Kill Your Squirrels

By Cornelia Read

 

Writing scares me. Getting my ass in the chair and the Work-In-Progress Word file open is a goddamn struggle, every single time.

It’s like my head is filled with a bunch of really mean, sarcastic squirrels who don’t like me very much,

and I have to get each one of them to shut up even though they’re wearing body armor and keep ducking down behind these fat flood-watch sandbags of inertia and angst.

Oh, and they’re probably French.

 

That they are also zombies and radioactive no doubt goes without saying.

So, yeah, a head full of Kevlar-encased carnivorous undead glow-in-the-dark scathingly articulate plutonium-oozing Catherine-Deneuve squirrels who know me down to the last molecule of unworthy marrow: Fabulous.

I may be more squirrel-infested than you are, or less. I think we all have to play at least a little mental whack-a-mole in order to get down to work.

My squirrels remind me that I don’t have a backup job or health insurance, and that if my fourth book sucks butt–which it inevitably will, if I even manage to finish it–I will be unable to learn how to operate an espresso machine at Starbucks, and that I will therefore be doomed to labor on well into my toothless nineties wearing support hose and a McDonalds uniform.

Probably in Antartica.

(Yes, I am aware that there are no Eskimos in Antartica. This just means that my job at McDonalds will be more lonely.)

I am not alone in this, I know. Gene Fowler once said, “Writing is easy. You simply stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

(I first heard that from Douglas Adams in a speech he gave at an ABA breakfast in Anaheim, about seventeen years ago. And he didn’t credit Gene Fowler.)

The basic gist here is that in order to write, I have to keep reminding myself to kill my squirrels. Here are ten tips for squirrel maintenance that have served me well in this regard, even though I don’t always remember them.

 

Number One: They’re Only Squirrels.


Really. Not to mention imaginary.

It’s a negative soundtrack of your own devising. It’s not the voice of The New York Review of Books, Your Mother, or Fate. Anne Lamott called it Radio KFKD, and rightly pointed out that it’s bullshit.

Don’t let it stop you from getting your ass in the chair and opening the Word file. You are allowed to write crap. You are allowed to write a shitty first draft, and a shitty second draft, and as many steenking-piece-of-crap drafts as it takes.

The best novel you can ever write will be the result of small, sustained efforts, repeated over and over.

It will not be the product of continuous days of brilliance, with The Choir Eternal singing praise in your ears throughout. It will be built in layers. Many, many, many layers.

These efforts will at times feel infinitisemal, as though you are trying to unearth Pompeii with a bent spork and broken fingernails.

Some of these infinitisemal efforts will suck. That is inevitable, and it is okay. You will fix them. You do not have to turn straw into gold by lunchtime, or dinner, or even breakfast tomorrow.

Gandhi said, “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” That’s your daily mantra.

Guy de Maupassant is credited with saying “Get black on white,” meaning just spill some ink on the paper.

Start. Pick a word and go.

I just re-read Stephen King’s On Writing. He relates an anecdote about a friend asking James Joyce what he’d managed to write that day.

“Seven words,” said Joyce.

“Well, James, that’s pretty good for you.”

Joyce shook his head. “But I don’t know which order they go in.”

What they say in AA is if you don’t know what to do, Do The Next Right Thing. It might be tiny, you might not know what comes next. Just do the next. right. thing.

We’re all digging with Sporks. Embrace the Spork. The Spork is Life.

 

 

Number Two: Writing is Like Working Out

If you’ve blown off exercising for a while, getting started up again sucks. The first day you feel like an idiot–you’re sweaty and ungainly and everyone else in the room is faster/stronger/better than you are.

The second day is worse because now you’re sore from the first day, and besides which the instructor lady is obviously a bulimic Nazi bitch who hates you.

But the third day… well, maybe the Stairmonster didn’t make you feel like barfing after only five minutes this time, or you actually finished the full sequence of leg-lift inner-thigh-torture things without collapsing to the floor like a lukewarm pool of spilled Hollandaise.

Writing is like that, too. Day one is a root canal, day two is a root canal with back spasms… but day three you might think up something funny, or have a few good lines of dialogue, or really nail the way newly delivered palm trees with their fronds tied up in the air:

kind of look like Pebbles Flintstone:

Whatever… day three you’ll have a little something to let you know you’re getting your mojo back, I promise.

 

Number Three: Watch Some Stupid TV.  After You’ve Written.

For the past two nights, I have been watching the CMT series about tryouts for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. This has helped my mental state immensely. I’m serious.

Here’s why: 99.9% of the chicks trying out for the squad are are nubile, gorgeous, great dancers, and have these huge smiles like they’ve got Vaseline on their teeth (they probably do have Vaseline on their teeth, if my Miss America trivia is at all trustworthy.)

600 of them showed up for the initial tryouts. Circa 150 got picked for a second round. Maybe 30 of those got to go to cheerleading camp, and another 15 of those got cut over the course of the next eight weeks of grueling workouts and vicious dance hazing.

Those final 15 who got cut? Mostly it was because they were nervous.

They didn’t throw caution to the wind and go for it, didn’t have fun, didn’t get outrageous and over-the-top with the whole thing.

The ones who made it were the ones who just shut up and did it–said to themselves, “Holy crap, I’m at fucking DALLAS COWBOYS CHEERLEADERS CAMP! What a trip! BE HERE NOW!”

The ones who thought about it too much froze, and missed out on the experience. And went home.

The ones who just went for it? They took criticism, and asked for help when they were called into the office. They said “yes ma’am” a lot and got better. And better. Bit by bit, rehearsal by rehearsal.

And they never stopped smiling.

Also, it reminded me that as hard as writing can be for me, it sure beats having to be a professional cheerleader.

If I had to smile that hard, my lips would fall off.

Seriously, aren’t you glad we don’t have to look this enthusiastic throughout Bouchercon?

Plus I can’t dance for shit. Not even with a bottle of tequila in hand and a gun to my head.

 

Number Four: Read a Really Crappy Book


If you’re struggling with your writerly self-esteem, read the crappiest book you can lay your hands on. I’m talking vampire e-porn, or the ugliest paperback in the drugstore rack.

Something with a bad ersatz Fabio on the cover and a lot of overly-serifed swirly fonts in gold is good.

Something where every woman’s hair is “a deep auburn,” and they talk about “his manhood” a lot.

Better yet, open up an Ayn Rand novel and read the dialogue aloud to yourself, preferably in a Sesame-Street Swedish Chef accent.

You can do better than that. You WILL do better than that. You already *ARE* DOING WAAAAAY BETTER THAN THAT.

Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.

 

 

Number Five: Do Something Mindless But Slightly Engaging for a While


I’ve heard it said that when super-computer designer Robert Cray got stuck, he’d dig tunnels in his back yard. Serious tunnels. Great Escape tunnels–with wooden struts and stuff.

There’s something to be said for doing some mindless shitwork that engages your front brain but leaves your messy subconscious bits free to play around on their own. Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had came while I was driving my kids back and forth to school for three months in a car with a broken radio.

The driving was just the right amount of engagement for my internal editor/critic to be absorbed by, but the rest of me was bored enough to start free-associating in kind of wild ways. Worked like a charm.

Raking leaves might work. Walking on a treadmill with no music could, too. I hear that some people swear by long showers for inspiration.

You want something that takes just a little concentration–probably with a slight amount of sensory deprivation and some sort of physical engagement. Distraction, basically, but not all-engrossing. The idea is to free yourself up to fly a little.

Think Steve McQueen stuck in The Cooler with his baseball and his mitt.

 

Number Six: Play “The Galaxy Song” a Couple of Times

 

 

 

 

Number Seven: Dude, Count Your Blessings Already.


First of all, you are not a little kid in Guernica when the Germans are testing out how well bombing civilians works for invoking general terror.

Neither are you getting strafed by Jap Zeros in a rice paddy in 1939 Nanking, with nothing to protect you but a straw hat.

Yea verily, I doubt that you are starving in Armenia,

Or chained in the bowels of a boat on your way to a torturous life of horrid indentured servitude,

Or being pillaged by rampaging Vikings at this very moment.

Additionally, there is probably NOT an IED strapped under your desk. You just have imaginary squirrels in your head.

Remember: It’s only writing–not famine or pestilence or doom.

In all the times throughout history that you could have been born, this one is pretty damn good.  There are antibiotics, for instance, and if you get sick, it’s a good bet no one will try bleeding you to release the bad humors.

Plus, if you’re reading this, you not only know how to read, you have access to a computer. The universe has indeed smiled upon you.

