out and lost a number of members in the process for just this reason. Yes, there were things about the organization that could have been better, but the resolution could have been done better as well. One does not use a Howitzer to kill a mosquito, or level a building to fix a plumbing leak. Overkill is neither good nor practical. That, however, is just my opinion. Yours may differ.

So - as there are differences of opinion and style in the real world, so should there also be in the world of reading and writing. And, dare I add, in the gastronomical world. I wish everyone here the happiest and most enjoyable of Thanksgivings. Appreciate your families and delight in the traditional orgy of eating. May you even enjoy turkey if you like it - just don’t expect me to have any.

The Rabbit Hole Seduction

                                     by Janis Patterson

No matter what we write, we’ve all been there. We’re writing along happily, the scene is working, the tension is building, our characters are behaving the way we want them to for once and - boom! - suddenly you need a tiny little fact without which nothing works.

Sometimes you can skip over it and finish the scene, vowing to go back and fact-check later (and sometimes you forget, for which fans will inevitably ding you) but often if the action is to proceed as you want it to you need an answer, as it might change the action.

In a way research was simpler before the internet. A trip to the library or the encyclopaedia if you were fortunate enough to own one, or a phone call to some authority, and you felt safe. You had done your due diligence and could feel fairly secure that you knew more about whatever it was than the majority of readers.

It’s different nowadays. Everyone has access to the internet, and let’s face it, a lot of information on the internet is confusing, contradictory and sometimes just plain not true. What’s a curious writer to do?

Research, research and more research. Some things are pretty immutable and easy to find out - the date of a battle, for example, or the reaction between two common chemicals. It gets a bit dicey, however, when you get into more esoteric stuff, for example, when did metal-spring hoop skirts become indispensable to ladies’ fashions? It’s fairly easy to find out the date of their first release (England, 1855 is the best date I can find) but when did they cross the pond to become available to Southern belles? What was a common recipe for home-made ink during the 1860s? And my own personal bête noir, did the 1916 Jordan Sport Marine automobile have a self-starter or were they only available with the old-fashioned and very dangerous crank? (Aeons of research have never yielded a definitive answer, so like my betters I have taken refuge in weasel words, saying that my heroine’s machine is an ‘experimental model.’ However, once the book is released I fatalistically await some reader to excoriate me for not having the correct answer. Sigh.)

I am beginning to appreciate why so many writers are now choosing to do urban fantasy, pure fantasy, science fiction, etc. Their world, their rules.

There are two main problems with research - one is that it takes time from writing, but this can be countered with the absolute necessity for at least believable accuracy. And yes, accuracy is important. I point to a Regency romance in a contest I once judged where the hero reaches into his pocket and pulls out a fountain pen, which although primitive ones were first patented in the 1830s were not commercially available until the 1850s, some thirty years after the Regency. When I counted this faux pas against the writer that absolutely furious young woman wrote me back, demanding to know why, especially since it was an old fashioned pen and who would know the difference anyway? Double sigh.

The second problem with research is its seductivity. You flip over to the internet to find out the date (say) whalebone was first used in corsets or the chemical formula for gunpowder and three hours later you are engrossed in reading the life cycle of the water nymph (dragonfly larvae) without really knowing how you got there, since neither dragonflies nor nymphs (insect or mythological) have anything to do with your story. Seductive, indeed!

Unfortunately, there is no cure that I know of for such a predilection to wander off into the arcane pathways of interlocking knowledge. After years of trying to discipline myself I have given up and allowed my mind to dive down the rabbit hole and follow the seductive lure of unknown fields. At least, for a while. You never know when you might find a nugget of knowledge that will enhance your story, or even give you a new one. (Yeah, like we really need new story ideas to add to the 200+ year stockpile we already have, right?) Besides, it’s inevitable. There is just too much fascinating information out there. We’re doomed.

(And I apologize for any weirdnesses in formatting - this new Blogger upload interface and I are not getting along well together! I don't see why companies insist on changing things for the worse!)

A Matter of Perspective

 by Janis Patterson

 

I have decided that I am a different sort of reader.

On one of my booklovers’ lists it seems there is a constant discussion going on. This particular list happens to be about a very specific kind of historical romance, a genre I have always loved, but sometimes these discussions get very heated. The author involved is noted for her historical accuracy and therein lies the problem.

The current discussion is - as it usually is - about aristocratic snobbery and unconscious racism. Personally I don’t mind either in historical fiction, as the stories in question were written in the past about a time even further in the past, and that was pretty much the way things were then. I said the author was renowned for her historic accuracy, didn’t I? However, some members of the list keep repeating how they loathe those particular attitudes and how they think they taint the stories. Of course that is their right - those antique attitudes are and should be loathsome by today’s standards - but the stories weren’t written about today, today’s society or today’s mores. As they were first published so long ago they weren’t even written for today’s people. They are a story of their time - not ours.

