Adventures in Newbie Land

 

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

I’m feeling much better now, after surviving the chaos of my previous blog. I discovered that, yes, if you ignore the strange sound that squeaks from inside your car it will in fact go away.

I took two weeks off from the day job and put fourteen 12-hour work days into my second novel, which is due to my editor mid-August, but will be delivered on September 15, which is, coincidentally, the launch date for BOULEVARD. I’ve come a long way, but I ain’t out of the woods yet.

I managed to write 200 pages in two weeks. This, after having reached page 150 a month ago, then throwing out 85 pages, then spending two weeks hammering out a beat-by-beat treatment from chapter one to the end (with the help of my wonderfully talented story-editor wife Ryen).

I crossed the 300 page mark last night (about 75,000 words) and I’ve got two weeks to write the next hundred pages to finish the book. Then one month for rewrites and a polish before handing it in.

So, what wasn’t doable two weeks ago is doable now. And I’ve got a good lead on turning the home foreclosure mess into a short-sell, so there’s hope there, too.

Meaning, I’m feeling much better, thank you.

And….the BOULEVARD train has left the station…

Reviews are starting to come in. Publisher’s Weekly and Book List so far, and I couldn’t be happier.

In my first blog as Murderati’s Newbie Author, I promised I would share the adventure. Report on the things I’m learning and the experiences I’m having. So here goes.

First and foremost – I recently joined the International Thriller Writers’ Debut Author Program and received their Debut Author’s Survival Guide. This is something I should have read a year ago. Incredible insights and practical advice about what goes on the moment your book sells. If I had read this earlier I would have saved my agent and editor tremendous heartache. Kudos to JT and others at ITW for having made this awesome resource available.  It is something that I will continue to reference for months to come.

I’ve also been getting my tour schedule in order. I’ll be covering all of California as well as my hometown of Albuquerque, Phoenix, Denver, Portland and Las Vegas. The Vegas trip will be fun, since it’s being sponsored by a friend who has guaranteed at least twenty Vegas strippers in attendance. That might not mean much to you…but that’s what I call a friend. Needless to say, my wife will be attending this event.

I’m also excited about the invitation to speak on a panel at the West Hollywood Book Fair. I don’t know if I should feel honored or insulted, actually, considering that the panel is called, “Dark and Twisted: Testing the Limits of Taste and Depravity.” I’m afraid to meet my fellow panelists, unless, of course, I’m the most depraved of the lot.

I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some fantastic authors. Brilliant writers, all of them.

I figured the best way to illustrate what’s going on is to post my current “To-Do List.” It tells more about where my head is than anything I might write in linear form. So here goes:

To Do List

Summer of ‘09

1. Research tattoos

2. Join Mystery Writers of America, per JT Ellison’s e:mail

3. Join Sisters in Crime

4. Schedule time with David (The Novel) for black & white photography

5. Ask Eric or Scott if I should do a book trailer – Blair. L/W 6/24.

6. Schedule lunch with Mike DePasquale, re: Robbery-Homicide Division

7. Be a guest blogger on Naked Authors site per Patty Smiley.

8. Figure out Google Alerts – look at Brett’s e:mail message. What am I doing wrong?

9. Put tour schedule on website.

10. Figure out how to access website and make changes regularly

11. Let everyone know tour dates – drum up a crowd for each signing.

12. Figure out how to do an e:mail blast/save the date thing like Brett did for “Shadow.”

13. Website fix-its: a) Take out quote or attribute it to proper person – Salman Akhtar, not Carl Jung, b) Add new blogs, c) Add proper titles to author blurbs, d) fix links – from one category to the next, e) enlarge navigation buttons so people can read it, f) add book-signing schedule and appearances, g) add reviews when they become available, h) add new covers for hardcover and audio book.

14. Check in w/ Ray Porter re: audio book narration

15. Suzuki – send letter to yet another marketing manager

16. Set up newspaper interviews with Albuquerque Journal

17. Book air flights and pay for tour.

18. Check on train trip and hotels for San Francisco, San Mateo, San Deigo.

19. Get a booktour.com listing or account or whatever.

20. Pay back the $300 to Uncle Jerry & Aunt Annette

21. Practice autograph

22. Review Bouchercon list of events – sign up for things.

23. Check to see if I paid my business license for 2009!!!

24. Days to take off work – Sept. 10, 16, 21-25, Oct. 5-9, Oct. 15, 16, 28, 29, 30.

25. Finish Blog #6

The list, of course, is ever-changing and never-ending. “Get an iPhone quickly before all is lost!” has been accomplished. As well as “Figure out how to make a website.”

Some of the things on my list might sound a little strange. “Research tattoos” being number one. I want something specific to represent this moment in my life. I want a “rite of passage”, marking my transition from unpublished to published. I’m a tattoo virgin, too, so it’s a big deal for me. My wife insists I choose the artist based on the quality of biohazard suit he wears while applying the tattoo, as well as the tidiness of the satellite construction “clean room” from which he works. (I should have added one other item to the list – #26: Daily yoga and meditation to prepare for mother’s reaction when she discovers I’m getting a tattoo). Really, I’m a big boy, it’s not the first nor will it be the last mistake I make in my life. Yes, but this one is permanent, and the Rebbe won’t let you be buried in a Jewish cemetery… 

What’s the Suzuki thing about? Good question. Good story, actually. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for a cool motorcycle for a couple years now. Oiy, he wants a motorcycle now? I’ve never ridden before. About a year ago I pulled up to one of my writing cafes and I saw the perfect bike. A little roadster, all black with shiny, bright chrome. Leather saddlebags. It was the best bike I’d ever seen. I drew closer and read the name on the gas tank, which was also written on the saddlebags. It was a Suzuki Boulevard.

