Two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post over on my own site about e-book piracy, and how victimized I felt, as an author, about my books being pirated. After I wrote the post, I thought I’d add an appropriate graphic to accompany the entry, so I went searching for a pirate image. I did a search on Google Images and found 17,700,000 entries.
Now, I don’t think of myself as the type of person prone to be a pirate. My daughter-in-law and my younger son both make their livings as professional photographers, so I’m well aware of the issue of photographers’ rights. Photographers want copyright control over their images just as much as we writers want control over our creations.
So as I looked at all those pirate images on Google, I automatically shied away from any and all photographs, because I knew they were probably under license. I shied away from anything with a live model or anything that looked like a hand-drawn illustration. I shied away from anything that had a trademark or an obvious business logo. I finally settled on the most generic black-and-white skull and crossbones I could find. It looked like your standard pirate flag symbol, something that might actually have flown on a flag two hundred years ago. How could something so generic be under license?
The blog post went up, and two weeks went by.
Then I received an email from a helpful soul, pointing out how ironic it was that I’d chosen a licensed image to illustrate my blog post about piracy. Take a careful look at that image, he advised me. There was a watermark there, almost hidden in the background. Yep, my generic skull-and-crossbones flag was a licensed image.
I’d completely missed it. I’d pirated an image for my post about piracy.
Of course I took it right down. And it got me to thinking — how often does this happen? How often do we unknowingly pull off licensed images from the internet, thereby violating the rights of artists or photographers?
I asked the person who’d written me how one can tell if something’s licensed or not, and he passed the question along to a friend of his who works in the graphic arts business. And the response was: all original creative works are copyrighted by default. The problem with Google images is that there’s no way of knowing if the image is indeed in the public domain. So to be safe, none of us should be using anything off Google images.
So where can we find free images?
He suggested a site: morgue file, a public image archive.
Finally, he added that “Many US government produced images are Public Domain, except for “agency logos” as we paid for them. NASA, EPA, etc… image can be be freely used in many cases.Just see the term of image use on most agency pages. Some require crediting the agency or photographer or not commercial use.”
It’s a valuable tip for anyone who blogs. If we hate being pirated as writers, then we should understand that it’s just as much a sin to be pirating off artists and photographers.
Just my tip for the day.
(I’ll be traveling today so won’t be able to personally respond to any comments.)
Last week I wrote a short story featuring a fiction writer in the future. Each morning she goes to work and her thoughts are harvested for stories. People known as “The Watchers” decide which of her ideas are the most marketable. In the afternoon, my poor protag must flesh out and complete those tales.
Problem is, my character is bored with their choices. The Watchers always pick the same general ideas. Originality, it seems, is frowned upon.
When I wrote the story, I wasn’t actively thinking about clichés.
I am now.
You know what? I think most of us treat clichés in a very cliché’d manner. Editors, critics, reviewers, readers — we all condemn them. Oh, no! They’re hackneyed, formulaic, unoriginal, tired.
Bull.
Deep down we crave clichés for the comfort they give us, for their efficiency and predictability.
This week I developed a taxonomy of clichés that centers on four main categories:
1. Phrases ► So hungry I could eat a cow ► Eyes like limpid pools ► High as a kite
2. Literary Devices ► Ticking clock ► Cliffhangers at ends of chapters ► Multiple POVs to give a sense of urgency
3. Characters ► Protag with crippling problems – alcoholism, traumatic past ► Brilliant scientist who is also really, really hot ► Bumbling policeman who never sees the most obvious clues
4. Themes ► Mysterious stranger arrives in town. All hell breaks loose either for the character . . . or the town. ► Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl hate each other. Boy and Girl fall in love. ► A world is in peril. Hapless man/woman meets sexy scientist (see category #3). They save it in the nick of time.
So why do some of these “overworked” concepts sometimes work while others don’t?
I’m reading Jeffrey Deaver’s The Bone Collector right now. It’s got the ticking clock for sure. Both of the main protags – Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs – have enough emotional baggage to sink the QEII. And don’t tell me that SERIAL KILLER isn’t a cliché theme all its own.
Yet the book is a riveting read.
Is it really possible that there’s “no new idea under the sun?” That plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose — which, of course, is a cliché — is the reality?
That still doesn’t explain the difference between successful clichés and those that make us want to throw a book across the room.
Is it merely a question of how they’re employed, the way a story is told?
I honestly don’t know.
Do you?
Let’s discuss it . . .
Give me your theories. ► Create new categories of clichés.
And even though New Orleans still has a long way to go…
A couple of weeks ago, we got to see a little bit of that comeback in motion:
I know to a lot of people, it was just a football game. But for a beleaguered city, for a people who’ve already been through hell and high water, it was a welcome change.
Right now, there’s a huge need in Haiti… I hope that if you haven’t already given something, that you’ll consider even a small donation. You’d be surprised how much it matters. You’d be stunned how well it adds up, and what a difference it makes.
In the mean time, tell me about your favorite fictional underdog stories or favorite succeeds-against-the-odds character.