When I open a book, I am entering someone else’s world. By going there I am a visitor and should understand that by being there I accept their world as it was then. If it becomes too upsetting to me, I close the book and leave. The same ethos applies if the book is sci-fi or paranormal or futuristic or even today’s plain (or perhaps not-so-plain) world. It is the world of that book, the world the author has created for it - not for me or any other reader. It is an discrete entity in and of itself, and we should treat it as such. We are mere visitors, observers - not residents.

To give this a more concrete example, I can think of no worse fate than to live full time in a tiny glass-walled treehouse set high up in the woods’ canopy and accessible only by a twisting, dizzying, exposed staircase. That said, however, I thoroughly enjoyed a two day holiday there and would not mind going back - but not for more than a day or two. It is not my world. I am a visitor.

It’s the same with books and movies, and TV, and other entertainments. I choose to go there, wherever ‘there’ is. I choose to stay there. It is different from my real life. If I don’t like it, I can leave by closing the book or turning whatever it is off. Implicit in my going there is my acceptance that it is the creator’s world, not mine; the creator’s thoughts and history, real or made-up, not mine. It was not created for me. I am a visitor, not a participant, and as such part of the artistic contract is to see the story through the author’s and characters’ eyes and beliefs - not my own. If all I cared about was my own, I should sit at home and stare at the wall.

You cannot apply today’s mores and ideals to the past. As someone famous once said, “The past is another place. They do things differently there.” The past is over and gone, and if it offends you don’t go there.

On Superwoman and Humanity

by Janis Patterson

Am I the only one tired of Superwoman? You know the kind of heroine I’m talking about - when challenged she can leap six feet in the air and take out half a dozen attacking bad guys with a symphony of martial-arts moves, all without mussing her hair or make-up. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of all kinds of esoteric knowledge and can solve a crime with a single piece of exotic evidence. Locked in a dungeon? She picks the lock with a hairpin, overpowers another gaggle of bad guys then goes home and cooks a gourmet dinner for her adoring stud-of-the-week.

Oh, there are other examples of Superwoman, some not as extreme but all redolent of the bad old days of the early feminist movement when average women were told they not only should be but were expected to be Superwoman.

Now I don’t want heroines to revert to the simpering, cloying wimps they were in the early days of the last century, incapable of much of anything except looking beautiful and allowing the hero to rescue them. They are just as unbelievable as Superwoman - and just as if not more annoying.

But - doesn’t there have to be some sort of a middle ground, one with which most people can identify? Of course there are extant examples in real life of both Superwoman and the wimp, but even their admirers admit they are rare.

I’ll admit I don’t like fantasy. Witches, shapeshifters, goblins, alternate worlds where the denizens have magical powers... they all leave me cold, and quite frankly I put both Superwoman and the incompetent wimp in that category of unbelievability. Now those of you who love fantastical stories, I wish you many joyous hours of reading and writing them... just don’t expect me to join you.

I prefer reality - at least, a reasonable simulacrum of reality. People whom you could know in everyday life, not the extremes. To me it is much more engaging to read about a heroine (or a hero, for that matter) who could be my next door neighbor - or maybe even me. Thoroughly human, with some skills others might not have but lacking others, yet all on a human scale. To me that is encouraging, heartening, something to strive for - that someone as ordinary as I can triumph in ordinary circumstances.

Maybe I should learn more about the denizens of fantasy worlds, get myself more in tune with Superwoman. Maybe not. I’m happy with ordinary fallible humanity. If they can rise above their very ordinariness and do great things, maybe I can too.

Who Are You Again?

 by Janis Patterson

As someone once said, it’s always something.

After decades - centuries - of respecting proper grammar, pronouns, tense, sentence structure, conjugations and all the other bits of pieces that comprise language and forms so much of communication, writers are being asked to learn a totally new - and distressingly flexible - set of personal pronouns.

Now there are people who are intent on messing up the concept of language. In a politically correct move some who believe they are more than one gender are not only using different pronouns for themselves, they expect others to use them as well. Some use ‘they’ referring to their singular selves. Some make up pronouns. Some commit even more unforgivable grammatical mayhem. One person interviewed calls itself ‘It.’

Whatever my personal feelings about these people are people have a right to live their lives as they see fit, as long as it’s legal. They can call themselves what they want to when they’re among their intimates, but who on earth would agree that they should be allowed to change the shape of the language?

