Old Dog, New Trick

As anyone who has been paying attention to my babbling over the last few years knows, I’m what’s known as a “pantser.”  We’ve talked about this method of writing before.  I’m pretty sure that Tess, who is also a pantser, has spoken about it much more eloquently than I’ve ever been able to manage.

Stephen King once said that his best books are the ones he didn’t plot out beforehand.  Since I have no idea which particular books he’s talking about, there’s no way I can judge this statement.  And while he may think he’s had a few misses, I’ve always been entertained.

But I’ve been a pantser for as long as I can remember.  In fact, the very first thing I wrote, I didn’t bother to sit down and think it out beyond the premise.  I just jumped in, guns blazing —

— and quickly discovered that writing is hard work.

But I never blamed that hard work on the fact that I didn’t prepare much before I started writing.  It seemed that this was simply the best method for me. 

I tried many times to go the so-called “safe” route.  With screenplays, I got a bunch of index cards and started plotting out the story, scene by scene, but I would only get about ten cards in before I grew bored with the whole process and just started writing.

With my first aborted attempts at novels, I tried outlining, but the process just seemed so much like homework that I could never get beyond a couple pages before I jumped into the “real” writing and started having fun.

Outlining = homework

Writing = recess

Ahhh, recess.  What a wonderful thing. 

Until you hit the wall, of course.  And every single book I’ve written, I’ve hit not one or two walls, but several of them that had me thinking the book was a failure and there was no way I’d ever finish on time.

Fortunately, I’ve been lucky so far. 

But earlier this year my writing career turned a bit of a corner and I found myself with more work than I anticipated.  Pile on top of that the online workshop I was committed to teaching, and other life commitments that felt they needed to intrude on my writing time, and I was, to put it politely, up shit creek with only half a paddle.

Or maybe not.

Because those new writing gigs required me to turn in, at the very least, a fairly detailed synopsis of the story, I was forced to get off my lazy ass and do the “homework.”

And guess what?

After writing that first story outline and working out all of its kinks, after slogging through and hitting the walls during the outlining process rather than the actual writing itself, I discovered, to my astonishment, that — get this — I was able to write the first story

…hold onto your hats…

about three times faster than normal.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen.  I wrote the thing very, very quickly.  And I can’t say that it was any worse than what I would have produced had I used my usual method.  In fact, it’s pretty freakin’ good, if I do say so myself. 

All of this thanks to that outline. 

I have always believed that outlining would kill my spontaneity, would stifle my creativity, would make me so bored with the story that I wouldn’t want to write it.  But the truth is, none of those things happened, and I sailed through the writing.

Now I’m busy outlining a new book — one that’s big and complicated and probably my most ambitious work to date — and I’m thinking, ugh, here we go again.  But once I started to outline, I suddenly found myself very excited about the stuff I was coming up with and realized, wow, I’m doing most of the work right now.  And all I have to do once it’s finished is go back in, flesh it all out, and make it pretty.

Not to say that writing of the book itself will be easy, but it’ll certainly be a lot easier.

The outlining process is forcing me to think in exactly the same way I do when going the pantser route, but allowing me to do it faster and without that panicked feeling that I have to get a scene perfect.  I’m concentrating purely on character and story without having to worry about the actual prose.  

So I guess the moral of the story is that no matter how old the dog may be, there’s always room for a new trick.  And anything that can get me to produce work faster, while still maintaining its quality, is a good thing.

How about you other pantsers out there?  Have you ever tried or even thought about trying to outline?

 

 

They’ll try to talk you out of it

Tess Gerritsen

I’m often asked why I decided to leave a secure career in medicine and become a writer.  My answer is: way before I became a doctor, I was a writer.  Writing was, in fact, my very first career choice, and when I left medicine, I was simply returning to what I’d always wanted to be.

I first knew I was a writer when I was about seven years old.  Age seven, in fact, seems to be when many of us first self-identify as writers.  By age seven, we know how to read, and we’ve acquired the skills to set complete sentences to paper, although those sentences may be rudimentary and the words charmingly misspelled.

While cleaning out my mother’s old house, I came across one of the very first books I ever wrote: Jungle Journey.  I’d bound it with needle and thread, and illustrated it with pictures of a blue zebra.  (Why is the zebra blue?  I have no idea.) 

Micky the zebra decided to go on a walk through the jungle.  He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but he didn’t know why.  His mother told him never to go into the jungle alone…

Yes, even eight year olds know about foreshadowing.

Micky came to a big tree.  There was a parrot in it.  “Don’t go into the jungle,” he said…

Two pages in, and you can already guess what’s coming next: Something Really Bad. Is this kid destined to be a thriller writer, or what?

All through my childhood, I wrote.  Short stories.  Poems.  Novellas.  I wrote and produced plays and musicals, composed the songs, and was editor of my high school newspaper.  One evening, after a school assembly, my high school English teacher pulled my parents aside and told them: “I’ve never met any student who was more clearly destined to be a writer.”  She knew what I was.  I knew what I was.  

But I had no idea how one actually made a career as a writer.  I’d never met a real, live writer, so I had no one to turn to for advice.  And then there was the question of practicality, uttered by father: “How are you ever going to make a living at it?”  He was the son of Chinese immigrants, an ethnic group known for its practicality and focus on economic security.  Did you ever wonder why so many Chinese Americans end up in medicine, engineering, and computer sciences?  Because that’s where the jobs are.  So that’s where our parents push us.

