Escaping Winter

I’m escaping winter in my California mountain village. So I’m looking for a furnished rental place of some kind in Ventura, California.

It’s not so easy because I want to bring my two cats along. Landlords have had bad experiences, and I understand that.

Since I grew up in northern Ontario, I’m well aware this is baby cold. Nonetheless, it bothers me. I’m also looking forward to bright lights, a choice in restaurants, and places to go after dark. Like most villages, everything shuts down here after dark. And there are no streetlights. Sometimes I get tired of my own company, I must admit.

Sooner or later, my plan is to move to Ventura.

Ventura is warm and sweet and there’s somewhere to go after dark.

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I’ve made a lot of friends on the California coast through Sisters in Crime. Moving means taking a look at the books I need in my life. I’m a fast reader and go through books way too fast. I’m always scrounging for something to read. Some of my books I want to keep, but which ones?

I mostly read fiction when I read actual books. I read nonfiction online, not that that makes a lot of sense. Since I write crime fiction, the fiction I read is—no surprise—crime fiction. But I’ve collected paperback and hard-bound reference books on police procedure, police science, and forensics. Those I keep.

Most crime fiction novels I read once. Some of them I read all the way through and enjoy. Those I pass on to my mystery reader pals at Sisters in Crime Bakersfield meetings. I go to writers conferences and there are always books available and books for sale. I’m looking at my six book shelves now.

I’m not going to throw out the dictionary my parents bought me when I went away to university, or the Norton Anthology I used in my first English classes. This is where sentiment and nostalgia creeps in.  This must be suppressed ruthlessly. I don’t dare to go through the boxes of photos because of the avalanche of emotion.

When I was young and foolish, I thought that having books on my shelves told the world that I was smart. I don’t care anymore whether people think I’m smart.  That’s a freedom to put books in other people’s hands who will appreciate them now.

Some are going to the English teacher at the nearby correctional institute. Many inmates are poor readers, and using these books as teaching material makes me feel good about giving them away. Our nearest library is 18 miles away. Some will go to the Friends of the Library Sale.

I’m finally giving up my Guide to Literary Agents 2005. Some books don’t have any value to anyone.

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You might be curious about the crime fiction novels I've written . Payback is set in the village where I live. The others are set in glitzy Santa Monica.

A sequel to Payback, titled The Most Dangerous Species  is moving slowly through the publication process.  Sign up here for my yearly newsletter and I will notify you when it is released.
 

 

Why Readers May Not Like Your Books by Mar Preston

Did anybody sit down and draw like Michelangelo after a few tries? Play like the master cellist Pablo Casals? Till his death at 96, Casals practiced every day “because I feel as though I’m making improvements.” Don't give up if you're a new or aspiring writer.

You get better at it the more you write. No one else brings to your manuscript the same life experiences that color the characters, setting, and plot that you are writing. Your story is important.

Don't give up.

 

Liking a book--or not--is subjective.  It may be something as simple as the setting is a place where a reader may have broken up with an old girlfriend. Your reader picks up your book and the first five pages remind him of heartbreak. That is not a judgment on your book.

Your book description may have conveyed the impression this was a light-hearted “cozy” featuring cats and an amateur detective. Instead your book is really noir, dark in tone, and not something your reader is in the mood for. Again, not a judgment on your book.

Your reader may be the kind that reads only a few books a year and may face your book with many competing agendas for his time. Just because you read dozens of books a year and are in the habit of reading, too many others aren’t. They’re TV watchers, or gardeners, or like to hang out with the family in their leisure time. 

Another book may have taken precedence. All this publicity over Harper Lee’s new book may have compelled your reader to take another look at To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Your first five pages may have started slow. There’s no zing there to keep the reader turning pages and to get them away from the TV.

A speaker, at one of the first writer’s conferences I went to, said when you’d written a million words you’d be published. I’d written about 5000 at that point so you can imagine how those words resonated. Now when writers no longer have to win their way past the bottleneck of agent and publisher to publication, these words may no longer to true in one sense.  You can publish your second draft, without the advice of an editor, critique group, or proofreaders. Your mother loves it. That’s good enough.

