figuring out what they’re not telling you

by Toni McGee Causey

If you’ve been querying or sending your work out and you’re getting
positive responses but you’re not quite crossing that elusive sale
line, it can be incredibly frustrating and debilitating. Sometimes,
it’s an issue of luck or timing, and there really isn’t a helluvalot
you can do about that.

A friend of mine and I recently discussed this, and she pointed out that there were four elements to this business: work, luck, timing (marketplace), and talent.

You cannot control the last three, not as a writer. The amount of talent you have is what you have, but you can improve your craft through practice, you can hone that talent to a fine edge. You cannot control luck, and timing–how things will fall together in the marketplace–is anybody’s guess, but it certainly not something a writer can control.

What you can control, however, is the work. How much effort you make, how hard you reach to improve, how much risk you’re willing to take, how objective you’re willing to be about what you have, and haven’t, managed to get onto that page. That? Is all you can really control.

There are times as writers
that we’ll get encouragement and nice comments without really knowing
what is making them–those people who buy–say "no, not for me." In the course of a discussion
on Backspace (a while back), someone asked,
"How do you know what to fix when they don’t tell you?" I had gone
through a self-evaluation process before the first book sold. My analysis of my own writing below is certainly not a "fix-all" sort of thing; however, it may be a way of looking
at your own work and stepping outside what you’ve been seeing up to
that point to analyze it. On the off-chance that it might be of help,
I’m re-posting my answer here:

A much larger part [of the analysis process] was sitting down and dissecting my own way of telling stories, pros and cons. Instead of
listening to what readers were saying, I started to look at what they
were not
saying. The gist of what I was hearing was that they always loved my
characters, loved the humor, loved the setting. Well, that kinda sounds like I had it covered, but something about the
way I told the stories wasn’t working since they weren’t selling, and
no one could tell me why.

Believe me, I asked. Especially of those producers with whom I had a personal relationship.

Instead of assuming that selling was all just subjective or luck, and in
order to figure it out why that wasn’t happening, I started giving my writing to people and asked
them to list the positive feedback they’d give me, and then I’d look at
those things and say, "What’s missing? What am I not seeing on this
list?" This is an odd sort of way of going about this, I know, but the
critiques I was getting weren’t pointing out the "gestalt" — the
overall problem.

(I started doing this sort of analysis with my screenwriting, and when
it worked, I transferred what I’d learned to my fiction. The relative
shortness of a script as compared to a manuscript may have given me an
advantage because it was easier to see it as a "whole" when trying to
break it down. )

With that in mind…

So… what was not being said?

The one thing that popped in my head that I noticed wasn’t said (or if it was, it was only occasional), was,

"I couldn’t put it down."

That whole "couldn’t stop reading" aspect is critical, especially if
you want to maintain an exec’s attention (in the screenwriting world)
or an agent’s attention (either world).

Now here’s the kicker — people would say how much they loved the
read, how immersed they were in the characters, so you’d think these
were the same things, but they’re not. And it took me a little while to
realize that.

Second thing that happened is pretty notorious in the screenwriting
world– you get killed by encouragement. But when you try to get to the
heart of why they’re not buying, they’ll use vague terms. They’re not
doing this to be mean, but because they aren’t writers and they have no
clue how to explain to you that there’s something not working. So
they’ve come up with a sort of shorthand which sounds like they’re
telling you something, when in fact, they’re basically saying, "I don’t
know jack, I just know I can’t buy it and I can’t put my finger on why." In the book world, this translates into "I can’t get the marketing team behind it."

I’ll break down one example for you, and how I analyzed it.

One of the things I had heard was that they loved the scripts
(the romantic comedies), but they were "soft." What the hell is soft?
It’s a romantic comedy. If it was ‘hard,’ it would be porn. How is ‘soft’ a definition for writing?

I’d ask my then-screenwriting-agent, who would be just as confused.
We would try to get more specifics out of them but the execs didn’t
think "soft" was a bad thing per se…and since they were in the middle
of telling me all of the good stuff, it was easy to set that aside as a
vague excuse.