I dutifully listened to my father, set aside my dreams of being a writer and became a pre-med student instead.  But I never did let go of the dream.  And when I returned to it a decade later, I was all the better prepared, and more determined than ever, to be a writer. 

I’m not the only kid who was almost talked out of a career in the arts, usually by well-meaning parents.  I sometimes hear from other Asian Americans who are miserable in their jobs, and wish they’d followed their hearts.  One computer engineer confessed to me that since he was a child, he’d wanted to be a fashion designer, but his parents pushed him into the sciences instead.  “Now I’m too old to chase my dream,” he said.  “Who’s going to hire a 45-year-old rookie fashion designer?”  One Korean American actor who did follow his dream, and now regularly lands roles in both TV and feature films, complained that his mother still asks him when he’s going to give up that Hollywood nonsense and apply to medical school.  

Well-meaning parents everywhere, of every color, have probably offered a variation of the same advice I heard from my dad.  “I know it’s what you love to do, son, but will you be able to to pay the bills?” Countless budding careers of artists and writers have probably been snuffed out by that common-sense voice of responsibility.  You can’t really blame parents, who are simply doing what parents through the ages have always done: ensured the survival of their offspring.  

Sometimes that advice to “choose a more practical career” is exactly what an aspiring writer needs to hear.  It prepares him for the harsh reality of this business.  It forces him to think about whether he truly is committed to his art. It winnows out those whose writing aspirations are wobbly or fleeting. The truth is, many authors won’t be able to support their families on their writing. They’ll wake up years later, with five or ten published novels under their belt and a stack of unpaid bills on the dining table, and they’ll think: “Dad was right.  I should have been a proctologist.”  If that prospect unnerves you and stops you from following your dream, then maybe you don’t have the drive, the passion, the sheer stubbornness, to be a writer.  Maybe your dream was never meant to be.    

But if you push ahead despite warnings from your parents, your wife, and your accountant, maybe you’re just insane enough to make it in this business.  

Must see, must read

by Pari

Ever since my children have come to the age of true intellectual analysis, I’ve wondered how best to give them a rich understanding of their heritage as Americans, New Mexicans and so forth. To me, one of the biggest gifts I can cultivate in them is a cultural fluency that goes beyond Hannah Montana and Disney.

I know this sounds heady, but I take my work as a parent quite seriously. Plus, it’s fun to introduce these bright young people to what I consider iconic examples of the best works—or the most representative of the best minds of our past and present—for the first time.

With the glorious advent of Netflix, my husband and I have been able to show our kids movies such as Gandhi—where we’ve been able to talk about nonviolence which then triggers discussion of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and what’s happening with racism and intolerance in contemporary society. We showed them Modern Times and talked about industrialization and its impact our economy and the human soul. Last night we watched the astounding The Great Dictator and, yet again, I was flabbergasted with Chaplin’s incredible prescience and articulation of the madness of embracing maniacal dictators like Hitler.

My children are also voracious readers. No books in our house have ever been off limits though I did, at one point, put some on the highest shelves so that my then eight-year-old—who was reading at a high-school level—wouldn’t get something with social implications that she truly wouldn’t understand. At least if the books were high enough, and she walked by with a stepping stool, I’d have a clue that she was trying to get at them and we could discuss their appropriateness.

Though my children are no longer pipsqueaks, we still read together every night. We’ve read Shakespeare, Austen, Bronte, Pratchett, Tolkein, Rowling and more. At school, my older child is reading John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Harper Lee and other thought-provoking authors.

But now I’m searching for masterpieces, the best representatives of genre works.

Of course we’ve gone through the kid stuff already, the beginner mysteries that are tame or clever, but written for a younger audience. We’re waaaaay beyond those now. Without bragging, I can say with confidence that my kids are sophisticated when it comes to themes and language. Dine with us sometime and I guarantee you’ll be fascinated by the depth these kids bring to our dinner conversation.

So . . . I need your help. Please.

What are the fabulous examples of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance that every person needs to have read to be truly literate in these genres? Which books had a profound influence on your world view, tastes or—for authors especially—your own work?

Was it a Heinlein or an Asimov? A Poe or Doyle? Did Ender’s Game change your life? Did Listening Woman? What do you consider the must-reads to give this new generation a solid grounding for the future?

On the same topic, are there movies that encapsulate an important point or time in our history? Is Citizen Kane still relevant? Is the first Star Wars seminal? Should we go back and watch all the original Star Trek episodes?

 I really can’t wait to read your responses.

And thank you for helping me to be a better parent.

 

 

Confidence

By Toni McGee Causey

Confidence.

You see it in some athletes. They walk out onto a field and in spite of being in front of a huge crowd, they’ll look like they belong there. They’ve put in the practice, they have the skills. They give the impression that they are formidable, that they came to win.

You see it in some performers. They take the stage, grab the mic or step into the role and whoosh, you believe in them. Just like that. Snap.

You see it in some professionals. The doctor under pressure in a life-threatening situation. The attorney arguing a case. The SWAT team running into a building with a hostage situation. You know they are going to do the job they came to do.

You see it in some writers. They start the story with an evocative sentence, something that pulls you in, that says, “Yes, you want to be here, reading this, right now.”