(like I could resist)
* Lyrics and music by Bill Withers
**Photos linked to their photo credit, where possible.
Okay, it’s FUCKING FEBRUARY and I now live near the arctic circle, here in Cow Hampshire. I hate February. I know deep in my tiny black heart that T.S. Eliot was totally, irredeemably, hopelessly misguided about that whole “April is the cruelest month” crap. April is a big fat snooze of a year-twelfth, by comparison–taxes and all. The only thing that can be said in February’s defense is that it’s the shortest, even though of course it actually consumes five years of mental time because, (oh, did I mention this already?) February SUCKS SUCH GINORMOUS BUTT!
Like I was filling my car with gas so I could drive down to New York last weekend, and it was so goddamn cold it almost made me cry, no shit. So cold it made my face ache the minute I opened the car door and I unscrewed the gas-cap and thought my hands were going to shatter and fall off, which is not something you want when you’re on deadline.
Luckily, I did not actually burst into tears, because they probably would have frozen before leaving my tear ducts and made my head explode. Or implode, or whatever. I don’t actually know, because I got a D-minus in chemistry back in high school, which allows me to disavow all knowledge of such things. Except that it was too fucking cold out.
Having lived in the northeast before, however (starting at age fifteen, when I left California for an east-coast education), I know that the only way to get through this shitbox of a month is to stockpile happy things. I don’t mean kittens and puppies (especially because they’d freeze to death, HELLO), but the kind of things that can nurture the human spirit even when it’s fully dark by four in the afternoon and you begin considering the option of investing in a balaclava with especially tiny eyeholes. (the gun would of course freeze to your hand, so bank robberies are probably out until April).
Yes, if you live somewhere as cold as here and you’re not one of those genetically Calvinist psychos who run outside yelling “Yea! Now I can go build a hut out on a big lake and catch fish through a hole in the ice!”, I know you probably just want to curl up under the sofa with a cake-mixing bowl of mashed potatoes with four or five sticks of butter shoved into the middle, but this is not a sustainable plan of attack on a daily basis. Trust me, I’ve tried.
Herewith, the ten things that have sustained me through the worst month of past winters:
1. Anti-Depressants
Why not start with the big guns? And remember, they’re cheaper than cocaine and probably not cut with Italian baby laxative. Bonus!
How does he make the boomerang-shoe noise? Genius! And so NSFW…
5. The car air freshener my pal Maggie bought me.
Because you* deserve a laugh after you’ve just scraped your windshield off with a metal spatula from IKEA, since even though you left California in August, you keep forgetting to buy a real ice-scraper thing at Wal-Greens. (*And by “you” I mean “me.” But you probably figured that out already. {And that last time, “you” actually meant “you.”})***
And also, it makes your incredibly bone-chilling car interior smell like tomatoes and basil.
Because all the good stuff there happens INDOORS, and everyone delivers.
Not to mention free cold sesame noodles:
Oh, and you can take your kid out to buy H&H bagels that are still hot, along with some Tem-Tee whipped cream cheese and a pound of Nova from Zabars (since unfortunately Barney Greengrass, “The Sturgeon King,” is closed on Mondays), which totally doesn’t suck.
Because all they have in Cow Hampshire are these:
Which are the goyish-carbohydrate answer to SPAM.
7. Go outside SOMETIMES
Like to watch the sun set over the frozen waters of the mighty Squamscott, very happy that they will light up those cupolas for the long dark night ahead.
8. Practice some “Snowman Noir”
9. Drink some Haitian rum
I don’t mean on an hourly basis or anything, but hey, every once in a while when it feels like it’s been the first week in February for the last twenty seven years, go for it. I mean, there’s got to be SOME upside to the sun going down so early, right?
Plus which, at this point it’s for a good cause.
10. Remember that there are still people in the world who stand up for what’s right. Then get to your feet and stand up beside them.
Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death. This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit.
Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.
(Du’a at seventeen)
There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.
I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.
A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.
“I’m sorry.”
What is wrong with women?
I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.
How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.
(Screenshots, camera-phone video of the stoning of Du’a Khalil)
I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.
It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)
(Next to her in this shot is a cinderblock used by her attackers)
Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.
All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.
I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.
The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.
(Her grave)
Inspired by Whedon’s essay, a group of people decided to collect essays and artwork for an anthology, called Nothing But Red. Here’s the website: http://nothingbutred.wordpress.com/
“Killings of young girls and women in Kurdistan are rapidly rising and such killings occur even more openly than before. After the murder of Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old Yezidi girl stoned to death in public, at least another 40 women have been killed – among them Amina, a 12 year old girl killed by her father, under the pretext that she was ‘in love with a neighbor,’ and Sara an 11-year-old.”
My pal Susan sent me a link to a Huffington Post article written by Peter Daou this morning, which is what got me thinking about the Whedon essay.
It was this part of the piece that compelled me to search for something to ease my sense of despair:
“13-year old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was stoned to death in Somalia by insurgents because she was raped. Reports indicate that she was raped by three men while traveling by foot to visit her grandmother in Mogadishu. When she went to the authorities to report the crime, they accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. Aisha was forced into a hole in a stadium of 1,000 onlookers as 50 men buried her up to the neck and cast stones at her until she died. A witness who spoke to the BBC’s Today programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning, reported to have taken place in a football stadium. … She said: ‘I’m not going, I’m not going. Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.’ A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her. The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was ‘awful.'”
