Macmillan and Amazon War by Morgan Mandel

I've been watching with interest the developments in book price wars. This one is a battle between Macmillan and Amazon. Macmillan's demanded higher prices for kindle, when apparently $9.99 is the highest Amazon would go.

Amazon pulled all the buy buttons from Macmillan books and was only selling books offered by third party vendors, none bought through Amazon itself.

Then, Amazon gave in under strong protest and decided it would agree to offer bestsellers at $12.99 to $14.99, under strong protest, saying Macmillan had a monopology over its own books.

I'm not sure what to think of this. In a way, it's a good idea for Macmillan to decide and stick to a price. That means authors will get compensated for their hard work, as well as other people involved in production and selling of books. Also, it sounds like Apple will be charging more for Ibook material than the going rates at most books at Amazon.

I actually dropped the kindle price for Killer Career to $3.99 to stay competitive in the ebook and kindle market.

Will the insistence on higher prices help or hurt authors? That's the question. In this poor economy, it's a good thing for books to be readily available at affordable prices. Still, these prices have dropped extremely low. Some authors give away their ebooks or kindles, while others offer them at $.99 or $1.99 in the hopes of attracting volume sales.

Will readers buy at the higher prices? Are publishers like Macmillan pricing themselves out of the market?
What's your take?

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/
Killer Career available at http://digital-bookshop.com/ , at Amazon and other venues.

Ordinary Sounds by Morgan Mandel

Going on midnight, I'm typing away at the computer, with the dog and DH already fast asleep. I hear a loud sound in the direction of the kitchen. My heart pounds. Then I identify the noise as the ice maker dropping ice into the refrigerator's ice bin.

I can be under the covers and hear faint knocking sounds. What is it? It turns out to be the furnace causing the warm air to blow through the vents.

Those are innocuous explanations for ordinary sounds. Now, what if I heard one of the doors creaking at night when the DH is already inside with me? That sound would make me want to grab my cell phone and call 911.

Can you name other ordinary sounds that can become menacing under certain circumstances? Or, maybe you've used one in a book.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com/
Killer Career now at http://digital-bookshop.com/ and Amazon.

Make Every Word Count

by Jean Henry Mead

I recall a workshop where the instructor impressed upon his students that each word committed to paper should pull its own weight. And that every unnecessary word needed to be culled from the plot.

Writers need to engage their readers, not simply enlighten and entertain them. Creating word images that readers can relate to is preferable to forcing them to fill in the blanks. A Hummer H2 conveys a much stronger image than having your protagonist ride to the rescue in an SUV.

Strong verbs are necessary to give one’s plot a dynamic, energetic tone. Words such as hurried, leaped and laughed as opposed to passive words like thought, imagined, mused or considered. And as we’ve all been told, stay away from the verb to be in all its forms because it’s the weakest of words.

Adverbs that end in –ly also weaken your prose. On the other hand, strong specific verbs give writing vitality. I’m reminded of my interview with A.B. Guthrie, Jr. who said, “The adjective is the enemy of the noun and the adverb is the enemy of damn near everything else. Writers use too many descriptive words." As for adjectives, author Lois J. Peterson once said, “One well-chosen adjective can be more effective than two or more, which used together might weaken the idea or image.”

Do we really need adverbs? Not unless it's impossible to come up with strong verbs, such as substituting rumbled instead of drove noisily. Cull the adverbs in your second draft and replace them with muscular verbs. As for adjectives, the rundown house can be rewritten as a hovel.

Word choices affect the plot’s pace. If every symphony movement maintained the same pace, the audience would either be exhausted or asleep before the finale. So writers need to think of themselves as conductors, controlling the pace with word choices, syntax and variety. Long sentences and paragraphs slow the pace and seem to be introspective while short, choppy sentences are much more dramatic and conducive of action scenes. So, in order to keep your reader reading, alternate your sentences and paragraphs in a variety of lengths.

Sentence rhythm is important so be sure to read your work aloud before committing it to a final draft. Some word choices bring a sentence to an abrupt halt and should be rewritten or replaced, along with all unnecessary words. The musical analogy is a good one because sentence flow is so important.

New Mysteries I'm reading by Christine Duncan

I love Sarah Graves' Home Repair is Homicide series so much that I barely finish the latest book in the series before I start looking for the next. I don't know exactly why--perhaps because her heroine, Jacobia (Jake) Tiptree is so real to me. The woman could live down the street.

Crawlspace, Graves' newest in the series is no exception to the rule. Jake is busy trying to figure out how to stuff insulation in her house (and striking a chord with this homeowner right there, since I also live in a drafty old place.) Her son is recovering from alcohol addiction and life is going on as normal, when a visiting true crime writer stirs things up by looking at a recent death in the area. Even then, Jake is not all that interested except....