Come on, now. What are the odds? This had to be the universe calling my name. The coincidence propelled me into action. This wasn’t just about finding the perfect motorcycle anymore. It was about finding the perfect cross-promotion marketing opportunity. I quickly found the names of two senior-level marketing execs at Suzuki and wrote to them, giving them the story, suggesting we cross-promote the launch of my novel with their motorcycle. I suggested I could have a banner on my website with a link to their website. I suggested they could sponsor my book tour, that I would ride the new motorcycle they gave me to book signings all across Los Angeles. I suggested they pay for my publicist.

I’ve sent that letter about four times now, to four different marketing executives.

The sound of crickets. Not even a return call to say, “Mr. Schwartz, your request is preposterous.” I should’ve taken the Suzuki item off my list months ago.

And, what, you’re giving me grief about practicing my autograph? You can’t tell me that wasn’t on your Debut Year To-Do List. So far I’ve signed three ARCs, and one was to Brett. The way my handwriting looks, I might as well take a chicken foot and an inkpad to my signings.

Anyway, the journey has begun. I’m getting the biggest kick out of watching my kids explore the world of publication. We’ll be road-tripping California, hitting Sea World and other exciting kid-friendly places along the way. It’s truly an amazing experience. The opportunity of a lifetime.

Let’s do something fun – give us a look at your current “To-Do” List. Just whip it off your computer or type it up and post it. Don’t you dare self-censor!

 

 

Rolling with the Punches

~Quickly before my post, just wanted to say if you’re in the San Diego are today, I’ll be speaking and signing at the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore at 7 p.m. tonight with fellow author Julie Kramer. Mysterious Galaxy is located at 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite 302, San Diego, CA 92111. Hope to see you there.

And since I’m on the road today, I may not be able to reply to comments, so I ask your forgiveness ahead of time. ~

 

One thing we writers need to be is flexible. This is especially true in our current economy and in the rapidly changing world of publishing.

We all know that the traditional routes to publicity – newspaper reviews, printed ads and the like – are quickly disappearing. Now we all must try to get as many online reviews as possible. Each of these may have a smaller readership than the newspaper reviews, but added together can potentially deliver as many readers as the traditional reviews used to.

Publishers are now starting to catch on to this whole online world, too. And it’s not just the reviews. My own publisher has organized a blog tour for me through the month of August on sites that will, hopefully, expand my fanbase. We’ve seen these blog tours before with such folks as J.A. Konrath and M.J. Rose, and my guess is we’ll be seeing many, many more. In fact, the whole area of marketing is evolving, and I’m sure we will see new oportunities and paths to get our names out there that haven’t even be thought up yet in the near future.

But when I say we need to be flexible, I don’t just mean marketing-wise. A sad fact is that some publishers are cutting mid-list writers, setting us adrift into a void where the future is far from clear. These untethered authors are forced to reinvent themselves or face the reality that our published years are behind us. Maybe this means a switch of genre, but more likely it means writing under a pseudonym for true reinvention. If we wish to continue in the business, we must be willing to take that step, and adapt…to be flexible. 

Even authors who are under contract, with publishers who support them, need to not just sit still as if everything is fine. If we do, it’s like driving a car with our eyes closed. We need to do whatever we can to help our careers by being proactive with our publishers, presenting ideas that will benefit both them and us. We need to also listen to their suggestions, and work together more than ever to build the brand each of us are trying to establish. We also need to recognize opportunities that are presented to us, even if they are scary, and mean we have to take chances. We need to be willing to jump, because we can’t afford to assume everything is going to be fine.

And for those of us who are not yet published, we need to realize that, especially this year, times are tough, and a lot of authors who might have gotten deals in a normal year, have not. But this doesn’t mean it won’t happen. We need to be patient, flexible, and always persistant.

Going forward we all also need to keep flexible with publishing itself. Over the next decade things are going to change. At some point, digital book sales are going to overtake sales of physical books. What is that going to mean to the traditional publishing world? Who knows? But whatever world we find ourselves in doesn’t have to be bad. it will just be different. We have to be ready for it.

And if we are flexible, and roll with the punches, it can also be good world.

Okay writers, where are you in your careers? What do you see the future bringing?

And readers, does the future of books concern you? How do you see yourself reading a book in ten years? Digitally? Or the traditional current method?

Hanabata Days

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

~ Maya Angelou

 

“Is it time to go home yet? I keep clicking these damn shoes, but nothing happens.”

~ Robin Hecht

 

I grew up in Honolulu. Moved there with my family when I was eleven years old, spent a few years away, then lived there with my wife and kids until I was in my mid-thirties, when Hollywood started calling.