The sky isn’t evil, but it sure can feel like it.
Buy a copy of Nothing But Red. Proceeds benefit Equality Now, whose mission statement reads:
Equality Now works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through the mobilization of public pressure. Issues of concern to Equality Now include:
RAPE * DOMESTIC VIOLENCE * REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS * TRAFFICKING * FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION * POLITICAL PARTICIPATION * GENDER DISCRIMINATION
That’s something we can all get behind, especially in February.
There is nothing more remarkable than the moment you realize you are no longer a struggling debut writer, but a real live working author. I’m not quite sure I’d fully grasped that concept until now, as I begin the penultimate blog before my fourth novel goes on sale.
Trust you me, when I started blogging here at Murderati on April 7, 2006, when I had an agent but no book deal, I never dreamed that I’d be at this point. I’m not being modest, I really, truly, honestly never in a million years thought that in a mere four years, I’d be doing what I’m doing.
What I’m doing is writing book six, and thinking about book seven, and getting ready for copyedits on book five, and promoting the living hell out of myself and book four, and working on three shorts for anthologies, and remodeling, remembering to breathe and beginning my foray into a bunch of foreign markets.
I am blessed.
A momentary aside: I am not kidding when I say that. I KNOW I’m blessed. Yes, I work hard, very hard. But there’s always an element of luck and timing involved in publishing, two things that have been in ready abundance for me. I don’t know why that is. I wish to God I could share it with everyone.
But that’s what happens in this crazy world. Sometimes, if you’re very good and very lucky, you get a break. Sometimes, if you’re very good and very lucky, you don’t get a break. It’s not fair. It upsets me to no end. I want everyone to be happy, published, self-sufficient. I know that’s not the case. Because there’s a downside to the good – friendships lost, sleepless nights worrying about what’s to come, the fear of a book’s complete failure. There comes a point where sharing good news can only be done with a few trusted individuals, because you don’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings with your joy.
That’s a lonely day. And it’s especially bad when you’re in the month leading up to a book release, when all you can thinking about is you and the novel and your positioning for the next interview, and you cringe knowing everyone who knows you must be sitting back and saying my God when did it become all about HER? You find out who your friends are when things are bad. You find out who your friends are when things are good, too.
But the good, it outweighs the bad. It outweighs it ten to one.
There’s a moment in the promotion schedule that I always hit – what in the world am I going to talk about with this book? I’ve been suffering with that malady tremendously with THE COLD ROOM – on its surface, it’s a novel about necrosadism, though there is so much more to it than that. There’s a secret in the book. Something that I don’t want to talk about – that’s not true, I DO want to talk about it, but I’ll ruin it for the readers if I do – so I’ve been stubbornly clinging to the mentality that I don’t have anything but that to discuss. I’ve had a horrible mental block on this, and we’re only three weeks from launch day. I have a punishing schedule of appearances and travel, and no matter what I want or don’t want, I have to talk about this book. I’ve tried to make notes, and nothing’s coming together. I am doomed.
And then my editor needed a series of questions answered for the Polish translation of ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS.
ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS? Hell, I haven’t even thought about that book for years. Literally, years. How am I supposed to think about that when I’m trying to figure out what to say about book four? And write book six? And remember to breathe?
So I got on a plane. Flew to my parents (it was a scheduled trip, but after the past month, and knowing what’s coming in the month ahead, I was really looking forward to being on a plane with no Internet for an hour and a half.)
I put on my earphones to discourage the negative Nelly next to me (note to flyers: NEVER open to your seatmate with a story about a plane crash. IT IS BAD LUCK!) settled in, and the second the bell dinged, I dove. I listened to some MUSE, some METRIC, then hit shuffle and closed my eyes. The first song that came on was Sarah McLachlan’s ANGEL.
Which is the theme song for book six.
Which I haven’t heard forever because I forgot I made it the theme song for book six.
Because I am an idiot.
And everything fell into place with one of those big huge cosmic CLICKS!
I suddenly remembered what I wanted to do with book six. I realized what I needed to talk about on the road for THE COLD ROOM. I remembered the joy and the agony of writing ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, and where I was four years ago, no deal, no books, no worries. I remembered that I have people, people who love me even when I’m being selfish, who want so much for me and put up with my nonsense.
I found my center.
I opened my Moleskine and started writing. I laid out everything I wanted to touch upon during the tour. I worked on the standalone. I worked on a short story. I made notes on THE PRETENDER. I listened to Angel over and over, and the blood, sweat and tears I’ve been putting in for the past four years just flowed onto the page.
I got off the plane feeling better than I have in months.
2009 was a rough year for many of us. Ours was particularly rough on the non-JT side of the fence, but a great one for JT. Which threw a great big rift into my ability to keep the two separate. I’ve been spinning my wheels for months now – working but not feeling wholly involved, promoting but resenting it, writing but feeling a spark missing.
That fire relit itself on the plane, because I had to think back, truly reach back in my mind, to remember something about my debut novel. I’m sitting here on my parents couch, looking at the waves, remembering how it all began.