As a kid, I didn’t have a lot of confidence… until one day, I did. And the only thing that shifted was a fundamental understanding of what confidence was. See, for a long time, I kept thinking, “One day, I’m going to feel confident, and when I feel it, I’ll know I’m good enough to be confident.” It was as if I were waiting for a cosmic permission slip to believe in myself. Like at some point, whatever it was I had accomplished was going to ding ding ding on some giant meter and I would get my Certification of Confidence from the Universe. (The Universe, by the way? Doesn’t give a rat’s ass.)

The problem, of course, was that there really never was going to be any giant certification from the Universe. Rationally, I knew that all along, but I kept thinking that with the next accomplishment, I would feel it. With the next “A” on an exam, or the next strike-out on my softball team or the next award, I was gonna know. And because I was waiting, there was a hesitancy. I didn’t quite realize there was a hesitancy. If you’d asked me at the time, I couldn’t have explained it, but everything—particularly my writing—felt tentative.

I was thinking about the nature of confidence one day as I happened to be on a long drive, and I punched around the radio stations, craving background music. Unfortunately, I was between decent stations and I ended up on a talk-radio show I hadn’t heard of, some psychologist talking about something entirely different than what I was thinking about. I barely heard the first half of the story she told, annoyed that it wasn’t music, and then suddenly, I was in that story. It likely won’t mean the same to you, because it was a specific moment in time, me cocooned in that car on a long, hot drive in the deep south one Sunday afternoon. It was classic… and it wasn’t something new to me, but it had a profound life-changing effect.

The story was about a woman who bites her nails. She’d gone to a doctor for a consultation and as they sat there, him in a chair near hers, she explained how she was desperate for help. Her hands were nearly ruined, and she held them up for him to see, and sure enough, bloody, horribly bitten nails. She told him she’d do any sort of program he’d want her to do, and she had been all over creation trying to get help, but nothing had worked thus far. As she told him the story, she started chewing on a nail and the doctor reached over, pushed her hand down and said, “Stop biting your nails.”

“But that’s what I’m here for,” she cried. “I need to stop and I don’t know how. I have tried…” and she listed off a number of programs, and as she went into detail, she started chewing on another nail.

The doctor reached over, pushed her hand down and said, “Stop biting your nails.”

“That’s what I need help with!” she said, clearly exasperated. “I don’t understand what’s causing this need. I’ve been tested for…” and she listed off a string of tests various institutions had run and as she talked, again the hand went to her mouth.

The doctor pushed her hand down again and said, “Stop biting your nails.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked. “That’s what I’m HERE FOR. I don’t understand why—“

“You don’t need to understand why to change the behavior,” he said. “Quit putting your hand to your mouth. Choose. We can always explore the why later. But make the choice. And keep making it.”

That’s when I heard the ding ding ding. (The Universe is SLOW. I’m just sayin’.)

Because I happened to be thinking about the nature of confidence, I realized that a lot of people don’t have confidence because they’re successful… they’re successful because they choose to have confidence. Now maybe that got reinforced somehow when they were kids, or maybe they were just more predispositioned toward confidence. And maybe this is a concept every single other person on the planet got by the time they were two. (I doubt that. We all have insecurities.) The thing is, confidence isn’t borne out of a surety of success. Confidence is choosing to believe that the outcome will eventually warrant the faith and then acting on it by practicing for that eventual success.

Confidence is choosing. Practicing for the outcome we’d like to have.

I looked at my writing, then. Saw the hesitancy. Sure, there was skill there, but it lacked faith. When I recognized that, my approach to writing changed. Voice rang a bell and showed up to the game.

The thing is, in sports, you can’t play someone else’s game. You might practice as many hours, with all the same coaches, but no two people are going to play exactly the same. As long as you know the rules (and how to break them), if you try to play just like someone else, that’s all you’ll be: a copy of someone else. You might even win some, but you won’t be the best you.  

But true confidence… true voice… is playing your game. It’s taking all of that practice, all of those hours and weeks and years of dedication and tackling the problem with faith that you have the skills and you can have the eventual outcome that you desire.

True success is rarely without practice. It is almost never without failure. Maybe even many failures. Failure is just an opportunity to learn and improve. It is nothing else. It is not personal. It is not a value judgment on you as a person. It is a circumstance, and most successes are successful because they’ve learned and grown and had faith that the practice they put in was going to be worth it.

Also? They competed. Performers put themselves out there for jobs, doctors compete for grades, athletes compete for position, SWAT teams practice relentlessly. Sometimes life isn’t fair and they failed, but they keep going.

So practice.

Play your game.

Choose confidence.

And keep choosing it.

I put that lesson squarely in the “better late than never” category. How about you? What did you finally learn to do (can be anything) that changed your life?

[Side note to our readers… be sure to check Tess’ post on Tuesday, which deals with what it takes to make it in the business, which she posted first in the queue and I discovered as I post this. They coincidentally make great companion pieces!] 

Just Close Your Eyes and Think of England

By Cornelia Read

It is reputed that Queen Victoria’s advice to her daughters on the subject of their wedding nights was “Just close your eyes and think of England.” 

 

 

That’s about how I feel about having my picture taken. Not like the camera’s going to steal my soul or something–hey, camera, welcome to it–but more like it’s going to superimpose the face of this weird looking chick who is not at all what I think I look like.

In short, I have a bad case of what my sister calls “Camera Face,” in that I totally freeze up whenever I know the lens is focused on me. I end up with one of two expressions:

The Joker, if I smile,

 or Queen Victoria if I don’t.

