Who cares about privacy?

by Pari

This week I planned to write a blog about my experience with voir dire in federal district court. I sat down at the computer and, as usual, checked my email. The first message was from my kids’ school saying that its liability insurance carrier now requires background checks on all parents volunteering for school activities and/or driving for school events.

Screeech! I skipped a grove on the old vinyl and ended up in Pissed-off Land.

Perhaps most people don’t give a damn about privacy. I’ve heard it’s a generational thing. People my age care. The under-50 crowd doesn’t.

Is this true?

I, like my husband, have nothing to hide. Nothing. That doesn’t stop me from hating the idea that total strangers will have copies of my driver’s license. I also don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry to have my Social Security number. (Why is it even called “Social Security” anymore when it’s used for id’ing purposes anyway? It didn’t use to be.)

I’m not naïve. I know there must be files and records on me, cluttering cabinets and gigabytes all over the place. I’ve seen how some of that information is handled. Hell, I worked as a temp all over DC for more than a year. Confidentiality in most offices is a total myth.

Nowadays this is more worrisome. There’s the little issue of identity theft.

Just as vexing is the pervasive societal presumption of guilt. Are we really assuming that everyone and her brother are pedophiles with crappy driving records full of DWIs?

I find it difficult NOT to take this kind of request/requirement for background checks and other personal information, well, personally even though I know they’re not meant that way. They’re just so damn heavy-handed, on a par with the school principal punishing an entire class for one kid’s transgression.

Perhaps the military is okay with this approach for team-building. But we’re not doing that here. We’re talking systematic suspicion, automatic distrust. Lawyers might benefit from this attitude, but it’s chipping away at civility in our society in the process.

We’re all so angry.

I’m not proud of this, but my first response to the school’s email was to write a snotty one of my own. “Give me the names, social security numbers and drivers’ licenses of the people who’ll be handling my info. Oh, and BTW, what are their credentials? Q Level clearance?”

Of course I didn’t do it. Well, actually, I did write the letter. Then I deleted it and called the school for more info. But my first reaction was there. I could’ve hit the SEND key as easily as the DELETE.

Am I being unreasonable? All I know is that this trend, and the public’s tacit acceptance of it, disturbs me to my core.

Do you care about privacy? Where are your limits on what’s acceptable to request and what isn’t?
Am I’m being silly?
Does the whole let’s-suspect-everyone-of-wrongdoing-until-he/she-proves-otherwise meme upset you or is it just par for the course?
Do you know anyone who has suffered from identity theft? What was that person’s experience?

I’m looking forward to your replies.

A writer’s workspace (mid-book)

by Toni McGee Causey

JT has her idea box and her official book box. Alex outlines (I think?). Allison brainstorms as she goes. Rob has a hole in a cave somewhere. (Kidding.)

I have whiteboards.

and…

(photos taken with my iPhone because my big digital camera died on me)

I also use Scrivener for Macs — which has many of the same capabilities of these whiteboards + a Word-like software… and I will dump a lot of photos there, images of my characters and such. But when I am working on specific scenes, I like having the photos right there on my board.

(photos are random, from the internet… not my own)

I like Scrivener for the organizational information-at-my-fingertips convenience. I am actually very lazy about organization–and I’ve paid for that countless times by wasting hours looking for something that I couldn’t remember how I worded (and therefore a simple “find” search wasn’t helpful). Or I’ll forget a character’s last name from the time I mentioned them (which drives me nuts when I can’t find a last name, and then I can’t remember if I actually used it or changed my mind but maybe mentioned them by last-name-only somewhere else). So the organizational ability to just plop a folder under a heading called “characters” on Scrivener, and drop bits of info in there (cut and pasted description, a photo of an actor or anyone I find on the internet who most resembles the character)… and later on, it’s there to remind me of details without me having to search.

Mostly, though, I use the whiteboards. And lots and lot and lots of Post-It notes.

I hate writing a linear outline. I don’t “see” the story like that. I see it playing out horizontally, like a movie. And that might seem like splitting hairs, but I was finally able to structure a story solidly once I allowed myself to write it out horizontally and “hang” the bigger turning points along a timeline, rather than try to write down the page, vertically, in a paragraph-by-paragraph explication.

[So far, I have never had to go back and make any big structural changes–once I get this structure up on the board. When I start blind, without the structure, I end up re-doing the first act too many times to count.]

When I start a project, both of those boards are empty. My husband, Carl, made those for me. [We ordered the magnetic whiteboards online where I found them at a pretty significant savings over Office Depot–especially for these sizes. Carl then framed them and hung them for me.][Yes, he is my hero.] The first thing I’ll do on the board that you see on the second photo is draw that timeline across the time–Act One, Act Two, Act Three lines in place, then turning point lines, climax, resolution. And I start plugging in the major emotional moments / major plot issues.

Weirdly, I will not write down every scene I “see” in this pass. I don’t need to–if I have a major turning point, I’ll know what I’ll need to do to build up to that turning point. Those things will fluctuate and change, though, so I’m not fond of nailing them down too severely.

The Post-It notes start showing up at some point around the mid-book process. I’ll start seeing too many things at once and I don’t want to forget the smaller details. I’ll have a note up there about motive, or a twist, just to remember to layer in those clues as I go so that when I get to that scene, it’s ready. As I write, I’ll realize I’ll need to go back and layer something in earlier, or give it more depth because it’s turned out to be more important or useful than the initial throwaway comment indicated back when I wrote it. (I often find I planted things I had no idea I’d planted… I’ll think, ‘Oh, I need to go back and do X’ only to go back and lo, there it was, already there.’ That, my friends, is freaky.)

By the end of the book, I’ll have dozens of Post-Its up there, of things I still need to go back and check. I’ll discard the ones I know I already finished, so it’s not confusing.

[During the edits and then later, the copyedits, I will do more Post-Its. I think the company owes me a thank you for keeping their revenue up.]