Be grateful.

Be happy.

Type something.

 

Number Eight: You Can Make it if You Try-igh-igh

As God is my witness, you can finish a book (or books)!

You may have to write it seven words at a time. You may not know what order they go in, at least right away. But if you get your ass in the chair and open the file every day, it will happen.

I don’t care if it’s for fifteen minutes at a stretch… you need to assume the position for inspiration to find you. You need to be typing.

I also don’t care if you start out typing “all work and no play…” etc. over and over again, until you figure out something better (though I recommend staying away from axes and creepy empty hotels, generally.)

 

Number Nine: Cornelia Says Relax

So does Ginger Rogers.

 

 

 

 

Number Ten: Fill in the Blanks

As Max Ehrman wrote,

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

‘Ratis, what works for you, when your squirrels are restless and your hypos have the upper hand?

Inquiring minds want to know…

In the Presence of Genius

by JT Ellison

A couple of weeks ago, darling hubby took me to see the symphony. It was a wonderful program—Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 in D major, Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, a world premier by Roberto Sierra—but the absolute highlight was Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 2 for Cello and Orchestra. The cellist, a young woman named Elisa Weilerstein, strode on the stage in a purple gown, her flowing brunette locks hanging free around her shoulders. She was stunningly beautiful. She shook the first chair’s hand, nodded her thanks to the audience, arranged herself in front of the Maestro, and dove into the piece. It took no time at all to see we were in the presence of genius.

Weilerstein didn’t play the cello. She became the cello. Her body language, facial expression, the set of her shoulders, all bespoke the story. She plucked the strings with a raw energy, her bow flowing, cutting, ripening the notes, and I literally had to force my mouth closed. The maestro was inspired by her performance, and become more animated himself. The orchestra as a whole came to life, each member hanging on Weilerstein’s every note. 

And we, the audience, were told a story by a genius.

Elisa Weilerstein spoke to me through her music, and in so doing, she garnered a fan for life.

I’ve always likened the symphonic medium to books. There’s a delineated three to four act structure, and the music follows the classic unfolding storylines: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Dénouement. The music build and retreats, ebbs and flows, allowing small bits of foreshadowing for the massive climax, the lingering notes closing the piece in a final dénouement. (Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no. 3 lends itself especially well to the crime fiction storyline.) I am particularly drawn to these compositions; it’s always so lovely to see this structure in action.

What is genius though?

Wikipedia defines it thusly:

A genius (plural genii or geniuses) is a person, a body of work, or a singular achievement of surpassing excellence. More than just originality, creativity, or intelligence, genius is associated with achievement of insight which has transformational power. A work of genius fundamentally alters the expectations of its audience. Genius may be generalized, or be particular to a discrete field such as sports, statesmanship, science, or art.

Although difficult to quantify, genius refers to a level of aptitude, capability or achievement which exceeds even that of most other exceptional contemporaries in the same field. The normal distribution suggests that the term might be applied to phenomena ranked in the top .1%, i.e. three standard deviations or greater, among peers. In psychology, the inventor of the first IQ tests, Alfred Binet, applied the term, to the top .1% of those tested. This usage of the term is closely related to the general concept of intelligence. The term may be also applied to someone who is considered gifted in many subjects or in one subject.

 

“A work of genius fundamentally alters the expectations of its audience.”

 

In those terms, we’re all genius, to a point. Everything we do affect those around us. We are our own individual purveyors of chaos theory. Every movement, every breath, every blink ultimately alters the course of reality. The Butterfly Effect, as it’s more commonly known. Again from Wikipedia:

The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly‘s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. While the butterfly does not “cause” the tornado in the sense of providing the energy for the tornado, it does “cause” it in the sense that the flap of its wings is an essential part of the initial conditions resulting in a tornado, and without that flap that particular tornado would not have existed.

We writers and readers are daily participants in chaos theory. Writers put words on the page. A year later, a reader holds the finished novel in their hands and reads those words. Their lives can be inextricably altered by the concepts in our work. Our lives have been changed, because we’ve made a psychic connection with the reader. We’ve told a story, and the reader has absorbed the tale.

But there is a step past all of the psychic entertaining we do, a moment in time when even more magic happens. That moment is the book tour, where we meet the readers whose lives we’ve altered.

There have been many roundups of the most recent Bouchercon these past two weeks. I came away with a sense of pure awe. The numbers were staggering – of authors and of fans. There was a moment on Saturday night, at Lee Child’s annual Reacher’s Creatures party, that I realized the collective conscience of the crime fiction world was present and accounted for in a single, stiflingly close room. I was among the geniuses of our genre, of writing, of our finest creativity. Not everyone was there, of course, but if you had a single copy of every novel published by every author in that room, the numbers would wobble the shelves of a mid-sized town library. I made that comment to Mr. Child, who opined that if you added in all the books we’ve read, the numbers would be astronomical.

I know I’m touched each and every day by the genius that permeates out community.

But being a writing genius isn’t enough. Our livelihoods depend on readers. In these changing times, with digital books making a play for large shares of the market, with major wholesalers discounting their titles to openly take a loss, we need readers, fan, more than anytime before.

Mediums change. That’s the nature of our society. Our cultural conscience, though, will remain strong and vibrant, regardless of whether we’re reading electronically, listening, or holding a hardcopy book. Because our collective genius is captured in those words.

I read a fabulous article recently by Nashville-based author Ann Patchett on touring. I know tours aren’t nearly as prevalent as they were, but the article is about more than the physical state of touring, it’s ultimately about the metaphysical connection authors have with readers. Jane Friedman, who developed the modern book tour with Julia Child’s second cooking novel, says to Ann Patchett:

“What hasn’t changed is the connection between the author and the reader. If anything, it’s even stronger. The people who come out to your signings are real…fans.”

And there’s the trick. The folks who come to the conferences, to the readings and signings, are the drivers of the industry. Yes, there are many, many readers who never set foot near an author or conference. But that one fan who puts their hand on your shoulder, who says you’ve touched their heart with your books, can sustain an author for a very long time.

The next time you’re touched by genius, stop for a moment. Appreciate it. Appreciate the phrase that caught your eye, the musical notes that create a melody, the lyrics that speak to your soul, that perfectly shaped fallen leaf. Recognize you’re in the presence of genius, and allow that to spark your own creativity.

Today’s question is self-evident: When was the last time you were touched by genius?

Wine of the Week: Compliments of my parents, who loved the whimsical label – 2007 Michael David Petite Petit

Face-to-Facebook?

by Zoë Sharp

This week’s been a bit up and down, in a mild kind of a way. Firstly, I went back to the wonderful library at Poulton-le-Fylde on Tuesday evening to do a talk. One of the librarians there, Ken Harries, has just retired, but turned out for the evening anyway, and Linda Robinson and the rest of the staff made me very welcome. Always nice when the turnout’s good enough so they have to bring out extra chairs. I think we’ve all done events where the staff outnumbered the audience …

 

That was the ‘up’ part. They even put me under a sign that said ‘Young People’ – what’s not to like?

Then, Wednesday, I was due to go to my writing group, which meet in a friend’s house about forty miles away. Long way to go for a writing group, I know, but this is the remnants of the Lune Valley Writing Group, which is now sadly defunct. The little local library where we used to meet in Caton village has even been closed down. It was this group who followed me through the trials and tribulations of writing my first novel and getting it into print. There’s now only four of us who meet with any regularity. They’re all excellent writers, who – vitally – don’t pull their punches when it comes to criticism, and I find their input extremely useful as a book progresses.

As I’m just about to dive into the next Charlie Fox book, I was looking forward to our meeting, even though it means getting home about midnight and I knew I still had this week’s Murderati blog to write (and, if I’m honest, no clue as to a topic). But, I was due a contact lens check in the morning, otherwise they can’t keep supplying me daily disposable lenses by post. I used to wear the permanent tinted lenses, which were brilliant, but eye problems – including a warning that I might completely lose my sight – put an end to that. So, important to have the regular check-ups, just to make sure nothing’s amiss.

But, this still meant we had all afternoon to kill, as it wasn’t worth doing the eighty mile round trip home and back again for a 7:00pm start. And then, at 18:04, I get a call on my mobile to tell me that two people can’t make it, so the meeting’s cancelled.

Ah well, that’s life. No point in getting upset about it, but I admit to a regretful moment about an afternoon spent wandering when we have mountains of things to do at home. Time lost, after all, is the one thing you just can’t get back.

And, on the bright side, it has given me a topic for this week’s blog. Writing groups. Are you a member – or have you ever been a member – of one? What did you feel you got out of it? If you stopped going, why?