 

I shit you not. Here, check it out… smiling:

 

Not smiling:

 

 I mean, pin the Order of the Garter on that sweater and throw a linen napkin on my head…

…and I could be Victoria Regina Imperatrix Redux. Shut your eyes and think of Belgium, for chrissake. Or possibly Bumfuq, Egypt:

This is all rather on my mind because of a new feature on Google, which is that when you Google yourself they show four pictures of you on the front page about halfway down if there are that many of you tagged with your name online. And, of course, you can’t control the four pictures that actually come up.

I mean, this one doesn’t suck, which is why I may have it on my dust jackets forever (okay, it’s three years old and yes, Photoshop *is* my friend):

And I even kind of like this one (which my ex took which may be why I look so fucking pissed off):

But could those two show up on the first page of Google? God forbid.

Instead I get that one of me in Scottsdale sitting next to Jacqueline Winspear which is so far past Queen Victoria it’s kind of into Zero Mostel territory. 

And this one, in which it appears that albino Oompa Loompas have dumped a bucket of Clorox on my head, to achieve unwitting solidarity on my part:

I am not particularly vain, but I just like to think that the off sighting of a picture of me online for some random stranger kind enough to Google me should not induce the proverbial technicolor yawn, you know?

Frankly, the only shots of me I like these days are the ones in which I am drunk, such as this:

Or this:

 

Or even this:

Which of course has a dash of the old Cesar Romero, but still at least has a little style.

Better yet are the photos in which my face does not actually feature, such as this shot of my thigh boots at the Edgars this year (the elegant wearer of wicked pumps is the justly famous Christa Faust):

 

(although I would like to add that that is TWO of my legs, it’s just that I’ve got one foot tucked behind the other. Ahem.)

Anyway, I need to get a new author photo for my third novel, Invisible Boy. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just send in a blank sheet of paper and go, “hey look! INVISIBLE CORNELIA!!! With her best friend, POLAR BEAR IN A SNOWSTORM!!!!!”

Or I could give them this one:

Yes, I’m fat, pale, shiny, and my hair is bright orange, but at least Tony Broadbent and Jacqueline Winspear look wonderful, so maybe that will distract people from looking at my scary visage.

Just shoot me. Or better yet, don’t.

So, basically, about the only thing I don’t like about being a published person is this whole ugly-pictures-of-me-widely-disseminated thing. Well, and self-employment taxes.

‘Ratis, what’s the worst picture of you ever taken? (provide URL if you dare… they can’t be worse than mine, right?)

The Killer in Me is the Killer in You

by JT Ellison

I know I’m not unique in the idea of a theme song for each novel. We all use music to drive us, some more than others. I know many authors who have to have music blaring to write, others who need silence.

But I’m always looking back to the very moment when I decided to be a writer. And I have to admit, even before I read John Sandford and decided to try it for myself, long ago in a land I’d rather forget, I heard a song that got under my skin.

It’s called “Disarm” by Smashing Pumpkins. There is a line in the song that goes:

 

The killer in me is the killer in you

 

That line mesmerized me. I listened to the song over, and over, and over. That line got under my skin, into my brain. Hubby and I watched a lot of Profiler and Millennium in those days, and I was beginning a true fascination with forensics, profiling and police work. The song felt like it was speaking to me, telling me something. It stayed with me for years, niggling at the back of my brain. I never did anything with it, just let it sit back there, all gargoyle-ly, gathering moss and rot and black mold.  

It was a sign of things to come, though I had absolutely no idea at the time.

It happened again when I was writing my first attempt at a novel. The song was “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. It’s rough, and rude, and violent – and my villain worshipped the song. Worshipped the lyrics. They drove him to his ultimate purpose – to hurt, violate and kill.

You can imagine how I might have been a little worried about this whole getting inspired by music thing.

Now that I’ve harnessed my bizarre little fascination, channeled it into writing novels about good and evil and all the places in between, you’d think I would be better at understanding the why behind the stories. But I don’t. The ideas come when I least expect them. They make themselves known, perching on windowsills, scratching at the glass, each one stumbling over the next in a vain attempt to get inside, vying desperately for my attention.

I love them. Truly, I do.

Sometimes the ideas come from nowhere. Other times, they come from snippets of songs. I’ve learned to take them as they come, write them down, and let them ferment. Sometimes, they actually grow into something worthwhile.

There have been other songs that speak to me. If it weren’t for Evanescence, I might never have finished THE COLD ROOM. I was on a flight to Denver, and I’d been struggling, really struggling, with the book. I couldn’t get myself from point A to point B, much less from A to Z, which is where I needed to go. I had my laptop open, trying to work, and it just wasn’t coming. Frustrated, I turned on my iPod, put it on shuffle and shut my eyes. Evanescence was the first song that popped on. It was “Bring Me to Life.”

As I listened to the song, a spark began in my chest. When it finished, I played it again. And again, and again. And suddenly, all those stupid lost threads fell into place with a bang.

I flipped the laptop back open and wrote the scene toward the end of the book where Memphis and Taylor are talking. I won’t share about what, but it’s a major, significant scene, both for the book, for Taylor’s character, and for the series story arc. Hugely important. And if I hadn’t gotten frustrated and given up, if even for a few moments, I wouldn’t have made the leap. Yes, I might have gotten there another way, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as rich and satisfying to the story.