Until one day, I finally realized what they weren’t saying.

They weren’t saying "I couldn’t put it down."

I’d get stuff like, "I love reading your scripts, I will always give
your agent a read overnight for your stuff," and "Your characters and
your worlds are so original, and I laughed all through it, so it’s
funny!" Which is great! But no one was saying, "Ohmygod, I had to pee
and I refused to get up to go to the bathroom because I had to see what
happened next and now I have to buy a new leather chair, damn you."

That is critical. You have to write in such a way as to get to feel
a freakishly urgent sense of needing to finish the read, which is what
translates into them being compelled to convince their bosses to spend the money.

A lot of other writers and people in the business were trying to
guess what "soft" meant at the time (since this was a fairly common
excuse floating around), and one opinion was that it was
the opposite of edgy. Well, not everything can be edgy,
so that wasn’t really working as a definition. Then one day I put the
two things together and I realized what ‘soft’ meant: it meant that
there wasn’t enough forward motion in the story to actively compel the
reader to keep reading, regardless of all else.

‘Soft’ is the opposite of ‘crisp’ and ‘urgent.’

How did that apply to me?

This is where it got tricky. I went through my stories and on the
surface, it seemed like I was already doing what needed to be done.

interesting characters………..check
clear goals………………………. check
obstacles………………………… check

So, hmmm. That looks like everything I need. What the hell is up
with that? Then I looked more closely at story structure, which is when
I realized: a lot of what is motivating the characters isn’t revealed
until sometime later in the story. And some of these were pretty
important reasons for being motivated, but they were buried deeper. And by trying hard to be mysterious, I just ended up with vague motivations.

But… but… (I can hear the outcries), in mysteries and thrillers, the real reasons aren’t usually revealed up front.

True.

But the reader still needs to have a reason, a motivation, for the action. They need to understand what that motivation is–whether or not you end up disproving it later.

The problem with writing so "indirectly" is that for the first part
of the story, the reader has to take it on faith that you’re going to
eventually supply them with the motivation and what’s at stake for the
main character. I managed to dance fast enough to keep them interested,
but I am certain that when they put my stuff down and had to go explain
to their boss, they weren’t able to sum up the character very easily,
or what the character wanted / needed or why. I definitely had reasons
all along the story trajectory as to why the character was doing what
they were doing, and the reader could deduce some of the motivations,
but at the same time, I blocked the reader from getting too much
information because I wanted to reveal more about them later. My
assumption had been that this sort of structure made the story deeper,
more thought provoking, creating a greater impact. That delay can work,
but it also renders a lot of your story as appearing to be re-active
instead of active: it doesn’t look so much like the character is
forging forward as they are simply reacting to what’s happening, and
that can make the story feel passive and less immediate.

I will give you a movie example that I think many of you have seen: The Usual Suspects. In it, [SPOILER ALERT, OLD MOVIE] Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) has been brought into the police station for questioning about his part in the gang who’ve ended up dead. Through flashback, Verbal tells the story, and we believe that his motivation is to get his ass out of a sling. He is just this sort of slow, innocent guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His motivation to stay out of jail is palpable and his fear of Keyser Soze, the real bad guy behind the slayings, drives the story.

Except, of course, at the end, there is the long reveal that he is Keyser Soze.

If the writer, MacQuarrie, had not given Verbal Kint a hard-driving reason for telling his story, the reveal wouldn’t have been as powerful.

Nor would it have been as compelling.

The story drives forward fast on the motivation of Verbal Kint to stay out of trouble with the police and with Soze. It is *really* being driven forward by the fact that Soze is completely manipulating the police detectives doing the questioning, and they just don’t realize it yet. He’s toying with them, showing off, and they’ll understand that later.

Complex characters can make for excellent writing, but you have to
do one very simple thing to pull them off: give the reader at least a
surface motivation as to why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why they
must have whatever it is they’re going after in the story. Even
if you want to deepen that later or turn it in on itself and twist it
to surprise your reader by making the character more complex, you still
need to keep the reader invested in the story, and they have a hard
time staying invested if they don’t know what’s at stake or why it’s
critical to the character.