You see that notebook on my desk? That’s the second one for this book. It’s a five-subject college ruled thing, nothing fancy, and I’ll brainstorm in there. I will work out motives, or the characters’ traits, backstory, habits, etc., and I almost never go back and refer to anything there because once I write it, I know it. It’s very stream-of-consciousness and hard to follow, but I will often start babbling in there if I have a knotty story problem and usually, the physical process of writing it down helps me brainstorm it out. I don’t know why. I can’t actually write the story in longhand–I freeze up. I’ve been typing too long, having started writing back in the early eighties on an IBM selectric typewriter.

My office used to be in a front room of the house–a room not-quite-double this sized room, and with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I never got anything done. Part of it was the fact that I was too accessible to everyone (kids, employees, husband), and part of it was that the wall space was too visually busy. I don’t have much on the walls in this room, and I like that it’s in the back of the house, where almost no one but my husband will go. I can write in public places when I have to, but it’s difficult because I am naturally nosy and want to eavesdrop on everyone, and then I end up in conversations. Which are great, but then I get nothing done.

[I am just one of those people that complete strangers will tell absolutely everything to. If I’m in a restaurant, people will want to tell me stuff they’ve never told anyone else. Little kids love me. They will be terrified of everyone else in that place, and if I sit down, they are going to try to come over and crawl in my lap. I have had new moms hand me their infant and say, “Can you hold her a sec? I just have to run to the restroom.” or in the grocery story, “Oh, here, I’ll be right back, I have to grab some cereal.” And then I’m standing there, with this kid I’ve never laid eyes on, who, for some reason, thinks this is perfectly okay. At least they don’t cry.]

Anyway, I digress.

I have worked in a very tiny office space made out of a closet. A back porch that we turned into an office. A converted dining room. My “desks” have included everything from a piece of plywood or a lap pillow to an old table to a hand-me-down desk, to, finally, a new desk. I’ve worked with just a typewriter all the way up to my Mac and a big honking monitor. (Yes, I know it’s huge. That wasn’t on purpose. That is just one of those, “Well, fine, if you insist,” moments when they did not have mine fixed, couldn’t fix it, and had to replace it with something bigger. I should get an Oscar for the straight face I had when they asked me if I would mind the bigger monitor.)

I’ve also written while lying in the backseat of a truck, just after having had surgery, while my husband drove us to Colorado–pen and paper and only occasionally, the laptop that was on its last leg.

So I’m curious about your workspace, no matter what you do. What’s on your desk? If you don’t work at a desk, tell me something about what you do and see when you arrive at work? What’s your ideal working environment (whatever you do!). What is the one thing that will derail your efficiency? (Mine is the dog barking next door. There is one of seven which sounds like you are stabbing her, and stabbing her some more and oh, wait, stabbity stabbity stab, and I swear, I think she’s dying and it upsets me. But that’s just how she barks.) (Not too coincidentally, I have begun to write to music all of the time, now.)

Tell me about your workspace!

Les Was More

By Cornelia Read

(Apologies for the cross-posting, as this appeared on The Lipstick Chronicles last Saturday, but this week has been a giant suckfest and Les was truly a fine man.)

Take a look at this face. It’s the face of a good man, a true mensch: kind and wise, gently amused. It’s one of those rare adult faces in which you can still see the full spirit of the original (indigenous?) little kid–luminous, undimmed.

This is the face of Les Pockell.

He came up with the title for my first novel, and was my editor for books two and three. Last Monday night he died in his sleep, after a long fight with cancer. His wife and his brother were with him, and if ever there was someone who deserved to have his most beloved people beside him at the end, I’m pretty sure this was the guy.

Earlier in my life, I worked with some ginormous buttheads in publishing–not as an author, but as a lackey. Over the years I’ve been grossed out to read their obituaries, to see how their coffee-mug-throwing, profanity-laced, and grotesquely shrill sense of entitlement was glossed over as “sensitivity,” “generosity of spirit,” and even “tremendous patience and compassion.”

Sadly, it’s often the ginormous buttheads who end up getting eulogized most extensively in New York Times obits–the ones who stole all the credit, jockeyed endlessly for position, played favorites, treated waitstaff and assistants like dog shit, and just generally, as my pal Rae says, “played ‘cupid’: Kiss Up, Piss Down.”

That wasn’t Les. If you Google him, you’ll find testaments to the man’s character from an astonishingly broad spectrum of people, but his own humility isn’t hard to spot. He edited a number of anthologies, and in almost all of them, his author bio reads simply, “Les Pockell lives in Westchester County, New York.”

This is a man who edited Jerzy Kosinski’s Passion Play and The Devil Tree, going to bat for him when Kosinski was accused of plagiarism.

On Google Books Les shows up in the acknowledgements of an astonishing number of authors:

Our wonderful editor, Les Pockell….

I was very fortunate to have Les Pockell direct this project. He had wonderful ideas that improved this book immeasurably. And he is a very patient man — an indispensable quality in an editor….

Les Pockell, who at that time was an editor at St. Martin’s Press, had a bit more perception and put his tail on the line for my first book….

Oh yes, there is Les Pockell, our editor, who was forced to tolerate the authors’ casual attitudes and impossible schedules. Without Les, there would be no book, and we hope that like the Snopes, he endured….

Author and photographer Hank O’Neal describes how he came to work on a book featuring the work of Farm Security Administration photographers of the 1930s and ’40s:

A Vision Shared came about because of a photograph I purchased from Lee Witkin in 1972. The photograph was by Walker Evans and this ultimately led me to the treasure trove of photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. I decided I wanted to learn more about these photographs and photographers but there was no overall survey of this monumental project. I went to Les Pockell at St. Martin’s, pitched an idea and he told me if I could gain the cooperation of five or six of the original Farm Security Administration photographers, he’d do the book. Ultimately, nine of the original men and women signed on as well as the Estates of Ben Shahn and Dorothea Lange. The book was published in 1976 and was a success.

