Why are readers so angry these days?

Yes, this is right on the heels of my last Murderati blog post, about whether I should pull the plug on the internet, followed by the post by Alafair Burke of being stalked online by an obnoxious woman. But I can’t help blogging again on the problems that come with being so accessible to readers online. The reason I can’t get off the subject is this situation, which I mention over on my own blog.

It turns out that some of my readers are angry (again), and they have no qualms about letting me have it with both barrels. This time, it’s nurses who are up in arms about my book, The Bone Garden, because it focuses squarely on the contributions of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The story takes place in 1830, when Holmes is a medical student, and in the tale, he gets the first inkling that doctors’ dirty hands are linked to childbed fever. “What about Florence Nightingale’s contributions?” say the annoyed nurses. “By ignoring her, you’ve revealed that you don’t value nurses’ contributions to medicine. Don’t you know that Nightingale’s observations during the Crimean War changed hospitals forever? Why is your book only about doctors?”

I try to patiently answer the emails, pointing out that the Crimean War was in the 1850s, a good twenty-four years after my story takes place, so for my characters to mention Nightingale would make them, oh, psychic. I also point out that Holmes was in America and Nightingale was an English nurse, so the two of them probably wouldn’t have known each other anyway. I point out that Holmes presented his groundbreaking paper on infectiousness in 1843, before anyone in America had heard of Nightingale. But while I’m trying to be reasonable and patient with these charges, I’m also aware that my blood pressure has shot up, and another writing session has been torpedoed.

All because a few readers are irritated and aren’t shy about letting me know it.

I’ve blogged about other examples of angry readers. There was the reader who told me I was showing my ignorance when I referred to Aphrodite as the goddess of love, because any educated person knew the goddess of love was Venus. There were the pit bull and Doberman owners who took me to task for using their beloved breeds as scary dogs in my stories. There are readers who tell me I clearly hate men (because the men are so mean in my stories) and that I hate women (because my female victims are so viciously attacked). And on and on. The question is, why do these readers get so worked up about stories that are merely fiction?

I’ve tried to analyze the reasons readers get angry. Most of the time, it seems to result from the fact readers are quick to personalize some element in the story. They think the author is insulting them in particular. They see it as a specific attack on their worth or their profession or their philosophy. And if an author makes a factual error (as we all do), the reader feels empowered by his own superior knowledge and feels compelled to let the author know it.

As a reader, I’ve read plenty of novels where I spotted factual mistakes, but I’ve never felt the need to tell the author he’s an idiot. I’ve read a number of novels that I felt were poorly written, but I’d just shrug and move on. I can’t remember any instance where a novel made me angry at the author. Where does this anger come from, and is it endemic to today’s society? If people are getting this riled up about something as trivial as a novel, what are their lives like at home? Are they insulting their spouses and kids? Are they screaming at their bosses?

I suspect that the nasty letters we writers receive are just a reflection of generalized anger about everything these days. It’s not hard to find angry people. Just check out any online election news article or political forum, and take a look at the comments. There are people engaged in name-calling and insults. There are people demanding guillotines or firing squads for the opposition. On both sides of the aisle, you’ll see calls to either “eat the rich” or “eat the poor.” You can’t find much moderation, because it’s not newsworthy. And when you turn on the news, you’ll find flushed, bug-eyed commentators yelling at the camera, spittle flying.

I guess I should be relieved that all we writers have to deal with are emails from a few pissed-off readers.

Have people always been this angry, or is this something recent? Is it a result of our wired culture, where all it takes is a mouse click on “send” and the object of your derision instantaneously hears your unvarnished rage? Please, can we go back to old-fashioned letter writing, when people got a chance to calm down before they actually sealed the envelope and licked the stamp?

I’m traveling today, so can’t respond to comments. But I’d love to hear from other writers what sorts of things have made your readers angry enough to let you know about it.

“Because Kait is worth the truth . . .”

by Pari

I remember when I heard about Kaitlyn Arquette’s murder. It was 1989 and I worked in PR at St. Joseph Healthcare Corporation. My office was just a few blocks from the gas station where Kaitlyn was shot in the back of the head. Hell, I’d gotten gas there, had parked on the same stretch of crappy real estate where her car came to rest after being run off the road.

The murder was too close somehow. Too unthinkable. How could this 18-year-old, beautiful, bright girl be killed like that? It also sat horridly in my heart because one of my good friends still lived with the unresolved questions surrounding her sister’s murder more than a decade before.

Two young women, alone on a dark night, each murdered in cold blood. And no one could explain why.

In Kait’s case, after a few months the police claimed the murder was a random drive-by. But for some reason, the questions surrounding Kait’s murder didn’t go away. People I knew and respected whispered about police cover-ups, insurance scams, Vietnamese gangs, witness intimidation. In the newspapers and on television, Kait’s mother, Lois Duncan, talked about uncovering forensic evidence that refuted the idea that the murder could possibly have been random . . . or a drive-by.

A prolific and award-winning YA author, Duncan wrote a book in 1992 that cast serious doubt on the investigation and its conclusions. She did the national media circuit, verbally sparring with reps from the Albuquerque Police Department and the DA’s office. (Robert Schwartz was the DA at the time.) Those appearances on Good Morning America, Unsolved Mysteries, Sally Jessy Raphael and Larry King breathed new life into the investigation . . . for a little while.

Kaitlyn Arquette isn’t front-page news anymore. The corner on the busy street near Albuquerque’s downtown looks as innocuous as ever.

And more than 20 years later, Kait’s family remains convinced the shooting was absolutely NOT a random drive-by. Is this irrational grief? Are they deluding themselves?

The police still stand by their investigation and conclusions. Are they right? Or was there malfeasance that should be looked at anew?

I don’t know. But I think that there are too many valid unanswered questions. I also know that the Arquettes didn’t start out as conspiracy nuts. They were just a regular family not angry at or suspicious of the police. Through the years, with reason, they became disillusioned.

Lois and I have known each other tangentially for years – one-to-two degrees of separation. We reconnected more recently on Facebook. Two weeks ago she told me that someone had set up a Kaitlyn Arquette channel on Youtube. You can watch some of the media clips there and judge for yourself.

As a parent, my heart aches for the Lois Duncan’s continued pain at the loss of her daughter. As a mystery writer who basically has tremendous faith and respect for law enforcement, I can’t ignore the questions Lois, her family, and credible private investigators have raised.

Decades ago when Larry King asked Lois what she possibly hoped to accomplish by keeping the investigation alive, she answered simply that her Kait deserved the truth.

She does.
My friend’s family does.
Everyone does.

So, look at the website and media clips. If by some strange coincidence, you have information on this case, please contact Lois here. Who knows? Maybe you know more than you think.

And for discussion today . . .

Do you have good examples of police investigations? Detectives that deserve a shout-out for the work they’ve done?
Do you have examples in your own life of investigations that ended with only more questions? Or that were abandoned before they should have been?

How to break in to non-fiction / fiction… a basic primer…

by Toni McGee Causey

You know I love you, my beloved ‘Rati, right? I do, more even than frozen chocolate M&Ms, and that’s like a whole freaking Grand Canyon of love, mkay?

But today? Today the words, they are flowing. I had a breakthrough and it’s rocking and as much as I love you, I’m going to post something I posted elsewhere. [I apologize in advance to our non-writer READER commenters… this one is so business related, you will likely be bored. I promise something fun for you next time.] A handful of you have seen it, but it’ll be new to most of you and I’d appreciate your help fleshing it out even farther. Further? Farther? Ugh. I iz a riter.

Anyway, it’s a how-to, as mentioned in the title. It’s not intended to be all-inclusive. There are books written on these subjects which still don’t manage to cover everything, but you can look at this as a sort of check-list of things you can do to get started without shooting yourself in the foot.

That shooting yourself in the foot? Just happened to a guy who wrote to me this week. I didn’t know him, never met him, didn’t have a clue why he was writing to me because he launched into pitching his non-fiction book and asked me to visit his website and read his excerpts and then I could just call or email him back with an explanation of what he needed to do next. Hello? Did this Speshul Snowflake save my life at some point? Donate a kidney to me when I wasn’t paying attention? No, no he did not. It was the casual “you don’t have anything better to do than to see my genius” attitude that rankled. So… on the off chance that he and I had met somewhere and I, in some state of amnesia volunteered to take him to raise and coddle and read his stuff… asked him if we had met. Or knew each other from online? And he assured me that no, we hadn’t met, because I would know him–he’s the guy who looks like [insert fairly famous TV star here]. And that, apparently, was supposed to be reason enough for me to stop my own work to do his.

I did not haul out the big guns. I want freaking brownie points for that. Because seriously, he didn’t even bother to find out what I wrote, much less read it. I am so not the person to pitch a non-fiction book to. And the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became because he’s going to keep writing to authors, thinking what he was doing was a great idea, a fabulous way to break in. What he’s really doing is marking himself as someone (I am being polite here) who doesn’t realize how the business works and even though I was actually intrigued by the title and tagline of the book he pitched, you couldn’t put enough chocolate covered strawberries in front of me to get me to read it now. And if someone is obnoxious in the way they ask me to read, I will be cranky.

You really really don’t want me to read your stuff when I’m cranky.

Besides… I’m not an agent. I’m not an editor. I am just a writer, like any other writer, with a secondary business I help run (construction) and family to tend to. I’ve also promised other people reads–some are people I owe huge favors to because they’ve read mine, some are waiting for blurbs and others who are waiting for feedback (the latter being close friends for whom I am willing to leash the cranky).

The thing is, I was once unpublished and people helped me. I’d like to help. I hope that some of the blogs I’ve posted fall into that category, and I’ve read for contests and taught classes and try to give back at conventions. I try to find those who are standing on the fringes, terrified as I once was, and pull them into the group so they can start meeting people. I’ve read and referred people to agents and I’ve even sent an email to an editor when I knew she was looking for something specific and I had just read that very thing and thought it was wonderful and she might just think so, too. (That has happened maybe twice.) I *do not* do that frequently. For one thing, if you are constantly bombarding people, no one listens and secondly, that’s not my job. My job is to write. I do help, when I can, because I really love seeing people succeed.