 

Moving away from Hawaii was difficult for all of us. I’m not a talented enough writer to describe the feelings we had then or the feelings my wife and I have now whenever we think of Honolulu, other than it is simply “home” to us. It is, as Maya Angelou says, a “safe place.” A source of comfort.

 

We try to visit every year and stay with family, but because of a whirlwind of conferences over the last few years, it had been a while since I’d visited. So this year I decided to forego ThrillerFest and RWA and go home with the wife and kids. I spent a lot of time doing nothing – which is just the way I like it.

 

But I also discovered, for the first time, I think, that the old adage is true: you can’t go home again.

 

There’s an expression in Hawaii, a term used to describe the good old days and the feelings of nostalgia that arise whenever we think of them. We call them hanabata days. “Hana” is Japanese for nose, and “bata” is pidgin (local slang) for butter. The days when we were little snots and all was good with the world.

 

During this last visit, as we drove around town, I was constantly reminded of those hanabata days, and how much things have changed since then. The most disconcerting thing, besides the horrendous traffic that makes a six mile drive last an eternity, was just how many of our favorite old eating establishments had disappeared. Ones we grew up with.

 

There was a time, not long ago, when we could get up early in the morning, take a short drive into Kaimuki and stop in at Kwong On, a little hole in the wall Chinese delicatessen that sold the best baked manapua and chow fun you could ever want. You’d walk in, take a number and wait quite a while to get served. That’s how popular it was.

 

But when the owner got sick – or so we’re told – his children decided not to continue with the business and closed the doors. We spent several days hunting for a replacement and soon discovered that there is none. Kwong On was one of a kind. Gone, just like that.

 

Another favorite place, Washington Saimin, disappeared a couple years ago. This was a terrific little restaurant where you could slide into a booth, order a large bowl of saimin (a local version of Japanese noodle soup) along with a couple of barbecue sticks, and soon be in nirvana.

 

But it’s also gone, without a trace.  As is Alex Drive-In, where the waitresses would take your order as you sat in your car, bringing your food on a tray that they mounted on your window.  Or many of the Chinese crack seed stores, full of industrial-sized jars containing dried mango and lee hing mui and other delicacies.

 

Like many places around the world, Honolulu is slowly losing its character – character that’s been replaced by cookie cutter strip malls and shopping centers. The same corporate megaplexes and fast-food psuedo-restaurants we see wherever we go nowadays.

 

Call me crazy, but I just don’t feel quite the same getting a bowl of saimin from McDonald’s as I did getting one from Washington Saimin or Tanoue’s, another favorite that has disappeared. These were places were you could sit down with your family and feel the spirit of old Hawaii, a spirit that is rapidly losing ground to that runaway train called progress.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I still love Hawaii and always will. But there was a time when my wife and I were certain that we would one day retire there. Go back home to grow old.

 

But this last visit had me wondering if I’d ever want to live there again. It isn’t just about missing restaurants, but that feeling that no matter how we try, we’ll never be able to recapture those hanabata days.

 

They’re gone for good.

 

And I’m sure it’s the same for many of you.  You’ve gone back home — wherever that may be — only to discover that it’s changed to the point that it’s become a place that you almost don’t recognize.

 

So tell me, on your trip back, what did you find missing? What do you long for that you’ll never be able to recapture?

Success isn’t a solo accomplishment

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much I owe my career to other people.  Yes, it all starts with sitting alone at my desk, spinning a premise into a plot, and a plot into a novel.  That much I have to do all on my own, and it’s a solitary struggle that no one can really help me with.  But once I do my job and the manuscript is completed, I have to stand back and rely on the skills of other people.  If it weren’t for the hard work of editors, publicists, sales reps, cover artists and marketing folks, I would never have hit bestseller lists.  I could fill several weeks’ worth of blogs detailing all the ways publishing professionals have contributed mightily to my success.  But today I want to thank just one group of people, a group to which I belong: authors who blurb.

When I sold my first medical thriller, I was known only as an author of nine paperback romance novels. With HARVEST, my first hardcover, I was breaking into a genre where I was a complete unknown.  The launch of any new hardcover author is a risky proposition, and HARVEST could have bombed like so many other debut novels have.  Out of all the thrillers being published that year, why should booksellers order mine?  Why should readers risk twenty bucks on an unknown?  Why should reviewers even glance at the galley? The publisher loved the book, the marketing people loved it, but how could they convince the rest of the world that HARVEST was worth their time?  In hopes of getting some good advance buzz, they sent out galleys to a number of authors, soliciting blurbs.

And here’s where my first white knight, in the guise of Michael Palmer, came riding to the rescue.  “Nonstop and terrifying,” he wrote.  “Only a riveting storyteller who is also a physician could have written this book.”

A few weeks later, James Patterson chimed in with another slam-bang quote.  In a note to my editor, he said that he didn’t do blurbs anymore, but he was making an exception for mine.

Other terrific quotes soon followed, from Philip Margolin and John Nance.  

I had never met any of these people.  I knew their names of course, but to me they were rock stars, authors I never thought would ever pick up one of my books.  This is what amazed me, that these strangers, people who owed me nothing, would so generously take the time to help out a new author.  And I am absolutely certain that those blurbs were vital to the success of HARVEST.