That’s just a random quick smattering of projects Les was involved with. His Associated Press obit described him as “a publishing executive and literary anthologist known for his deep and unpredictable intellect and an equally eclectic range of book projects.” The number of books he helped bring into being, the authors he supported, the ideas he helped midwife–yea, verily, the man’s sheer, formidable magnitude of contributions to our culture–is humbling to consider. Les worked at St. Martin’s, Doubleday, Kodansha, Book of the Month Club, and Warner/Hachette/Grand Central. He was Donald Westlake’s editor and Harold Bloom’s and John Lithgow’s.

That AP obit’s author, Hillel Italie, wrote that Les “was also regarded as a mentor with a great deal to teach and a willingness to let others take the credit.” That’s certainly how my wonderful original editor at Warner Books’ Mysterious Press, Kristen Weber, remembered Les on her own blog, To Live and Read in LA:

I wasn’t sure what to make of Les when I first met him. He was enthusiastic and expressive and I was a scared baby editorial assistant…. But everything changed when my boss, legendary Mysterious Press editor Sara Ann Freed, passed away. I was an editorial assistant without an editor to assistant, and Les became one of my biggest advocates. He watched over me when I had to pack up Sara Ann’s office. And when all of her authors slowly but surely decided they wanted me as their new editor, he was as excited for me as I was.

Mysterious Press became me, Les, and publicist Susan Richman. We’d have weekly meetings in his office that were as much about fun as they were about business. I was thrilled to discover how much of a mystery fan he really was, and he became one of the first readers for any project that I wanted to buy.

Sara Ann gave me the tools for becoming the editor that I am today, but Les was the one that watched over me while I implemented them. He was an amazing mentor and I know there are many other editors who feel this exact same way.

Les was on the editors’ panel at a literary trivia competition sponsored by Slice Magazine (co-published by Les’s former assistant editor, the fabulous Celia Johnson*.)

One of his authors, Susan Jane Gilman, was competing against Les on the authors’ panel that night. She summed up the experience on the Powell’s Books Blog:

But the editors? It’s their job to know more than writers. And my current editor, Les Pockell, knows just about everything. And I mean everything. He’s a guy who goes into a Japanese restaurant and orders in Japanese, and then converses casually with the wait staff in Japanese. And he isn’t even trying to get laid. His daily functioning intelligence is slightly higher than that of, say, the entire nation of Sweden.

As a fledgling author under Les’s aegis, I got to have lunch with him too, and it was really, really cool just to get to listen to him. He was enthusiastic about EVERYTHING. He loved surprising details and lovely ironies and obscure little factoids, and he’d join into just about any conversation with tremendous glee.

And to have this guy get excited about your work, as a writer… well, all I can say is that it makes me tear up just thinking about it. Having received praise from Les Pockell will always count as one of the best, most lapidary, most sublime things I’ve ever had happen in my life.

When Les looked across the restaurant table and said why he liked a particular thing, and just got so happy and excited, grinning and waving his hands around… I don’t think the experience of working with an editor can get any better than that. And he was willing to wait for liking something, through draft after draft, just being encouraging and thoughtful and smart about the work as I tried to figure out what the hell the book was about and everything.

I’m not saying he pulled punches, or sugar-coated his critique when a manuscript needed work. He was forthright, and usually just, well, right. Even about the details–like when I referred to the mournful second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh, but ended up typing “Beethoven’s Second.” Well, Les caught stuff like that, which is no small thing when you’re trying to whip three-hundred-odd pages of manuscript into shape without embarrassing yourself, you know? But he was never a jerk about anything, never pretentious or didactic or even harsh at all.

Goddamn it, the world needs more human beings like Les–men especially. Losing him hurts, and I think all the best people involved with making books happen in New York feel the pain of his passing. He was a shining exemplar of goodness, in a world containing far too many ginormous buttheads.

And at the end of the day, here is the problem with ginormous buttheads, in publishing and elsewhere: they tend to kill off ideas. Even if they don’t think, or admit, that that’s what they’re doing.

As Richard Hofstadter wrote, in his Anti-Intellectualism in American Life: “Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture. Men do not rise in the morning, grin at themselves in their mirrors, and say: ‘Ah, today I shall torment an intellectual and strangle an idea!’”

It takes courage to nurture ideas, and to nurture people. It takes patience. It takes wit. It takes tremendous compassion. It takes people like Les.

Alice Walker once said, during a graduation speech at Sarah Lawrence: “No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labor so to bring into the world.”

Les was both friend and kin, a man who coaxed gifts into the world.

I just finished re-reading Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club yesterday, and was really struck by her final paragraphs in that beautiful book as this has been a year marked, for me, by a lot of death:

It’s only looking back that I believe the clear light of truth should have filled us, like the legendary grace that carries a broken body past all manner of monsters. I’m thinking of the cool tunnel of white light the spirit might fly into at death, or so some have reported after coming back from various car wrecks and heart failures and drownings…. Maybe such reports are just death’s neurological fireworks, the brain’s last light show. If so, that’s a lie I can live with.

Still, the image pleases me enough: to slip from the body’s tight container and into some luminous womb, gliding there without effort till the distant shapes grow brighter and more familiar, till all your beloveds hover before you, their lit arms held out in welcome.

Amen to that. (And, yes, I think the afterlife should look like the former Penn Station.)

But here’s the best way I think Les can be remembered:

Les Pockell Makes a Sandwich

* I am blessed that Les worked on my last two novels with the luminous and extremely gifted Celia Johnson, now the full-fledged editor in whose capable hands I find myself for book number four. I am a lucky, lucky writer, and Les was (once again) a farsighted and very smart man.

Things I Learned At RWA

JT Ellison

Last week I ventured down to Orlando for the RWA conference. For those of you unfamiliar with the acronym, RWA is Romance Writers of America. RWA is to romance writers what ITW eventually could be for thriller writers, and I say eventually because RWA has 10,000 writers on its rolls, 145 chapters, and a conference that quite simply smokes everything I’ve ever been to. That’s not a knock on ITW – I adore the organization, have bled, sweated and cried for them, and thought this year’s Thrillerfest was the best yet. Pretty impressive considering they’re only 5 years old.