There are rare times I will read someone’s unpublished manuscript, but it’s happened occasionally. (a) they win a contest where I’ve given away a read. I read one recently like this for a contest for donations when Nashville flooded… and CP Perkins won and her voice and story were refreshing and smart and delightful and I was very happy to read. (b) a referral from a friend I dearly trust who either has blackmail material on me and who is so fired up over someone else’s manuscript, I am curious and (c) people who comment regularly in the comments section that I’ve come to know and like and… yet, even then, I warn them about the cranky. (Look, I’ve inadvertently made people cry–men and women–and that’s when I thought I was being helpful. You have to understand that I came out of the screenwriting world, where there is no such thing as a gentle critique.) I will never ever ever, did I mention never? read a complete stranger’s stuff just because they sent an email. I have no way to know the crazy on the other side of that email, and honestly, there are legal ramifications involved that are too painful to be worth the risk.

Okay… wow, for someone who wasn’t going to post much, I ended up ranting.

Still… you’ll see “networking” down below as one of the ways to get feedback and build relationships, which can sometimes help. Sometimes, as in occasionally. Not all of the time. Maybe even rarely. Don’t count on it. Lots of other ways to the end of the rainbow, etc. I believe in networking, but I also believe in respecting the other person’s time and commitments. Better than networking, though, is just being a good reader / blog commenter / convention participant / fun person. That will make you memorable in a good way.

Here’s what I’d ask of you today–and I’m posting this question above the very long blog post that’s about to follow, because many of you won’t need or want to read the whole thing, but it’ll be there for those who do. Many of you published writers will have a lot of other tips, though, and I would greatly appreciate it if you would:

1) tell me other tips on breaking in, fiction or non-fiction (flash-fiction success stories, for example)

2) tell me any books or classes that you’ve taken that were pivotal in your ability to break in

3) online resources? websites? blogs? Please feel free to include your own if you have writers’ resources listed there.

*****If you have a question not covered–and as long as this gigantic post is, I’m sure there’s plenty more–please ask in the comments and I–and hopefully some of the other ‘Rati–will endeavor to answer. Keep in mind this is just my perspective. Your mileage may vary.

(Also, check out at the very bottom the fantastic class Alex is teaching in a couple of weeks.)

And now, I’m off to enjoy the words flowing. Meanwhile, here is a very long piece about how to break in:

How do you get started writing for pay, for both non-fiction and fiction?

I’ve been asked the above many times it’s a great question. What makes it difficult to answer is that every single person asking is at a different stage/level of writing, so there’s no “one size fits all” answer that will apply. Even so, I think there are a number of things a new writer can do in order to jump into this vocation. I really wish someone had broken some of this down for me, oh-so-many years ago. In honor of those questions and in light of the fact that I just realized I’ve been publishing for 25 years this year (in May), here are a few things (and this is not a complete, definitive list yet) that I think might benefit a new writer to do and/or think about.

1) Do you absolutely NEED to earn money FAST with writing? If you’re going to spend extra time doing something, MUST it earn money in order to makes ends meet?

Now, it might surprise you that I ask that question first, but I want to get this concern out in the open and addressed, because I understand the desire more than anyone knows: you have a talent that people have encouraged-whether it was a teacher somewhere along the way, or family or friends… and for reasons all too common, you have to earn extra money, but leaving the house to do it is damned near impossible. Maybe it’s because of having kids at home, or maybe it’s because of where you live or the high unemployment rate, but you’d really like to earn money quickly, and you’d like to do it from home.

If this describes you, then you need to look at NON FICTION as a potential solution. Back when I started, our local newspaper still took on freelancers for various sections. The pay was not great—$75 per article, and, ironically, $75 per photo. I learned pretty quickly to include photos. It was a very happy day in the household when I had worked my way up to a whopping $150 per article and $100 per photo, because I was writing two or three articles a week by that point, and making a pretty good side income.

NON-FICTION

Here’s some how-to tips and things to keep in mind:

Even though the local newspapers on on the decline (and seriously, they’ve laid off staff right and left, so it’s going to be difficult—but not impossible—to land a freelance assignment there), keep in mind that many many places have their own websites now, and they may benefit from additional local coverage/articles. You have to think outside the box a bit more to find these places and to pitch them, but keeping a site updated with frequent content is very time-consuming for a local business or corporation, and if someone can solve that problem for them, fairly cheaply and with good quality writing, that person can end up creating a niche for themselves.

Finding the market: Obviously, finding those businesses and sites (even regional and national sites) takes research. It takes looking at every site you cross, every local business web page with an eye to what you could do to make that site more of a “destination” site. Why would they need you? What could you bring to the table that would be interesting to their customers? How frequently would they need the content updated?

Pitching: There are two general ways to pitch—one is a query letter, and one is to provide a sample, which we call “writing on spec” (speculation). While the former is the generally accepted method of approaching most businesses, I have to say that a simple cold query is almost never going to work for non-fiction. They’re going to want to know what you can do, and this is where you’d include samples of your best writing. If you don’t have any samples because you’re just getting started, then the best thing to do is write the article you’re pitching to them. Show them what you can do by doing it, and doing it so well, they really want to use it. On the upside, if they want it, it’s already done and you’ll get paid a lot faster. On the downside, you could put a lot of research into something and end up not making a sale. Never fear, though—because that article might be able to be slanted toward another market. I made several sales by taking an article that had already been written, looking at the needs of a different publication, slanting a rewrite toward that publication and then selling it there.

What do you mean, slant? To “slant” something is to be aware of the demographic and/or the attitudes and needs of the publications’ audience. In the approach to a business, you want to be aware of who their target customer is. For example, let’s just say there’s a local Bed & Breakfast near you, and you realize that people who travel to the B&B might want to read about other sites to see and venues to visit near said B&B, and the B&B’s website is pretty static—nothing new there about what’s going on locally or how awesome the area is. Or whatever they have is the same thing they’ve had up for a year. So you want to pitch them a series of articles where you cover local attractions from the point of view of a local—great places to hang out that are off the beaten path, etc. You wouldn’t write this article with a lot of slang and angles on where to go skateboarding, because the audience is likely going to be older—couples—from retirees to newlyweds—not teens. You’re also going to see more middle-class visitors than wealthy, and many of these would be interested in saving money while seeing the sites, so you’d feature the more affordable things to do in the area. However, you could take that same information that you found while researching and pitch it to bigger hotels in the area, or restaurants, or travel guides or the local paper’s travel/fun section, etc. In non-fiction, research only used once is a missed opportunity. You can often rewrite the article to slant it toward different audiences, thus making more money for the same research.

(I once sold an article about relaxation and endorphins toRedbook, and then turned around and used the same information to create a fun quiz for Madamoiselle.)

Querying official markets: By “official” I mean the standard markets you’d think of for non-fiction: magazines and newspapers and some of the bigger news/magazine websites. MOST but not all of the requirements of the paying sites are going to be included in a publication called WRITERS MARKET. There’s a print version (usually) available in most libraries. There are other sites as well, such as publishersmarketplace.com—but I used WM almost exclusively for my non-fiction forays and I think it’s been around the longest.

There’s a huge non-fiction section to these sites and specifically in WM, and you can look up the publication to see:

what they need
what they pay
how to contact them and a contact name

FOLLOW. THEIR. GUIDELINES.

In every case, I would call the front desk of the magazine just to verify that the contact name was still at the publication. People move, get fired, etc., and you don’t want to send in a query for the new person’s predecessor—it’ll be obvious you’re not that great at research, if you do. You also, however, NEVER try to pitch these people over the phone. Ever. EVER. ON PENALTY OF DEATH. Okay? Because you will tick whoever that person is off, right then, and anything you send it later will be thrown away.

Then you’ll follow their guidelines. Even if they say “snail mail only.” Because they are grumpy and you’re trying to get money out of them, eventually, you want them to think well of you.

And please note that in order to approach the bigger markets, like national magazines, where the pay is much nicer, they’re going to want to see “clips” (published examples, taken from the source, or a pdf copy thereof) of your work for other paying markets. You can graduate quickly to a larger market, but having these clips is essential, so you’ll need to start either locally or regionally.

Do not ignore the off-beat magazines which have a very specific following. For example, you may not normally think about writing a golf piece for a travel magazine, but if you live near a world-renowned golf course, there may be an angle there that you could pitch. Or, for the golf magazine, you might pitch a round-up of favorite local eateries for the people who will be traveling in to enjoy a major golf tournament. I dunno-this is where RESEARCH of the market is VITAL. It’s a good rule of thumb to read the last few issues of a magazine to see their TONE and APPROACH to topics, but also to see what they’ve covered in the last couple of years. Yes, two years, minimum. Most editors will not want to repeat a topic (celebrity stuff excluded, obviously) unless you can present a really new slant on that topic. Women’s magazines, for example, might have covered anorexia a year ago and won’t want to cover it again… but if you’ve heard about a new treatment or research or a myth-busting truth has crossed your path, you might be able to sell it. It’s got to be a fresh take, though, for them to be willing to bite. There are all sorts of odd, off-beat places and ways to get started.

Keep in mind that sometimes, you have to give a little to build a reputation. Here’s a good example. My oldest son, Luke Causey, is an outdoorsman when he’s not working, and he loves camping/hunting/fishing, etc. A while back, he wrote a free review of a knife he’d purchased and posted it on a website where reviews were invited. His review was well received, and he reviewed more and more—to the point that knife makers would send him a knife for review and he was able to keep the knife. He ended up with enough positive reactions from his reviews that he started reviewing other equipment for a website called Woodsmonkey.com; his payment was that he could keep the item he reviewed, which, for him, was great. I’m very proud of his articles—he’s professional, easy-to-read, fun, and you can tell he has a sense of humor. He also does great “how-to” articles about how to improvise something you might need. The kid’s a regular MacGyver (along with his dad and brother), so it’s a perfect use of his talents. As a result of his articles, he’s been invited to contribute articles—for pay—to a new magazine that’s starting up called Pathfinder, which is founded by Dave Canterbury, who stars on the Discovery Channel’s Dual Survival Show. In this internet world where so many people blog for free, you may have to write a while and demonstrate that you have a knowledge base or a particular take on a topic that is unique and helpful or entertaining in order to prove to the paying markets that you deserve to be paid.