Now I know my MO. Each book has to have its own song. There’s always a classical piece that’s the daily go to (THE COLD ROOM plays heavily on Dvořák’s New World Symphony) but more and more I’m using songs with lyrics to inspire me. THE IMMORTALS theme song was “Ariadne” by The Cruxshadows. I already had a character named Ariadne, so when I stumbled over the song, it fit so perfectly I couldn’t help myself.

I’m working on a new book. It’s had fits and starts. It keeps getting interrupted to deal with earlier titles, the way this time of year always plays out. But at long last, THE PRETENDER has a song too, one that’s terribly melancholy and sad, but uplifting, in its way. It’s “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan. It’s perfect for the tone of the book, the setting, the topic, everything. Every day when I sit down to work, I listen to the song and read the lyrics, and it puts me in the right, well, mood is the best word for it. I usually listen three or four times, letting the words wash over me as I think back to what I wrote the day before, and where I want to go. Then I can write.

Bizarre, these little idiosyncrasies we writers have.

So writers, do you have a special song that has meaning you and you along comprehend? And readers, do you use a theme song in your daily life?

Wine of the Week: Frozen Strawberry Margaritas

Which explains why I’m not as attendant as I’d like today, so please forgive me. I’ll check in as often as I can.

Getting The Flavour

by Zoë Sharp

Last weekend we were in London, which is a fair old hike from where we live in the north-west of the country, but the more time I spend there, the more I rather like the place. I’m formulating ideas for a book that would be largely set there, so I wanted to just get a real feel for certain areas. I seem to need to do that when I’m looking for a location. A first visit gives me the atmosphere, then I’ll start writing, and a second visit ties down the details and the nitty-gritty.

I particularly wanted to visit Greenwich on this trip, so we took a river cruise from Tower Bridge and gently ambled down the Thames to Greenwich Pier. Greenwich itself is delightful, with a much more villagy feel than I was expecting, packed with small shops and pubs, and all kinds of exotic food in the market hall, not to mention the magnificence of the Naval College, and the rise of Greenwich Park up to the Royal Observatory, which not only contains the official dividing line between east and west, but also gives one of the best views in London, out over the Millennium Dome and across the Isle of Dogs to Canary Wharf. It’s only then you realise what a very flat city London is for the most part.

And much as you can look at pictures on Google Maps, or search the Internet, there’s often no substitute for actually going and seeing it for yourself – if only to prove that what you’re looking for is actually there. We’ve thought we’ve had some things pinned down on Internet satellite images recently that have turned out to be not quite where we expected them when we got there. I still think there’s value in the old saying of ‘write what you know’ but there’s even more value in writing things about which you’d like to know. It makes the research a lot more fun.

When I was writing THIRD STRIKE, the notes I’d made on a previous visit to New York City came in very useful for adding atmosphere to the book. I always have to remember that Charlie has a Brit perspective on places, and we certainly don’t have anywhere like Manhattan in the UK. I might not have used the detailed statue I found on the door of a church, but I think I did mention the old men playing chess in Washington Square Park.

 

Although photographs come in useful for research, they’re not the be-all and end-all for me. I’m not a happy-snap kind of person. I rarely if ever take a camera away on holiday with me because I want to see the place in full widescreen, rather than tunnelled down through the viewfinder of a camera. You miss so much that way. Besides, unless you take some time to set a shot up, and think about lighting and angles, you don’t really seem to capture the full majesty of whatever it is you’re photographing anyway.

I’d much rather make notes of an impression, a smell, a colour or a texture. The fact that the Boston Harbor Hotel had padded wallpaper in the lobby, the fact that the open-plan café in the Boston Aquarium made the lobby smell of fried fish.

It’s very easy to forget that we have a whole host of other senses, and the temperature of a place can anchor it as firmly as the look of it, as can the smell. We tend to forget that, living in the UK, where we get a kind of indeterminate mid-weather, neither desert hot nor Scandinavian cold, where America has every extreme in the same continent. Dazzling cold and oppressive heat can play as big a role in a story as any character, affecting the mood and actions of your protagonists.

What you really get in London, though, is a sense of jumbled up history, the brand new nestling alongside buildings that are hundreds of years old, churches scarred with shrapnel from the Second World War, and tiny crooked buildings that survived the plague and the Great Fire in the 1600s. There’s a real sense of something else lurking just beneath the surface, and the prospect of getting under the skin of the place is rather appealing.

So, my question is, what do you use to get to know a place you intend to use in a book? How do you capture the flavour of a street, a city, a village, a barren stretch of desert? Do you take pictures, hunt the Internet, make copious notes, or just go there and steep yourself in its atmosphere? And is there a line or phrase you’ve read or written that really summed up a place for you?

This week’s Word of the Week is palliard, meaning a professional beggar, a vagabond; a rogue or libertine, from the French paillard from paille straw, from the vagabond’s habit of sleeping on straw in barns.

All I Ever Had, Redemption Songs

by J.D. Rhoades

 James Nichols, a native of Moncure, North Carolina, was more than a little surprised when a Sheriff’s deputy came to his house and arrested him–for going to church. Nichols, unfortunately, is a convicted sex offender who was convicted of indecent liberties with a teenage girl and attempted second-degree rape. When he got done with his six year stint in prison, he started attending church, because, he said, ” It helps me keep my mind on track. It helps me be a better person, not just to myself but to someone else.” But North Carolina law provides that convicted sex offenders can’t go within 300 feet   of a school, playground, or day care. And these days, you’d be hard pressed to find a church that doesn’t have a playground or child care center. The ACLU is looking into filing a challenge to the law.