Funny how life works, isn’t it?
Next time, I’m going to bore you to tears with all kinds of details about THE COLD ROOM. It was the most difficult book I’ve ever written for a number of reasons, and I’m ready to talk about that.
But today, let’s celebrate someone else.
My friend Carla Buckley will join the ranks of published authors for the first time on February 9, with her fantastic debut THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE. I met Carla through the ITW Debut Authors Committee, and we were fast friends right away. I am so excited that her time draws nigh, and hope you’ll welcome her with a due accord (BUY THE BOOK!!!)
Here’s the officially skinny on Carla:
Carla Buckley is the debut author of The Things That Keep Us Here (Delacorte Press, February 2010.) Orion in the UK and Wunderlich in Germany pre-empted rights to her first two novels. Carla is the Chair of the International Thriller Writers Debut Program and currently lives in Ohio with her husband and children.
A year ago, Ann and Peter Brooks were just another unhappily married couple trying—and failing—to keep their relationship together while they raised two young daughters. Now the world around them is about to be shaken again, when Peter, a university researcher, comes to a startling realization: a virulent pandemic has made the terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland. And it is killing fifty out of every hundred people it touches.
Food grows scarce. Neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps. And then a winter storm strikes, and they are left huddling in the dark.
Trapped inside the house she once called home, Ann Brooks must make life-or-death decisions in an environment where opening a door to a neighbor could threaten all the things she holds dear.
Whew! That’s the way to grab our attention, Carla. Many, many congratulations!
Wine of the Week: Bogle PhantomAn outstanding wine for under $20 that is full, and ripe and utterly yummy!
P.S: See how it all began! ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS is available as a free download! Stop by eHarlequin or my website to get your copy.
It will come as no surprise to those who know me that I love playing with words. My dictionary is falling apart and decorated with Post-It notes of words that would make great titles, names, or just ones I love the sound or shape of. Looking up anything always takes me longer than I expected because I get very easily side-tracked. I collect weird meanings and derivations of unusual words and phrases, many of which I’ve included in these posts.
But it’s not just unusual words that fascinate me. I love common words with unusual meanings, or slight misspellings that change everything. (Only recently I was sent an email imploring me to sign a partition.) When I started making a note of some words that caught my eye for this post, I quickly filled pages of notes, and then had to force myself to stop. Here are just a few of my favourites, in no particular order.
And, just to break things up a bit, I’ve interspersed them with some glorious pictures sent to me this week of the coloured patterns in icebergs, caused by them picking up different pigments, or frozen waves. Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions. Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with melt-water and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form. When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe. Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.
While androgynous means having both male and female characteristics, androgenous means having only male offspring.
Everyone knows what angry means, but angary is a legal term meaning a belligerent’s right to seize and use neutral or other property, subject to compensation.
Pursue means to harass or persecute – or, in Scots law, to prosecute – and Spenser spelt it pursew with the same meaning. But written persue, it is not only another alternative spelling, but also means a track of blood. (Spenser again) from the act of piercing.
Consent might be to agree or comply, but concent is a harmony of sounds or voices.
The meaning of blanket is familiar, but blanquet is a variety of pear, blanquette is a ragout of chicken or veal made with a white sauce, and bloncket means grey. (That bloke Spenser gets everywhere.)
A lake is not only a body of water, but also a small stream or channel, or a reddish pigment made from combining a dye with metallic hydroxide to give the colour carmine. Spell it laik and it becomes a Northern English term meaning to sport or play or be unemployed, and lakh means the number 100’000 in India and Pakistan, especially when referring to rupees, or an indefinitely vast number.
While a block is a mass of stone or wood, a bloc is a combination of parties, nations or other units to achieve a common purpose.
One that always used to confuse me as a kid was the difference between demure, meaning chaste or modest, and demur meaning to object or hesitate.
And I know for a fact I’ve accidentally mixed up defuse, to take the fuse out of a bomb or, according to Shakespeare (and what did he know?) to disorder, with diffuse, meaning widely spread or wordy, or also to pour out all round; to scatter.
A clue might be anything that points to the solution to a mystery, but it’s derived from clew, being the ball of thread that guides through the labyrinth, as well as being the lower corner of a sail or one of the cords by which a hammock is suspended.
And this is before we get to the words with one spelling but lots of different meanings:
Pernicious means both destructive and highly injurious, but also (according to Milton) swift, ready and prompt.
A tent could be a portable canvas shelter, an embroidery or tapestry frame, a plug or roll of soft material for dilating a wound, a Spanish red wine, or the Scots word for taking heed or notice of.
A rabble could be a disorderly mob, but also a device for stirring molten iron etc in a furnace.
A race is the descendants of a common ancestor, a fixed course or track over which anything runs, the white streak down an animal’s face, a rootstock of ginger (Shakespeare) to raze or erase, or to tear away or snatch. (Both Spenser. He just made them up as he felt like it, didn’t he?)
Anyway, there are LOTS of others, so what are your favourites, ‘Rati? And what’s the best accidental misuse of a word you’ve ever come across?
No Word of the Week this week. I think I’ve used quite enough, don’t you?
