Writing for Seniors

I write senior sleuth novels because there’s a growing market for retirees who enjoy  reading about characters in their own age group. I was intrigued years ago by Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, who were wise and introspective, but never seemed to have any fun.

That’s not true of today’s seniors who are less inclined to retire to their rocking chairs than previous generations.

The late Pat Browning, who wrote Absinthe of Malice, said: “A St. Martin's editor gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten: ‘Be careful not to turn your characters into cartoons.’ I try to picture older characters as they are--the same people they always were, only older. This is especially true when it comes to romance and sex. For all the jokes about senior sex, it's a very real part of senior life, and it's no joke to those lucky enough to have a romantic partner late in life.”

I agree. Not unlike Janet Evanovich’s character, Grandma Mazur, who is eccentric enough for a cartoon character, most seniors have the same interests they’ve always had, with the possible exception of roller blading and downhill skiing. On second thought, I once interviewed Buffalo Bill’s grandson Bill Cody, who learned to downhill ski at 65 to keep up with his much younger wife.

Mike Befeler writes what he calls “Geezer-lit.” His novels feature his octogenarian protagonist, “who is short on memory but has a sense of humor and love of life. He accepts his ‘geezerhood,’ solves a mystery and enjoys romance along the way.”

My second senior sleuth mystery, A Village Shattered, takes place in a California retirement village. The plot is generously sprinkled with humor but none of the seniors resemble cartoon characters, although a couple come close with a redneck Casanova and love starved widow. Diary of Murder followed and I portrayed the two 60-year-old protagonist widows as quite capable of traveling the country in their motorhome as well as chasing down killers who happened to be drug dealers. 

Another senior writer, Beth Solheim, spent years working in a nursing home and says she loves the elderly and their “humorous, quirky insight to life, love and longevity.”

Chester Campbell, an octogenarian, writes the Greg McKenzie Mysteries. He said, “My friends in this [age] bracket are out going places and doing things. Some, like me, continue to work at jobs they enjoy. I chose to use a senior couple in my books who are long married, get along fine, and do a competent job as private investigators. Greg, who narrates the books, is aware of his limitations from age and makes up for physical shortcomings by outsmarting his adversaries. My hope is to dispel some of the absurdity of the stereotypes about seniors that are all too familiar. Like the old song says, "Anything you can do I can do better."

Like so many other novelists, I write what I enjoy reading. My readers are mainly retirees and baby boomers who number over 78 million. Some 8,000 boomers are moving into the senior column every day, the fastest growing potential book buying market on record.

We’re experiencing the graying of America. What better age group to write about and for?

~Jean Henry Mead

A Little Marketing Music Please

A guest blog by Pat Browning

I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just when I was ready to write a few words on marketing, Vickie Britton’s new mini-ebook, Writing and Selling a Mystery Novel: A Simple Step-by-Step Plan, fell into my hands.

She also writes fiction. Vickie and her sister, Loretta Jackson, have co-authored more than 30 novels, most of them mysteries, mystery-romances, and westerns. Besides print editions, many are available on Kindle.

Vickie’s new mini e-book is a blueprint for writing a mystery from start to finish. Her segment on marketing sums up in three rules: Get it finished; get it out there, get it to the right market. Please note: The first rule is
GET IT FINISHED!

Here’s an excerpt from the marketing segment, reprinted with Vickie Britton’s permission:

Why Most Books Don’t Sell

Yes, being a writer is tough, and it is a competitive market. But there are three rules that will greatly increase your odds of success.

■ Get it Finished

Most people don’t sell their novel for one simple reason: they never get it finished. They attend writer’s conferences and critique groups, talk about their project incessantly, and maybe even jot down a few ideas or chapters. But when it comes down to the wire, they don’t have a finished product to offer.

Half a book will never sell. True, when you get established you may be able to sell on the basis of a synopsis and three sample chapters, but at some point in time the editor is going to ask for the completed manuscript. You had better be ready and able to produce one. Usually, editors want completed manuscripts from new authors so that they know the writer can finish what he started. Once you’ve written a completed manuscript you've already eliminated over half of the competition.

■ Get it Out There

No manuscript has ever sold sitting in the bottom of a filing cabinet. Once you feel you've written the book to the best of your ability, get it circulating – by either querying an agent or sending it directly to a publisher.

■ Get it to the Right Market

Not only do you have to get your manuscript out there, but targeting the right market greatly increases your chances of a sale. If you have a mystery, don’t send it to a romance market. If you've written a police procedural, don’t send it to a tea cozy market. You'll get nothing but rejection. Study the publisher’s book list. You'll find that all publishers have a certain image they project to target a certain type of reader. They can vary greatly. Even if you have written the great American novel, the publisher won't change his publishing list for you.

■ Finding an Agent

This is the question authors get asked the most. No, it isn't necessary to have an agent in order to sell a book. An agent can help you reach larger publishing houses that don't accept unsolicited material, and they can help you get a better book deal once you have reached the stage where you want to sign multiple contracts. They can handle foreign rights for you and do all the bookwork.

On the downside, they charge up to 15 percent. So yes, you should try to get an agent if you want one. There are plenty of legitimate agents listed in the Writer’s Market. Another way to find a good agent is through word of mouth. Never pay a reading fee. Agents who ask for money up front make their living by charging fees, not by selling books.

■ Going Solo

If you either can’t get an agent to take you on because you're a new author or you simply don’t want one, you can query the editors at publishing houses yourself. Read their submission guidelines carefully and don’t try to change rules.