When I first moved up to this neck of the woods, I looked for a local writing group, and one was just forming, but it seemed to me that the organiser wanted to use it as a platform for her own ideas on teaching us to write, rather than simply letting us bring our own work for feedback from the rest of the group. I know a certain amount of structure is good – a topic for next time, if people are stuck for what to write about – but it wasn’t what I was looking for, and I regret that I didn’t last long there.

The trouble is, I don’t live in a big city, and there aren’t lots of writing groups to choose from. And I’ve never been a member of one where anyone else was writing crime. So, I’m starting to wonder about joining an on-line group.

But I don’t know how that works.

The big problem is the written word. If someone says, to your face, “That piece of dialogue really doesn’t work for me. It’s clunky. It sounds like the writer needing to get information across to the reader, rather than two people talking.” Then you pick up on far more than the words. Body language, tone, emphasis, facial expression, all help to soften down the criticism into something you can process and accept. Dashed off in an email, it sounds like a damning condemnation.

Somebody once said there are six ways people can read a letter. Some people write things that are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, and find themselves being taken much too seriously and causing great upset or offence. I know adding smiley faces to emails is supposed to be a bit naff, but I do it all the time now to show I’m only making a jokey comment that is not supposed to be taken literally. Having had someone ring up and yell at me down the phone for a throwaway remark I once put in an email, I’m now very careful about these things. It doesn’t always work, of course, and I know I often put my foot in it. Where do you think the heading ‘Changing Feet’ came from?

 

So, that in itself makes me wary of joining an on-line writing group. The whole purpose of on-line is that you don’t meet, so how do I know if the general personality of the people whose opinions I’m soliciting will fit in with my own ideas? You make decisions about people within minutes of meeting them, but how long does it take for those same opinions to form when all you have are emails or comments? Do people reveal themselves more fully in their writing than face-to-face, or do they hide behind the words?

And quite often I used to take along to my writing group the bits I wasn’t sure about. If you write something that you instinctively know is good, you’re happy with it. It’s the bits you have sneaky doubts about where you want a second – or even third or fourth – opinion. Do I really want to release unfinished, possibly dodgy bits of work onto the Internet? Who knows where it might end up, and what damage it might do?

Paranoid? Me?

So, I’m looking for advice and information, people. Can you recommend a good on-line crime/thriller writing group? If you’ve had any bad experiences of on-line or face-to-face writing groups, care to share? And just how do the damn things work, exactly?

This week’s Word of the Week is postiche, an adjective meaning superfluously and inappropriately superadded to a finished work; counterfeit or false. Also a noun meaning an inappropriate hairpiece or wig.

Scary Stories

A man was driving late one night when he saw a young woman walking by the side of the road. Thinking that it wasn’t safe for her to be out and alone so late on a lonely country road, he stopped and asked her if she needed a ride. She gratefully accepted. She told him she was trying to get home and gve him directions to her house. The driver tried to engage the girl in conversation, but she was strangely uncommunicative, telling him only that she wanted to go home.

 

When they arrived at the darkened house, the driver got out and walked around to the passenger side to open the door, thinking to walk her to her front door. 

She was gone. 

The puzzled driver walked up and knocked on the door, wondering if the girl had somehow managed to get out without him noticing. An old woman answered. When she saw the man standing there, she smiled sadly.  “I know who you’re looking for,” she said. “And she’s not here. She was my daughter. She was killed in a car wreck ten years ago on her way back from the prom. And every night on this date since, some man has come here, telling me that he picked her  up by the side of the road. But she never makes it home.”

***

Maco, North Carolina, lies along the line of the old Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. On a foggy, rainy night in 1867, a brakeman  named Joe Baldwin was working the night train headed for Wilmington. By some mischance the caboose became uncoupled from the train and stranded on the tracks. Joe knew another train would be along soon and his duty was to try to stop it before it collided with the stranded caboose. He ran down the tracks, swinging his lantern.

 

 

When he saw the lights of the train behind, he waved even more frantically. Unfortunately, the oncoming locomotive failed to see him in the fog. It struck poor Joe, killing him instantly.

Since that night, people walking along the tracks near Maco Station have reported a strange light appearing alng the tracks, moving from side to side. They say it’s the ghost of  Joe Baldwin, searching for his severed head.

 

***

In the early  19th century, in the town of Bath in Northeastern North Carolina, there lived a dissolute young man by the name of Jesse Elliot. Jesse loved to drink, gamble, and race Fury, his champion  stallion. He’d never been beaten on that horse, and he swore he never would.

One Sunday, a stranger, all dressed in black, arrived in town on a huge black horse. He challenged Jesse to a race, and Jesse, already half drunk, agreed. Some of the other citizens of the town scolded him fotr drinking and racing on Sunday, but he laughed them off and had another drink. 

The race began, the horses thundering down a nearby country lane. The stranger’s horse kept up with Jesse’s, then began to overtake him.

 

As they rounded the big oak tree that was the halfway point of the race, a spectator called out that it looked like Jesse was going to lose this one. “I’ll ride this horse to victory or I’ll ride him to Hell!” Jesse shouted back. At that moment, Fury pulled up suddenly, throwing Jesse against a nearby tree and killing him. The stranger pulled up beside Jesse’s limp body, and for years, onlookers would shiver as they described his chilling laugh. Then he spurred his horse and rode away, never to be seen again in those parts.

To this day, you can still see a set of mysterious depressions in the ground near where Jesse died.

 

Nothing grows in them, and obects placed in them are gone the next day. In the 1940’s, a newsreel cameraman named Earl Harrell came to Bath and performed an experiment. He filled the holes with dirt and leaves, then made a webwork of back thread over them. The next day, the thread was undisturbed, but  the holes were empty. The locals debate whether the mysterious depressions are the hoofprints of Fury or of the great black stallion whose rider tempted Jesse to his death.

I hope you have a happy Hallowe’en this weekend! And please share your favorite ghost stories, from wherever you live.

 

 

Fear of Ice Cream

 

By Louise Ure

 

Gelatophobia. Okay, I know it doesn’t mean Fear of Ice Cream, but gelatophobia is what I’ve got.  The fear of being laughed at.

(For the moment, I’m going to ignore the topic of words that don’t look like what they really mean. “Gelatophobia,” for one. “Rosacea,” for another. It should be a beautiful Latina’s name instead of a skin desease. But that’s a blog theme for another day.)

Unlike our Rob, whose video rendition of “Mandy” in last week’s blog post proves he does not suffer from this malady, gelatophobia has shaped me in ways that I could never have imagined.

And I blame it all on the circus.

We weren’t big on family outings when I was growing up. We had one driving vacation as a family and that was to Disneyland and San Diego. I got a nail in my foot at Disneyland and got picked up by the cops as a lost child in San Diego.

I remember only one family dinner in a restaurant and that was a Bob’s Big Boy. My mother learned her lesson after that. I’ll bet the waitress still has nightmares.

And then there was the circus. All five of us kids were lined up like jaybirds on the sixth row of bleachers, close enough to smell the elephants, far enough away that everything still looked like magic. I was enthralled.

Until the clowns came out, of course. Six of them crawled out of a car the size of a pram and began honking and squirting and big-foot flopping all over the ring. One clown with a bright red nose held an oversized camera, the old-fashioned kind with an accordion baffle and flash bulb on top. He looked high and low through the crowd and settled on me as his partner.

    

 

 

Feeling fully justified in taking my place in the center ring, I proudly joined him in the arena. He fussed and primped and tsk-tsked, all the while making sure I was posed correctly. Then he stood back and clicked the shutter release.

Somehow, with his fertile imagination and hand gestures, he got us to believe that that bulky old Kodak had morphed into a new fangled Polaroid and it spit out the picture …

   

 

 … of a donkey.

I have hated clowns ever since, but have lived in greater terror of the sound I heard that day – the full-throated, cackling derision of people laughing because I was the butt of their joke.

I’ve rarely been on the opposite side of that feeling. I don’t laugh at pratfalls or choose to see pie-in-the-face comedies. I don’t make fun of people’s looks or mistakes (unless the mistakes are grammatical or the attitudes suggest that uniquely evil combination of arrogance and ignorance).

And I don’t go to the circus anymore.

But I realized that my gelatophobia had colored other areas of my life as well. Take sports, for example.

I tried to ski once and wound up goring a would-be rescuer with my pole as he came to save me on the bunnyslope. I gave up running after coming in second in a relay race. You’ll never see me on a karaoke stage.

Stupid, I know. But there you are.