But RWA is… different.

After the event was moved to Orlando from Nashville after the Flood™, I had my doubts about attending. A – I was terribly upset that they’d pulled out (*more on that later). I felt like if they’d given us a chance, we could have worked out the conference, and the hotels, etc. But I was doing a workshop with Allison, and didn’t want to shirk my obligations there. B – it was my husband’s birthday. Birthdays are a big deal in the Ellison household. We’d planned around RWA, with so many of our friends coming to town, we were going to have a lovely little party. Suddenly, all that went up in smoke. C – it’s been a BIG travel year. Another plane, another hotel, another five days away from work, just rang my bell (and my wallet. This is a pricey con, the most expensive out there. BUT ALL INCLUSIVE – so it really saves you money.)

If it had been anywhere but Orlando, I would have bailed. But we’ve got family in the central Florida region, so I planned to go ahead. Big mistake. One I won’t make again in the future. Traffic, driving unfamiliar roads, and being walloping sick with some sort of plague we caught in New York that necessitated two rounds of antibiotics (which I’m still on) made it a real pain in the ass. And I couldn’t do any of the big events, because driving 90 minutes at midnight seemed like a bad idea.

So I stuck to the days, and attended the lunches, and some workshops.

And found out that all my preconceived notions about RWA were wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’m honestly not sure where to begin.

Let’s start with the Literacy Signing. 600 authors. Lines of people that numbered in the thousands. $60,000+ raised for literacy. Holy Smokes, right?

I went in planning to watch and learn, and was shocked and surprised to find that several people knew me, came to see me, and were sharing me with their friends. Those are the finest, most uplifting words an author can hear – “I loved it so much I had to tell all my friends to read it.” Sharing is good. It makes us happy.

Or the Harlequin signing, where I signed for 90 minutes without a break (granted, I was next to Heather Graham) and came out just rocked with excitement – that’s a lot of new readers to touch in one sitting.

Revelation number one: Alex and Allison and Toni have been preaching it for a while now, but the literacy and HQN events proved it. Romance readers READ, and not just romance. They read everything. Ignore them at your own peril, I’ll tell you that. I think it sometimes takes seeing something with your own eyes for it to register fully. Well, if you have any trust in me whatsoever, listen to what I’m saying. If you’re a writer, published or not, you should go to RWA at least once. It’s a magnificent display of publishing – still in its glorious hey dey, still reaching millions of people, still the coolest, craziest and most uplifting job in the world. Anyone who thinks books are dead needs to go to this conference.

And the girl power was unmistakable. Alex and I met a sweet girl from Germany who has the soul of a poet (you can read it in people’s eyes, truly) and when she asked how we knew each other, and Alex said we were probably burned together at the stake for being witches in a past life SHE GOT IT. Hoo-rah! Sometimes the boys look at us, well, strangely is the best term. It was fun to swim in the estrogen ocean for once.

Revelation number two: I learned that the umbrella of “romantic suspense” is much, much broader than I’d originally thought. I have an ongoing love story. It’s not predominant, and I’ve always heard that for RS the rule is the romance must predominate and the suspense must come second. Well, I figured out this weekend that that’s all a matter of very subjective taste. I’m a thriller writer, no doubt, but I’m probably just one orgasm away from being solid romantic suspense.

Therein lies the rub – the boy books have sex, and no one’s calling them romances. John Sandford has Lucas Davenport get it on with his wife (and in previous books, an indiscriminant amount of women) and no one would ever think to call him RS. So why does a woman writer have to be labeled that way? Because women won’t pick up a Sandford book knowing they’re going to get some hot sex? What about Barry Eisler? Lee Child? Vince Flynn?

Revelation number three: I guess it’s safe to say that though I read and enjoy romantic suspense and straight romance, I’ve always avoided the label so I could maintain a base of male readers. Which is kind of stupid thinking, but you know, I’m new, and I’m going to make mistakes. Coming out of RWA, I’m not even sure that the genre labels matter. I’m realizing we get ourselves pretty twerped out over exactly where we fit into the pie, and that’s just not as vital to know anymore, because the genres are melding anyway. Write the best damn story you can possibly come up with, and you’ll attract readers. Their gender doesn’t matter.

Revelation number four: What’s important is branding. I think the brand is the key. After a great deal of thinking, here’s what I came up with (with a major nod to Alex Kava for planting this thought…)

People know that if they pick up a novel by JT Ellison, they’ll get a strong female lead, a fast-paced story centering on a crime, and a glimpse into Nashville, Tennessee. Three little things that are very brand specific, and none have anything to do with genre labels.

I’ll tell you something else. I started reading JD Robb’s SEDUCTION IN DEATH on my way home. That book is as dark and nasty – possibly even more so – than any of mine. I’d always thought it was romance heavy, and boy was I wrong. I see how a master makes this work – you can have sex, and violence, and ruminations on love and relationships, all against the backdrop of a futuristic world, without it having to have a label. It’s simply a great story.

Lightbulb. Over. Head.

Revelation number five: RWA is what this is all about. There are so many different kinds of writers there. I walked away inspired, scared, confused and eventually inspired again. I am already making plans to go to #RWA11 in New York next June. And this time, I’m going to take in every little bit this conference has to offer, whether I’m feeling up for it or not.

I realize I haven’t even scratched the surface of what I took away from RWA. But I’ve detained you long enough. So next post, I’m going to talk about one of the workshops I attended, given by Donald Mass, and the bizarre revelation I had about what voice really is.

So let’s talk about labels today. I’d love to hear from some of our industry professionals on just how much they should matter to the writer as he/she are writing, or whether it’s a marketing tool for the publishers more than anything else. And for the readers: is there a genre you won’t pick up and read because you have a preconceived notion of what will lie therein? Any revelations you’ve had about different writers or genres?

Wine of the Week: Villa Pozzi Nero D’Avola – this wine was truly spectacular. Dark, jammy, smoky – one of the finest nero d’avolas I’ve ever had, and ridiculously inexpensive.