Every book I write, there comes a time when I’m getting really close to the end, my deadline is looming, and I suddenly go into a panic thinking, shit, I’m not gonna make it.
Okay, missing your deadline by a few days or even a week is probably not all that bad — probably not really that big of a deal as long as you talk to your editor about it, and actually get the thing in when you say you’re going to. But I hate like hell missing deadlines.
And I have to admit I’ve missed a couple. One by a few days, one by a couple weeks, but always with the understanding from my editor that it’s okay. “We’d rather have a great book than a rushed one.”
But the truth is, I’m not so sure rushed makes a difference.
I wrote my very first book in about four years. Granted, I was only writing sporatically during that time. Squeezing in a few pages here and there and sometimes going for weeks without writing a word. But it took me four years to finally finish it.
With my second book, I was on deadline. They gave me a year to write it and, believe me, I took that year. In fact, I had such a horrible, horrible case of second-bookitis that I needed every second I could squeeze out of that year in order to a) regain my confidence; and b) get what was in my head down on paper.
Then around comes book number three. I’m not sure what happened, but I must have gone to too many conferences that year. I wound up spending more time goofing off (and working my day job) than I did writing, and it took me about five months to do that particular book.
The next one I wrote took me four months. Are you seeing a pattern here?
Obviously, I’m getting faster at this game. But has the work suffered because of it? How the hell do I know?
I never feel completely satisfied with any of my books, so I’m probably not the guy to ask. Somehow what I’ve got in my head when I conceive of an idea — the pristine beauty of it — never quite seems to make it to the page. So, again, I have no idea if slower means better.
But I suspect it doesn’t. Even though I might feel that a scene was rushed and I could have spent more time on it, the absolute truth is, I could tinker with every single one of my books for years on end, because I’ve got this niggling little trait that I suffer mightily for: I’m a perfectionist. At least when it comes to doing anything creative.
Honestly, if I’m photoshopping a damn family portrait, I’ll spend hours adjusting the colors, fixing the levels, softening the skin tones, tweaking the exposure — then I’ll throw it all out and start from scratch.
Now, I never throw anything out when it comes to books, because I rarely write more than I need, but if you give me the time to do it, I will tinker each scene to death, will rearrange the words in a sentence a hundred times, until I’m almost but not quite completely satisfied with it.
So taking a year to write a book is probably not a good idea for me. Four months seems comfortable, although I certainly would love a couple extra months to procrastinate. I’m very good at procrastinating.
One of my favorite ways to goof off is to diddle around on the web. Facebook. Twitter. Murderati. Reddit. Digg. Amazon. Abe’s Books.
And when I’m chasing a deadline, it just gets worse. Even though I know I only have a couple weeks to finish a book, I find myself wanting to goof off more and more. I think this is because those last fifty or so pages are absolutely the most difficult for me. So avoidance is the game. And I’m certainly good at avoidance.
Which, when it comes down to it, is what I’m doing now. Avoiding writing the book that’s due in a couple weeks. Instead, I’m writing this completely insignificant post and going on a lot longer than I had intended, because I know when I finish I’ll have to go back and write those last pages.
And the funny thing is, I like this book. I think it’s some of the best work I’ve done.
But look at me. I’m just rambling on. What I had intended to do was what my wife suggested (since I’m on deadline) and write a blog about short little life tips, or author tips or some such thing.
Problem is, I don’t have any goddamn life tips, and or any kind of tips at all.
Well, maybe two. The first courtesy of my lovely wife. So here goes:
1. Never wear a red shirt then shop at Target.
2. When you attend Bouchercon for the first time, don’t go around pronouncing it Boo-shay-con. At least not out loud.
And that’s it. I’m spent. That’s the extent of my genius. The breadth of my knowledge.
Now, to be merciful to those of you who are still reading, I will stop here. Because I truly am on deadline and I really do have to get back to those pages.
But not until I procrastinate for a few seconds more and ask you to tell us all about your problems with deadlines, your pursuit of perfectionism, how slower is better (get your mind out of the gutter, girls) or best of all, just give us some damn life tips.
Then maybe I can steal a few. Once I’m finished with this friggin’ book.
Today’s guest is J. Sydney (Syd) Jones, whose second novel in a historical mystery series set in Vienna 1900, Requiem in Vienna, launches today.
Each book features one of the cultural luminaries of the day. The first in the series, The Empty Mirror, has the painter Gustav Klimt accused of murder and this second book finds the composer Gustav Mahler the target of an assassin.
“A rich, beautifully written historical mystery … first class,” said the starred Booklist review.
“Confident prose and mastery of historical detail, woven into a convincing narrative, make this sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber,” wrote the Kirkus reviewer in another starred review.
Publishers Weekly said: “Jones’s fine second Viennese mystery … smoothly blends a compelling period whodunit with bountiful cultural and social details.”
Let’s get to know Syd a little better:
LU:It’s clear from your work that you know Vienna well. Tell us a little bit about your years there.