As my career slowly built, other authors were equally kind: Iris Johansen. Tami Hoag.  Even Stephen King gave me a quote, and his enthusiastic, paragraph-long blurb for GRAVITY was used as the lone back-cover copy on the hardcover.  I didn’t even know they’d been sent the galleys.  I didn’t solicit any of these authors; they received the galleys directly from my editor, so these authors could easily have ignored the requests.  But they didn’t.  And I will always be grateful.

Over the years I, in turn, have been delighted to blurb other debut or emerging authors. I’ve watched those authors, including Lisa Gardner, Kathy Reichs, Harlan Coben, Karin Slaughter, and James Rollins ascend to bestsellers lists around the world.  I get a kick that I “discovered” them before most other readers did.  When I come across a truly compelling book, like C.J. Box’s BLUE HEAVEN or Linwood Barclay’s NO TIME TO SAY GOODBYE, I can’t wait to get to my computer and send off a blurb.

The downside of being generous with blurbs?  You get overwhelmed by galleys.  I have at least a dozen lying around my office or stacked up by my bed, and I wish I could read them all.  I know that I won’t have the time to crack open most of them, and of those I do read, most will fall flat.  Every so often, though, I’ll find one that blows me away, one that I wish I had written.  And I remember how, years ago, Palmer and Patterson stepped in to help launch an unknown writer.

If they did it, so can we all. 

        

 

 

 

Honesty in writing

When it comes to writing, I think too many of us try to outguess the market, to look into an imaginary retail crystal ball and write to what we think will sell in one, two or three years from now.

That’s why so many bestsellers beget whole cities of stepchildren that don’t share any of the remarkable DNA of their non-biological parents.

All this determining up front what genre our novels are, trying to dissect demographics and reader habits, going onto listservs and designing our works to please readers who like dogs but hate cats, is both useless and self-defeating.

Why?

When creative people spend that much time devising the perfect strategy for success vis a vis other people’s responses, they lose sight of their own unique gifts and voices.

The seed that started this particular vine of thought came from a comment a fellow novelist made about the first few paragraphs I’ve written in a new book. This one isn’t a mystery; it’s just a project I’ve started because I want to write every day and am giving myself permission to explore different styles and ideas.

My friend said, “Pari, I think that’s the most honest piece of fiction you’ve ever written.”

She wasn’t saying this as a condemnation of my other work, but simply out of surprise at the rawness of the emotion in the piece I’d shown her.

Honesty in writing? I was so flattered, I didn’t ask her what she meant.

Last Saturday I was on a panel at a local bookstore with John Maddox Roberts, Jane Lindskold and Pati Nagle. Betsy James was in the audience too. We started talking about writer’s block and a bit about process. I said that I’d felt a change in my writing during the last five months or so since I’d come to terms with not penning more Sasha books for now.

I’ve begun to write what I want to write without worrying so much about where it “fits” into the market. (I’ll deal with that later in the editing or selling process.) And believe me, just because I’m playing with new approaches doesn’t mean I’m forgoing the hallmarks of good fiction for some kind of freeform lark. It’s also not a rejection of the idea of genre or categorization; I’m just not writing to any of those goalposts right now.

As a result, I’m working harder than I ever have, but the quality of the experience is different. I’m getting much more satisfaction from my daily effort. It feels – dare I say it? – more honest, more from the sincere heart than the analytical head.

Will my new fiction sell?
I sure hope so.

What if it doesn’t?
I’ll be very sad . . . but not defeated.

Either way, this slightly new focus is giving me a level of creative freedom that I think will serve me far better in the long run. At the very least, I’m not so damn worried about every publishing hiccup and trend.

The truth is I’m enjoying myself within the struggle of disciplined creation; the journey itself is becoming a lot more interesting.

Today, I have many questions that I’d like to discuss:

1. Writers: Should novelists write to a particular market? Should they follow the conventional wisdom of knowing where their books will go in the bookstores BEFORE they begin?

2. Here’s another bit of conventional wisdom: you should write what you’ve written so that your audience can understand and stay with you. Readers, what do you think of that?

3. Readers: do you know when you’ve found an “honest” writer? Or honesty in the fiction you’ve read? Can you give us any examples?

4. Everyone: Does honesty in writing even matter?

5. Everyone: What the heck is “honesty in writing,” anyway?

 

 

 

 

Secondary and Tertiary Characters

ByToni McGee Causey

If we think about a visual representation of what our secondary and tertiary characters would look like in a physical representation of their uses and benefits in a story, it might look something like this:

This is the interior structure of a bridge, and every one of those supports is necessary:

But if you look closely at those supports, they work by being at cross angles—cross purposes. They are not all the same—some are even curving in the background in ways that seems counterintuitive to supporting the whole. Each one of these supports has more than one face: the solid side portion, the face with the sun hitting it. Darker, lighter, bent, straight, rusted in spots, repainted in others.

The main characters—and important secondary characters—form the foundation of the story:

Doesn’t this (admittedly craptastic snapshot) strike you as a three-act story? It has entrances and exits, it suspends disbelief by suspending us over water, allowing us to travel from here to there. But without the world of those minor characters holding the framework together, the whole thing wouldn’t work.