*A note about the RWA move from Nashville to Orlando. After seeing the massive scale that this conference covers, from all the attendees to incredible organizers and goodies and workshops and dinners and lunches and parties and awards and even the incredible conference program, I now completely understand WHY they had to move. And had to move they did – to be honest, that the conference ran as smoothly as it did was a feat of Herculean proportions, and my hat is off to RWA for pulling it off. I rescind any previous snark about pulling out of Nashville. But I do hope y’all will think about coming back. We have a lot to offer.

Harbinger

Zoë Sharp

We British as a whole are very bad at the practice of blowing our own trumpet.

As a general rule, we’d rather apologise for being bad at something – take your pick of any sporting activity, from cricket to football (soccer) – than we would boast of our successes. Maybe we’ve had so few successes as a nation recently that we’re out of the habit. (See, there I go again…)

So, I’ve found this post very difficult to write.

You see, while I was at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival a couple of weeks ago, I found out that the news is official.

The Charlie Fox series has been optioned by Twentieth Century Fox TV.

I heard the news in the bar (of course – this was a crime writing convention, where else would I be?) I was just introducing fellow author Russel D McLean to his American publisher, who I happened to know and he’d never met, when the publisher paused, looked at me and said, “Didn’t I just get an email about you – something about a movie deal?”

(Oh, and isn’t this a great picture of Russel, by the way? It was taken by the incredibly talented Mary Reagan, and really should be his official author photo.)

Of all the ways to find out the proverbial cat was out of the bag, that has to be one of the most unexpected. When fellow crime writerist and famous beardy person, Stuart MacBride, heard the news, he was dancing about with a huge grin on his face, while I admit I was just looking a bit nonplused.

Of course, since then I’ve had a bit of time to think about it, for the implications to settle in and, frankly, I’m still thinking… Wow.

Of course, apart from wandering round with an occasional big stupid cheesy grin on my face, I don’t quite know what to make of it. I’ve had emails from people – including all the ‘Rati crew, of course – wishing me congrats, but the Brit in me feels compelled to point out that it’s only half an inch up towards the first rung on the ladder. There’s a hell of a long way to go from page to screen, as I’m sure many a previously optioned author will testify. (You see? I just can’t help myself.)

But for the moment, I can allow myself the odd little daydream, the most immediate of which (apart from wondering what it was they saw in my series that made them option it in the first place, and what elements might make it through to the final phase) is who would play the characters. I know, I know, it’s sad, but what author hasn’t done it?

The dream, of course, is to have a relative unknown, like Noomi Rapace who played Lisabeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium trilogy. But who will take the role in next year’s remake, considering Daniel Craig has already been cast as Mikael Blomkvist? If it’s a big name, they’ll bring a big slice of their own personality to the part. Does the character gain or lose from that?

The problem for me is, that because Charlie Fox is a first-person character, I never get a good look at her. She’s not the kind of girl who spends a long time staring into mirrors, and the only time she’s looking at reflections in shop windows is doing counter-surveillance routines.

Now, Sean I have a much clearer picture of. Probably something like the Sam Worthington character in ‘Terminator Salvation’.

Charlie’s fallen-from-grace slightly cold orthopedic surgeon father? Well, how about somebody like Michael Kitchen, although minus the hat.

And Charlie’s boss, Parker Armstrong? In my world, Mark Harmon would be a distinct possibility.

And yes, I know there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of any of this fantasy cast becoming a reality, but I can dream, can’t I?

My problem is that Charlie is very close to me, which is a problem when it comes to me picturing her as somebody else – or somebody else as her. Fellow crime author Meg Gardiner once described one of her lead protagonists as “me with the brakes off” and that probably about sums it up. Only, to that I’d add “me with the brakes off, fighting mad and heading for timber” as well.

So, I’m open to suggestions. Help! How do you see her? Or any of the characters? Or any characters in your own or your favourite books, that have or haven’t made it to screen yet? Did the actor playing the part fit your idea, or ruin it for you?

This week’s Phrase of the Week is letting the cat out of the bag, meaning to reveal a secret. It stems from medieval markets where an unsuspecting buyer was often shown a suckling piglet, but while negotiations were taking place on the price, and the piglet was being bagged up for the journey home, an accomplice would often substitute it for a cat instead. The duped buyer would only discover this when he got home and, quite literally, let the cat out of the bag.

THIS IS THE CITY

by J.D. Rhoades

I just got back from the big city of Chicago, where I had the honor of helping two dear friends celebrate their wedding. When not participating in wedding merriment, I got a chance to see some more of one of my favorite towns.

There are quite a few downsides to being, as I put it, between publishers, but one of the ones that really gets me down is that I don’t get to travel as much to conferences and book festivals. Not only do I love seeing old friends, making new ones, and finally getting to know people I only know from online, I love seeing America’s cities. This may surprise some of you, since I’m pretty vocal about being a small town boy. What can I say? Like Walt Whitman, I am large. I contain multitudes.

There’s just something about going walkabout in a city I’ve never been before, especially if it’s a place I’ve connected to through books. Or going back to one I’ve been to before to find that the taste I got the second or third time is different from the first.

Here are some of my favorites (by no means an exhaustive list):

Chicago: I love the architecture. I know it makes me sound geeky as hell but I’m fascinated by those old buildings, especially the big ones like the Chicago Tribune building. Some of them are as ornate and filigreed as cathedrals.

Then there are the parks. For a big city, Chicago seems to be very much into green space and places to play outdoors. Next time I go back, I’m going to take some time to just hang out there.

And the food, good lord, the food.

New York: I’ve often said I’d probably expire quickly if I lived in New York. Not from pining away for the South, but from lack of sleep. No matter how late it might be, I look out into the street and I feel it pulling at me. I just have to get out there and see what’s going on. And there’s always something going on. The people were very nice, too, which I didn’t expect after years of hearing how uptight and unfriendly New Yorkers were. (Except the bartenders in the Grand Hyatt. Those guys acted like they were doing me a favor selling me a 14 dollar cocktail.).