Language is communication. Language conveys ideas and feelings and information and all kinds of things, but the basis of language is understanding. Both parties - the one speaking and the one listening - have to have a common ground, not only a knowledge of what the words they speak mean, but a certainty that they both know the same meanings.

For example, there are many languages in this world, and in each language there are many examples of beautiful writing. But - unless you speak that language, those writings are nothing to you. Someone could be reciting the most exquisite words in the world, but if you don’t know what they mean you hear nothing but polysyllabic babble. There is no common point of reference.

Now that might be something of an overdrawn example, but the principle is true. Language is shared communication.

Say someone wants itself to be referred to using ‘tym’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she,’ as in “Tym is my friend.” Or someone refers to itself as ‘they’ rather than ‘I,’ as in “they want to go to the mall” meaning that the speaker wants to go to the mall. Unless you are personally acquainted with this person, or know of its preferences, you won’t know what they’re talking about.

Language has rules. For example, ‘they’ is plural - not singular. ‘Tym’ is a made-up word, signifying nothing.

We are writers. Our job is to communicate, to share ideas and situations and information. If people don’t understand what we’re saying, we are not doing our job. And it will lose us readers. Another possible pitfall is that writing is forever, and the words that are currently trendy may be totally incomprehensible in a decade. Or less. Yes, language changes and mutates, but it is a natural process, not a fiat declared by a tiny minority, a minority that can’t even agree on which of their new words are right.

Again, people have the right to refer to themselves as they wish. They do not have the right to demand that others use those same words. There is no standardization to these new manufactured words/meanings, and the definitions are too fluid to last.

Call yourself what you want, but don’t mess with the language. Posterity - and those who believe in clear communication - won’t thank you if you do.

Should You Self Publish? Or Not?

 by Janis Patterson

While browsing on Facebook this morning (instead of working on my current novel, my bad!) I found a post asking writers what made them choose self publishing over traditional publishing. I just had to answer. By the way, my answer is specific to me, and is not intended as a dictum to anyone. To self publish or not to self publish is a decision only the individual writer can make.

Though I do still traditionally publish rarely (a dear friend is a publisher, and I love doing business with her) I chose self publishing because I hated the ‘writing by committee’ aspect of traditional publishing.

Think about it. Most of the major publishers won’t even look at a manuscript without the intervention of an agent, which means that your story must go through an agency’s first reader who will ‘suggest’ changes to be made before they will show it to the agent, so you do them. Then if all goes well the agent will ‘suggest’ changes to be made before offering representation, so you do them. The agent then shows the book to an editor at a publishing house, who (again if all goes well) will ‘suggest’ more changes, which if you do them will get your book handed to the acquisition editor, who will probably ‘suggest’ more changes before the book goes to the editorial committee, who – you guessed it – will ‘suggest’ more changes. Then the book gets a content editor, a continuity editor, a proofing editor – all of whom will suggest changes, which you do. (And this is a good-case scenario – your book can be shot down at any step of the process!)

Then – tah-dah! – in another 18 to 24 months your book is on the shelf. The only thing is, the book that comes out more than likely won’t resemble much of your original story. Writing by committee.

By contrast, in self-publishing I can tell my story as I want to and make sure that my story is the one the readers receive. I do hire editors and make my story as strong and good as it can be, but through the process it remains my story with no alien ideas or sub-plots or character changes grafted on to fit the whims of others. The basic bones of my story – if they are good – are not changed to suite the whims of those who determine if it should be published or not.

Make no mistake – self-publishing is a lot of work. Fiddly, picky but essential work. It’s not hard, though, and your story remains the story you wanted to tell – not a conglomeration of various peoples’ ideas. I have a friend – an accomplished and seasoned writer – who under a multi-book contract wrote a romance novel with a Montana rancher as the heroine and an insurance agent as the hero. I read it. It was a lovely book. Then she got a letter from her editor ‘suggesting’ that she change the locale from Montana to the Florida keys, make the hero a deep sea diver and the heroine a secretary. And that is not the worst tale I have heard of editorial re-writing!

Self publishing comes down to control. You control the story. You control the cover. You control the price and the distribution. You control whether it will be ebook or paperback or both. You control the timeline – no more waiting years for the book to come out. (Am I the only one getting the lead-in to the old Outer Limits tv show here?) You control the publicity – which you would most likely have to do with a traditional publisher anyway. Plus, so many traditional publishers limit you as to the number of book you can release in a year; that decision is now yours, which is wonderful for us fast writers. These days there are ways to get your book considered by libraries (impossible during the early days of self publishing) and foreign markets.