See, this is my problem with reviews. I hate when they tell too much, you know? But suffice it to say, that Jake's adventures into mystery this time put both her son and herself in danger. Read this book!

Another recent read is Ghastly Glass a Renaissance faire mystery by Joyce and Jim Lavene. This is only the second in the series but it is already a favorite of mine.

Jesse Morton is writing a thesis about crafts in the Renaissance time period. She is researching them by apprenticing herself to various crafts folk at a Renaissance Village in Myrtle Beach. Previously, she had been apprenticed to a basket weaver (Wicked Weaves is the first book in the series.) and this time she is returning at Halloween for a short apprenticeship with a glass blower. Those folks who like to read seasonal mysteries in order to get in the mood will love this one which really makes you feel as though it is Halloween. And regular mystery series lovers will like the character of Jesse and her boyfriend, Chase Manhattan and want to keep reading their adventures. I can't say enough about this series.

So what have you been reading lately? I'm always looking for a good mystery.

Christine Duncan is the author of the Kaye Berreano mystery series. Book two of the series, Safe House was recently released by Trebleheart books.

EVOLUTION OF DETECTION

trench coats, fedoras
by Earl "Ah, the good old days" Staggs

Back in the day, when Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Mike Shayne needed information to catch the bad guys, they wore trench coats, fedoras and used up a lot of shoe leather. They scoured the mean streets for clues, twisted the arms of snitches, romanced willowy blondes, bribed bartenders and hotel desk clerks, all in search of information that would lead them to the solution of a crime.

Not any more. Not if you watch mystery and crime shows on TV.

No longer do our heroes have to plead for warrants to examine phone records, wade through years of newspaper articles, get witnesses to spend hours going through mug books, or sweet-talk an old girlfriend at the Department of Motor Vehicles to trace a license plate number.

All it takes now is a few keystrokes.

Nearly every crime show has a computer wizard/master hacker equipped with a million dollars worth of equipment who can come up with any information on anyone in any corner of the globe in seconds.

Take “Criminal Minds” for instance. Approximately every five minutes, one of the profile team calls Garcia, their mistress of the microchip, and the conversation goes something like this:

“Hey, babycakes, I need a listing of all twenty-five-year-old redheaded women who spilled beer on their yellow dress while on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean in 1983.”

“Sure thing, sweet cheeks. Give me a second. Ah! Here it is. There were three of them and they all live within a mile of where you are right now.”

NCIS has two of them. Both McGee and Abby, with flying fingers, can key up any information from any data base on the planet. Need the criminal record or military history of a suspect? How about high school yearbook pictures, a listing of any call made or received on any cell phone, or every home address the suspect ever had.

You’ll find someone like them on all the popular crime shows these days.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating my examples a bit, and I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with any of it. I watch those shows and enjoy them. After all, with the technology available today, there’s no reason not to use it to catch the bad guys.

But somewhere inside me, I miss the trench coats, fedoras and hard-drinking, two-fisted gumshoes whose technology was as simple as a punch in the mouth or a slug from a .45.

Earl Staggs

Some Thoughts on Getting Published

Once upon a time I struggled with the concept of "getting published." I went the recommended route, queried agents, and sent my manuscripts off to those who were interested. I soon learned there was a lot of luck and timing involved in going from manuscript to printed book.

The other day I looked back at the file for my first mystery novel written in the modern era (which means leaving out one I wrote while in college and another penned in the mid-sixties). I had a good agent and she got some nice rejection letters from several major houses. A Harper Collins editor said he couldn't get over the timeliness of the book (an end-of-the-Cold War story). He enjoyed it and found it "very much in the traditions of the thriller genre," but they were looking for books quite different from the genre as a whole.

Grove Weidenfeld found it "a competent and entertaining piece of work" but not the kind of novel they usually published. William Morrow said the "scenario was creepily plausible and nicely audacious," but they feared it might be out of date by the time it was printed. A Berkley Publishing Group editor thought it "a very well written thriller, but this genre is just too hard to sell in mass market at the moment. Maybe this would work well in hardcover."

The result was it didn't sell, the agent lost her fiction associate and decided to concentrate on non-fiction. After equally futile results with the next three manuscripts and the next three agents, I lowered my sights to the small press field. There I got a three-book contract for manuscripts number eight, nine and ten.

After problems in collecting royalties, I started the old agent search again with the next book. I found it more daunting now than back when I was peddling my earlier manuscripts. Being in my eighties, I decided I did not have the time or the patience to continue knocking my head on the brick walls that adorned the New York landscape.