Non-fiction books: Also, keep in mind that non-fiction is the lion’s share of books sold, so if you have an expertise in an area… or you know someone who does have an expertise… you may be able to break in with a non-fiction book. There are a lot of websites and information out there about how to do this, but the bottom line is, you have to do a tremendous about of market research to show why your book is needed. If you’re following a trend, you’re probably already too late—by the time the trend happens and “hits” big in the public conscious, there’s already a glut of those books sitting on editors’ desks, because everyone else has noticed the trend, too. You’ll need to find an angle about the subject that hasn’t been done, and a reason why the audience would need that information. How is it going to make their lives better? How is going to help anyone? Why does it fill a void the other books out there haven’t filled? How big is that demand? (Meaning, how big is that void? Is there a big enough audience to warrant the cost of publishing the book?) If you want to go this route, don’t start writing the book until you’ve really researched the how-tos.

The writing itself: You might be thinking, “Well, I’d like to do this, but how do I know if I have what it takes?” And my answer is going to sound snarky, but it’s not meant that way:you can read. If you’re going to be a writer, it’s your job to read read READ read READ READ READ and DISSECT dissect dissect DISSECT the hell out of what you read. Look at a website you love and see how they do it. Ask yourself stuff like, “how do all of the articles start… with an anecdote? with a hook? with a fact? with a bold statement?” and then ask, “what is the style of this publication? is it breezy? snarky? factual? dry? sardonic?” etc. Write a few sample articles and get friends/peers to read and tell you if they remained interested throughout. Find out if you have confused them anywhere along the way. Did you make a point? Did the person care about it once they were done? Did you impart information that the person wouldn’t have known already? Did you give them a glimpse into something they couldn’t have ordinarily seen just surfing factual sites on the web? And so on. If you want to go this route, there are several writing books on the subject out there which will help you with the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself.Writer’s Digest almost always puts out excellent books on the subject, and their magazine had great articles on how to approach non-fiction markets. (I’m assuming they still do, though I haven’t read in a while.)

The pay: Is almost always on publication now except for some of the really big markets, but if they’re a local business and/or are not going broke, then you might be able to negotiate payment upon acceptance. Check out markets of similar size in the Writer’s Marketplace to get a fair idea of what you should charge, if you’re pitching to someone “outside the box.” And it’s always a smart thing to present the “outside the box” types with an invoice once they’ve accepted the article for publication. That way, should they forget, you can remind them without looking like a fluffy bunny who’s just doing this for free.

(There are good reasons to do something fo
r free—blogs, for example, have obviously taken over the world and they’re free and they offer a zillion viewpoints and bits of information, but if you’re going to write for someone else, they need to pay you, or be able to give you some sort of in-kind-trade, where you benefit financially.)

FICTION

2) “No no,” you say, “I don’t want to write non-fiction. I want to write my own stories. My own worlds. I just don’t have a clue how to go about getting started.”

For what it’s worth, I said this sentence at some point in my non-fiction writing career, when I really wanted a change and I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it. The fiction world is SO BIG and SO AMORPHOUS and holy cow, there are about a billion ways to Oz, and I kept hopping from one path to another because I didn’t even really realize I was on a path, until about four or five paths later. So in order to help you keep from meandering in the wilderness for forty years, here are a few of the general things I’d suggest you think about and/or do to get started.

The genre you love to read: Here is the very best place for you to start. Why? Because whether you realize it or not, you know a lot about it already. You know what the reader expectations are for that genre, because all you have to do is ask yourself, “What am I looking for when I pick up this type of book? What is it that I’m craving? What type of experience? What works for me? (Make a list.) What doesn’t work for me? (Again, make a list.) Ignore stuff that the author had no control over, like the back cover copy and the cover… focus on the story: do you like dark thrillers? do you like them to have romance in them, or not? if not, why not? (There are no wrong answers. In fact, you MUST be really honest with yourself here if you want to be successful.) Do you like light romances? Do you like a lot of angst or stories with more twists in the plots? Pull out your top ten or twenty favorite books in the world… the ones you’d read over and over again. What is it about these books that you love? Look for genre, but also look for commonalities: what is it about them that’s calling to you? Is it subject matter? Theme? Tone? Or a type of experience? Setting? Type of plot?

When people give the advice to “write what you know”—it doesn’t necessarily mean for you to write about your experiences in your life… it means, write the kinds of stories you know how to tell, that you’d love to read and watch. Write something that you grasp the meaning to, the nuances and the lifestyle of, because you’re going to need that understanding to get you through the long slog. However, be aware that what you understand can apply to many other life situations. You may never be a spy, but you might have a grasp on cut-throat tactics and livelihoods at stake, and you might have access to a bunch of people in the spy business who would be willing to talk to you and you might have an understanding of what it is to be immersed in a world where you have no one you can trust, and if you put those things together, you could write a spy thriller. Especially if you love the spy thriller genre and you’ve read just about everything classic that everyone references as well as the new turks taking over the genre—then you’ll know if what you’re doing is good and original.

The writing itself: There are a billion choices for you to go through to create that work of fiction-and each one of those can be overwhelming when you’re new. Things like “should I tell this in first person? or third?” have ramifications far beyond just using the word “I” a lot. Suffice it to say, those choices are too huge for this one blog. I have a few pieces of advice about how to write:

read. READ READ READ. And then, READ.
DISSECT. If you can’t figure out what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it, then you can’t utilize the technique. Now, you may dissect subconsciously, or you may be the type who pulls out highlighters and makes copious notes or you may fall somewhere in between, but good writers read with an eye to how the author accomplished what they accomplished. And the rare times I’ve read a book where I’ve gotten completely immersed and have forgotten to read with that eye, I go back and figure out where the author drew me in, and how.
write write write write write. PRACTICE. Do not whine to anyone about how you don’t want to abandon your first book, that you think it’s got what it takes to make it and “those people” just wouldn’t know great writing if it hit them in the face, because I—and all the other professional writers around you—will want to bop you on the head. Unless you are a very speshul snowflake, you’re probably not going to sell the very first book you write. Or the first full-length fiction (if, as it was in my case, a screenplay). You may, however, show enough promise to get encouragement from peers and other writers, or place in some contests. You may even get some encouragement from some agents. But you need to be aware that just because you can type, or just because you’ve read all your life, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to automatically spew out a perfect novel that everyone clamors to read, one which will—if not make you wealthy—will at least solve your financial problems. It’s unrealistic. I don’t care how talented you are, it’s unrealistic. The one-in-a-million that it happens to is a fluke, and if you get so lucky? Well, good, I’m glad. But don’t go into this thinking that’s how it works, because it doesn’t. Plus, you will annoy the writers around you who could have offered you useful advice on how to improve, except if you’re all whiny about how great you already are, nobody’s going to want to help you. (Um, yeah, pet peeve. Moving on.)
Peer review/critiques/feedback/beta reads… You will need these, in the beginning, at least. Again, there are rare people out there who are so talented, they may not need any feedback, and if you’re one of those people, congratulations, we all hate you. However, most of those people find out they are those people because they’ve already written stuff and submitted it and wowed everyone, or peers read and were blown away, etc. If you’re writing something and you hand it in to your critique group/peers, etc., and they are dying DYING dying to know what happens next, then you may well not need the critique group’s input.
Finding a peer review group is a blog unto itself, but my caveat here is to find people who love the same genre in which you’re writing, or you’re going to get a whole lot of advice that sounds great and is logical and makes sense and may even resonate with you… but which could derail the story you’re trying to tell because it negates the very conventions of the genre of your story. And this derailing won’t even be intentional… but I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times.
Classes. I actually think taking classes is a beneficial thing—if it’s being taught by a really strong teacher. Please note that sometimes, really strong teachers aren’t always bestsellers themselves, which may have a helluva lot more to do with the vagrancies of the marketplace or something beyond their control. Conversely, there are also a lot of bestselling authors who don’t really teach well. And some who do both. Ask around, get suggestions from others who benefitted from the class.
Don’t just take every class you hear about. Target your weaknesses and focus on classes for those things. Read how-to books, also. But mostly, and I cannot emphasize this enough, READ BOOKS that do well whatever it is you feel is your weakness and analyze how they accomplish what they do.

Polishing: Before you send out your book, please take the time to go back through it and polish it. Not just spelling and grammar, but look for logic holes, look for inconstancies, look to make sure your characters stay in character and aren’t just doing something you need them to do for the purpose of the plot, etc. Look at how you’ve told the story and ways to improve that. You only get one shot per agent to prove that you have the chops, and that agent is not going to care if you were writing this on the weekends and in the mornings and you have a really big mortgage and you’ve fallen behind and you need a quick sale. If that were the case, thousands of books would be bought instantly without being read, because the economy sucks and people are hurting everywhere, and there are all sorts of medical/family/work problems that a little extra income would solve. Agents can’t take that into consideration. They need to be wowed by your book, in order to pick it over all the other books on their desks or in their emails, and they have to be wowed enough to take you on as a client. If you’re lazy about polishing, they’re going to notice, and frankly, there are a lot of other people out there willing to put in the work to polish, so why should they choose you?

Submitting: There are entire books and blogs devoted to this topic. Read them. As many as you can. Look up agents on QUERY TRACKER or ABSOLUTE WRITE and always check to see who the scam artists are from PREDITORS AND EDITORS (that is how they spell predators; I don’t know why). P&E has a very good database of the scum to avoid. You can find out all about who’s sold what lately, and who represents what you’re writing through various other sites, include publishersmarketplace.com.