On the other hand, I was awarded with immediate praise when I first started painting with oils, I took naturally to the ballet-like stretches of Pilates, and flying a plane seemed like second nature to me. Those continued to be hobbies and habits for a long time.

Which brings me to writing, of course.

I wrote my first book in five months after accepting a dare from a friend. I credit my writer’s group for that initial rush of praise; had they been less fulsome, I would have abandoned it in a nanosecond. The early success of securing an agent and selling the book when it was finally done sealed the deal.

I never would have/could have been one of those writers with six manuscripts in a box under the bed; one of those writers who aspire, who practice, who get better and better with no recognition of their talent but their own unflagging determination and belief.

I admire them – those with hearts much stronger and surer than my own – those people who try and fail and get up to try again. Even if they’re on the receiving end of the literary equivalent of that crowd’s laughter.

Think it’s too late for me? Is sixty too old to start competitive diving?

   

LU

Book Reviews, Served With a Healthy Side of Snark

by Alafair Burke

When writers say they don’t read book reviews, they’re usually referring to their own.  Not me.   Whether I should or not, I do read reviews of my own books.  I don’t, however, read book reviews generally.  I peruse the New York Times Sunday Book Review, as well as the book sections of the magazines to which I subscribe.  I also find myself really enjoying Huffington Post’s new book section.  But I wouldn’t say I make a point to have my finger on the pulse of critical response.

Perhaps the casualness of my book review browsing explains why I spotted a common thread among three reviews I happened to read last week.  My brow first furrowed when Entertainment Weekly panned Michael Connelly’s Nine Dragons as a novel that “read like it had been scribbled during a red-eye from Los Angeles to Hong Kong.”  Those were some hard words to handle, coming as they did from my pop-culture bible about my crime-writing God.  Apparently also for book blogger Sarah Weinman, who tweeted, “What bug crawled up [the reviewer’s] butt?”  Can’t we all just get along?

 

It turns out the reviewers were just firing up their keyboards.  The following Monday came Janet Maslin’s review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.  Maslin treats Ehrenreich’s thesis as “the makings of a tight, incisive essay,” then dismisses the admittedly “short book” as still “padded with cheap shots, easy examples, research recycled from her earlier books and caustic reportorial stalking,” with a central point “that’s as obvious on this book’s last page as it was on the first.”

But Michiko Kakutani wasn’t going to let her colleague take the week’s prize for creative dissing.  Her review of Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City is so scathing I felt myself wincing with every new phrase.  Just a few?  “Tedious, overstuffed.”  “Insipid, cartoon version.”  “Sorely tries the reader’s patience.”  “The characters turns out to be an annoying and tiresome lot.”  And finally, “lame and unsatisfying.”

Yikes.

Don’t get me wrong.  This isn’t yet another writer railing against a bad review.  Nor is it a claim that reviewers should only review books they enjoy.  Nor is it a general indictment of the enterprise of reviewing.  Nor am I claiming that the above reviewers were inaccurate. 

Instead, I find myself asking questions: If a reviewer concludes that a book stinks, what is the appropriate tone for the resulting review?  Does the reviewer do enough by saying the book is (to their mind) bad, or does colorful condemnation help make the point?  Do scathing one-liners make for more effective — or at least more readable — reviews, or are they just unnecessary snark?

I ask because it seems to me the few bad reviews I read (hopefully not mine, fingers crossed) seem to be getting snarkier.  Maybe I’m wrong about that.  Like I said, I don’t scour book reviews, so my sample size is woefully unscientific.   And if you listen to Brad Meltzer, stinging reviews are nothing new.

But it would make sense if reviewers were getting meaner.  With newspapers struggling generally, and book reviews taking a disproportionate hit, reviewers and their editors might reason that readers would rather see blood shed on the page.  And if their main competitors are websites and blogs, well… let’s just say there’s no shortage of churlish comments online.

 

Author who read a bad review? Or reviewer who read a bad book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Are reviews getting snarkier?  Should they?  And, best of all, what are some of the harshest reviews you’ve ever read (or received)?

I’ll start.  (1) Maybe.  (2) Honestly not sure.  (I know, I’m very decisive today.)  (3) The Independent (UK) on my debut novel, Judgment Calls: “Does the name Burke ring any bells? Why, it’s James Lee’s daughter and she’s written a legal thriller about as thrilling as a trip to the dentist. Dull as ditchwater, in fact. She’s a former assistant DA in Portland, and if I was [sic] her, I’d have stuck to the day job. Me, I’ll stick to her daddy’s books.”  Nice.

You’re Not Normal: Speech to the New Jersey Romance Writers

By Allison Brennan

Below is the speech I didn’t give to the New Jersey Romance Writers last night. Sure, I started the speech as it’s written. I gave parts of the speech verbatim (cough cough–sort of–cough cough) but I ended up going off on tangents and sharing stories that came to me as I started speaking. For example, my story about my morgue tour? I elaborated far beyond what I wrote. But what happened was that I ended up skipping chunks of the speech because the wise and wonderful Madeline Hunter kept making strange hand signals to me and I realized that she was telling me TIME’S UP! It took me awhile to get it :/ . . . but then the light bulb hit: that’s why Roxanne St. Claire told me to practice the speech and time it! So I wouldn’t go over my allotted time.

Though, if I didn’t go off on tangents (that related to the speech) I would have been under time. But honestly? I couldn’t have done it any other way. I was just being me. Which was the theme of my speech.

Warning: There are typos and probably some non-sequiturs and I didn’t actually read this speech in its entirity after I wrote it because I wanted to be conversational and I was nervous that if I edited it too much, it would be stiff and formal. Forgive me. It’s been a busy week.

But not half as busy as Alex driving cross-country with her cats.

 

Speech to the New Jersey Romance Writers

October 24, 2009

 

You’re Not Normal

 

I have a confession to make.

Okay, it’s not much of a confession—it’s not like I’ve kept it a big secret. I don’t plot. I don’t outline. I barely write a synopsis. In fact, I only write the bare minimum required for only two reasons: when it results in a check (some contracts pay part on proposal) or when I have to get something to the copy department so they can, you know, write the back cover copy. Copy that I inevitable have to change because (cough, cough) I only wrote the copy because I had to and never looked at it again and whoops, didn’t I tell you that I changed the heroine’s name to Beatrix and the hero has only one leg? And the story takes place in Denver, not D.C., and it’s not a mass murderer but an identity theft ring?

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

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

I get that.

Last year, I was asked to give a speech to the Emerald City Writers Conference. I didn’t think twice about saying yes—this was in Washington, and I love Washington and have been trying to get my husband to agree that fog and gray skies are a good thing, but he thinks I’m insane because I like the rain more than the sun. Anyway, I agreed and didn’t think about writing a damn speech, because what’s the fun in that? But other people—people I adore and love and who mean well—thought I was insane.

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

I laughed. But she was serious.

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

Theme? What theme? I don’t do themes.

Of course you do, she informed me.

No I don’t, I insisted.

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

Bitch.

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

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

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

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

Except . . . I’d already committed to speak here. And there are more people. And my mentor, the brilliant and talented and wise Mariah Stewart is in this chapter. And I hate failure.

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

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

But before a theme, I needed an idea of what to talk about, right? Something smart and witty and motivational.

Right.

When all hope was lost and I thought bullet points might still be a good idea, I read a message from someone on one of the RWA loops that said something like:

“I’m so glad to find people who think like me, who also hear voices in their heads. I’m normal after all.”

Hmmm. Normal. Right.

I have news for you. For that woman and every person in this room.

You’re not normal.

And why in the world would you want to be normal anyway?

Suddenly, there was my theme! “You’re Not Normal!”

Do not tell me that this isn’t a theme, because it’s the backbone of my entire speech and Margie said I had to have a theme. So it’s my theme and I’m sticking to it.

This woman who unwittingly gave me the entire idea for this speech is not the first writer I’ve heard who said something equally stupid. Ok, maybe stupid is harsh. How about immature? Really, you think it’s normal to hear voices? I’m sure that if we were all in the psych word together we’d think it’s normal too.

But honestly, why would any of us want to be normal? Normal is boring. And who decides what normal is anyway? Some government agency? No thank you. I’m not normal. And neither are you.

As they sing in my church, “Rejoice and be glad!”

Alleluia. Rejoice and be glad that you are different! That you stand out! That you’re strange and beautiful and unique.

I realized how . . . . um, unique . . . I was when I went to dinner with my husband about a year ago.