Which reminds me: there are some cities I’ve been surprised by, because frankly, my pre-conceived image of them was so unfair. Like:

Boise: “Boise?” someone once asked when I told them I was going there for the Murder in the Grove conference. “Why the hell would anyone want to go to BOISE?” To be sure, I wondered that myself. I expected to be surrounded by potato-chomping whack job survivalists. Boise, I apologize. It’s really a very hip city, with great restaurants, coffeehouses, and one of the coolest guitar shops I’ve eve been in. And I got to actually wave hello to the new Governor in his office.

Omaha: I had the same prejudice against Omaha. I thought it was going to be a hick town writ large. But again, I apologize. No, corn does not actually grow in the streets there. No, cows do not roam free. The people do not all dress in overalls (not that there’s anything wrong with that). In fact, it was a very nice place,with great food, cool record shops, Irish pubs, blues bars, and some great steaks.

Some cities, alas, it’s hard to love. Like, for instance, Dallas. I hated Dallas. Hated it, hated it, hated it. That may, however. have been because I was only there for a meeting that was part of a particularly ugly and contentious lawsuit and my main view of the city was from the windows of a corporate boardroom full of assholes.

But even that dry brown city had its upside. It was there I first sang karaoke with a group of Japanese executives who were very appreciative of my sake-fueled rendition of “Travelin’ Band.”

Houston, on the other hand, rocks, thanks to friends like David Thompson and the lovely McKenna Jordan (both of Murder By the Book) as well as my old friend Celine (aka Lee Billings). I’ll always remember Houston as the place where Ken Bruen read to a room full of late night partiers from a book that had just come out called THE DEVIL’S RIGHT HAND.

One city I’d love to go back to: Baltimore. I’d read Laura Lippman. I’d seen every episode of THE WIRE. So I’m not sure what I expected from Baltimore. That may be why I never really felt like I got a handle on the place. But lunch at the Inner Harbor was nice.

Other places I’ve loved and would love to revisit: Boston. Miami. Madison.

Some cities where I’ve never been, but want very much to see: L.A. Seattle. Austin. New Orleans.

So, on to the discussion questions: What’s your favorite city? What must I be sure to catch when I’m there?

The Pantry Diet

By Louise Ure

The ‘Rati troops seem to have been fairly consumed with food issues these last few weeks. Rob wrote about his Post-Hawaii Diet. Cornelia sang the praises of “Lobster Pie” at the Maine Diner (and gave an even earlier shout out to a “Lobster Prozac” recipe). Alafair, in yesterday’s post, bemoaned the temporary loss of her favorite lunch at Otto’s Enoteca Pizzeria in NYC.

I’m continuing the theme today with my own new diet plan: don’t buy any food.

Times are tough, we hear on the news. Folks are going out to dinner less often and packing their own lunch for the office. That’s all good advice, but many of us stopped going out long ago and making my own lunch is nothing new.

Ergo my new calorie and cost saving diet: stop buying food.

With three exceptions (milk, eggs and bread), I’m not going to buy any groceries until I’ve cleaned out the freezer and the pantry.

Now I’m not one of those folks with a full-size freezer stocked with venison and a whole flock of chickens. The stuff that’s in the freezer is there because I didn’t want it before. Some of it is so old that I can’t tell what it is. Animal? Vegetable? Mineral? I’ll take my chances.

And the can-laden shelves in the garage are not “earthquake supplies,” as contractor I hired so graciously suggested. Oh no, that’s mini-Costco. One thing I’ve learned in hindsight: I should never have sent Bruce to Costco when he was hungry. He invariably came home with a case of kidney beans or a gross of cans of tuna. Or both. I have enough cranberry juice on the shelves downstairs to cure a sub-continent of scurvy.

At first it was fun and full of variety. There was shrimp in the freezer. And steak. Frozen haricots vert and corn. The supplies dwindled as my favorites disappeared. And my names for each of these recipes changed. Soon I was eating “Home Alone Macaroni and Cheese” and “Assisted Living Chicken,” which is probably not what the folks at Stouffers would have called that breaded chicken cutlet.

There’s “Party of One Smoked Oysters” (and why did Bruce ever think we’d need fifty cans of it?) and “Thousand Year Old Pot Stickers.” I need about twenty new recipes to use up all the cans of water chestnuts and little bottles of clam juice.

Tamales have their own pride of place as my relatives think they are the Arizona equivalent of a covered dish brought home after a funeral. I had four dozen at last count and that’s about 48 meals-worth.

There’s a pecking order to my choices, of course. I’ll use the butter up first and then move along to the olive oil. When that’s gone, I’ll resort to the vegetable oil, the peanut oil and finally to that least-favorite-of-all-the-lipids, PAM spray. If I break out the lard, you’ll know I’m close to the end.

The coffee will go first and then I’ll attack those half-dozen, half-filled boxes of tea bags. And I don’t even like tea.

I have enough pasta to live through any amount of time in a bomb shelter and enough brown rice to start my own commune.

Desserts will prove challenging, although I still have a jar of applesauce, and a box of popsicles. Of course, there are all those boxes of Jello pudding and the Peeps from last Easter on the top shelf of the cupboard.

Sometimes when I’m putting together a meal I feel like one of those chefs opening a basket on “Chopped.” Anchovies. Dried apricots. Bush’s Baked Beans. Count Chocula cereal. “You must use all of these ingredients in your final dish.”

What about you guys? If you had one of those “No Way I’m Going to the Grocery Store” days, what would you pull out of your pantry for a meal?

Oh, and I may add one more ingredient to that “must buy” list. Wine. I think I’m going to need it.

I Want What I Can’t Have

I want what I can’t have.

When I say that, I don’t refer to the desires most of us have for actual things or states of being that exist in reality but which we will likely never enjoy: a mansion in Maui, a loft in Tribeca, waking up in bed with James Franco.