But this is, perhaps, where the metaphor breaks down most for a lot of writers. It’s a little too simple to think of story structure like a bridge and the minor characters as support of that story because we’re then thinking of those characters purely as a matter of how they must function within the story to make the final outcome work. Writers have a tendency to work exceptionally hard on the main characters and then slot in the minor characters, utilizing (whether consciously or unconsciously) archetypes: the underdog, the nerdy sidekick, the tough guy sidekick, the “girl,” the mentor, etc.

If you look at that first image, it’s black and white, all sharp contrasts, but each support is essentially interchangeable with the next one. There is no flavor there, no color, no uniqueness, and therefore, for as many supporting players as there are here, there is not a single one of them memorable. And if your main characters are supporting a world and a story full of unmemorable characters, then the conflict and the sense of being immersed in a fascinating world will be lost.

We can use cooking—or music as metaphors. Change an ingredient in a recipe and the outcome generally changes. Change the amount, even, and you’ll end up with an entirely different flavor. Same thing with music—add in that odd woodwind instrument that I always hear in Celtic music but never quite identify and you’ll have a vastly different effect than a trumpet.

So how do you go about creating memorable secondary and tertiary characters?

I’ve heard the old adage that each character is starring in his or her own story, and that’s true, and it’s useful to remember. They have their own goals and their own needs. But for the purposes of a novel, you cannot always show what they think their own story is in that moment that they have on stage, so that sort of advice can sound great but end up not all that practical to apply.

So what can we show?

1. Personality.

This isn’t just a “trait” or a schtick. It drives me a little bit bonkers to read a story where the tertiary characters are reduced to one or two personal “ticks” – like a character (and I am picking a notion randomly and hoping no one has done this)… twitching. Or substitute any single physical habit like talking with a lisp or limping or smoking or blinking rapidly or speaking with a husky voice. These are all fine starting points, but there has to be more or the character is going to be one-dimensional.

I have a character in book one (Charmed and Dangerous) who is a minor character nicknamed “The Mountain.” He’s a rather large guy, a simple fellow who is eager to please the smarter henchman, Eddie, who is his friend. He wants to impress Eddie and the world, and he explains to Bobbie Faye’s brother, Roy, that he wants to one day be in the Guinness Book of World Records. To do this, he has been collecting doorknobs. Roy doesn’t quite realize the significance of this until The Mountain gleefully explains that he has one for every person he’s killed, and he wants to call Guinness, but Eddie won’t let him. At this point of the explanation, Roy is tied up and in serious doubt that he’s going to make it out of there and he’s too afraid to ask if The Mountain has taken a doorknob from his home.

2. Style

Style is a close associate to personality, but not wholly so, because it’s a presentation by the character of themselves to the world. How they want to be perceived. Or maybe, the lack of thought into how they are perceived. Do they dress well? Poorly? Like a hooker? A pimp?

But we can’t stop there—that’s just surface. How does their style affect their perceived choices in life? Do they think of themselves in a negative way? Positive? For example, a hooker who thinks this is the best she can do and it’s a good gig and it’s feeding her kids and/or her mom will strut that clothing style in a different way than the woman who used to be a corporate executive, who’s loss of a job two years ago and her home and everything thing else she had and now this is the only thing she can do to feed her kids. Is there a conflict in how they present themselves vs. how they wish they could present themselves? Is there any irony?

How do they speak? Everyone should not use the same level of grammar, the same sentence structure.

Style is the soul sister to Attitude.

3.Goals / Conflict

Every single tertiary character needs to have some conflict with the main characters at some point. Every. Single. One. Even the ones who like the main characters, who agree with them on major points. They may agree, for example, on the overall goal, but not the strategy for getting there. They may agree on the strategy for some things and not others. They should have their own goals that are at some sort of cross-purpose with the main characters. These cross-purposes do not have to be big moments, big turning points, but they add dimension to a story.

An example I love is from the movie Witness. Harrison Ford is a cop from New York trying to solve a murder by getting a better idea from the witness: a young Amish boy. He finds himself attracted to the boy’s mother, Rachel, in spite of their many differences. Quietly vying for Rachel’s affections is the Peter Godunov character, who has one distinct advantage over Ford—but it’s also his disadvantage: he’s Amish. He was a good friend to Rachel’s (dead) husband, and he wants her. He is attractive to Rachel, but not as fresh and fascinating as Ford’s New York cop, who represents an entire forbidden world just outside Rachel’s grasp. I don’t remember all of the details, but while the Godunov’s character is helpful in many ways to Rachel and her family, he is clearly annoyed with Ford’s continued presence, though he is extremely polite. He is the epitome of what a strong Amish man is—and there are a wonderful couple of scenes of a barn building where the two men try to out-work one another. Rachel, at a late point in the story, has chosen Ford and tries to seduce him, and Ford makes himself turn away. He makes the decision for them both, because he knows it would never work—he couldn’t live in her world, she couldn’t live in his. As Ford drives away, the Godunov character is purposefully walking up the lane to go court Rachel.

That film is 24 years old and I have not re-watched it in more than 20 years, and I can still remember that character.