JSJ: I went to Vienna initially as a student. It was my first experience of a big city and I fell in love with the place. This was during the Cold War–the Russians had just crushed the Prague Spring movement–and the city was most definitely Central European with the ambience of a much earlier time. Faded elegance best describes Vienna during that time. It has since gotten a facelift and joined Western Europe in a million small and irritating ways, but at the time, for a young man who loved history, Vienna was a living museum. I stayed on for almost two decades after my student year, working and living in other parts of Europe as well: Paris, Florence, Molyvos, Donegal. But I always kept coming back to Vienna for that feeling of home.
LU: How did you happen to choose fin de siecle Vienna as the time period? What is its special appeal? And have you ever been tempted to write about modern day Vienna?
Vienna became not only a second home to me, but also a major theme for my writing. When I was first there, fin de siecle, or Vienna 1900, was not the cottage industry it has since become. You could still pick up a Klimt sketch for a reasonable price or bid on Werkstätte pieces at the Dorotheum with a chance of actually winning. Maybe it was a wonderful course I took on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus at university in Vienna, maybe it was the as yet undiscovered territory of the intellectual/cultural ferment of the period–whatever, I became hooked on turn-of-the-century (20th) Vienna. I researched it for years in preparation for my first big nonfiction work, but soon discovered that no one was interested. But for Hitler there has been perennial interest. Linking the story of the (largely Jewish) cultural renaissance in Vienna 1900 with the flip-side tale of Hitler’s down and out years in the city, I found quite a lot of interest; thus publication of my Hitler in Vienna.
I have also used Vienna for a more recent historical backdrop in a stand-alone thriller, Time of the Wolf, set during World War II, and wrote three unpublished novels in a series featuring an American foreign correspondent set in contemporary Vienna. But it seems my efforts at an earlier Vienna are the ones that have proven more successful.
LU: Your work is peopled by real historical figures like Gustav Mahler, Gustav Klimt, Hans Gross and Alma Schlindler. What are the special challenges you face when including real people in a work of fiction?
Using historical characters in fiction obviously poses some challenges. With fabricated characters, the writer is in total control of backstory, personality, and physical characteristics. However, when using actual figures in a fictional setting, you do not want to do a disservice to the historical record. I read widely about my characters–biographies, journals, diaries and letters if available, newspaper accounts. But at some point you just have let your writerly instincts take over and get inside the character. Klimt, for example, as I portray him in The Empty Mirror, is a bit of a crude barbarian, but loveable all the same and a true genius. I took my lead from bits and pieces of historical writing about him, especially about his weight-lifting and brawling and his love of pastries. Other characters give you more insight to start with. Alma Schindler (later Mahler) kept a diary for the years I was interested in that provided me a window into her psyche as well as the social happenings of the day. There are also dangers in this approach. Using Klimt as a suspect in a series of brutal murders earned me a headline in one of Vienna’s tabloids as a “Scandal Author.”
LU: Tell us about your protagonist, the lawyer Karl Werthen. Why is he the perfect foil for the other lead character, Hans Gross, and this series?
Werthen and Gross have a long history and it is Gross (one of those actual historical figures in my series) who first prods Werthen back into the world of criminal law and investigation. Gross, as I portray him, is a blustery old coot in many ways, but also in possession of a keen mind–he is known as the father or criminology, after all, and an inspiration, some say, for the character of Sherlock Holmes. Gross is fusty, persnickety, and a great egoist, largely unaware of his self-centered ways. Werthen, younger than Gross, is sensitive and caring, a man with artistic sensibilities and even some ambition to be a writer. Where Gross is all action and drive, Werthen is more reflective and in possession of a sense of humor–something missing in Gross’s resume. They play off of each other quite well, and over the course of the books Werthen increasingly comes out of the shadow of his mentor. Theirs is not a Holmes-Watson association, but rather a collaboration of equals. It is just that Gross only rarely recognizes this.
Their pairing also allows me to bring out important themes in the series, including anti-Semitism (Gross is the unconscious racist whereas Werthen is an assimilated Jew), and feminism. Werthen’s wife, Berthe, and her group of friends (including the early feminist writer, Rosa Mayreder) are integral characters in the ongoing adventures.
LU: You’ve written both fiction and non-fiction. Is there a difference in how you face your writing day for those two different kinds of writing?
Half of my published work is nonfiction. When starting out as a writer, I was very practical, figuring that I could publish nonfiction more easily than fiction, and then establish a name and cross over to my first love, fiction. Practical isn’t always smart, and publishing works in mysterious ways. Anyway, while concentrating on novels now, I have continued to work in nonfiction and in freelance journalism to pay the bills. The biggest difference between the two is that with nonfiction there is not that niggling little bit of dread in the stomach when I sit down to work each morning: I know where the day’s work is going. Fiction demands more. I pretty closely map out my novels scene by scene, but there still needs to be that spark, that bit of invention and surprise in each scene. You hope you get it every day; sometimes you don’t.
LU: Tell us about the birth of this new series. You’ve been writing for over twenty years, and yet this new series set in turn of the century Vienna represents a whole new direction for you. Did it require a new agent and new publisher? How did you go about getting it published?