So I lowered my sights another notch and went with a micro-press. I now have five books in print (actually, the first three are "out of print" but will be back in as soon as the current inventory is exhausted). With my bona fides firmly established, I know if I write a decent book it will be published.

Will it be on the New York Times (or anybody else's) bestseller list? Not unless Lady Luck does an about face and gets me a movie deal or some other highly unlikely miracle occurs. Am I worried about my "writing career?" Hardly. I've been a career writer since I got my first job as a newspaper reporter in the fall of 1947 (for the full story see Reflection on the Writing Life - My 60-year odyssey with the written word.

Do I recommend my path to publication for others? Were I forty years younger, I might keep plugging away at the seemingly impenetrable agent barrier for a little longer. But if you've experienced the same long-term frustration that I have, it just might be worth a try. I know all the cautions advanced by organizations like Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. I'm secretary of an MWA chapter and president of a SinC chapter.

The books get great reviews from all kinds of review sites. Some have won awards, though not the big ones that require a major publisher or extensive name recognition. But I'm viewed as a competent professional by my peers and a creator of exciting books by my readers. What more could I ask?

Chester Campbell

Mystery writing heroes by Vivian Zabel

Since another icon of the mystery genre has left our world, I decided to honor some of the mystery writing heroes who directly or indirectly affected my writing: Phyllis A. Whitney; Mary Stewart; Tony Hillerman; and Robert B. Parker. Three have died, and one still lives but no longer writes.

Phyllis A. Whitney passed away on February 8, 2008 at the age of 104. For more than 80 years, she wove her storytelling magic — in her lifetime garnering numerous awards and worldwide acclaim for her books. A winner of the prestigious Grand Master award for lifetime achievement from the Mystery Writers of America, and an author the New York Times once called the "Queen of the American Gothics," Phyllis A. Whitney was and remains one of my favorite mystery and romantic suspense writers. Reading her books during my teens and adult years had an impact on my writing.

"It's hard to come up with a 'quote' about myself. Perhaps I could say that most of my writing has been concerned with understanding between people. Whether of different races, or religions, or even in the same family I tried in my books... to deal with the subject of understanding the other fellow."
-- Phyllis A. Whitney

Mary Stewart published about one book a year from 1955 until 1980, each becoming a best seller. She was at the height of her popularity in the 1960s and 1970s when many of her suspense and romantic novels were translated into many languages. I read every one of her books I could lay hands on during the same years I read Phyllis Whitney's.

Stewart is considered one of the founders of the romantic suspense sub-genre, blending romance novels and mystery. The author has lived for many years in Scotland, where she divides her time between Edinburgh and the West Highlands.

Mary Stewart has always been hesitant to categorize her novels, uncomfortable naming them thrillers, mysteries, or romances. She says, "I'd rather just say that I write novels, fast-moving stories that entertain. To my mind there are really only two kinds of novels, badly written and well written. Beyond that, you cannot categorize...Can't I say that I just write stories? 'Storyteller' is an old and honorable title, and I'd like to lay claim to it."

Anthony "Tony" Grove Hillerman was born on 27 May 1925, the youngest of the three children of August Alfred and Lucy Grove Hillerman. The Hillermans farmed and ran the crossroads store in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. Even though Tony was originally from Oklahoma, I never had the opportunity to meet him in person until the Red Dirt Book Festival, October 2003, in Shawnee, Oklahoma. I attended all his sessions, stood in line to get my books autographed, and listened as he spoke at the banquet. Several times he visited with me during the course of the two-day festival. A friendly and gracious man, he signed one of my books with a personal message, giving me a keepsake that I will forever treasure.

One thing he shared with us that weekend, some people around him in the publishing business considered him a prude because he didn’t include sexual scenes. One person told him the closest he came to sexual tension was to have a man and woman shake hands.

Many people have written about Tony over the years, and since his death, but one article that best explains his books is an article by the author himself: “Behind the Books” by Tony Hillerman. I advise anyone and everyone read that essay.

Anthony Grove Hillerman, writer, born May 27 1925; died October 26 2008.

Then earlier this week, the world learned we lost another leading mystery writer: Robert B. Parker. I blogged about him on Brain Cells & Bubble Wrap Tuesday, right after I heard about his death.

Robert Parker revitalized and brought life back to the hard-boiled mysteries. I've read most his books, and I enjoyed some more than others. I'm a fan of Spenser (loved Hawk) and Jesse Stone, and always will be.

Yes, we still have some marvelous models to follow as we write mysteries, such as Carolyn Hart, Jordan Dane, Tess Gerritsen, William Bernhardt, and many more, but those we've lost will remain as pioneers in our craft.

Vivian Zabel
Brain Cells & Bubble Wrap
4RV Publishing