Do your homework. Look up the agent’s website and look at their submission guidelines. FOLLOW THEM. If they don’t want an attachment, and you try to be the exception, they’re going to be annoyed. Do you really want to annoy the person you’re trying to land as an agent? If they want 50 pages, don’t send them 100, or the whole manuscript. (Now, if your chapter ends on page 51, send that, too—find a logical place to stop.) Pay attention. This probably means keeping records, making yourself some sort of file/spreadsheet, so you can keep their requirements straight as to who wants what. It’s just part of the business end of the vocation.
Do your homework. Figure out who would be right for your book based on what they’ve sold and who they represent, as well as what they state their preferences are in the various places where those things are posted. If they don’t represent S/F/F and that’s what you’ve written, don’t clog their in box and waste both your time and theirs.
Do your homework. Write an amazing query letter. Don’t know how? Welcome to the club. There are about a zillion of us, but everyone’s got to do it at some point and there are some great resources (on the first two links in the “submitting” graph above) which has examples or threads discussing how-to, and there are books and there are agent blogs (quite a few now) which express how to and while it’s overwhelming, basically, it’s your job to learn it. Your goal here is to entice them to read your book. It’s the hook that they very well may turn around and use with the editors they submit to. If it’s well done, that same hook will be used by the editor to pitch it to her publisher to get the deal, and some variation will be used to pitch it to marketing and sales. So think of it like the back cover copy, or think of it in the way you’d tell a friend about the book, when you want to hook them into reading it. What is it that makes it different than other books out there. Mostly, why should we care?

Landing the agent: Once you’ve got things out on submission, you’ll either start getting form rejections, rejections with personal notes (those are great) or requests for the full book. (This is why you have the full ready, by the way, which wasn’t mentioned above, but I’m emphasizing it now. Unless you have a lot of credits elsewhere that proves you can write a novel, and write it well, they’re going to want to read the whole thing before signing you.)

It is not only okay, but necessary, to query more than one agent at a time. Do not send form letters-personalize each query. (Again, that’s your job.)

Once you get an offer of representation in, it’s customary to give all of the other agents who have requested partials or fulls a heads up that you’ve gotten an offer and you’d like to know if they’re still interested. Some will automatically say no (there’s too much on their plate at the moment). Some will read quickly and still decline (a zillion different reasons, but it’s often just not their thing or they have a client writing something too similar, etc.). One or two may say, heck yeah, we want it, too, and then you are in the enviable position of getting multiple offers and you get to decide who to go to prom with. Congratulations.

Agent submission/sales, etc.: This blog is long enough, but suffice it to say that not everything that gets agented sells. (Oh, if only.) So don’t go spend your savings yet, don’t quit your day job, and don’t assume. Anything. There’s a lot that goes into the selling and the publishing aspect—that’s a whole other blog for maybe next time, but for now, I want to end this by address money, for the same reasons I started it.

The money: People often want to write a book because they think it’s a quick, easy way to make a lot of money from home or out on their deck. (I will pause here while writers everywhere finish laughing… and crying….)

Money is paid out as an advance. They are assuming they’ll sell your book, and they know you need to make somethingwhile the publication process grinds forward, and they’ll pay you about what they think you’ll book will earn. They’ll base that figure off what other books like yours have earned, whether or not you’re well known, or whether or not you have a huge commercial hook, or whether or not your second cousin is Oprah and she’ll endorse it, or whether or not they had great sex that morning. In other words, it’s a mystery as to why some books get bigger advances than others, and while it’s a business, it’s also a guessing game because the publisher is trying to predict the future as to what you might earn.

They will then take that advance and divide it into three. Sometimes, they will divide it into four, but three is more common, I think, still. They will then give you 1/3rd of that money on signing of the contract, 1/3rd on what they call D&A (delivery and acceptance), which is the point where you’ve done whatever rewrites/polish the editor wanted and they have accepted it and you’re then moving on to the copy edit phase. And then they’ll pay the last third on publication.

If your book sells more copies than they anticipated, they will eventually owe you royalties—but it’ll be more than a year, very likely, from the point of publication, before you see those royalties. (Again, that’s a whole other blog entry.)

So, keeping the above in mind, the average advance is said (by those who gather that type of statistic) to be between $5K and $10K. That’s not a typo. That’s five thousand to ten thousand. Divide that into thirds, and subtract the standard agent fee of 15%, and keep in mind that it takes about a year from acceptance to publication, and you’re looking at maybe making between $3500 and $8500 for the year. Not including the time it took you to write the actual book, which, let’s be real, for a first book is probably about a year to two years (actual writing time, not calendar time.)

Now, you may get lucky and be above average, but most of the sales I see on Publishers Marketplace are for what they call “nice” deals, which is about $25K, but that’s often for two books, or three. It’s not completely uncommon for a new writer to get an advance of $25 to $50K, but it’s not the norm.

I tell you this because (a) it’s a fact of the business and therefore, that information is out there and (b) if you’re going into writing because you need the money, you’re shooting yourself in the foot, financially. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me they’re going to supplement their income—and this, when they’re already up against terrible stress—by writing. It’s not fast and it’s not easy.

If you’re not doing this for the love of it, if you’re doing this for the money, then you might want to consider another field.

Because those of us who write, can’t not write. So if that fits your take on the world, welcome to the nuthouse. The crackers and cheese and wine are on the bar. Please don’t run with scissors, except on Thursdays, when it’s scissor day, and by all means, feel free to bring cupcakes or brownies.

Now, a very brief comment about e-publishing… especiallyif you read Konrath’s blog. I know of several established writers who are now starting to put their new works up themselves, and are making some money off it. “Some” though, is “not very much–a few hundred” to a couple of thousand. Others? Hardly any. So far, from all of the reports I’ve heard, not many people have made anywhere near what Konrath is making, and I think that’s partially because Joe’s got a great following on his blog—and has had that for years—and that following has helped him get the word out about his ebooks. In other words, he spent a tremendous number of years promoting the hell out of his books, and that put him in (what I believe to be a rather) unique position to reap the benefits of the ebook market… because the same problem that faces authors with editors and publishing houses is multiplied exponentially when you go straight to ebook, and that is, “How will the customer find you? How will they know you’re there? How will they know who you are?”

That said, Joe has a very solid point and the publishing paradigm is shifting, and we’re going to see a lot of the stuff I wrote above become obsolete in the next five years. There’s a new business called FastPencil which just announced some initiatives in the press, which may very well change the game. Still, even with that in mind, I don’t think a brand new writer is going to get the attention from the public like Joe has managed, and that’s when a traditional publisher’s distribution system is a real plus.

—-

So that’s it — those are some basics. If you post a link in the comments, I’m going to come back and add a website list on the tail end of this (and I’ll also include it on my site.)

Meanwhile, for those of you who may not know, our own Alex is teaching a fantastic class about structuring your novel, titled “Screenwriting Structure for Novelists” — it’s for any genre, and you can read about it HERE.

I See Dead People

by JT Ellison

This is an irreverent title for a very serious post, and I chose it specifically to show that sometimes, we need some irreverence to deal with things in our life. Humor heals all wounds, and writing cop novels means I’ve dealt some really off color moments which defuse the tension of the situation at hand. Humor helps with most every circumstance—with nervousness, with fear and tragedy. Thank goodness we have that, at least.

I attended my first autopsy this past weekend. Allow me to amend, I spent a full morning at the Medical Examiner’s office, which meant not one, but four autopsies. Don’t worry, I’m not going to gross you out with freaky details. Not too many, at least. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss some of what I experienced and the way the day is haunting me. There are images seared into my brain now that I’ll never erase.

Names, places and details have all been slightly altered to protect the innocent.

I recently received an invitation to attend a postmortem, and I honestly didn’t want to accept. I’ve done a lot of boots on the ground research for my novels, but attending a real post wasn’t something that I’d ever really felt the need to do. There are great virtual autopsies online, and with my truncated pre-med background and subsequent fascination with doctors, I have enough of a familiarity with anatomy that I can manage. I’ve worked with the Manhattan Medical Examiner’s office to get specific details so my Medical Examiner in the book, Dr. Sam Loughley, doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes or misstatements. But I’ve always felt like a fraud. People ask all the time if I’ve attended autopsies, and the answer is always no.

But in the book I’m writing, Sam is a point of view character. So it was time. Plus, I mentioned the invitation in an interview last week, effectively outing myself, which meant culpability. Damn it. After a week of hemming and hawing, I accepted the invitation. We set the day for Sunday.

I dreaded Sunday all week.

I didn’t eat Sunday morning. I got a green tea from Starbucks. I figured that was as safe as anything. I was to call when I was in range. It wasn’t a quick drive, so I had plenty of time to think about backing out. I will freely admit to pulling into a gas station and sitting for about ten minutes, getting up the courage to make the call that I was close. Finally berating myself for being a total idiot, I called. I was ten minutes away, and I did my best not to think about what I was about to do. Or rather, I imagined fourteen different scenarios, in which I passed out, threw up, freaked out or otherwise embarrassed myself.

They met me outside, and whisked me in. I’ve been in this particular morgue before for identification of skeletal remains, passed a few spots I recognized, then suddenly, we were in the changing area. I handed over my purse, pulled on tons of protective gear, and grabbed my notebook. The following conversation ensued:

Tech: “She’s going to get blood on that. I’d leave it.” (She being the M.E.)

M.E.: “Hey, I’m pretty neat.”

JT: “She’s just kidding, right?”

Tech and M.E. have small, secretive smiles on their faces, which remain blank. I am certain they are teasing and decide to bring my notebook. My mask is around my neck. My heart is doing double time. I have enough familiarity with panic attacks to know that I’m pushing into the borders of one. I breathe deeply, square breaths.

JT: “You should probably have the smelling salts ready, just in case.”

M.E.: “You’re going to be just fine. I’ll take good care of you.”

JT: “Seriously. I have no idea about how I’m going to react. I’m not kidding.”

Tech and M.E. realize that I’m quite serious, and make a plan for me.

Tech: “If you start feeling hot, step out. I’ll come and give you a coke or something.”

ME: “Are you ready?”

I swallow, hard, and nod. In we go.