One drawback to self publishing is that it costs money – you need to hire editors; you need to hire a cover artist; you need to hire a formatter; you should buy ISBNs even though with some retail outlets that is not necessary. (I always say if you’re going to play with the Big Boys of publishing, play by their rules and conventions.) If you’re so inclined, you can learn to do all of this yourself – except editing. You always need another set of professional eyes on your book. Yes, there are companies – some legit, some the worst kind of money-grubbing vanity presses – who will do this for you. Some are kind of reasonably priced, some are extortionate. Personally I cannot think of paying a great deal of money to do what I can do myself, but then I was raised to do what I can do well and hire the rest out. If you do decide to go with a ‘helping’ company, do your due diligence.

As I said, self publishing does require a certain amount of outlay up front, but you can control how much. On the credit side, you will probably make more money than with trad publishing. Since I’ve been self publishing I sell a markedly fewer number of books than when I was traditionally published – but I’m making a lot more money. 60-70% of cover price sure beats 3-6% of net! I’ll take the money – and the control of my career!

Self publishing is not a decision to make lightly. Investigate, think about it and then do what is best for you. I have, and I love it!

The World Gone Upside Down

by Janis Patterson

I don’t know about you, but right now I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels. I didn’t realize The Husband and I did so many things, had so many meetings, went to so many organizations until they started cancelling one after the other like a cascade of dominoes. A simple trip to the grocery store became a frustrating expedition, where the shelves were empty and the store hideously crowded with people. I spent two days and many stores getting sufficient supplies for some elderly (90+ years old) members of our family, an exercise that was annoying and time-consuming. Some of the overreactions of the shoppers could almost be regarded as amusing – as in two grown men fighting over a package of toilet tissue.

Then today (I’m writing this on Monday evening) everything doubled, trebled, then went right off the ‘scary weirdness’ chart. Our mayor announced at 5 pm that beginning at midnight all bars and restaurants would be closed except for car-side delivery takeout – no dine-in allowed. Not only that, but our school district is closed. No restaurants, no schools, no… I have no idea what’s going to be forbidden next. They even canceled the iconic St. Patrick’s Day Parade, for Heaven’s sake!

I am not going to touch on politics, but I’m of two minds about the way this situation is being handled. Yes, this virus is serious, but is it enough of a threat for such draconian measures? I don’t remember this much hysteria for the H1N1 (aka swine) flu a couple of years ago. We cannot just do nothing, so we must do something, but are we doing too much?

For example, I fear that a lot of restaurants and small businesses – which operate on narrow margins in the best of times – will fold permanently with an extended enforced closing. Worse, their employees – most of whom work for minimum wage and live paycheck-to-paycheck – will suffer almost immediately. One of my restauranteur friends is providing bags of rice and beans for his employees – boring fare, but nutritious, and at least they will be able to eat. And my worries are not limited only to food service workers or small store clerks. Far too many people in our society have nothing put by for a rainy day and are dependent on receiving a regular paycheck. Now it seems the monsoon is about to rage around us and it’s too late for many to prepare.

And there are other, less immediate but more personal casualties. Next month I was to go to the American Research Center in Egypt International Conference in Toronto where, in a first for both ARCE and me, naming rights for three characters in a novel I would write especially for ARCE would be auctioned off as a fund raiser. The international publicity had already started when – because of the coronavirus – the conference was cancelled. The auction… who knows? It’s dead at the moment. There is always next year, but by next year it will be old news, all novelty gone, and who knows what will happen between now and then? Even if it comes back next year, it can never be the same. This could have been a breakout for me, and I grieve for its loss.

We must realize, though, that it is indeed an ill wind that blows no one good. Bars and restaurants are closed. Schools are closed. In many places gatherings of more than 50 people are forbidden. Social interaction (in person, at least) is discouraged. People are going to be pretty much stuck at home. So what are they going to do? You can only watch so much tv, play so many board games, do so many chores. What’s left, that will entertain and yet not expose you to the dangers of public places? Books. Especially ebooks, which can be ordered over the internet, meaning more sales for more authors. In the long run, perhaps something good can come from all this. If it is allowed – Amazon has already announced that it is focusing on immediately need supplies such as food and medicine, and that books are way down on their priorities. We can only hope they mean physical paper books and not electronic ones, which shouldn’t present any shipping difficulties. It is Amazon, though, so who knows?

However – to drag this subject kicking and screaming back to the writing of mysteries – it’s a rare situation that a writer can’t use in some fashion. Just think of all the plots that can spring out of this flirtation with real-life dystopia. In a few months I predict a flood of books with plots that can be traced back to our current situation.

I just wish they were fiction.