On August 13, 2009, NFL quarterback Michael Vick signed a contract with the Philadelphia Eagles. He played his first game shortly afterwards. Many football fans and animal rights activists were outraged that Vick was allowed to return to the NFL after serving a Federal sentence on dogfighting and racketeering charges. “As long as Michael Vick is playing football,” once fan wrote, “I will be at every game humanly possible to protest.”

Mathias Sendegeya lives in a tiny hamlet in Rwanda that’s known as  “Redemption Village.” He served 10 years for his part in the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda back in 1994. He and the other “genocidaires,” as they are called, were freed “to seek peace with the orphans and widows of people they killed.”

These stories all hit my consciousness about the same time, and I think they had the effect that they did because redemption is a concept   I think a lot about. It’s a theme that runs through the book I just finished writing (although my protagonist hasn’t done anything as bad as molest children, engage in dogfighting or particpate in genocide) and the book I’m thinking about next (in which a major character has done some pretty awful things).

Literature abounds with stories of people who have committed serious wrongs, or who suffer under a crushing weight of guilt, and who yet manage to win some form of redemption. Conrad’s Lord Jim struggles for years to redeem himself after an act of cowardice, as does Amir in Khaled Hosseini’s THE KITE RUNNER. One of my favorite movie characters, William Munny in UNFORGIVEN, is described as once having been a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. Whether he redeems his former life by his actions in the movie…well, that’s another discussion.

In real life, though, it seems that people are not so eager to believe in the possibility that people who have done wrong can somehow rise to be better or to redeem themselves. Even Bible-belt North Carolina seems to have rejected the idea of the church providing a path to righteousness for people like James Nichols. Despite the fact that Michael Vick paid for his serious crimes with a chunk of his life and of his pro career, not to mention millions of dollars (some of which went to care for the animals he’d injured), there are some people who will never believe his debt to society has been paid. Even the writer of Mathias Sendegaya’s story admits he “blanched” as the former “genocidaire” reached out to invite him into the village dance.

I still believe in redemption. I belIeve people can turn aside from evil. Not only that, I think it makes for an interesting story. Maybe it’s the remnants of my Methodist upbringing. Or it may have something to do with my day job. After all, if I didn’t believe people were redeemable, I’d have to spend a lot of time standing in front of judges shrugging my shoulders and going “Ah, what the hell, lock him up and throw away the key.’ When I’m tempted to do that, though, I think of people like Danny, whose story I told in more detail here. I think about the young man I represented with the horrible record who was looking at a long prison sentence for theft, but who was diverted into a two year drug rehab program, which he’s well on the way to completing; in fact, he wants to work for the program and try to get other addicts off drugs. I think of  parents I’ve seen who lost their kids to DSS, straightened up, stumbled, straightened up again, and eventually got their kids back and became decent parents. It doesn’t happen every time. Frankly, it doesn’t even  happen a majority of the time. But it happens enough to keep me believing that even bad people can be better.  

What are your favorite stories of redemption, either on the page or in real life? If you know up front that a character has done awful things in the past, what does it take before you can forgive him? What’s the deal-breaker in that situation, the thing you could not forgive a character for having done? Finally, in real life, is wickedness, as Joyce Carol Oates asked recently, “soluble in good deeds”?

Cooking Up a Character

By Louise Ure

 

I think the fascination started for me with Lawrence Sanders’ retired chief of detectives, Edward X. “Iron Balls” Delaney and his distinction between “dry” sandwiches (which could be eaten in front of the TV) and “wet” sandwiches (which could only be consumed while leaning over the sink). That detail – his appreciation of the various combinations of food, his inability to actually cook anything, his meals eaten alone – told me more about the man than a dozen pages of dry, descriptive prose could ever have.

 

It’s funny how those little asides – those distinctive and distinguishing marks we give our characters – can become so memorable. They are the details that round out our characters, that give them life and breath, that make them human. Nero Wolfe’s orchids. Matthew Scudder’s drinking and tithing. Dave Robicheaux’s fishing.

 

In earlier days, those idiosyncrasies and character traits were often vices, like gambling, drinking and smoking, but those days are gone for all but Lee Child and the noirest of protagonists. I remember Elaine Flinn telling me about all the reader emails she got condemning the fact that Molly Doyle smoked. “Doesn’t she know how bad it is for her? She’s got to quit!” ran the virtual outrage against this fictional character. Even J.P. Beaumont walked away from his Makers Mark.

 

In retreat, some authors have turned to food preferences as a way of describing our characters more fully. Kinsey Millhone adores Quarter Pounders with Cheese and Spenser’s Susan lives on lettuce leaves. I made sure that the blind mechanic in The Fault Tree was an accomplished cook because that was another way to show how capable she was, even in her blindness.

 

But tread lightly: these little identifying tics – whether they’re food related or something else entirely (like a character cracking his knuckles) – can easily be overdone. I read a book last year where one of the cops was distinguished by his use of plastic wrapped candy. Every time this guy showed up, there went the hand in the pocket, the crinkly paper unwrapping, the pop it in the mouth, the slow sucking sound. Every freaking time. OK. I got it. He’s the cop with the candy habit. I remember him from two pages ago.