In other words, when I say I want what I can’t have, I don’t mean it the same way Morrisey meant when he sang “I Want the One I Can’t Have.” (Yes, that was just an excuse to include a Smiths video in this post.)

With all due respect, Morrisey, the more precise language to describe that state of desire would be, “I want what I am highly unlikely to have in the foreseeable future.” No. When I say that I want what I can’t have, what I mean is that I want what I literally cannot have. And by literally, I mean literally, not figuratively, the way people nowadays inexplicably (and literally) say things such as, “My head literally exploded.”

Here’s what I mean: Yes, I want that beach house in Maui, and I want that loft in Tribeca. I’m not likely to have either one in the foreseeable future, but my real problem is that I want them at the same time. I want to wake up to the sounds of waves crashing on the beach outside my window, then step outside onto cobblestone streets to eat pasta cooked by some employee of Robert DeNiro. I want to take a surfing lesson in my backyard then walk down the street for dinner at Nobu.

And, yep, I got a mad crush on James Franco. I sort of like the idea of being Mrs. James Franco. (Oh, who are we kidding? He’d be Mr. Alafair Burke, but whatevs.) Now, am I likely ever to meet James Franco? No. Would he love me if he met me? Well, yeah, of course, but he might not want to marry me. All of those considerations are irrelevant, however, because I want to be married to my husband. Forever. Exclusively. Indubutably. For reals. But, ahem, as bride to James Franco. I want what I can’t have.

As I write this, I find myself extremely sad because I am packing a suitcase. Tomorrow morning, I will board an airplane, and I won’t come home for 14 days, 2 hours, and 11 minutes. The husband will be joining me for the first five days on Burke-a-pa-looza, an all-Burke vacation up in Canada. There will be golf, parental units, and nieces and nephews who think I’m the coolest aunt in the world. I have every confidence that said vacation shall rock.

From there, I will head solo to a hotel room on the west coast, away from the humidity that ruins my summers and my hair, closer to dear friends whom I still miss everyday, and shielded from the many distractions at home that keep me from writing with the intensity I need right now. I asked for ten days, by myself, in a hotel room, so I could finish my next book before classes start.

I got what I asked for.

But now I’m sad.

Why? Because fourteen days away from home means fourteen mornings when I won’t wake up to find this face licking mine:

It means fourteen days when I won’t have lunch at my office away from home:

Notice the name of the guest on the check. I’m a regular!
It means fourteen days without my gym, my park, my croissant place, or that amazing collection of health and beauty aids crammed into my medicine cabinet.

It means ten days without my husband.

The thing I want that I can’t have is all the comforts of home, all the familiar rhythms of family, the constant companionship of my closest friends, and all the time and solitude I need to write the best possible book I can.

In this case, I really can’t get what I want.

I just might, however, find I get what I need: a few days with my family, a few dinners with my west coast friends, a hell of a lot of writing time, and a very happy husband and Duffer waiting to greet me and my completed manuscript at home. Wish me luck! (I may be a bit quiet while I’m bunkered down.)

So what are the things you want that you CAN’T have?

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Breaking Rules to Break In or Break Out

by Allison Brennan

On Saturday, I presented a workshop with J.T. and Bantam editor Shauna
Summers called “Breaking Rules to Break in or Break Out.” I’ve given
this workshop many times and it changes each and every presentation.

Three years ago, the Orange County RWA chapter were the guinea pigs for
this workshop. I had been frustrated by the so-called “rules” imposed on
writers that I felt stifled creativity and weakened an author’s voice.
So I polled published authors I knew and asked for their first sales
stories, specifically what “rule” they broke that they felt helped them
sell. Some authors blended genres in a way that others told them
wouldn’t sell, some authors set their story in an “unpopular” time era,
others pushed the envelop with story or characters.

The workshop has evolved, largely because I hate giving the same
presentation twice. I’ve given it at RWA, at the New Jersey RWA
conference, and on-line via email loop. The primary purpose is to teach
writers that we all have rules we adhere to, because they are OUR rules.
For example, because I write romantic suspense, my personal rules is
that 1) the hero and heroine must survive in the end and 2) they must be
closer at the end of the book, so the reader can believe that they have
a HEA in their future. I also ensure that the bad guy gets what’s coming
to him, because justice-for me-must be served.

But other rules I’ve been told by some critique partners or contest
judges or even reading the advice of other published authors, agents,
and editors, doesn’t work for ME. For example, I like writing in
multiple viewpoints–sometimes more than four, six, eight, ten. The most
I’ve used is thirteen. My only rule is that transitions must be clear.
My editor helps keep me on the straight and narrow there. But some
people will tell you never write in more than (insert arbitrary number
here, usually 3 or 4) POVs.

Following rules that don’t fit you or your voice conforms your writing
to match everyone elses. What’s the fun in that? Why will an editor buy
your book if it sounds like the hundred other submissions she just read?
It’s the stories that practically sing with character and voice that
draw an editor, agent, reader in . . . Not whether you followed all the
“rules.”

Rules are important, but breaking rules is fun. But more important than
being fun and creative, is that rules-or the lack thereof-is crucial in
developing voice and style and making you stand out from all the other
writers writing in your genre.

I always learn something at every conference I go to. Otherwise, I would
probably stop going. But seriously, no matter how many times I go, I
pick up something I can apply to my own writing life.

What did I learn, or was reminded about, in my own workshop? Editors
generally buy on voice and character. Don’t break rules just for the
sake of breaking rules, break rules with a purpose. Too many cooks (or
critique partners or contest judges or well-meaning friends!) will
destroy your story. As Stephen King says, write with the door closed and
edit with the window open. Meaning, write for yourself first, but don’t
let everyone in during editing–only those you completely trust.

You will never please everyone. There will always be people who hate
your book. I’d rather have people who love my book or hate my book than
people who are lukewarm about my book. (Of course, I really want more
people to love it than hate it!) So write for yourself, edit smartly,
ignore the rules that don’t work for you or the story, and in the end,
your story will be stronger for it and you’ll be happier.