It was a private dinner, with his boss and bosses wife and a couple other people. Nine of us I think. Lori, the boss’s wife, is a fan of mine and we’ve chatted on line a couple times. She asked about my research, and I’d recently toured the morgue. So I told her about the autopsy I viewed, and then about the bodies lined up in the crypt—and about why maintaining good pedicures is so important because when you’re lying, dead, in that cold room the only thing anyone can see is your feet—and all the feet there were ugly as sin. I know, that’s mean to say, but it’s true.

I also shared what a body looks like when it’s been underwater for twenty-four hours. It’s not pretty.

I think my husband kicked me under the table a couple times before I realized that maybe my trip to the morgue wasn’t appropriate dinner table conversation.

But she’d asked.

Maybe it was more like the question, “How are you?” No one really wants all the details, more a general, “I’m fine, took the kids to the park yesterday and we had fun.”

When they ask, “So, what did you do today honey?” They don’t really want to know how you sat in Starbucks for two hours discreetly watching men and women who met online having their first “date.” I swear, I stopped going to one of my favorite Starbucks because it became a meeting place for MySpace dates and I was so distracted watching the body language and trying to figure out their backstories.

Being unique—i.e. not normal—runs in families. One late afternoon, I’d picked my oldest daughter up from practice. We were driving along a country highway and spotted a large dark green garbage bag in the gulley next to the vineyards. The way it was lying, with the shadows of the vines and trees that formed a windbreak, I thought, That looks like a body.

Just then, my daughter says, “Mom, did you see that garbage bag? It looks like dead body.” Then she adds, “Do you want to go check?”

Writers will often say they hear voices in their heads. Okay, there is something just not right about that. I don’t hear voices, and I’m sticking to that story.

I read an anonymous quote that hit home: “Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they pretty much do the same thing.”

On the other hand, I’m a talker. When I’m in the shower or the car I verbally run through scenarios and plot points and sometimes I forget when someone’s in the car. My son has been known to say, “Mom, stop talking to yourself.” Just the other week, my oldest daughter asked, “Are you talking to yourself again?” And ironically . . . I wasn’t. Not really. I was sort of thinking out loud about stupid drivers. But the fact that she mentioned it like it was commonplace had me wondering how much I talk to myself and don’t notice . . .

Thank God for hands free phones. Other drivers will just think I’m talking to a friend!

And who are our characters anyway? We know them, right? Sometimes I talk out plot problems with my two older daughters. One of them will suggest a solution, and I’ll say, “But Moira wouldn’t do that.” Or, “Well, Robin is scared of the dark. She wouldn’t check it out.” My daughter tells me I talk like my characters are real people. Well, I know they’re not. I don’t expect them to walk down the street and say hello. Most of them wouldn’t anyway, they’re too busy J . . . but I do feel like I know them. I know how they’ll react in different situations. I know how they think. I get into their heads, walk in their shoes, and so when my daughter suggests something I have to consider not what I would do, but what they would do. And as I verbalize it, I use shorthand so yeah, it sounds like I think they’re real.

And sometimes I even run dialogue outloud. Now that’s fun!

Embrace what’s unique about you. Because you don’t want to be normal. Like a friend of mine, a bestselling author, tried to quit smoking, but quitting destroyed her creativity. Maybe it’s subliminal that she doesn’t think she can write without a cigarette, therefore she can’t write without a cigarette, but I totally get why she didn’t end up quitting. Your creativity is what makes you unique. Special. Not normal. It makes you shine. It doesn’t matter whether you’re published or not, whether you have twenty million books in print or ten thousand, whether you’re a mega-bestseller or a debut author or a struggling midlist author. Your creativity is different than every other writer on the planet. The way you look at the world—from big brush strokes of color and feelings and human interaction to the fine details of  individual motivation and personality traits.

Ok, who in this room HASN’T had someone tell them, “If I only had the time, I too could write a book.”

I swear, I want to shoot the next person who tells me that. I’ll bet it’ll happen by the end of the week. I hear it all the time, and I’m tired of being gracious and saying something like, “I’m sure you could,” or even something a little snide like, “Well, you have to make the time.” Because honestly? They can’t write a book. If they could they would have already tried. Because that’s what writers do—we write. We can’t not write. That makes us different in the eyes of the world, those who think they can, but really can’t. Those who don’t understand the fun of the “What if” game. Those who look at a man with a briefcase and see a man with a briefcase, instead of what we see. A terrorist with a bomb. An undercover cop with a wire waiting to pay a ransom. A lawyer with divorce papers in the briefcase on his way to get his client’s wife to sign, only to realize when he gets there that he was the other man who caused the break-up in the first place. An unemployed salesman on his way to a job interview, desperate because his sister is dying and he has agreed to provide for her three children, but he has no job . . .

So when people tell me they, too could write a book, if only they had the time, I just give a half-smile and nod and mentally think, what a dumbass.

I didn’t promise I wouldn’t swear in this speech. Apologies. Ok, I’m not really sorry. When I wrote this speech I wrote it stream of consciousness. It was a good compromise—no plotting, just write out a speech as if I was talking to a small group of people and let it just come out.

For writers, we are different from everyone else out there, but we’re also different from each other. When we see a man with a briefcase, we all come up with different scenarios for him. We play it through in our head. We tell different stories with different voices.

If we all had the same voice, books would be boring. If every story sounded the same, why not just figure out the formula and have a computer write it?

Your writing voice is truly unique, and you should celebrate it.

Henry Miller said writers have antennas who are tuned into the cosmos and draw out ideas. Natalie Goldberg said our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience and make stories from the decomposition of food. Claude Bristol said undoubtedly, we become what we envisage.

Does that make Henry a space alien or Natalie a pile of decomposing trash? What are you?

I sold my fifth complete manuscript. I had hundreds I’d begun and never finished, but I did type THE END five times before I sold. The first four books will never see the light of day, and that’s a good thing. But I needed to write them. I was discovering my voice.

Few of us write our first book and sell. Oh, yeah, sure, some of you out there have sold or will sell your first book. Well, blech. Most of us aren’t that good out of the gate. I sure as hell wasn’t. I needed to practice. I learned something with each of those stories, things I couldn’t really put into words, except one: voice. I was finding my voice. Strengthening it.

Some of us start writing what we think we should, only to discover that our natural voice is lighter or darker; we write a historical but realize we shine in the contemporary world. We write romantic suspense but discover we’re actually funnier on paper than we are in real life and end up with a romantic comedy.

Too often our voice is stifled by well-meaning people who want to mold us into what they think we should be. Parents, spouses, children may tell us what we want to hear, or be passive-aggressive, or downright ornery about  what we write. Crit groups can be jewels that help you find your weaknesses and fix them; sometimes they can be stumbling blocks.

But honestly? We—you and me—are our worst enemy in discovering voice. We tell ourselves we have to write this—and we have a long list of reasons to justify it. We tell ourselves we can’t do something, or shouldn’t, or should. We limit ourselves, we reign in our creativity because we don’t want to go over the top or too far.

But when you’re discovering your voice, that’s the time you should never stifle your exuberance. You should let the story run away with you and take you places you’d never go on your own. Does it matter if that particular book gets published? Or does it matter more that you discover what works and doesn’t work for YOU?

Editing is your friend. But that first draft—as Morpheus said to Neo, “Free your mind.” Let go. Let the story pour out naturally, and then you will find your voice. Then your talent will help you hone it, shape it into an enjoyable story.

Your voice is unique to you. Being unique is good—if you write like everyone else, what’s going to make your story stand out when an agent is rushing through the fifty-seven partials she had that month? What’s going to make an editor sit up and read more? Yes, you need talent. That’s a given. You need to know how to write. But lots of people know how to write. Not everyone has discovered their voice.

It’s not easy. Who said it would be? Honestly, anything worth having isn’t easily achieved. You need to work for it, want it, sacrifice for it. Look into your muse and figure out what you really should be writing. Free your mind. Let the story flow. Don’t worry about the damn rules that someone else made up—you can address the ones you want to in editing. Too many times we second guess ourselves as we write.

Stephen King once said, “No, it’s not a very good story. Its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.”

You have to listen to your voice, your own voice, because that’s the only way you’ll know for certain that what you write is YOU. When you die deep, write with the doors closed, listen to yourself, and write your passion, you will have discovered your voice.

But it’s not easy. There are times I sit there and doubt myself. Okay, every day I sit down at the computer I doubt myself. But when the muse hits, when I’m in the zone, I don’t think about whether the word is right, the sentence make sense, the scene is ultimately necessary. I simply write what I see and hear and feel in my head. I put myself in a characters shoes and become part of the story. I put aside the doubts temporarily. They never leave forever, but I can bury them enough to let the story tell itself.