 

Which brings me, with about a mile and a half of dirt road detour, to the food-related, character-defining trait I’ve always wanted to write about.

 

I want to create a character who cooks food on the manifold in her car’s engine while she’s driving around solving the crime.

 

Call it Manifold Destiny, if you will (except that that fabulous title has already been taken by a couple of enterprising cooks back in 1989). Car-be-que. Road Kill Dining. MPH (Meals Per Hour) Cookery. Engine Block Eating.The Sedan Sauté. Overdrive Oven. Fourth Gear Gourmet.

 

Whatever you call it, it says a lot about a character. She plans ahead. She’s prepared for obstructions and reversals. She takes care of herself. She’s agile and quick-witted. She’s frugal: making her gas-dollar go a long way. And she likes to eat.

 

Or maybe it means she’s an absolute loon, one of those folks with a two-foot machete under the bed and a year’s worth of MRE’s cached in case she has to go live in the mountains after the apocalypse.

 

Either way, I think it would make for a fairly distinctive character trait.

 

Can’t you just imagine her wrapping a salmon filet, some sliced onions, garlic and lemons in a foil pouch and tucking it under the air intake hose as she heads out to the cabin where the young girl was last seen? It’s going to be almost dark when she gets there and there probably won’t be a 7-Eleven within thirty miles. She notes the wide tire tracks in the driveway at the cabin (hmmm… it looks like a truck was here), peers in the dusty windows, then settles down on the front porch to enjoy the fragrant dinner she’s just liberated from the engine compartment.

 

I have no idea whether car cooking can be done with a hybrid or an electric car, but I’m guessing not, or not as well. That means that my protagonist probably will not have participated in the Cash for Clunkers program. She’s driving some beat up old piece of American sheet metal and the only time she changes the oil is when the ratatouille explodes all over the engine block.

 

I like her already.

 

So today, in honor of kooky (“cooky?”) protagonists with food/eating idiosyncrasies, I give you my favorite recipes (along with the speed and distance you need to travel) for your next car-be-que:

 

The basics:

 

Usually, the hottest part of the engine will be the exhaust manifold. On older cars, the top of the engine block will be a good, sizzling place. Cooler parts of the engine work well for vegetables and fish. Choose places that don’t move when the car is running. (Duh.)

 

Wrap your soon-to-be-cooked food in aluminum foil and seal it tightly. Then do it again. And again. Triple wrap, with separate sealing folds, is the only way to go.

 

The package either needs to fit snugly between the manifold and the hood or, better yet, secured to the manifold with a wire. If it’s loose enough to move around, it’s loose enough to fall off.

 

Road Recipes:

 

Pork Tenderloin – Cooking distance: 250 miles at highway speed

 

    Ingredients:

    1 large pork tenderloin, butterflied

    3 tbsp Dijon mustard

    2 tbsp dry white wine

    1/2 cup red onion, minced

    2 tsp rosemary (fresh), crushed

    Salt & pepper

 

Blend together the last five ingredients and spread across the inside of the pork tenderloin. Close up the pork, triple-wrap in foil and place on a medium-hot part of the engine. Turn once (125 miles) during cooking.

 

 

 

Cajun Shrimp – Cooking distance: 35 miles at a good city clip or highway speed. No traffic jams or the shrimp will be overdone.

 

    Ingredients:

    1 pound large shrimp, in shells.

    1 jalapeño

    2 cloves garlic

    1 medium onion, finely chopped

    Butter or spread

    Salt & pepper

 

Remove seeds and ribs from jalapeño dice with the onion and garlic. Butter your foil, add the shrimp and cover with your spicy mixture. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper, then triple-wrap and place in a medium part of the engine.

 

 

 

Breakfast To Go – Cooking distance: 55 miles at highway speed

 

    Ingredients:

    Breadcrumbs

    1/2 pound mozzarella cheese, cubed

    6 eggs    

    Diced Canadian bacon (optional)

    6 empty tuna-fish cans for cooking

    Pinch of cayenne and paprika (optional)

    Butter or spread.

    Salt & pepper.

 

Wash 6 empty tuna cans and butter the insides. Sprinkle a few tablespoons of breadcrumbs into each can and shake to cover the base evenly. Dump out excess. Now cover the bottom with mozzarella (and bacon if desired) then crack an egg on top of each, add seasonings and spices on top, then cover with mozzarella. Wrap cans tightly in foil, place on a hot part of the engine with good contact for the base of each can, and after 55 miles they should be good. If not, keep driving till the cheese has melted.

 

 

And what would she cook if she didn’t have to go anywhere that day? Dishwasher Lasagne, of course.

 

So tell me, ‘Rati. What’s the “incidental information” that attracted you to your favorite sleuth?

 

 

 

How the Internet Completed Me

by Alafair Burke

Last week brought the start of law school classes. Today marks my inaugural post as a blogger for Murderati. And last month my sister told me I’m the most confident person she knows. What ties those seemingly unrelated events together is my relationship – at first reluctant and seemingly fleeting, now embraced and habitual – to the Internet.

Google “Alafair Burke.” Go ahead. I do.*

Among the first ten or so entries, I suspect you’ll find the following: My official author website, my faculty biography on the Hofstra Law School website, my HarperCollins author page, a Wikipedia entry, and either my MySpace or Facebook page.