But the one reminder that I needed now more than ever came from Nora
Roberts in her “chat.” No excuses. Put your ass in the chair and write.
Stop whining, stop complaining, stop blaming. No one said it would be
easy, and you have to want it. You have to be hungry for it, have
passion for it, be willing to make sacrifices for it. What is IT? For
many at RWA it was simply “being published.” But for the published, what
is it? I had to think about that. For me, it’s writing a better book
than my last, to stay focused, to simply be a stronger, better writer.
And sometimes that’s hard to believe possible. We all doubt. But that’s
the excuse. My goal is now to DO. No more excuses. Put my ass in the
chair and write.

I’m traveling home today and hope to check in periodically between
flights. I hope you’ll chat about something you’ve learned at a
conference that you’ve applied to your writing life and to what result?

RWA Nationals and some thoughts on INCEPTION

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m posting from Orlando, where I am at the Romance Writers of America National Convention, along with ever-lovelier Murderati lovelies JT and Allison.

I don’t suppose it’s even much of a surprise any more that a good chunk of this Rati lineup attends one or both of the major romance conventions a year, and smaller ones on the side as well. And it’s not just because we can’t bear to go more than a few months without seeing each other in person, although that’s part of it.

Many of us have said this here before, but it bears repeating. ANY writer in publishing today ignores the romance market at their own peril. Industry insiders openly admitted that romance kept the book business afloat during the bleakest times of the recession, and continues to. And it’s no longer the case that mystery and thriller writers are just outsider guests, mere curiosities at these conferences. Just in the last four years that I’ve been a published author, I’ve seen the huge tent that romance is take in more and more subgenres, some of which tilt darker and darker – and I’m talking dark like in zombie apocalypse stories – to the point that I’m not sure you can realistically call romance ANY kind of genre at all, as much as it is simply a marketing strategy.

(Okay, all right, I can hear romance purists howling out there, but I’m looking at this from a mystery/thriller perspective.).

ALL the publishers are here, some of them with dozens of reps, from divisions all over the world. You can’t walk two steps without tripping over an editor or agent from a major company, And not to be crass, but you can tell how romance ranks with our publishers not just from that overwhelming presence, but also from the sheer amount of money the agents and publishers spend on parties, marketing, and book giveaways (staggering…).

Because of that overwhelmingly professional slant, RWA is not the free-for-all that Thrillerfest and Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime – and Romantic Times – tend to be. (Although nothing beats that Harlequin dance party – I’m so sore this morning I can barely type…). It’s a working conference; many, many aspiring authors come to pitch to agents and editors (and do come away with representation and book deals), and the very cool thing is that RWA chapters all over the country prep their chapter members for conferences with practice pitch sessions and conference how-to in the months before “nationals”, as they call it.

One feature I really love about RWA (besides being able to wear all my dressiest clothes and changing outfits three times a day) is the daily luncheons with keynote speakers. Not only do they feed us (which means I actually eat, something I often forget to do at other conferences), but there’s always a fascinating keynote speaker at the lunches – yesterday Jane Ann Krentz, who has published 160 books under three different names, giving us a wry breakdown of how she has sabotaged her own career over and over and over again over the years, and always managed to reinvent herself. You can’t help but learn – and find comfort – from a pro with that much life and career experience.

But the greatest thing for me about this conference, as really any of the good ones, is hearing aspiring writers all around me say in a way that makes me know they mean it – “That’s it – no more fucking around. I’m finishing this book by —-“ (Oh, all right, it’s Nationals, they’re not saying “fucking”.) And they mean it. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again – a conference like this is what gets people past those last internal blocks and gets the book finished, repped and out there.

Something to think about.

—————————————————————–

Okay, so while I’ve been here I’ve taught two Screenwriting Tricks For Authors workshops, SRO, and because I saw INCEPTION last week I kept using that as an example, and I want to make a couple of comments without discussing in-depth until more people have seen it.

The movie is a great one to see not just because anything Christopher Nolan does is worth seeing, but also because it illustrates how useful it is to watch movies and read books with story structures specific to what you’re writing yourself. I’m going to do a full post on it next month, and if you want to play along, there are two things especially I wanted to suggest you guys keep in mind when you see it.

First of all – the movie is about the nature of dreams and reality, sure, but while you’re watching it, ask yourself – “What KIND of story is it? (See here if you don’t know what I’m talking about). It’s a very specific sub-genre that Nolan uses to tell this story, and all the conventions of that genre are used and laid out very -conventionally. Instead of giving you the answer, though, I think I’ll let you see it and tell me.

But it’s absolutely textbook how all the story elements I keep talking about are laid out in this movie (watch particularly for how the PLAN is articulated over and over and over again…)

Also, the movie is interesting structurally because it uses a convention we haven’t talked about yet – a Point Of View character. Even though DiCaprio is the protagonist, we maintain a certain distance from him because he is so unreliable. So there is also a character who carries the emotional investment of the audience – a character who observes DiCaprio, worries about his mental state, and steps in at a crucial moment with a plan of her own. Ooops, there, I gave it away, but it’s not really a spoiler – I just wanted to mention that Ellen Page is serving as the point of view character, and you can see how that works. (Actually I think the Ellen Page character is a very weak character, and it’s a weak performance, but the presence of that character as written still works to build suspense about DiCaprio as a dangerous character, unsuited to do the job he’s supposed to be doing.).

This is a storytelling trick used when you want to build in a whole other layer to your protagonist, and observe her or him as a character instead of simply being inside the character as a vehicle for your experience of the story. Often this character will actually BE the protagonist, the one with the biggest emotional arc.

Also, this is a great movie to watch for the outlining of the PLAN.

And oh, all right – what class MYTHS do you see working in this one? (One is too easy for words, but not ALL on the nose…)

There are some classic Point Of View characters in literature, and some not so famous – any examples for us?

And yes, I want to hear what KIND of story you think INCEPTION is!

And of course – anyone else have a take on romance conferences?

Back to the trenches, now… where are those spike heels?

– Alex