Doubts are bad news—doubts make us do stupid things. For example, writing to the market. Yeah, I know, you always hear: don’t write to the market. Don’t do this, don’t do that, you have to do this, whatever. But the market thing kinda sticks with us because we’re thinking, well, maybe we’re doing something wrong, maybe we’re not writing what will sell, so we have one eye on the market and the other on our manuscript and honestly? You can’t write like that.

Case in point: me. I write pretty dark. Even my humor is on the dark side, and that’s my voice. It took me five books before I discovered my voice—practice is important, and I’m a slow learner. But I honestly believe that no one can tell you how to write or what to write, that the only way you can write what’s in your heart, write your passion, is through trial and error.

But that dang market—remember 2003? Chick lit. It was big. It was hot. It was selling. And here I was, writing romantic suspense and I thought, well, maybe I should write a chick lit mystery. My voice . . . mystery . . . with chick lit. Think: first person, humor, murder. I liked the story. My critique partners liked it. Then, I found an agent with my romantic suspense—my fifth book—and after we sold I asked if she’d read some of my other material. Sure, she says. I sent her what I had of Fish or Cut Bait about 200 pages—about a slightly overweight teacher who had a doctor husband and as they celebrated their five year anniversary on a cruise ship, Gemma, my heroine, doesn’t tell her husband that if he doesn’t rekindle their romance, she’s getting a divorce that she doesn’t want. She’s insecure and thinks he’s flirting with a blonde bimbo and then the blonde turns up dead, and Charlie is on the run as her killer—but he didn’t do it. Gemma is almost positive. That’s where my 200 pages ended . . . my agent emails me a couple weeks later and essentially says, while she really liked my heroine, I wasn’t funny and stick to suspense.

Voice is something that is unique. It’s not normal—it’s special. It’s all you. You can’t fake it, though some people think you can. When you discover your voice, the angels sing and you dance around the computer or pour yourself a glass of champagne. But discovering it isn’t easy. Would you want it to be? If it was easy, everyone would do it. If it were easy, you’d be bored. Achievement, the sense of accomplishment, comes because you’ve done something you couldn’t before, something you weren’t positive you could do. Discovering your voice, honing your voice, making it stronger, comes from practice and it’s all you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Sometimes you just have to drive

by Alexandra Sokoloff

So the reason I’ve been so scarce around here for the last month is that it’s October.   When you write scary books you quickly realize you will never have a Halloween season to yourself ever again.  

Also, because of a family illness, I had to get back to California – with my cats.   Instead of flying, I decided to drive, and luckily my sister was up for doing it with me.   I kept a journal and am excerpting it here, because anyone who hasn’t driven this country really is missing the experience of a lifetime.

———————————————————————————————-

Road trip, Day One, Saturday  (Raleigh NC to Hickory NC)

A friend of mine who’s obsessed with ON THE ROAD has pointed out to me that in that book, going West is always happy and optimistic and full of adventure, and going East is always sad and depressively introspective and fraught with setbacks.   Which obviously means that just by geographical orientation this has to be a happy trip.

Actually my sister and brother and I live for road trips.  We were programmed for it early on during the family’s summer cross-country trips – pile into the station wagon and drive a different route every year so we could experience the country.   Like, all of it.   A huge, priceless gift we got from our parents.   Well, and Dad just loved to drive.

We’ll miss M. on this one, but E. and I travel pretty much perfectly together – she’s really one of a kind: Dorothy Parker’s wit, Julia Child’s effervescence (and cooking skills), and the artistic sense and surrealist mind of Salvador Dali.   We drive until we drop, tell each other stories, pull off whenever anything looks interesting, and laugh until we’re sick.  The trick here is, we’re going to have to drive eight good hours a day to make it to an event I have to do in Vegas this week, AND – we’re taking my 14-year old cats, also sisters, but who hate each other and Do Not Travel Well.  We have kitty Valium but they’re still way too old for this on top of everything else they’ve been through in the last few months, and most of the stress I have is about how they’re going to hold up.

This first day was a little – um – nuts: I was committed to teach a writing workshop for a half day before we could hit the road.   Lucky for me I could do this one in my sleep, because I’d had all of 20 minutes the night before.

The workshop went spectacularly well even in my unconsciousness and then I had to race back to get the house in order, pack more stuff into the car than I would have thought possible and then hit the road…

… just in time to get caught in a crazy traffic jam around the U 2 concert at local Carter-Finley Stadium.  (I heard people were just abandoning their cars along I-40 and walking, a mini-Woodstock.)  It took us 20 minutes to get a half a mile, but then we were out of it (saw the back up for the next 30 minutes of driving, though).   I’d been blocking that U 2 was in town that night and I’d miss them, but there was a radio station playing A to Z U 2 songs that night, so E. and I got a mini-concert of our own.

The full moon was up and the sky was so bright that we could see the whole landscape on the road to Asheville, a totally different experience than that tunnel of black that I-40 here usually is, just beautiful.  

The open road is always about endless, infinite possibility to me.   The world is huge and it’s all available to us, every second.  I am grateful to have this chance to vacuum out my head, and become open to everything.

 

Day 2, Sunday  (Hickory, NC  to Somewhere, Tennessee)

 7 pm            

We are now in a rather dubious motel at the side of I 40 in Tennessee, somewhere between Nashville and Memphis.   Not as bad as those scary motels conveniently located right behind the ubiquitous “Adult Superstores” along 40 (is “Adult Superstore” a Southern code word for brothel?).  The room is actually clean, and totally fine for a night but I suspect illicit truck stop activity is soon to come.   It was just raining too hard not to pull off, and no other options in sight.

But the door is double-bolted and chained, the cats are mellower tonight, and we’re watching Titanic on HBO as I write this.   Will never make it up to the end; I don’t care to see Leo’s oh-so-romantically-tragic death anyway.   But man, those eyes…

So the day…

Not much sleep between 3 am and 7 because of feline hysteria, but still felt fine in the morning.   E and I drank five cups each of that incredibly sugary motel vanilla cappuccino (which I think is like a whole week’s worth of calories) and then hit the road.   A gorgeous fall day: blue, blue sky with wispy clouds, and even saw some turning leaves – just a taste of the psychedelia to come.

We made a brief stop in Little San Francisco – I mean, Asheville, and did a quick tour around downtown – stopped in at Malaprops to sign books and at Street Fair to buy hippie clothes.   I got at totally great orange and purple and teal leaf-embroidered tank top for fall.  I absolutely love Asheville, really must spend more time there.   It has that sensual, mystical quality of San Francisco and New Orleans – and what a riot of fragrances and colors and art and books and architecture and coffee and every sensual pleasure.

Too, too short a time there, but we got a taste.  Then up over the mountains (love that one tunnel, very filmic) and crossed into Tennessee, which immediately has a different feel to it.   Still forest and leaves, but the roads are carved between rock cliffs.   The sky was getting gray and truckers honked at us every few miles.

My sister is on a quest – she’s obsessively trying to recreate – food-wise – the eating highlights of a West-to-East cross country trip we took about four years ago.    Her rule is that we eat regionally, and today her mission was The Bean Pot in Crossville, TN (where the time changes from Eastern to Central).   I have to say she was right – those are the best beans and cornbread sticks I’ve had anywhere, ever.   The restaurant itself is almost a parody… I think I hope it’s a parody.   Beside the door is a horrifyingly realistic mannequin of a mountain boy straight out of Deliverance – or Texas Chainsaw Massacre.   He’s in a wheelchair, legless, wearing denim overalls, gap-toothed and vacant-eyed.   One of his arms is attached to an invisible wire and the woman behind the register will pull the wire to make him wave hello and goodbye to customers.  Nightmare-inducing.  The souvenir shop next door sells racist table implements and statues of dogs lifting their legs to piss, along with all manner of Confederate flag apparel – but sadly, not a trace of the cactus penises we remembered from our last trip and have always regretted not buying, even just to prove they exist.

The rain started early afternoon and got steadily harder.   I was glad to have remembered to have the windshield wipers changed, something that never would have occurred to me in Southern California, but after five years in NC, I was ready.   The rain made it easier to have to drive right by Nashville, another totally great city that we had a charmed evening in on our last road trip.   But with JT and Randy living there,  I can go play any time I want.

The soundtrack today was nonstop 70’s, lots of singing along, and let me tell you, no matter what you think your problems are, it’s nothing compared to the travails of poor Lola at the Copa – Copacabana.