It is white, clean, pristine, with shiny stainless steel and a man lying naked to my left. This is not my first dead body, but it is my first unclothed, which is momentarily shocking. My greatest fear is that there will be one of two demos: a man my father’s age, or a child. I immediately see the board says the man is in his 70s. Shit. I realize I’m breathing through my mouth, which isn’t necessary, there’s no real smell. The M.E. checks if I’m okay, and says we have four autopsies this morning. (FOUR? WTF? I only signed up for one. Panic sets in again, then abates. Surely I’m only going to observe one. I can handle this.)

We move further into the morgue. I immediately see a young boy on a gurney further away from the sinks. Nightmare scenario two. I stop cold. The M.E. asks again if I’m okay, tells me not to personalize. There are two more bodies, one woman with blood on her face and a young man with tattoos along his ribcage. I feel the urge to run and not look back. I also have the most absurd reaction—I keep looking for chests to rise, for eyes to open, for bodies to sit up. I’ve got a full-fledged horror film running through my brain—one that never really goes away.

Everyone is waiting for me. The techs are standing at the ready by their bodies. The guests, they call them. All the bodies have been stripped, weighed and measured. Since none of the deaths are criminally suspicious, evidentiary precautions are not in play. Each station is set up with a white board with things written on it like heart, liver, kidneys. I know enough to know that’s for weight measurements of the organs. I am still on my feet, though looking over my shoulder expecting a ghostly white hand to grab me. When we’ve established that I’m not going to barf or bolt, the M.E., who is no nonsense and an excellent teacher, takes me to the computer and we review the cases.

The first step is to cover the details of each individual case. We have an unattended death outside, an unattended possible overdose, a possible suicide, and the child with severe head trauma. I am hugely relieved to learn that his autopsy will be external only, the cause of death was established by the hospital. Thank God for small favors.

We step to the first body, the woman. On go the masks. The M.E. does an external exam, explaining to me in detail what she’s looking for. The woman has marks and scratches on her body, we spend some time determining what they might be. When the M.E. is finished, she nods to the tech, who takes a vitreous fluid level and begins to get femoral blood. I watch rather indirectly, really expecting the gorge to rise, but it doesn’t. So far, so good. A block is placed between the woman’s shoulder blades – not under the neck like we see on TV. I understand why moments later.

We’re standing in a spot when I can see all four bodies when the tech makes the Y-incision on the woman. This is quick, brutal and astounding. The pristine whiteness is replaced by glorious Technicolor. Things start happening very fast. We move to the next body, the probable heart attack, and start the external exam. Then on to the suicide. I know I’m not supposed to be personalizing, but I can’t help it. I feel horrible for these people. I am angry at the man who decided life wasn’t worth it. I feel sorry for the heart attack. I worry that I will look similar to the woman if I’m ever in her place. I am over-personalizing. I stare into a chest cavity, focus on the ribcage, and knock it off.

That’s when I realize I will be attending all four autopsies, because they are done simultaneously. Oh.

We work in circles, moving from station to station. There are unexplained noises, and odd smells. Mostly alcohol, wafting from the bodies. There is a pattern to our concentrics. This is a team effort, a coordinated, choreographed dance. When the breastplate is off, the M.E. looks at the heart in situ, then the organs start to come out. The bone saw didn’t bother me at all, I’ve got contractors in the house laying a floor upstairs and it sounds no different. It is easier when I don’t have to look at their faces. When the skull is off, the tech yells what I think is “Head” and we go back to look at the brain before it too is removed.

Autopsy is a surprisingly physical job. It takes more than one person to move the bodies around on the table. It takes strength to get through bone.

We move on to dissection. Each organ must be looked over thoroughly for signs that the death isn’t what they think. I see things I’ve only read about—cholesterol, plaque, nodules, cysts—and make plans to lead a healthier life. Microsurgery suddenly makes sense. I’m going to stop with the description here and save a bunch of it for my books, but suffice it to say, it’s fascinating.

And bloody. Biggest misconception I had about autopsies—I always envisioned them bloodless, sterile, clean. Yeah. Not. The tech wasn’t kidding when she said I’d get blood on my notebook. It actually sat quietly on the counter awaiting my return—I really didn’t need it to take notes. Sometimes, visuals do all the talking for you. This would have been a bit different if any of the bodies had lost blood at the scene, of course, but these were all intact.

The boy was last, and that was as hard as you could imagine.

We wrapped at 11:30. We’d been at it for three hours straight. One of the techs asked me if I’d had fun. I told her fun wasn’t exactly the appropriate word, though it was a fascinating, enlightening and educational morning.

Remember the humor? There were some really funny moments, both during and after. A nicked aorta that had people rushing around for ladles. The M.E. getting the band wrong on one of the songs – it was David Essex’s ROCK ON, not New Kids on the Block. Listening to AC/DC while watching a liver dissection. Realizing when we finished that I was starving, and assuaging my hunger with Milk Duds. Going to Waffle House after and needing my bacon very, very well done. Freaking out a friend when I overshared about how to differentiate tissue samples from the lobes of the lungs. The rest goes in the books. Hey, a girl’s got to have a plan, right?

I’m so glad I finally broke down and did this. Sam will be a much, much richer character from here on out. And I was so proud of myself for actually making it through without problems. I’m still haunted by visions; I doubt they’ll ever leave me. But I did it.

I will end with this. My own spiritual path has evolved from the dogma I learned as a child. I find beauty in all religions, can see that what I was taught isn’t the only path to God. But what of the soul? We are all the same inside. Organs designed to function in very specific ways, our body structure and development meant to be exact, past the point of similarity. So there is something that makes us all unique, special, different. Ourselves. Id. Ego. Superego. Soul. Spirit. Essence.

Me.

I felt God in the room, whoever he or she may be. I dare anyone to look into the human body and not believe that there is some kind of grand plan. The design, the way we fit together, is stunningly beautiful. Couple that with the knowledge of our differences, and trust me, I’ve been struggling with some weighty philosophical discourse ever since.

So tell me, ‘Rati – have you faced your worst fears lately? Is there someplace you’d like to go that you don’t think you could manage? Any research you’ve skipped over?

Wine of the Week: Vihno dos Mortos, Portugal, which has a fascinating history.

Bouchercon Blues

Zoë Sharp

Bouchercon By The Bay starts today in San Francisco, and I’m not there, dammit.

Sometimes, you have to weigh up want against need, and right now I need to be concentrating on the book I’m in the midst of, and the copyedits for the next book have just landed, and the outline for the next one is still only a vague murky idea. In short, there are a hundred and one jobs that made a transatlantic trip just not feasible at the moment.

Dammit again.

I made the mistake of looking at the list of attendees, and see the names of so many people I would love to have hung out with, not least of which are my ‘Rati colleagues. Another thing I noticed is there are very few people I’d leave the bar to avoid. And it reminds me, if I needed reminding, what a great community this is to be a part of.

So, because I’m a masochist at heart, I started thinking about all the aspects of a convention that I enjoy so much, and what I was really going to miss.

There’s a lot I’m going to miss.

Obviously, meeting with people we know. The crime writing crowd are overwhelmingly smart and funny, and I genuinely enjoy their company.

Meeting with people we don’t know – yet. Finding a new mind in tune with your own is always a joy.

Meeting ‘the man behind the curtain’ (as per Louise’s blog from Tuesday) and NOT being disappointed. I first met some of the biggest names in the business at conventions or festivals, both here and in the States and found that in the majority they’re delightful.

I love to meet readers. First and foremost, I’m a reader. I got into this because I loved books, loved to read books, and went that step further and then wanted to write stories that other people might want to read. But the reading came first, and without satisfied readers, we’re talking to ourselves.

What else? Fascinating panels, the undiscovered gems that often come out of the book bag, the charity auction.

That last one might sound odd, but I have been lucky enough to be able to auction off four character names either at Bouchercon or at Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha Nebraska. One of the four turned into five, as I included both the winning bidder and her late mother. I just happened to have a slot in the next Charlie Fox book for mother and daughter characters. And, again, looking at the list of attendees for San Francisco, I see that three of those generous bidders – Frances L Neagley, Terry O’Loughlin, and BG Ritts, are all going to be there.

And I’m not, dammit.

Of course, although the whole point of going to a convention is to BE at the convention, not off sight-seeing, there is usually the opportunity for a side trip to a gun range while we’re there. Watching people who’ve never handled a gun before having their first shot at it (pardon the pun) is always entertaining. And then there’s the occasion when I put a trip to the gun range up as an auction prize, and the lady who made the winning bid had been blind since birth.

But that, as they say, is another story…

Here’s a group of us taken after our foray in search of firearms in Baltimore. I don’t know quite what just happened to Stuart MacBride, but I’m open to suggestions.

OK, so now I’m completely grumpy and naffed off that I’m not at Bouchercon, and in order to prevent bottom-lip-out overload, I have to think about the things I DON’T like about conventions.

Watching badly moderated panels. I’ve seen a few in my time. Like the one where the moderator asked questions of the panelists in the same order ever time, so the poor woman at the far end was left with nothing to add to every question. Or the one where the moderator did not-very-funny stand-up for the entire duration, and one panelist didn’t actually get to speak at all.

Rude panelists. I’m fortunate to have moderated only one of these, but her name will stick in my mind forever. For entirely the wrong reasons.

Being landed with the bill for everyone else’s cocktails at a group meal. OK, OK, as a teetotaller, I’m aware that I’m always going to end up paying extra at a group meal – it’s the price you pay for going out in company, and if you don’t like it, you should eat alone. But do these people never stop to wonder at how little it seems to cost them to eat and drink at a convention? The indomitable Sally Fellows had this nailed at Mayhem. Every time we sat down in a restaurant, her first words to the wait staff were, “Separate checks, please.” If nothing else, it makes my accountant’s life easier.

Air con red-eye. Maybe I should be blaming all the late nights in the bar, but I always seem to end up with dreadful bloodshot eyes at conventions, which I put down to the fact that Brits are not used to being in air-conditioned buildings. If it wasn’t for eye drops, I’d permanently be walking round with eyes like this:

Bad manners. And this is another one where I appear to contradict myself. I DO love talking with people, but that’s different to being talked AT by people. And I’ve lost count of the number of times you can be in mid-sentence and someone else just comes up and jumps into the middle of the conversation. They don’t want to join in – they don’t even want to let you finish what you were saying before they take the plunge. It’s like being ambushed.