Guidelines can be found in the Writer’s Market, or by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to a specific publisher. Most editors want to see a synopsis and three sample chapters. The synopsis shouldn't be more than three pages. People disagree whether the outcome of a mystery should be revealed in the synopsis. I believe when selling a book you should tell how the story unfolds so the editor can get an idea of the plot’s plausibility. The sample chapters should be the first three chapters and not picked randomly from the book. If a publisher will accept a completed manuscript, then send the entire book.

***

Writing and selling a Mystery Novel: A Simple Step-by-Step Plan by Vickie Britton is available for purchase at Smashwords: http://tinyurl.com/4y75bt9 . It’s available in ten e-book formats.

***

About the Author:

A veteran traveler, Pat Browning's.globetrotting of the 1970s led to her work as a travel agent and correspondent for TravelAge West, a trade journal published in San Francisco. During the 1990s, she served as a newspaper reporter and columnist. Her mystery novel, Full Circle, first of her Penny McKenzie mystery series, was later republished as Absinthe of Malice. She's currently hard at work on the second novel in the series.

Absinthe of Malice

Pat Browning

by Jean Henry Mead

Pearl's a gem of a town in the midst of the fertile San Joaquin Valley. When a skeleton is discovered in a cotton field, a series of events unfold that unearth long-held secrets, including murder.

Reporters Penny MacKenzie and her friend Maxie Harper discover the old bones and it isn’t long before Penny is investigating Maxie's death.Was she murdered or the victim of a genetic allergy? Complicated relationships within the town include Penny’s mother’s love affair with the police chief, who is somehow involved in the mystery surrounding the skeleton.

Absinthe of Malice

The town’s founding father was also involved as well as his descendant, who, with his attractive wife, represent Pearl’s societal elite. An affair is discovered after the pillar of society's paramour is found dead, and Penny’s former boyfriend Watt shows up in the middle of the investigation after nearly a two-decade absence. 

A number of Pearl's residents get involved, including the newspaper's photographer, Maxie’s neighbor and  her former informant at the police department. Browning carefully profiles each character, leaving the reader wondering who's a suspect or who's an innocent bystander.

Because Pat Browning and I worked for the same small town daily in California’s Central Valley, and ate at the same Chinese restaurant, which is a setting in the plot, I have a special interest in the book (although I didn't know her at the time). The town of Pearl was patterned after the town where we both lived and the author certainly captures the essence of the agricultural area as well as its residents.

The story is fast-paced, skillfully woven and humorous, and keeps the reader wondering whether Penny will unravel the secrets or become the next victim. The author’s portrayal of a small town reporter is spot on, I’m pleased to say, and not the aggressive, obnoxious journalist usually portrayed on film.

I highly recommend Absinthe of Malice as a good read, and look forward to the second novel in the series.

A Compulsion to Write

by Jean Henry Mead

I wonder whether some of us are born with a compulsion to write. Many writers have created not only elaborate stories, while still in elementary school, but novels and three or four-act plays.

But why do we write?

Mignon G. Eberhart once said: “I write because I like to, sometimes hate to, but I have to write. I started when I was very young, almost as soon as I could put pencil to paper.”

Fellow mystery writer Lawrence Kamarck added: “I suppose I have a storyteller’s compulsion. I want to tell somebody what’s happening to all of us. I’m convinced nobody really knows but me. And because I want to keep the [reader’s] attention, I tell my story with as much force and drama as possible, within credible limits.”

Pulitzer winner A. B. Guthrie, Jr. told me during an interview that “the fun is having written well.” But he confessed that he didn’t enjoy the actual process of writing. “At the end of the day, I go back over it and say to myself, ‘By golly, that’s right, that’s right.’ And then I’m rewarded.”

So why do we write mysteries?

Ross MacDonald said: “Mystery stories have always interested me because they seem to correspond with life. They deal with the problems of causality and guilt that concern me.”

Loren D. Estleman wrote as an adolescent and sold his first novel at 23. He saw little of his parents because he spent so much time in his unheated, upstairs room, his only companion a typewriter. "I lived in my study and I didn’t have much of a private life,” he said. “It revolved around my writing . . .”

I like Estleman’s description of a mystery. “For me, a good mystery places story and character ahead of all else, yet never loses sight of the simple truth that in order to be a mystery, a question must be asked. It needn’t be a whodunit, and might be something as simple and maddening as why the murdered man had three left shoes in his closet and no mates. If the writer has done his job well, the reader will forget the question as the story draws him in. But there had damn well better be a mystery involved if he’s going to call it one.”

I pulled an aging copy of Mystery Writers Handbook from one of my book shelves and found the following quote from the editor, Lawrence Treat:. “Great ‘mysteries are great novels, like Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities and The Scarlet Pimpernel. And they’re clearly mysteries.”

I then asked my fellow Murderous Musings blog team members why they write mysteries. Ben Small, during one of his more serious moments, had this to say:

“I write mysteries and thrillers because I love the high stakes competition between good and evil, the uncertainty of justice, and the suspense of the ticking clock as the protagonist puzzles out a solution. Good stuff, escaping into a make-believe puzzle-world where I push the reader to beat me to the solution.”

Beth Terrell said that she loves the fact that the detective puts his own life at risk to protect others. She also loves the fact that “the good guy always wins--or almost always--even if it’s at a terrible cost. I feel like mysteries work on so many different levels. They are ripping good stories, thought-provoking puzzles, and wonderful vehicles to write about real human problems—things that matter. They’re a challenge to write; a good mystery or thriller has to do all the things a literary novel does and weave a gripping plot as well.”

Pat Browning concluded that a mystery is the oldest form of storytelling--with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Sometimes there's a moral, sometimes it's a cautionary tale. It reassures us that good triumphs over evil. It satisfies our need to know that everything turns out all right in the end. Contemporary mysteries often have a romantic angle, and a humorous twist In short, the mystery offers something for every reader.