A perusal of those sites would bring a tremendous amount of information about me. Some of it’s pretty basic: where I grew up (Wichita), my folks (James Lee and Pearl), the education background (Reed College, Stanford Law School), my work experience (clerk for the Ninth Circuit, prosecutor, blink-of-an-eye law firm stint, now law professor), the bibliography (five novels, one short story, a bunch of law review articles).

The biographical details also get more personal: the romantic situation (husband: Sean), the dependents (French bulldog: Duffer), even the age that I swore in my twenties I would eventually lie about (39. Really.).

And the personal goes beyond mere biographical facts. There are the photos — not just the posed headshots for the backs of book jackets, but the Facebook scrapbooks: me schlepping my Fodors on my first trip to Italy; me as a living, breathing 1980’s time capsule back in Wichita; me on a boat in a life vest, or perhaps it’s me as a bright yellow Michelin man.

There are also the Facebook wall updates, “tweets,” and author interviews that depict something resembling an actual life. Restaurants frequented. Miles run. Trips taken. Shows watched. Music downloaded. Diets failed.

So what does any of this have to do with the fact that I woke up this morning thinking there was some link between the start of classes, my first post on Murderati, and my sister’s surprising observation about confidence?** Because, prior to my leap onto the World Wide Web, I had more personalities than Sybil on a bender.

Compared to most people, we moved around a lot as kids. Then I went to college in a city and at a school where I knew no one. Same again for law school. I clerked for a liberal judge then went directly to a prosecutor’s office. I went from Birkenstock-infected Portland, Oregon to blue collar Buffalo.*** I spent my days in a law school classroom and my nights (and sometimes early mornings) as a new New Yorker checking out bars I’d seen on Sex and the City.

And somewhere along the line, I got used to adapting. I talked theory with my academic friends. I talked cases with the lawyers. I talked favorite TV shows and the neuroticism it takes to write with my fellow crime writers. I wore frumpy suits in the classroom, fashion-victim wardrobe experiments for SoHo. You get the drift. I unconsciously tailored different parts of my personality to share with the diverse people who made up my daily world.

So imagine my conundrum when the marketing forces of the publishing world pushed me toward an online presence. At first it was just the author website, with the basic biography and a few book tour pictures. Then it was a reader message board, where I slowly found myself responding to my new online friends with personal messages, out there in the virtual world for all to see.

Then, when I published Dead Connection (about a serial killer who finds his victims online), I knew it was time for MySpace and Facebook. I worried. A lot. My peers could see this. My students would read this. OMG, as the young people say.

I began with trepidation, posting initially only about my books. But then writer friends found me, striking up public conversations about not only writing, but also vacation spots, favorite city hang-outs, and dog shenanigans. Then came the long-lost friends from high school with pictures that could have stayed lost longer. There were also the academics, even a couple whose Kingsfield-ian personas are so well honed I never would have imagined they watched Arrested Development or read US Weekly. Suddenly all my audiences were in one place, getting to know the parts of me I had unknowingly kept from them.

I know some writers who have dealt with the online world by creating a separate writer persona. They purport to put themselves out there, but the self that’s out there isn’t really them.

Others have just said no. (I’d list them here, but I can’t find them online.)

But I eventually took the leap. At first it was accidental. An esteemed professor on the west coast messaged me on Facebook about a post I’d written about The Shield. I realized I had lost all control over my professorial image, but, amazingly, nothing happened. They didn’t revoke my faculty ID card. My students didn’t demand a tuition refund. My law review articles still got published. And I was still the same person.

I no longer try to wear different hats for different audiences. I write crime fiction. I write law review articles about prosecutorial power and criminal defenses. I love my husband and dog. I’m fascinated by pop culture. I blog, not just about my books, but whatever I find interesting.

I also hate when authors quote themselves, so I’ll quote fictional prosecutor Samantha Kincaid instead:

“That’s why I’ve always felt so home with Chuck (boyfriend-type-person). He got me. He could take the traits that other people see as so inconsistent and understand that they make me who I am. I eat like a pig, but I run thirty miles a week. I despise criminals, but I call myself a liberal. I’m smart as hell, but I love TV. And I hate the beauty myth, but I also want good hair. To Chuck, it somehow all made sense, so I never felt like I was faking anything.”

I’m almost forty years old. I’m a serious academic (or at least an academic) even though I read Entertainment Weekly. I’m snarky as hell but really am a nice person.  And I write some pretty entertaining books despite a fondness for footnotes and big words.  I think I’ve earned the right not to fake anything.

So classes started last week. My new students might read this, my first post on Murderati. And I’m all right with that. Because I’m the most confident person my sister says she knows.

But I wasn’t always like this. The Internet made me this way, despite my own instincts. Am I alone in this online transformation?  What has your experience been with that vast worldwide web?

I look forward to putting myself even further out there, here on Murderati.  In the meantime, hope to see you online, here, here, and/or here.

*Any writer who maintains that he or she does not Google himself or herself should be viewed with great distrust, because good writing requires honesty, and said writer is lying. This particular author is unabashedly honest and therefore admits a propensity for self-googling that is probably diagnosable.

** I still have not fully resolved whether I should construe my sister’s observation as stunning praise or a stinging rebuke. For now, I have opted for the former, giving us both the benefit of the doubt.

*** Long story. Details are findable (of course) on the Internet.