OK, so your turn. What do you love or hate about conventions? What’s the best question you’ve heard on a panel? Or the worst?

This week’s Word of the Week is epitome. The most common modern use of epitome is to mean excellence, the best example, as in ‘she is the epitome of elegance’- a person or thing that is typical of or possesses to a high degree the features of a whole class. But its fundamental meaning is a condensed account, a summary, especially of a written work. Its root is the Greek epitome, to cut short, abridge. In theory, a précis encapsulates the best of the original work, although (as most authors are aware) this is not necessarily the case…

On the Road Again

by Rob Gregory Browne

As you read this, I’m headed up the coast toward San Francisco, where I’ll be attending Bouchercon along with several other Murderati authors.

I knew I had to write a post today. Then, of course, I started washing clothes, packing and trying to figure out what I needed to take and what could stay home, and about three minutes ago it suddenly hit me.

I had forgotten completely about the post.

Typical.

I find the older I get, the harder it is to remember stuff. Nowadays, I get up from my desk and go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and get in there and forget what I went there for. So I go back to my desk, sit down, then suddenly remember, oh, yeah, coffee.

So I get up again, go to the kitchen and by the time I get there, I’ve forgotten all about the coffee again.

Kinda scary, when you think about it, but I think I can chalk it up to the simple fact that I’m always preoccupied. Not just a hazard of the profession, but a hazard of being me.

I have a report card from when I was a kid with a note that says, “Robby is a good student, but spends too much time daydreaming.”

I don’t know about you, but I think that teacher was kind of an idiot. What’s wrong with daydreaming? Lord knows she wasn’t holding my interest.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that I forgot about this post and since I’m getting up at five a.m. to head out to Bouchercon, I’m going to completely flake out on the Murderati crowd today and go to bed.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Good thing I’m not getting paid for this gig, eh?

But before I go, let me throw out a random question:

If you could be a character in any novel you’ve ever read, who would you be and why?

Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

By Louise Ure

This feels a little creepy to write, just after Alafair’s post yesterday about cyber-bullying an author. But it’s a look from the other side … from the reader who thought she knew a writer’s heart and didn’t.

I found myself in an unfamiliar situation a couple of weeks ago: choosing to not read a man’s fiction because I found his personal character and politics unsavory.

I’ll leave him nameless in this blog, but you would surely know his name. He has written more than a dozen books and his work has been lauded for decades. He is revered as one of America’s preeminent crime fiction writers.

So you can imagine my anticipation when I was invited to a small private luncheon with this icon –this man whose work I have admired for longer than I’ve been writing.

And that’s where my “I know him because I know his work” rationalization crashed headlong into the reality that an author’s real voice is not always consistent with his voice on the page.

This man’s words on the page are powerful, and so deeply emotional that you would think he placed his own feet inside his characters’ shoes. In person, not so much.

While still glib in real life, he came across as untrustworthy and inauthentic; someone who doesn’t reach out for new experiences. He said, for example, that he will only travel through affluent neighborhoods because he doesn’t like to see billboards in Spanish or HIV prevention ads on bus stops. They would sully his world.

In his work, his characters care deeply about things. They are driven to find the killer, to stop the pain, to make things right in a world gone mad. In person, the less information the better.

He has no television, no radio and no computer. He reads no newspapers or any other author’s work, either in fiction or non-fiction. He prefers to sit quietly, by himself, in a dark room.

The cops in his books are not cartoonish; he creates real people with their own obsessions and weaknesses and self-doubt. His writing sings with clarity and precision.

But in real life this author thinks the cops can do no wrong and believes that torture, whether done by the police or soldiers, is justified to get a confession. “Better to torture an innocent man than to chance that one bad guy gets away,” he said at the lunch.

He called me un-American when I expressed a different point of view.

So there I was, with Famous Author’s Latest Oeuvre in hand, and I walked out without getting an autograph. I didn’t want his signature on any book in my house. And I’m considering removing his earlier works from my shelves as well, as I no longer think I can appreciate them without identifying the writing with the real life man.

This seems like such an odd fit of pique for me. While I’m perfectly comfortable not going to see a Mel Gibson movie, or finding a new favorite country singer after spotting Leann Rimes at the Republican National Convention, this is the first time that I have purposely spurned a writer of fiction because I didn’t like him personally.

(Wait a minute, come to think of it, there is one other guy, who years ago at one Bouchercon or another, invited himself to the lunch I was hosting, ordered lots of food “for the table,” then got up and left when the bill arrived. I still haven’t bought any of his books.)

But it brings me to my central question today: Do we expect the real life man to live up to the author’s voice on the page? And if you can’t stand the man behind the curtain, can you still admire the magic he conjures up?

I don’t mean that an author has to resemble their characters, or even have their same world view. There are too many good examples of the shy author who writes thrillers with daring, adventurous protagonists. Or the senior citizen whose protagonist is a hip and humorous 20-something.

I also don’t mean that every writer has to echo my own values and life experience. I guess I mean something closer to … heart. If an author’s work has depth and emotional resonance that rocks you, should you expect that to be reflected when you meet him in person? Would it be okay if he were shallow or rude or purposefully mean?

Should it even matter that I don’t like the man behind the words?

In some ways, I wish authors weren’t so “available” to us readers. In an ideal world, I’d remove both the author photo and the short bio from every book jacket. There would be no Meet the Author signings or conventions. Blogs and websites and Twitter and Facebook would be outlawed, unless they dealt strictly with a discussion of the work.

That’s why we buy books anyway, right? To get lost in a fantasy world created by someone we’ve never met. Why do we have to taint that magic by bringing the real life author — warts and all– into the equation?

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to that lunch. Maybe I would still revere his books.

How about you ‘Rati? Do you pay any attention to the man behind the curtain?

I Was Cyber-bullied by a Naked Woman

by Alafair Burke

We’ve all seen the tragic stories of teenagers driven into depression, out of schools, or even to suicide by the online taunts of peers. The media have dubbed the phenomenon cyber-bullying and almost always describe it as harm committed by and against children.

But I’m starting to wonder whether horrible stories like this, this, and this are tragic extensions of the everyday nastiness to be found on the internet, among both children and adults who feel emboldened online to hurl criticism, taunts, and veiled threats they would never speak aloud to a person’s face.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going Unabomber or anything. I still the <3 the World Wide Webs. Although I understand why Tess is thinking about pulling the plug, I get energy from the supportive relationships I’ve formed with readers online. And yet there’s something about the Internet that encourages people to let their guard down and say impulsive things. Is it really surprising that some people’s inner thoughts are better left unsaid?

A couple of weeks ago on my Facebook page, I finally got around to posting some photos from book tour, including one from my joint event with Harlan Coben at Barbara Peters’ Poisoned Pen.

Within a few minutes, the reader comments numbered into the double digits. Love him! Two of my favorite writers! Waiting for you to come back to Scottsdale!

Pretty loving stuff, right? Well, almost all of it. Whoa. Who gained all that weight? Too much touring. Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling the love from that one. I tried to convince myself the woman was talking about Harlan (yeah right). My response: Harsh. Guess I won’t be wearing that outfit anymore.

I sort of expected the woman to delete her post, or perhaps back pedal, or at least say nothing. But a minute later: Alafair, maybe you should start riding your bicycle when you go to East Hampton. But you’re still my favorite chubb* writer. Love you. LOL.

Love you? LOL. No, I don’t think so. Block User.

But blocking her wasn’t enough. A few minutes later, I had this nagging loose thread tickling my brain. Something about the woman’s name had sounded familiar. She’d come to my attention before. I googled her name with mine. I got some hits on Facebook. She had posted other comments to my page, and they were also odd: One asked whether I employed some of the cyber-sleuthing technology referenced in one of my books; another made strange mention of the race of a character.

And here’s what’s even stranger: Googling her name with mine pulled up that old My Space profile I’d forgotten about, and hers as well, because she had friended me there. Her profile was very…public. And personal. And naked.

My inner mean-girl was seconds away from unblocking her on Facebook, slapping up a link to her naked pictures, and saying, “If I looked like this, I wouldn’t be calling anyone chubb.”

And, you see, that’s how it starts. With the press of a button, I could have sent thousands of people to gawk at the naked photographs this woman had posted, but only her handful of friends had actually seen. At least some of them would have taken a cue from me and piled on their own insults. They would have forwarded the link to their friends. And who knows how this obviously unhealthy woman might have responded.

Needless to say, I suppressed my inner mean-girl. At forty years of age, it’s no longer hard to do. At least, not for me.

But obviously some adults are still hitting that send key. Although a naked lady’s comments about my weight fall into a category of their own, I am amazed at the number of people who contact writers online to tell them how hard they suck. Granted, the positive, supportive comments outweigh the meanies by 999 to 1, but, man, that .1 percent can irritate. Just a few of my favorites:

Why did the book have to be so long?

Why do you set your books in New York and Oregon? I prefer reading about New Iberia.

The sun does not rise in Portland that time of year until seven a.m.

I’m enjoying your books but feel they are too similar to each other. Not sure I’ll stick with them.

This week I received a nasty-gram based on a blurb I had written. Apparently I wouldn’t know “credible writing if it hit me in the face.” I’m not sure I want writing to hit me in the face.

At least I know I’m not alone. One writer swears to me that someone used his book as toilet paper and mailed the soiled pages to his publisher. (Okay, that one’s got nothing to do with the Internet, but it’s frickin’ creepy.)

A certain two-time Edgar winner and Grandmaster I know receives emails all the time telling him his words are too big, his sentences too long, and his characters too old. A recent gem: “I just finished [name of novel]. It was a tedious reading, I do not know why it was written. I have read all your previous books with relish.”

What a fan! Give that man some relish.

And it’s not just in my writing life that I open myself up to online criticism. Thanks to RateMyProfessors.com, students can post anonymous, unmoderated comments online about their professors. Professor Burke generally fares well in the forum, and I even have a chili pepper (signifying my “hotness”) despite the obvious chubb factor, but it’s not fun when someone calls you “boring as hell.” (Is hell …boring?)