The Viennese Mystery series is the first time I’ve allowed myself to use, in a fictional format, the material I’ve researched for so many years. I guess I was always too conscious of historians looking over my shoulder before. Once I set on Gross and the fictional Werthen, however, the writing became hugely fun for me and I forgot about the constrictions of nonfiction. My enjoyment–if you believe the reviewers–comes across in the books to create an entertaining blend of fact and fiction. And what was also surprising about the series was the relative ease I had in getting it published. I did need to change agents for this new direction, and had positive responses from a number of really good people. I teamed with Alexandra Machinist at the Linda Chester Literary Agency. She loved the book and the series concept and made the sale with the first submission. It seems my earlier works on Vienna helped, making me something of a Vienna expert, but it was also the high concept and Alexandra’s enthusiasm and savvy that did the trick.
LU: What famous Viennese characters or situations are you working on for the next book?
Book three is finished and features, among others, ten-year-old Ludwig Wittgenstein, long before his fame as a philosopher. The modernist architect Otto Wagner and the mayor of Vienna at the time, Karl Lueger (role model in demagoguery for young Hitler) also figure in this tale of machinations to sell off the sacred Vienna Woods to developers. Book four in the series is in the works now and focuses on literary Vienna–Arthur Schnitzler (the playwright whom Freud called his doppelgänger), Felix Salten (of Bambi fame), ur-bohemian Peter Altenberg, and a host of other literati of Vienna 1901. Another major character is the famous prostitute and madam, Josephine Mutzenbacher, whose memoirs are a sort of Viennese Fanny Hill. Like I say, this series is great fun to research and write.
LU: Thank you, Syd. It’s a pleasure to get to know you. Check back in on our comments section today and meet the rest of the ‘Rati crew.
PS: Not only is it Syd’s launch day for Requiem in Vienna, but it’s also the day that the trade paper edition of my Liars Anonymous hits the shelf. Go out and buy somebody’s book today! And since Amazon appears to have backed down in their power grab over e-book pricing (although I don’t see that their ordering buttons are lit yet) feel free to order from them or go to BarnesandNoble.com or to your independent bookseller!
Over at Facebook, folks are winding down Doppelganger Week, which called on Facebook users to change their profile picture to a celebrity they’ve been said to resemble.
As it turns out, I’ve been said to resemble a broad array of celebrities. When I was in college, my father (around the same time he said my two sisters looked like Jessica Lange and Kim Basinger, respectively), maintained that I looked “just like” these knockouts:
Apparently age has treated me well, however. More recently, I’ve been compared to these women:
Um, yeah… right. Although I’m much happier to be compared to Kate Hudson or that actress who temporarily ruined Law & Order than either of the Rosies, I conclude from this mish mash of non-matching faces that I may not have a celebrity doppelganger. But, lucky for me, other writers do.
You see, much like my father, I also have a tendency to swear that people look “just like” someone else. I can’t run into Andrew Gross, for example, without reminding him he looks like that totally hot kid on Weeds.
And poor Michael Koryta has surely lost count of the times I’ve pointed out his resemblance to David Duchovny.
Marcus Sakey‘s probably sick of hearing that he looks like Starsky.
The late JD Salinger bore a strong resemblance to George Gershwin.
And Barry Eisler might as well change his last name to Baldwin.
It turns out some writers have lookalikes I hadn’t thought of. Jason Pinter also played Doppelganger Week, posting a photo of Al Gore. Now, Jason, can you say “Lockbox?”
Laura Lippman tells me she’s often compared to Susan Dey. No surprise there, right?
But I was beyond amused to hear that in profile, she’s a dead ringer for a fellow journalist who loved Underdog, Sweet Polly Purebred.
With some writers, the identification of a lookalike’s a little more challenging. And, boy, do I like a challenge.
With someone like James Born, for example, it depends which photograph you select. In some pictures he looks a lot like that writer who once said I looked like Rosie O’Donnell.
But in other pictures, Jim, I’ve got to say it, you look more like MacGyver.
In my constant quest to identify lookalikes, I have an irritating tendency to tell friends they look like X and Y had a baby. Harlan Coben, for example, looks like the offspring of Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci.
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And Victor Gischler could be the long-lost love child of Meat Loaf and Mario Batali. (Wow, that sentence actually made me hungry.)
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So here’s today’s challenge: Who are the other doppelgangers? Do you have one, and this a good thing or bad? And which other writers have lookalikes that I’ve missed? Psychic gold stars for those who include links to photos!
ADDED 5:13 pm Sunday: Oh! Toni has a winner from last week! Elisabeth (commenter #9). Yeah! Please email Toni at toni [dot] causey [at] gmail.com and give her your preferred email address and whether you want an Amazon or a BN or Borders gift certificate. Toni will then email the gift certificate directly to you!
Now back to the regularly scheduled blog . . .
I start writing a new book tomorrow. I would start today, but I’m revising the final two chapters of my current book one last time. It’s crucial to make sure the ending is not only satisfying, but that all the loose ends are tied up, and those that are continuing threads are at least neatly identified. Writing a series is HARD WORK–I didn’t realize how hard until now.
But whatever difficulty I have in ending a book, it’s nothing like the beginning of a book. And the most important question for me now is:
WHERE DOES THE STORY START?