 

Day Three:   Monday   (East of Memphis, TN  to Fort Smith, Arkansas)

It’s so nice to wake up in the middle of nowhere! Foggy and cool this morning, very green all around, trees and fields.

E. wanted BBQ but we couldn’t find any that early in the morning, and she had never been to a Waffle House and we don’t have them on the West Coast, so we did that for the experience.  

Crossed through Memphis, over the Mississippi, my favorite river, on that great bridge, into Arkansas.

E. had some business to do today so she made some phone calls while I drove and spaced out.

Arkansas is a state I know not much about, except of course for the Clintons, but visually and geographically it seems to be divided along I-40 into three very different terrains: the Eastern side is relatively flat with fields of this almost surreal marigold color, bordered by very unforesty trees, more like oaks and apple trees.   After Little Rock, the Western side turns into woodland with lots of water – lakes, rivers, creeks.   And then suddenly, the Ozarks, which are stunning, very low hills and vegetation I’m not familiar with, but just beautiful vistas.   And apparently it’s wine country. 

We got a lot of driving done today – left early and pushed through, but the cats were not happy campers for most of the time, and we were tired, too, so we gave up around five and found an Ozarks motel with a view out the window that goes on forever and the perfect local restaurant right across the parking lot: Big Jake’s, with photos of prize-winning livestock in the lobby, a very cool model train running all the way around the balcony of the dining hall, and dead animals hung on the walls.

We had big plans of doing yoga in the room tonight with a DVD we brought, but maybe tomorrow!  It’s not even nine, but I’m crashing.

Oklahoma next, which means a day of roadside tamales of the gods.

 

Day 4 – Tuesday –  Fort Smith, OK to Amarillo, TX

Today was Oklahoma – where the wind really does come sweeping down the plain.

There was a thunderstorm when we woke up this morning so we waited it out a little but still managed to leave by nine.   There was instantly a different feel to the day.   The sky is enormous, a huge bowl, and it was so liberating to be able to see horizon again.   That is one thing that really continues to unnerve me about Raleigh:  no vistas. 

As I remembered, Oklahoma is a gorgeous state in a totally different way from anything in the South:  vast fields…. All kinds of fields… of yellow flowers, sage green ones with shiny pretty waving grasses by the road, red freshly plowed ones, and even black ones dotted with white cotton.    We had a spectacular cloud show all day long in that endless sky, constantly changing layers, some dark funnels of rain, and then the sun coming out after a few hours.    And signs every few miles marking a different tribal nation.   Would really love to go back to graduate school in American history… um, next lifetime.

Oklahoma City would be interesting to hang out in for a day or two, just for the wonderful historical downtown – SO Midwestern:  all shopfronts and great examples of Plains architecture, which I recently learned about on an architectural tour of Chicago during ALA that made me just about rabid to read more about the history of American architecture.   That I might be able to get to before the next life.

We couldn’t stop, though, because in the afternoon I had to stop for 45 minutes to do a four-way phone interview with a Vegas radio station and Rhodi Hawk and Sarah Langan, the other dark suspense authors I’m going to be doing this Southwest tour with.   Elaine and I were in the middle of nowhere so we pulled off at a Cherokee Trading Post with a huge cutout billboard of a feather-headdressed chief against that bowl of blue sky, and I did the interview on my cell phone in the parking lot with a strong and really noisy wind whistling around me and a family of bison staring at me from a nearby field.  The connection was terrible on my end and I could hear the host’s questions but not a single word of Rhodi’s and Sarah’s answers, and I can only hope what I said was vaguely in the ballpark of a coherent conversation.   And on top of all that, halfway through the interview I had to run out into the parking lot, phone in hand, and help E. rescue a turtle heading straight for the freeway in an apparent suicide attempt.

One of those absurd moments my screenwriting partner and I used to call – EXTREMELY ironically – “The glamorous life of a Hollywood screenwriter.”  

It was pretty great, even so.

Back on the road, and the cats were being placid after spending the interview prowling around the car and eating, so we pushed on, and crossed into Texas just after four.  The landscape, again, was immediately completely different; I always marvel at that fact of border crossings.   Who decides these things?  Or does the landscape change to fit the character of the state after it becomes a state?

Texas is much flatter than OK, and a lot of scrub brush and smaller trees at the border.  Signs for bail bonds, derelict gas stations, and oil wells almost immediately, even if they’re tiny ones.

And then the land opens up into this immense, bare flatness, with very gentle curves of hills and low dry grass and patches of yellow, and the occasional steer, under a HUGE sky.

Now you can really tell you’re on Route 66; the Americana is non-stop.   The billboards are endlessly entertaining:  “Free 72 ounce steak”   (isn’t a usual steak, like, eight ounces? The mind boggles.)   “Five miles to the Jesus Christ is Lord Travel Center.”  (We didn’t have the nerve to stop.)   “Two miles ahead: the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere, a spiritual experience you will never forget.”

I wouldn’t call it a spiritual experience, but it WAS a big cross, sort of ominously impressive against the darkening sunset.

But the sunset – now that was a spiritual experience all on its own – it started out pearlescent, all those clouds in that huge sky, and then went on for HOURS, climaxing in shimmering reds and golds and purples – and then even more spectacularly, the sky went deep blue and the clouds appeared backlit, as if painted on to an enormous theater scrim.   Just jaw-dropping.

We hit Amarillo exhausted – just enough energy left to stop for tamales.

Which were, of course, divine.

 

Day 9 – Los Angeles

She’s seen her share of devils in this angel town.

–       Shawn Mullins, Rockabye

You can check out any time you like… but you can never leave.

  –  The Eagles, Hotel California


Aaaahhh!!!!   L.A.!!!  Again!   How did I end up here again???

Well, okay, my trip journal went to hell once we hit the Southwest – some very crazy driving back and forth – dropping my sister and the cats off at a hotel in Vegas (E. threatening the cats with a debauched night of bourbon and whores once I left), meeting Rhodi and Sarah for our booksigning in Vegas (Books in Vegas!  Who knew?), jumping in the car with Rhodi and driving back to Phoenix to meet Sarah for another signing, circling down to San Diego for another, then up to L.A. for yet another signing and then cruising around the Southland for about two dozen bookstore drop-ins.   I have one whole day off and then flying to Indianapolis (up at 3 in the morning – please just kill me) for the World Mystery Convention.   (Which Steve has recounted beautifully here).

There were four border checkpoints en route to San Diego because of some recent drug cartel shootout, and I kid you not, Rhodi and I froze like deer in the headlights each time a border cop leaned in the window to ask us, “Where are you coming from?”

I mean, how do you possibly start?

And then one of them threw in a trick question:  “Where are you headed?”

I swear, it was something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

It’s a good thing we don’t look like Mexican drug runners, and/or were perhaps showing some leg at the time, or you may never have heard from me again.

– Alex

 ——————————————————————————————————————-

November is Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, in which thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of writers, commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30.

I’ve been doing a Nanowrimo prep on my blog, and there’s still time to get yourself in gear.   Come on, you know you want to!

 

SO NOT HOLLYWOOD

 

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

What impressed me more than anything about Bouchercon was the warm reception I received from a community of authors who had no doggone reason to be so damn warm and accepting.  But there they were, the top mystery-thriller writers of our day, opening their arms to one and all.

I only knew a few of these folks when I arrived, but I left knowing most everyone.  Because that was their way. 

At Bouchercon you walk into the hotel lobby to find yourself swallowed into the bar scene where those you know introduce you to those you’ve only read or heard about.  I arrived nervous, wondering who I might know, wondering if I would be accepted into a group whose members had paid their dues and earned the right to be there.

I stepped into that bar to encounter Alex/Brett/Cornelia/JT/James Scott Bell/Alan Jacobson/F. Paul Wilson/Christa Faust/Marcus Sakey/Sean Chercover/Lee Child/Rebecca Cantrell/Bobby McCue/Rebecca Cantrell/John Gilstrap/Matt Hilton/Naomi Hirahara/Jason Pinter/Howard Shrier/Kelli Stanley…you get the picture.

And everyone, every single one of them sang the praises of every other one of them, shared the stories of their successes and failures, shared the little tidbits of advice that had been shared with them by others or had been learned through their own hard luck efforts.  And they listened to the stories of my successes and failures, nodding their heads, patting my shoulder occasionally, smiling or showing concern when appropriate. 

Someone always arrived to take my hand, to guide me to someone they wanted me to meet.  To someone influential, someone that might advance my career.  Not a single author hoarded this information.  They passed me eagerly, from hand to hand.  As they did with everyone.  I was not singled out.  I was not the exception. 