Now… whether TV or film or books, name a few secondary / tertiary characters that you just remember off the top of your head, without looking them up. Why are they memorable?

 

And don’t forget, coming from a woman who has a ton of memorable characters—main and secondary (!!) – our ownAllison Brennan’snewest book,CUTTING EDGE, hits the stores on TUESDAY, July 28th!

When security specialist Duke Rogan’s state-of-the-art computer system fails at a controversial bio-tech firm, a raging inferno spreads, and a grotesquely charred body is discovered in the aftermath. With an extremist anti-technology group claiming responsibility, the case grows even more complex when the victim’s autopsy unexpectedly reveals that he bled to death. Heading the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit, Agent Nora English is fiercely determined to track and stop a sadistic assassin.

 

 

The Joys of Writing

By Cornelia Read

 

 

There are days when writing makes me feel like this guy. Actually, every day I write I feel like this guy, at least at the beginning. That’s because beginning is the hardest part, contrary to that annoying song by Tom Petty which claimed that waiting is the hardest part. (actually, I’m much more on board with what Fran Lebowitz had to say about waiting: “The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.” But enough said.)

I was on a panel at the magnificent and life-altering Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference last weekend during which we were supposed to talk about writing rituals, and things we had learned on the way to becoming professional writers. Here is what I have learned, in that the following four things are the bedrock of my complete lack of moral fiber when it comes to writing:

 

And angst. Don’t forget the angst.

 

I had coffee with a novelist friend who doesn’t write crime fiction while I was at the conference. I asked her how it was going. She said, “My second novel almost killed me. Actually, it may have killed me. I might be walking around dead right now. My brain is so fried I wouldn’t really know the difference at this point. Writing sucks. Did your second novel almost kill you? Because mine almost killed me. Have I mentioned that?”

I said, “Dude, every moment I worked on my second novel, I didn’t know whether to cry or throw up. Some days I did both.”

She laughed in recognition of this mental state. “Third one’s a piece of cake, though, right?”

“A piece of shit, more like,” I said. 

“Great.”

I said I would always remember what Jan Burke told me, when I confessed how hard it was to be writing my second novel, back when I was writing my second novel. Here is what she said, “Yeah, they all suck. It’s always excruciating. Don’t expect it to ever get any better.”

My non-crime-writing novelist friend laughed again… the bitter laugh of the completely hosed.

“I think that was really cruel of Jan Burke to say, don’t you?” I continued. “I mean, couldn’t she have lied? Couldn’t she have said, ‘kid, here’s the thing–the second one almost kills you, and you won’t know whether to cry or throw up, most days, but after that it’s like falling off a log. No problem. Just get through this one, and the rest of them you can write in your sleep with both hands tied behind your back,’ right? I mean, would it have killed her to lie about that?”

My non-crime-writing friend said, “So now you’re laying that same horrible view of my future on me, even though you’re still pissed with Jan Burke for telling you the truth. Thanks so much.”

 

 

I nodded. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Jan Burke… it’s just that I might have thrown up a few fewer times if she’d lied in that instance, you know?”

“Yeah. Aren’t we the lucky ones?”

“We are. We could be throwing up and not published.”

 

 

“That could still happen.”

“Yeah, any day now,” I said.

“So how was it writing your third book?” asked my friend.

 

“Shit,” I said. “Unmitigated shit. And I hate the fourth book already.”

“How much of the fourth one have you written?”

“About a page and a half,” I said. “And it’s already a stinking pile of unreadable crap.”

“Right on.”

 

“You know what Dorothy Parker said are the two best things you can do to help out aspiring writers?” I asked.

“No, what?” asked my friend.

“She said the second most helpful thing you can do is buy them a copy of Strunk and White.”

 

“What’s the first most helpful?”

“‘Shoot them now, while they’re still happy.'”

Then we spent the next twenty minutes talking about how everyone who sold more books than we do should die, unless they were really nice to us. Successful novelists who don’t know us should be loaded onto a bus and driven off the edge of the Grand Canyon, we figured. With bells on.

 

 

This is why I love hanging out with fellow writers. We’re all nuts in similar ways, which makes me feel better.

We are none of us exactly Little Mary Sunshine.

 

 

But as I said to my stepmom a few weeks ago, sitting down to right every morning is like knowing you have to punch your way through a brick wall. Except every morning you realize again that the bricks are made of styrofoam, as soon as you screw up the courage to throw that first roundhouse.

On the other hand, I still have a page and a half of book four. So, you know, it’s not quite like falling off a log yet. Or maybe it’s like falling off a log with both hands tied behind my back.

 

 

And also, I am a whiny little bitch.

 

 

‘Ratis, what do you tell yourself when it’s time to get started? How do you talk yourselves out of believing everything is doomed to failure, and that it’s time for The Rapture? Inquiring Cornelias want to know…

The Idea Box

by JT Ellison

“Where do you get your ideas?”

It has to be the most frequently asked question in fiction. I can’t remember a single event that I’ve done that it hasn’t come up. And the answer, of course, if everywhere. We’re writers. There is little that escapes our notice. Our job is to observe, synthesize and report back our findings in new and different ways. The magic of that process can’t be quantified – give fourteen mystery writers the same newspaper article and instruct them to write a story about the topic, and you’ll get fourteen different stories.