Some of my colleagues have been less fortunate. Comments about weight, body odor, flatulence, attire, supposed senility, and their marriages and other personal details abound. And these are comments by adults, about adults.

To be clear, the jibes I’m complaining about aren’t nearly as bad as the psychological torment that has made headlines, or the growing phenomenon of nasty online comments about obituaries. Obviously most healthy adults (and I’ll include myself in that group) can handle this stuff. You ignore it. Or, if you’re me, you let it hurt your feelings for half a minute, then laugh about it, then ignore it. This stuff’s minor, and it’s rare.

But this morning I felt like exposing the bullies to sunlight. No retalitation. No mean-girl revenge. Just an acknowledgement that as much as I love comments from readers, I could do without the rare nasty aside.

So, are you willing to share your cyber-bully stories? What’s the nastiest thing anyone has ever said to you online?

(*Chubb? I have no idea if this is slang for fat, because lord knows we don’t have enough words for obese, or if she just omitted the y, but for reasons I can’t explain, being someone’s favorite chubb writer seems much worse than being someone’s favorite chubby writer. Either way, I am not aware of an award in either category. If there is one, please do not send it to me.)

If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter, but please don’t talk smack about me, all right?

Moonlight & Magnolia’s Keynote Speech: Master Your Voice

By Allison Brennan

Below is the speech I actually gave (mostly) to the George Romance Writers last Saturday night. I did go off on a couple or four tangents telling stories that popped into my head, but I did actually give the whole speech with some minor changes I’d written on my hard copy. I was definitely surprised I stuck to it!

First, can I just say that if you write in any genre of romance and live within a couple hundred miles of Atlanta, that this conference is one of the best? The chapter is amazing, gracious, and full of Southern hospitality. While I presented my own workshop on Friday afternoon, as well as the keynote speech, I also sat in on an incredible workshop put on by Michael Hauge, a screenwriter and story consultant. And while everything he said I knew, either from Vogler or our own Alex, the way he said it and the examples he gave had me looking at my stories from a slightly different angle.

For example, Michael talked about the tools for creating a subconscious connection to our hero. I’m not going to go into his workshop in detail, because no one would understand my notes, but when he said we must create empathy with our hero–we have to know where they start–so that when something bad happens the reader is already emotional invested in the hero.

I had a problem in my current WIP because while I had Lucy Kincaid prove she was competent and smart and yada yada, I hadn’t created empathy for her character for new readers. This is book two, and I just made the assumption that everyone would have already read book one. So the key emotional turning point happened far later in the book than it should have, and I gave no reason for the reader to be invested until that point.

Ironically, in my very first draft that I showed no one, I had the big emotional turning point in chapter one, but felt that it was a poor place to start the story because I couldn’t assume that readers would understand that the news Lucy receives is truly devastating for her.

So, when Michael talked about empathy, then talked about showing your hero as powerful (one of the “subconscious connections”), he used the example of a surgeon saving a child’s life . We’re introduced to someone we know can get the job done, and therefore are willing to follow her on her journey, already invested in her because of her skill and dedication.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what was wrong with Act One. In my first draft, I’d subconsciously known that I had to give Lucy the bad news early. But I convinced myself Chapter One was too early (and it was) and kept pushing it back and back until my semi-final draft had it at Chapter Sixteen. By that point, it slowed the plot and didn’t really create the empathy that it should have.

I emailed my editor from the workshop and told her what I wanted to do–and she completely agreed. Now, this pivotal emotional turning point is in Chapter Three–after Lucy proves she’s skilled and capable, she gets devastating news. Sure, this means a little more of revisions that I had hoped, but it’s working so much better.

While nothing Michael Hauge said was a huge revelation, looking at something familiar from a different angle will completely change your perception and understanding. For me, it was about Act One–which is always the hardest part of my book to write.

This whole experience reminded me to trust my instincts and stop second guessing myself. I should get it tattooed to the back of my hand.

Speech to the Georgia Romance Writers

Moonlight & Magnolias Conference

October 2, 2010

I have a confession to make.

Okay, it’s not much of a confession—it’s not like I’ve kept it a big secret. I don’t plot. I don’t outline. I barely write a synopsis. In fact, I only write the bare minimum required for only two reasons: when it results in a check (some contracts pay part on proposal) or when I have to get something to the copy department so they can, you know, write the back cover copy.

Plotting is like speaking. I don’t plot, I don’t write speeches. Because writing the speech is like planning what I’m going to say days—or weeks—before I say it. What’s the fun in that? And it’s written—the written word doesn’t always translate well to the spoken word. If you doubt me, go buy my audiobooks. I listened to one chapter of SUDDEN DEATH and scared myself—and realized maybe the audio book deal wasn’t the best idea on the planet.

As Stephen King said, “I don’t think my books would’ve been as successful as they are if the readers didn’t think they were in the hands of a true crazy person. When I start a story, I don’t know where it’s going.”

I get that.

When I was first asked to give a keynote, I didn’t think twice about saying yes. I love giving workshops and I like talking (after all, I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” and “Most Talkative” in school.) I didn’t think about writing the damn speech. But other people—people I adore and love and who mean well—thought I was insane.

“What do you mean you’re going to wing it? You can’t wing it,” said my friend Roxanne St. Claire. “You have to write the speech. Edit the speech. Rehearse the speech. Give the speech six hundred times to your dog until you know it by heart, but still print it out in twenty-four point font double spaced and put it in front of you in case you forget.”

I laughed. But she was serious.

Then Margie Lawson—you all know Margie Lawson, the woman who helped make the guy who invented highlighters a billionaire?—told me that not only did I have to write the speech, I needed a theme.

Theme? What theme? I don’t do themes.

Of course you do, she informed me.

No I don’t, I insisted.

She then told me that all my books had themes and I stared at her like she’d grown horns and she laughed at me (again) and wouldn’t tell me what the themes of my books were after I informed her I had no themes.

Bitch.

I didn’t need to write a speech—I’d simply jot down some bullet points and all would be good.

But between two little demons–Rocki on one shoulder and Margie on the other (where was my angel, dammit?) I began to panic. On the plane, I wrote a speech on my laptop.

I hated it. I can’t even remember what I wrote, but I revised the so-called speech all weekend until Sunday morning when I had to give it and realized it sounded like crap, and it wasn’t in a conversational order, and I didn’t put down half the stuff I wanted to talk about and it was, ahem, kind of short I realized after beginning, so I winged it, but kept referring to his miserable excuse for a written speech and kept losing my train of thought.

After that dismal failure, I said never again. I would never agree to speak to another group EVER.

The second time I agreed to give a keynote, I wrote a speech much like this one—in fact, the opening is pretty much the same. But at one point about three or four pages in, I went off on a tangent . . . and never did give that speech.

(In hindsight, I could have recycled it, because I didn’t really give it, right? Damn. Why didn’t I think of that earlier before I stressed about writing this speech?)

See, I have a speech! I figured, writing a speech wasn’t really plotting, because it’s not fiction. It’s like having a conversation with a couple hundred friends, right?

But I still needed a theme. Margie told me I needed a theme. What is a damn theme, anyway? I write to entertain people, not to educate them.

Well, I have one! And I didn’t even have to come up with it. The fabulous and gracious organizers of this conference did it for me. It’s your theme. Master Your Story, Master Your Destiny.

Of course, I then had to ponder what that actually means. Going backwards, isn’t destiny something like fate? Are we talking about controlling fate? Or sort of an H.G. Wells kind of time travel where if we didn’t do something right five years ago we can travel back in time and fix it?

I wish. I’d go back twenty-five years and not quit soccer because if I didn’t quit soccer, I’d still be in good shape.

I can pretend, anyway.

Or I’d go back fifteen years and start seriously writing earlier. Or five years ago tell myself that no matter how much I know about the business, I don’t know ten times as much and never will.

Ignorance is sometimes bliss.

On December 28^th, my fifteenth book will be released on the five-year anniversary of my debut novel. When I realized this, I was stunned, because I still feel like a debut author. I still feel like I know nothing about this business, until I talk to someone who knows less. J

There is one certain truth that you can take to the bank. Well, you might not get any money for it, but it’s the one constant truth in publishing.

You control nothing—nothing—in this business except for your book. Your story. What you put on the page. That is yours. Even if you accept editor revisions or critique partner advice or your husband’s insistence that you name every hero after him (ahem), it is your book with your name and your blood, sweat, and tears on each and every page.

Think about that. Your Story.

It’s all you control.

You don’t control marketing, advertising, reviews, or covers. You can’t substantively affect whether Walmart orders a hundred thousand copies or ten thousand copies or no copies of your book. You have no say if your publisher fires your editor or your editor changes houses.

Sometimes, you have some control over some parts of some books. But you’ll never know when or why or how much.

You control one thing. The story.

The theme “Master Your Story” might on the surface seem like a positive affirmation you chant at night to keep you motivated, but there is a deeper truth to it that few writers really understand.

You can’t be anyone but YOU.

If you imitate, you’ll be a pale imitation. If you innovate, you’ll rise to the top. (Someone other than me said something like this, but I honestly can’t remember who.)

Oh, but what about the market? I hear your worried minds ponder. What about Facebook? Twitter? Publicists? The high concept? The logline? The pitch?

Forget the market.

The market is constantly changing. Yes, you need to consider the market but only after you write the damn book. Because what’s hot now may not be hot two years from now. Or it might be hotter. Or publishers will be so over-inventoried that they buy your trending up vampire-werewolf historical time travel, but it won’t be out for three years and in three years just where will the market be?

If you don’t have a book, you have nothing to market.

Write your book with passion. Be bold. Be unique. Write in your voice, and make it the strongest voice you can.

When you’re done, when you have mastered your story, then you can look at the market. The question you should ask is:

How can I position this story to fit into the market the day I pitch it?

Sure, you might need to revise the book a bit, but it’s still your book.