And the readers, and the fans, and the writers-yet-to-be-published were welcomed as well.  In the same fashion.  Everyone had access to everyone else, and everyone respected the boundaries of others.

A special treat for me was meeting some of the readers of our Murderati blog site.  The warmth I felt when people like Allison introduced herself, reminding me of some of the things we’ve shared in past blogs, allowing me to get a glimpse into her world as a writer and lawyer in San Francisco.  I can’t count how many times someone came up to me to say they read my posts on Murderati and that they had hoped to meet me at Bouchercon.  The thing I wrote most commonly when signing my book was, “Thanks for your enthusiasm and warm smile.”  Because everyone I met was enthusiastic, everyone had a warm smile. 

“You sound like you’re at camp,” my wife said as I rat-a-tat described the events of my days.

“Camp, yes…”  It was exactly like camp, without the tents and bugs and campfires and bad food.  The camaraderie was the same.  The silliness was there also, like the drunken 3:30 a.m. bar songs in the lobby of the Hyatt with shouts of “Shut the fuck up!” from a room somewhere around the tenth floor.  Or Alexandra Sokoloff, Joe Konrath and others waltzing through the lobby in their bathing suits on the way to the hot tub, carrying a tray filled with beer.  The security guys stopping by once in a while to tell them not to drown, saying that they didn’t mind at all so long as the bathers kept the riff-raff from other hotels from invading the pool (not knowing, of course, that none in Alex’s party had a room at the Hyatt).

Each day was more exciting than the last.  The things I loved the most:  Brett Battles receiving the Barry Award for Best Thriller of 2008; his inviting me to share the celebratory dinner with just him and his editor; the phone call I received from my publicist to tell me that, after only four weeks in release, I had landed on the L.A. Times Bestseller List; the wonderful review I received in the L.A. Times the next day; the crowd that attended my panel; watching my books disappear off the bookstore shelves; the friends I met for the first time; the hugs and handshakes at the end.

I realized how unlike Hollywood was the Bouchercon experience.  The world of Bouchercon = “Come on in, there’s always room for another author!”  The world of Hollywood = “Fuck you get out of my way who the hell let you in to begin with?”

Hollywood is a tough place to hang your hat.  Everything devolves into Social Darwinism where the strongest, fittest, most predatory players find great success.  There are always exceptions to the rule, of course, and I’ve met a few talented, successful screenwriters who are accepting of others.  But I haven’t met many happy screenwriters.  Film is a director’s medium, so what the screenwriter ends up doing is writing a blueprint for the director’s vision.  That’s great if the screenwriter is directing the film.  However, that’s not generally the case.

At Bouchercon I met a whole lot of happy authors.  Sure, not a lot of Ferrari owners in the crowd, but at least we authors get “final cut.”  Our vision stands on the page.  And, while we’re all generally a bundle of insecurities, at least our insecurities don’t manifest into arrogant behavior that isolates us from the one, true support group we can enjoy—our peers. 

The authors in our genre, the authors I met at Bouchercon, understand this.  We are a support group.  It’s hard enough just to get published.  We don’t need to compete with ourselves.

So, is it a wonder I fell into a minor depression the minute the conference closed?  How can anyone go back to his day job after that?  How can anyone face the daunting creditors?  Bouchercon gave me a glimpse of what life could be, if only I could live it 24/7. 

The depression coincided with another event—the passing of my grandmother, who was 103 years old.  She died ONE DAY before her 104th birthday.  I had visited her just last week, after four years away, when I traveled to Denver on my book tour.  She was fine and healthy and full of humor.  She had another twenty years in her for sure.  Then one little bladder infection and it was all over.  She died Saturday morning, as my mom was flying in for her birthday.  My mom waited until Sunday afternoon to tell me because she didn’t want to ruin my time at Bouchercon.

Life and death, ecstasy and grief.  I experienced it all over the course of one weekend.  Thankfully, I had a great support group to share it with.

 

AT PLAY IN THE FIELD OF THE WRITTEN WORD PART 2

by Brett Battles

When we last left off after part 1, I was finishing my proposal and about to send it to my agent. If you recall, I mentioned that I was doing something different that neither my agent nor my editor was expecting.

Now I can tell you what I did…instead of giving them a single, stand alone book proposal, I gave them three completely different ones.

Yes, I said three…individual…story proposals.

Each included the following: A) a ten to fifteen page outline, and B) sample chapters of around thirty pages for each idea.

I know. You’re thinking, What? Are you crazy?

Perhaps. After all, I turned in approximately 120 pages of written material…for a  proposal!

(Wait. I am crazy.)

Here’s how it happened. Earlier this year I was at a point with the book I was working on that I had a break of a few days, and, as luck would have it, an idea for a stand alone came to me. In a two or three day period I typed up nearly forty pages of the beginning of the book. Then I saved the file (we’ll call this idea #1), and went back to the manuscript I was working on.

When August came around, my publisher and I agreed that the next proposal should be for a stand alone instead of the fifth in the Quinn series. Almost immediately I had a new idea (idea #2) that I was excited about. I worked on it for several weeks, spending a lot of time just thinking things through. I ended up devoting a lot of time on the trip I took in late August working on it, and had things pretty much had it all figured out by the time I got on the plane to fly home.

Funny thing about flying, often I’m struck with random ideas that momentarily consume me. (Many times they involved planes, for obvious reasons. One such idea occurred on my trip to Bouchercon last week.) This moment of inspiration happened to me on the first leg of my journey back to the States, and for three hours I wrote long hand in my notebook the first couple chapters of a new book (you got it, idea #3). When I got home I still had a few weeks before my proposal was due, so I allowed myself some time to flesh out this new idea and see if it was worth sending in. I’m sure my initial thought was that if it was better than idea #2, it would be the proposal I’d submit.

As I continued on it, I definitely liked where it was going, but I also found that I still really liked idea #2. That’s when the scandalous thought hit me: why not send in both and let my publisher decided.

And seconds after that thought crossed my mind I remembered the story from earlier in the year.

Knowing I probably shouldn’t, I went back and reread it anyway. Damn if I didn’t liked where it was going.

Okay, fine, I told myself. I’ll send them three. Because I knew I’d be happy to write any of them. Let my editor weight in on which one should be next.

As a side note, I should say that this method of giving multiple choices was also ingrained in me during my working days in television graphics. The thing was, if someone wanted a main title for their show…let’s say TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORIES (one of the shows on E! I rebranded)…if you show them one idea they won’t like it. But if you give them choices, they’ll feel like you really put thought into it, and will pick one.

In the case of my proposal, reason behind given multiple ideas didn’t equate to my time at E!, but my thinking was definitely influenced by my process there. The real reason I sent all three was because I was happy with all of them so it didn’t really matter to me which one I did.

The last Friday of September, I emailed the proposal to my agent without any warning about what she would receive. Was she impressed? She sounded like it to me. That following Monday, she send it on to my editor.

Since my proposal was rather bulky, and my editor also had other things on her plate, it took a couple weeks for her to get back to me. She finally did the Friday after my last Murderati post (two weeks ago tomorrow.) Thankfully, she was very happy with all the material, and while she liked aspects of all three idea, she went with idea #2.

(Funny tangent…the down side of doing this (besides all the extra work) was that once I sent the proposal in, one of the ideas started to pick at my mind. And since I had nothing else to do, I put in a little time on it, developing it further. And, you guessed it, that wasn’t the one chosen. Oh well, it’ll be the next one if I have any say in it!)

So I’m back at the daily writing thing now, working on making idea #2 into a finished, kickass stand alone. I’m pretty excited about it, too, because I’m using a lot of my personal past in it…(the book is largely set in my hometown.)

Now, would I advise doing your proposal in the manner I did? Ah…no. What works for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for all. I will say I don’t plan on doing multiple ideas for future submissions, though, I guess, you never know.

Questions for today:

Brett…crazy/not crazy? (Perhaps we should skip that one.)

For writers, how much thinking to you put in before you start a new book? (Not talking necessarily about outlining, just working the idea and characters in your mind.)

Readers, does this behind-the-curtain stuff even interest you?

And finally…and this is most important…I would love to hear any ideas on topics you like me, or other Murderati contributors, to discuss!

 

A special hello to all the new friends I met at Bouchercon, and to the old ones I got to spend time with and get to know better. It was an excellent conference and I can hardly wait until next year. If you weren’t there, try to come next time. Hell, it’s in San Francisco! Who’d want to miss that?