The question that readers should be asking us is: “How in the world do you keep all the billions of ideas you have on any given day in any semblance of order?”

I’m no different from any other writer. I never know what will trigger my imagination. It could be something as simple and natural as an exceptionally fluffy white cloud passing overhead in a crisp blue fall sky, or as complex as the murder of a young pregnant mother. There are times that I seek out new inspirations, and other times that something odd catches my eye and I think, hmmm, that might be an interesting story.

I also subscribe to the belief that if a story idea is solid, it will stay with you, growing and fermenting over time, without too many influences or excess research. Which can be difficult to deal with when you’re first starting out, because you’re juggling about 1,000 different ideas about how to make your story better, and the thought of one of them slipping away is tantamount to inspiration genocide.

But it’s not. I’m here to assure you – those scattered idea that you don’t write down can sometimes be the genesis of something exceptional.

Anyway, I’ve gotten myself off track. What I wanted to talk about today was my idea box.

It started as a few cuttings from the local newspaper, or printouts from websites, that I stashed in a file folder and shoved in my drawer. When something would leap out at me, I’d throw it in the file and leave it alone. As time went on and my repertoire for idea building grew, I started throwing jotted down scraps of ideas into the folder too: lines of dialogue that amused me, amorphous scenes, pictures of kitchens. Imprints, really. Imprints of ideas, of possibility. These aren’t the IDEAS themselves, they are the germs, the bacteria of my mind’s eye. The microscopic beings that find their way under my skin and eventually force me to scratch.

When I get stuck—and yes, that does happen, even though I’m resistant to call it writer’s block because block, I think, is your story’s way of telling you you’re going in the wrong direction and being stuck is something wholly different, more a necessarily evil to the thought process—I clean. I organize. I shuffle, realign, file and trash. I rearrange the furniture, delete long overdue dead files, read, catch up on scheduling issues, sort out my archives, anything that’s not inherently creative in nature. I’ve come to welcome these spurts of agony, because something wonderful always comes out of it in the end.

The last time I was really and truly stuck, I organized my ideas file.

It had grown to an idea drawer while I wasn’t looking. Folded up newspapers lazily shoved into the space where the folder should go, post-it notes stuck to printouts – it was a mess. No rhyme or reason. Just a collection of whimsies, stowed out of sight until I might need them.

But isn’t that what a creative box should be? Isn’t there something magical about knowing it’s there, that you’ve dropped your little bits of inspiration into one secure place to ferment? I liken it to Dumbledore’s penseive – an aggregator of memories swirling around in some sort of transparent fluid. The idea box is just that – the repository for lost ideas.

So I took an afternoon and organized my drawer. I went to Staples and bought a smart looking expandable file folder that has a hard top and sides, and offloaded everything from the file that became a drawer into the box. I cut out the newspaper articles, sectioned the stories out into subject and geographical region, and slipped the cleaned sheets into the box. Then I stashed it right behind my chair, so I can look at it anytime I want. Just knowing it’s there is fine with me. I don’t need to open it and lovingly finger the papers inside. That, I’ll save for the next round of proposals, or when I need a random subplot.

If these thoughts and ideas mature and make it out of the idea box, they will be transferred to their attendant book box. I read Twyla Tharp’s THE CREATIVE HABIT last year and was surprised to find I already used the same organizational method for projects as Tharp: the individual book box.

Every book I write has it’s own plastic, sealable box. Everything related to that book goes in the box as it’s written. That way, I always know where everything is. By the time I’m done with the book, the box is full to the brim: each draft of the manuscript, the copyedits, the author alterations all go in, on top of the research material, notes, music, etc. When I finish a book and it’s gone to ARC, I take all my notes from their yellow legal pads and stash them in there, too. And then I put them away.

I have to say, this is a really good system. I got to test it out with the fourth book in the series, THE COLD ROOM. Because the box had been put away. Stored. Done. Complete. Smiley face on top (okay, no smiley face, but you know what I mean.) And when my editor wanted me to make a change, it was easy to see exactly where I’d been. I pulled out the box, pulled out the notes to refresh my memory on its impetus, scanned through the original CEs, and went from there.

And since I use a Brother touch labeling system, it was simple to print out a new label for the box with the new title. And soon, the box will go away again, nestled deep in the closet with its friends, and I’ll reopen the next box. And the next. And the next.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my process lately, looking for ways to make things even more streamlined. I have tried a number of different methods for idea storage. There are a number of online avenues to do this. Most everything I do is online now – calendar, to do list, email, goals, even ideas, which I clip to Evernote.

But I’m resistant to the idea of doing away with my boxes, simply because I just love those moments when you spill everything out onto the floor in front of you and comb through the mess looking for that one little spark that will help you move along. There must be some chaos to the creative process. I think we can stifle ourselves if we try to do everything to perfection.

So, where do you keep your ideas?