Because this is a series, and this book takes place about two weeks after the book I just finished (well, I THINK two weeks, I’m not quite sure because I haven’t started it yet), the story really started two books ago. Of course, readers don’t want a boring recap of what happened in the first 900 pages of this saga.
For CARNAL SIN, I started with another vision for my heroine, prompting a tense conversation between characters where I could both advance the story and give the reader the minimum information she needs to understand the story. But since my heroine is not in town at the beginning of MORTAL SIN, I can’t do that again–and it would be kinda boring to do the same thing.
LAW & ORDER is brilliant in how they enter a scene “late”–meaning, after the action or in the middle of action. Elliot and Liv go in asking questions. No lengthy set-up. Dead body? Rape victim? We see part of the set-up (prologue) and then jump into the middle of the investigation. We don’t see them being called, or stopping for donuts, or having a conversation about how they spent the night before. BORING. Sure, it might go to character, but we can get that information in context, not in the beginning.
I love starting books with a dead body. A standard opening in mysteries–a crime to be solved. I’ve done it in many of my books:
SPEAK NO EVIL:
Her death had not been easy.
Homicide detective Carina Kincaid stared at the dead, naked corpse of the young woman, avoiding the wide-eyed terror etched on her face. her mouth was gagged, but what drew Carina’s eye was the word slut scrawled in thick black marker across her chest. A small red rose was tattooed on her left breast.
SUDDEN DEATH:
The homeless man’s murder had been ritualistic, brutal, and efficient.
THE PREY:
Rowan Smith learned about Doreen Rodriguez’s murder from the reporters camped out in her front yard Monday morning.
Because in MORTAL SIN, one of my main characters is suspected of murder, I thought–why not start with finding the body? Not let the reader know–through reading the scene–whether he’s innocent or guilty. When I get into his head, the reader will know (he’s a reliable narrator) but initially, there are doubts. And, perhaps, he’ll know more about the death than he lets on to the other characters–
But still, I don’t know for sure that this is the best place to start, hence my preoccupation with beginnings today.
So I pulled out some books from my TBR pile and read the first paragraph of two, just for fun. Now for a little game: read the openings and tell me which book you would most like to read. (And if you know the book, don’t let on! I’ll post the titles in the comments at the end of today.)
A
At the mass of the dead, the priest placed the wafer of unleavened bread and the cheap red wine on the linen corporal draping the altar. Both paten and chalice were silver. They had been gifts from the man inside the flower-blanketed coffin resting at the foot of the two worn steps that separated priest from congregation.
B
“You have a whisker.”
Though I hear the loudly whispered comment, it doesn’t quite register, as I am rapt with adoration, staring at the wonder that is my hour-old niece. Her face still glows red from the effort of being born, her dark blue eyes are as wide and calm as a tortoise’s. I probably shouldn’t tell my sister that her baby reminds me of a reptile. Well. The baby is astonishingly beautiful. Miraculous.
C
Every eye in the newsroom followed me as I left Kramer’s office and walked back to my pod. The long looks made it a long walk. The pink slips always came out on Fridays and they all knew I had just gotten the word. Except they weren’t called pink slips anymore. Now it was an RIF form–as in Reduction in Force.
They all felt the slightest tingle of relief that it hadn’t been them and the slightest tingle of anxiety because they still knew that no one was safe. Any one of them could be called in next.
D
I’ve always wondered what people felt in the final few hours of their lives. Did they know something terrible was about to occur? Sense imminent tragedy, hold their loved ones close? Or is it one of those things that simply happens? The mother of four, tucking her kids into bed, worrying about the morning car pool, the laundry she still hasn’t done, and the funny noise the furnace is making again, only to catch an eerie creak coming from down the hall. Or the teenage girl, dreaming about her Saturday shopping date with her BFF, only to open her eyes and discover she’s no longer alone in her room. or the father, bolting awake, thinking, “What the fuck?” right before the hammer catches him between the eyes.
E
Cops aren’t supposed to get frightened. The badge and the uniform and the gun strapped to a cop’s side are intended to ward off the normal fears that most people experience when confronted by unspeakable horror and evil.
But it doesn’t always work out that way. Cops get scared, just like everyone else. Sometimes they get so scared, they run for their lives. Other times, they get shaken to the core and never forget the things they’ve seen. It happened to me, two years into the job.
F
On January first, Mac rolled over to smack her alarm clock, and ended up facedown on the floor of her studio.
“Shit. Happy New Year.”
She lay, groggy and baffled, until she remembered she’d never made it upstairs into bed–and the alarm was from her computer, set to wake her at noon.
Okay, those are the six pleasure books on the top of my TBR pile–meaning, I’d looked through them on Friday to pick something to read for the weekend, and those interested me the most, but then one thing led to another and I didn’t have time to start anything new. If those six books were at the top of your TBR pile, which would you read first? Remember, don’t spoil the fun and give away the author!
And as a little teeny reminder . . . ORIGINAL SIN went on sale this week. It’s a supernatural thriller–a little different than what I’ve been writing, but I had a lot of fun writing something new! So to celebrate . . . I’m giving one copy away to a random commenter. Just tell me your favorite beginning (above) or just say hi!
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