The reason readers may not like your book is that you may not be at the top of your game yet, sad to say. Your next story, or your next novella or full-length piece of crime fiction may be the one that grabs notice. 

Sometimes it’s perplexing to look at two books side by side and wonder why one succeeds and another doesn’t.  It’s all subjective (when you hit all the high points that are currently popular in your genre.) 

The important thing is to honor your own voice, to keep going when the shadows creep in and darken your optimism.  Keep going when the most published author in your critique group, the one with the most insistent loud voice, tells you to make your heroine a hero, rewrite the ending, or just give up on this story. Don’t do it. Persevere.

If you have completed a manuscript that has a beginning, middle, and end, with a plot that makes sense, characters that are alive and engaged with each other, and a colorful setting—whatever else is wrong with it can be improved. 

If your spirits are sagging, along with the middle of your story, don’t give up. Take an online writing course, find a critique partner, trust a friend who loves reading your genre. If you’re ready to listen and learn, and take criticism to heart, there are techniques you can learn to improve your writing.

I know a little about writing mysteries and the craft of telling stories. You might check out my eBook series on “Writing Your FirstMystery.”

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.

Writing Your Own Style Sheet - Mar Preston

Not knowing any better when I began writing my series set in Santa Monica, I called this document a Character Roster. I’ve always loved theater programs listing the characters and the actor playing the role. Fiction writers struggle with many aspects of plot and story, one of them keeping track of our characters and settings.

The Character Roster is a simple idea, but it will save you a lot of agony, searching back and forward through your manuscript, scratching your head and trying to remember what you called the pharmacist your detective visited to nail down the victim’s timeline. Now he needs to go back to the pharmacist. What did you call him?  Look it up in the Character Roster.

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A Style Sheet is more advanced.  A style sheet is documents the style standards and practices of a publisher of newspapers, books, or magazines. If you were to write for them, you’d know to ask for one before you submitted your piece. I wouldn’t have, so here’s a tip.

A traditional publisher to may adhere more or less strictly to the Chicago Manual of Style and your local weekly follow the Associated Press’s guide. Suffice to say there are many other style manuals for specialty publications.

Style sheets offer the publication's guide to spelling, punctuation, and capitalization practices so you can turn in a manuscript consistent within itself as well as match the style of the publication.

A style sheet can help you as the writer, as well as potential beta readers, and any editor you may hire to develop consistency and reduce errors in story details.

Make your own style sheet

You can make this reference document as simple or complicated as you like. Working simply, you’d list in alphabetical order on a sheet of lined paper (or spreadsheet or word processing document)  any odd spellings or words that you make up as you go along. Stick in place names for example, if you’re writing a mystery set in Wales.  

Use this also to keep track of odd spellings or words that you make up, especially if you're writing fantasy or paranormal. If your beta readers or editor pauses to make a decision over a word or grammatical construction, their attention has been jarred loose from the smooth flow of the story.

Make decisions.

Serial comma or not? Em dash or parentheses? Numerals for all numbers greater than nine or will your cut-off be ninety-nine?

Decide on the use of quotation marks and/or italics, especially for unusual words, or words used for emphasis. If you don’t know common usage for quotation marks and italics, this is the time to look it up and professionalize yourself. Writing down the differences will embed it in your brain.

Time to learn the basic rules of capitalization as well. For example, “seeing the sergeant” and seeing Sgt. Fields.”

List words in foreign languages that you’re using and how to spell them.

What belongs in your style sheet is anything unusual that the beta reader, editor, or copy editor should know as they are reading. Anything that would make them stop and say "What?"

If you’re a plotter you may enjoy this task. A seat-of-pantser may not want to slow down until the first draft is complete. Working on one before that point might get in the way of the pantser’s feverish creativity.

I do urge you, nonetheless, to set up the Character Roster. You may find you’ve referred to an incidental character as Billy, Bobby, and Bob. Get it right and your initial readers will thank you.

And your story will flow like honey when you send off your final manuscript wherever it’s going.

I'm curious if other mystery writers use this tool. Please let me know.

//www.amazon.com/Writing-Killer-Characters-step-step-ebook/dp/B00UXLO91M?ie=UTF8&keywords=mar%20preston&qid=1464630132&ref_=sr_1_4&s=books&sr=1-4