Wine of the Week: Gnarlier Head Old Vine Zinfandel

A Peculier Crime

by Zoë Sharp

By the time you read this, I’ll be in Harrogate for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Harrogate is now in its seventh year, and is one of the largest of its kind in the world. It’s very different from the US conventions I’ve attended, as you have to be invited to take part on one of the range of panels, and only one panel track is run at any one time, ensuring large capacity audiences. Fortunately, as the whole thing is professionally miked and lit, you can’t see much beyond the spotlights anyway when you’re up on the stage, which tends to help authors who are a little shy or not used to performing in front of so many people.

Harrogate also differs from many conventions in that you can buy tickets for individual panels, as well as weekend rover passes, although many people never quite manage to make it out of the bar. However, I’m sure the prospect of listening to Lee Child, George Pelecanos, ‘The Wire’ creator David Simon, Mark Billingham, Christopher Brookmyre, Ken Bruen, Allan Guthrie, Stuart MacBride, Denise Mina, Andrew Taylor, Martyn Waites, Caro Ramsay, Chris Simms, Val McDermid, Laura Wilson, NJ Cooper, etc, will be more than enough to ensure packed houses for every event.

Among the silly things I’ll no doubt be doing over the weekend, I’m giving a workshop as part of the opening day, Creative Thursday, on self-defence and writing action scenes. Andy, brave soul that he is, has volunteered to be my Crash Test Dummy for this. Practise for that quickly degenerated into undignified grappling and fits of giggles, I can tell you – there was a water pistol involved – but we shall endeavour to be serious on the day.

Other workshops taking place will be the Award-winning writer Laura Wilson talking to CSI officer Andy Manns; lawyer and crime author Martin Edwards will be unravelling the legal side of crime writing; exploring the structures of a novel from ancient to modern with crime author and Head of Writing at Liverpool John Moores University, Adam Creed; a discussion between author Mark Billingham, abridger Kati Nicholl, and actor Adjoa Andoh about adapting for audiobook; and finally the Dragons’ Pen.

This latter event gives would-be authors two minutes to pitch their story to a panel comprising top agents Jane Gregory and Philip Patterson, and editors David Shelley of Little, Brown, and Selina Walker of Transworld. A scary prospect indeed, but worth the risk to get your idea in front of such a line-up, even if there is the danger of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion.

So, I hope you’ll excuse the short post this week, and I’ll leave you with the question have you ever attended a writing workshop – either a course or a single day event? If not, what puts you off? And if you have, what did you gain from it? Is there one specific piece of advice that stands out?

Last week, of course, were the CWA Dagger Awards, held at Tiger, Tiger in Haymarket, London. I was nominated for the CWA Short Story Dagger for ‘Served Cold’, which originally appeared in the Busted Flush anthology A HELL OF A WOMAN, edited by Megan Abbott, and was published in the UK in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME, published by Constable & Robinson. The worthy winner was Sean Chercover, for ‘One Serving of Bad Luck’ from KILLER YEAR, published by MIRA. Many congrats to him, and also to Colin Cotterill, winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library; to Fred Vargas for THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN, winner of the CWA International Dagger; and finally to Catherine O’Keefe, winner of the CWA Debut Dagger for the opening section of her novel, THE PATHOLOGIST.

This week’s Word of the Week is deprehend, meaning to catch, to seize, to detect, whereas apprehend means to lay hold of, to arrest, to be conscious of by the senses, to lay hold of by the intellect, to recognise or catch the meaning of, to understand, to consider, conceive or look forward to, and to anticipate, especially with fear.

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

We’ve had a bit of a medical crisis at my house in the last 24 hours. Don’t worry, everyone’s going to be all right, but dealing with it has pretty much eaten up all the time and brain power I had in reserve, and everything I’d meant to say about my chosen topic is scattered in untidy heaps inside my head.

In short, no new original post from moi this week. Please accept my apologies, and I’ll do better next time, I promise.

As a diversion in the meantime, how about another game of iPod Roulette?

You don’t necessarily need an Apple iPod to play it…any Mp3 player or computer music player will do, so long as it has a “Shuffle” feature that allows you to play random songs from your library. It goes like this: (1) Hit Shuffle. (2) In the comments, post the first twenty songs that come up. (You can forward through if you don’t want to listen to all of them before posting). (3) Be honest.

The choices of my Creative Zen Touch:

  1. Simple Minds-Don’t You Forget About Me
  2. The Who-The Real Me
  3. Coldplay-Fix You
  4. Liz Phair-Girls! Girls! Girls!
  5. Bruce Springsteen-Workin’ On the Highway
  6. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers-Here Comes My Girl
  7. Paul Simon-Homeless
  8. U2-I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
  9. Tom Lehrer-Poisoning Pigeons In The Park
  10. The Replacements-I Will Dare
  11. Buzzin’ Cousins-Sweet Suzanne
  12. Lucinda Williams-Out of Touch
  13. Stones-Gimme Shelter
  14. White Zombie-I, Zombie
  15. Sex Pistols-Anarchy in the U.K.
  16. Little Feat-Rocket in My Pocket
  17. English Beat-Best Friend
  18. Guy Clark-South Coast of Texas
  19. Neil Young- My, My, Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue)
  20. Tangerine Dream-Prophet in Chains

And if that’s not sufficent diversion, here is a bunny with a pancake on its head:

Gotta go, see you next time…