Good stories can find a home. Sometimes it takes awhile. But one thing writers sometimes forget is that once you sell, you now have Expectations. With a capital E.

You have Expectations from your editor and publisher and agent. You have reader Expectations. You have your own Expectations. If you sell a story you’re not passionate about just to sell a book (though I would argue that it will be a harder sell if you haven’t put your heart into it,) you may be wed to that genre for years. It is hard to write something completely different without getting a pen name, and then that means building two careers.

It can be done. It has been done. But it makes your life difficult and even more complicated.

Soooooo much easier to love what you write.

Be the best YOU. No one has your voice. No one has your stories. If I gave everyone in this room the same one-line premise and told you to write a story, we would have as many different stories—unique in voice and tone and genre and execution—as there are people.

I call this discovering your voice. Your voice is unique and amazing. When you write with YOUR voice you have passion and heart in the story, no matter what you’re writing. Don’t be like everyone else. Don’t try to be the next Nora Roberts or the next Stephen King. Be the first you.

At my last sit down meeting with my publisher over the summer, someone asked me where did I see my writing going? This was a valid question, as I had just changed agents and that in and of itself was making a statement. I had to think about it, and then was prompted, do you want to be like X author or Y author? And I said no, I want to be Allison Brennan. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. But if I’m going to be pigeon-holed, I want to write the types of stories like Tess Gerritsen’s THE APPRENTICE and Lisa Gardner’s THE PERFECT HUSBAND and THE THIRD VICTIM and Tami Hoag’s A THIN, RED LINE but . . . not exactly. They wanted an answer because they need it for marketing and planning and covers and all that stuff. I get that. Genre is about marketing and reader expectations. They need to know where I fit; or, rather, because this is genre fiction, if I fit the suit.

But I don’t want to be the next Tess Gerritsen or the next Lisa Gardner because I will never be as good a Tess or Lisa as they are.

That is what I mean about voice. It’s all yours. You need to develop and nurture and grow and protect it with all your heart and soul.

When you do that, mastering your story isn’t far behind.

Some people say that you need three things to get published: talent, perseverance, and luck. You only control two of them. Talent—some writers are naturally talented, some have to learn more about the craft and practice, practice, practice.

Stephen King said, “While it is impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.”

Perseverance—the hard work and dedication that King speaks of–that’s all you. Whether you have the inner strength to write and learn and submit and be rejected—over and over and over for years–that’s on you. You have to want it bad enough to make sacrifices, to learn from critiques, to not be destroyed by rejection.

Then there’s luck. Well, you have no control over that. But you can help luck find you. Go to conferences. Meet people. Enter contests. Submit your manuscripts. But more than anything, keeping writing and keep persevering. The longer you write, the greater the chances your book be on the right desk at the right time.

If I can impart any advice, it would be this:

Write. And write some more. No one is so good that they can’t learn. I still take classes, I still edit and revise, I still take editor input, and I hope that I always will. And even now, though I know my voice, I’m comfortable with my voice, I can do better.

Write for yourself first. As Stephen King says, write with the doors closed and edit with the windows open. Or something like that . . . essentially, don’t listen to everyone when you’re writing your rough draft. It needs to be you, all you, warts and all. Then you edit and revise and send it out to your trusted critique partners, you trusted editor or agent or ideal reader. Someone or several someone’s who will give you quality advice based on your voice and not theirs, your vision and not their dreams.

Don’t write to the market. Write with passion in your voice, with your vision, and only then, when it’s done, when it’s you, then look to the market and see where it fits or how you can position it to fit. The market isn’t evil—it’s there because of readers. But it’s changing all the time. And honestly? Good books that transcend the market sell all the time. The passion that comes through when you discover and hone your voice will make your work shine, whether you’re writing what’s currently popular or not.

Anne Lamott said, “We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longer which is one reason why they write so little.”

Don’t be sheep lice. Go forth and write!

The Social Network

by Alexandra Sokoloff

This is being touted as “the film that defines a generation”.

Well, SPOILER, but I don’t think so. On the other hand, I think we could have a great conversation about it – what is is, what it could have been, what really does define Facebook and all these other – whatever they are.

And I really would like to have that conversation. At conferences I have seen the most godawfully insipid presentations on Twitter, Facebook, blogging, RSS feeds, etc. I think we can do better.

The movie is pretty brilliant for the first hour. It’s fascinating to see what Facebook started off as. As presented by the movie I read it as a nerd’s revenge on “social clubs”, which I gather is Harvard’s version of frats and sororities.

Okay, look, I went to Berkeley. Frats and sororities were the low end of the totem pole. Being in a frat meant you were suspected of fucking sheep, and at least at the time, that was not completely without reason. And doing sorority rush was cause for massive group intervention every bit as dire as would be learning that a friend’s boyfriend was battering her.

But for someone as misogynistic and socially pathetic as the movie portrays the character of Zuckerberg…. I can see that frats – I mean social clubs – that got hot girls bused into the frat – I mean social club – as entertainment – would incite a nerd’s jealousy and revenge.

On the other hand, there was also the homoerotic undercurrent of Jesse Eisenberg (who I thought was brilliant, btw, wonderful performance) having his first look at the classic erotica fantasy of the Winklevoss twins, in all their 6’5” preppie cutness. Talk about visual imagery: after that I didn’t ever really buy that anyone female had anything to do with anything, motivation-wise.

(By the way, did EVERYONE in college have hot prep jock twins? Serious question, because for all these years I thought that was just me, only to find now that it’s just a college cliché. And yes, the movie did inspire me to Facebook them, and no further will I go on THAT train of thought.)

Anyway, in the movie, Zuckerberg, the ultimate social outcast, creates (the formerly known as) The Facebook as sort of an online social status meter. And the app is complete when a random conversation makes Zuckerberg realize the missing element: the relationship status button. Because the only thing you really care about in college is if someone is single. Or for some people – taken and looking anyway is fine, too.

That was probably the high point of the movie for me because it made me understand what made Facebook – at least originally – a killer app.

From there the movie declined, for me, rapidly, because I thought the filmmakers, and I mean by that Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher (although I can definitely see the fingerprints of producer Mike DeLuca here), who have done such brilliant and emotionally unnerving work elsewhere, never took the trouble to define and portray what the Facebook experience actually IS, at its core.

Okay, well, it’s a biopic. Biopics by nature are unsatisfying – I think because no one can ever fully define a human being. Except in fiction, of course – you CAN define a character. Even the biopics I really love, like Walk The Line, tend to dissolve into soap opera melodrama in the end. I’m always left with an unsatisfied feeling, and this was absolutely true of TSN.

And I guess the filmmakers were most interested in the corporate and legal aspects of the story. But what I wanted was a movie about Facebook.

Why is it Facebook that has taken over the online world? What makes it more addicting than – MySpace, I guess, for example, or the Ning networks or online bulletin boards? Has Facebook become its own Internet within the Internet? Or is Twitter really where it’s at, but not enough people have figured Twitter out to tip it over into critical mass?

Personally I was a little ahead of the curve on the online addiction thing – I burned out all my obsession on an online message board before FB even existed, and of course then the obligatory blogging thing that we all do, and by the time Facebook came along I was politely interested but not rabid the way newbies to internet addiction are.

But I do get some basic things about why Facebook.

First, it’s brilliant that it’s so plain, visually. You don’t have to spend any time setting up a look for your page – in fact, you can’t – so there’s no competition or feelings of inadequacy, there, and no reason to put it off. You can just be up and running.

There may be feelings of inadequacy about numbers of friends, I don’t know. I bet that was a big deal when FB was just on the campuses. But as authors, we have “friends” come to us. We have thousands of them (in fact I am now in the not fun process of having to convert my “friends” over to a fan page – you would think by now FB would have designed an automatic way to do that).

The other obvious thing about FB is that it became the place to be, therefore you can find almost anyone you want from your entire life on it, no matter how long ago you fell out of touch, and message them without having to explain why you are – because everyone else is doing it. (You do get a sense from the movie of how in a business sense that kind of coverage happened, even though the movie only deals with the college phase of FB).

I have not done much on FB to track down people from my past, but I’ve seen in other people what an addiction that is. And for me, the connectivity is great. I like keeping up with real friends – I like getting random updates about what they’re doing. Of course the dark side of that is – that’s no substitute for a relationship. There’s a song about social networking that says something like “and we’ll get together one of these days”, with the clear implication that people just never do anymore, now that there’s FB.

I love the update feature of FB because it’s like having a mini-blog without any of the things that make blogging such an exhausting time suck. Promotionally, it’s great for authors because it requires so much less energy than a blog. You can get a fun thread of conversation going with just a random off-the-wall comment. I have to cop to being extremely judgmental about what people end up posting – the level of inanity is truly off the charts. If a writer can’t come up with something halfway interesting or witty or amusing… But when you have time, if you have time, you can punish those inane time-wasters in your own head by quietly removing them from your news feed.

Anyway, I have no idea of the figures on this but I would venture to guess that you can reach more people in far less time by doing your blogging on FB. But I can’t really say because Murderati has a large audience compared to most blogs, and so does my own blog. I could never use FB as a substitute for my blog, but I have a specific niche – my blog is more a product than a journal. For other people who are not getting the same kind of blog traffic and who hate blogging anyway, I would think FB is a great and maybe sanity-preserving alternative.

And then obviously, FB is “dating” heaven – I think it must have completely replaced singles sites by now. And that is the point I guess the movie was trying to make – that what made FB a killer app is that it allowed people to hook up on line from within a network of friends, which makes it seem less skeevy. Not that skeeviness isn’t happening left and right, it’s just the perception.

(It’s always sex and war that drives entrepreneurial innovation, right?)

So those are the basics that I see driving the phenomenon, but what I really want is to hear what everyone else thinks.

The 64 million dollar essay question is:

– Define the Facebook experience – for you and/or for the world. (Come on, it’s Saturday, you’re only going to spend it on FB anyway.)

But if that’s too overwhelming – here are some softer ones:

– Give us your review of The Social Network.

– Tell us some great biopics and prove me wrong on this genre.

Hope everyone had a good week!

– Alex