So the new list:

interesting characters…….check
clear goals…………………… check
motivation……………………..check
obstacles…………………….. check

Then I looked at the "obstacles" and analyzed my writing, and I
realized that not only did I have to make those obstacles incrementally
tougher, they had to matter so much and the character had to keep failing.

Terry Rossio, over on his Wordplayer (highly, highly recommended reading) used Indiana Jones as an example…

Indy [PRE INDY 4, OBVIOUSLY] is this great archaeologist / hero, able to go into difficult
areas and retrieve these priceless artifacts, and when he’s going after
the ARK, he keeps failing. When it looks like he’s about to succeed,
there’s another twist and he’s not only failed, he’s in a bit of a
worse situation than he was when he started. And now he’s got to
brainstorm his way out of that.

Someone once said to me: character is shown by the choices we make when things aren’t going well.

A person may talk the talk of a pacifist, for example, but when
confronted with a situation, realize that they would resort to violence
to save someone they loved… so their character is not a pacifist
after all (something they may have difficulty dealing with in the
story.)

When you make sure that your stakes are escalating and that your
character has to keep dealing with these problems, and the problems are
getting worse, then you’ve got the chance to show what this person is
really like — good and bad — which, along with the stakes, renders
the story a ‘page turner.’

So I looked at my scripts and realized I wasn’t applying that sort
of tension. (This can, honestly, apply to literary fiction as well. The
stakes are more intimate, more personal, but they have to keep
increasing and keep mattering to the character.)

Once I realized these things, I looked around for the kind of story
that resonated with me, the kind of character I just could not put
down. I looked for a way to tell this story without sacrificing voice
or style, a way to immerse the reader immediately and have them hanging
on, turning the page to see what happens next. When I started getting
that "I couldn’t put it down" reaction consistently, I knew I had
stepped onto a higher level playing field. (There are always higher
levels, no matter where we are, where we’ve started.)

These things which applied to me may not apply to you. You have to
really look at what is being said, make a list of the positives and the
negatives, and then start looking at what’s missing. Most people are
not Simon Cowell (American Idol) and aren’t going to tell you the
brutal truth, even if they’re thinking it. They’re going to sugarcoat.
But I think by looking at what is consistently not said, you may be
able to dig up some useful truth.

If you’re getting the "I couldn’t put it down" sort of responses
from just about everyone reading but it hasn’t crossed that elusive
"sold" line, remember that a big part of what we do is sales, and not
every buyer is looking for exactly what we have. That’s the frustrating
part about the business, but it doesn’t mean you’re not on track with
your writing (if you’re getting the great responses)… it’s just a
matter of right person and right time.

Persistence is everything.

I’d love to add to my examples of movies or books with double layered motives. Especially any good sting type of movies (like, well, THE STING) where the motives hit the switchback trail a couple of times and still keep you utterly compelled. So what have you seen (old or new) where the motives were utterly compellingly written?

Reporting Earning$

What would happen if the book world openly reported the money a book grossed on it’s opening weekend?

Visual Storytelling

by Alex

Because I have been in that bliss period between handing in a new book and getting editorial notes, I’ve actually been able to read, and have been picking up about ten books a day. I can do that because when I’m reading for pleasure, I discard most books within ten pages, if that. Sometimes I give it 50 pages. Sometimes I make it halfway through and lose all interest. So that’s pretty much been the process over the last two weeks. Have only made it through two whole books so far.

Yesterday I picked up a book that had me riveted from the very beginning – and it made me realize something actually pretty obvious about myself.

I am a visual whore.

Yes, and proud of it. Oh, sure, I could pretend to be all highbrow and quote Aristotle on “Spectacle” in The Poetics, but really, why sugarcoat it? Give me eye candy. Dazzle me with images. But make them mean something. Your story better give me your themes visually or you risk losing me, and fast. I want symbols, symbols, damn it!

And no, I haven’t segued into talking about movies, now. I’m talking about books.

I have to say, one thing all that screenwriting has been really good for is helping me develop a strong visual writing style. I love it when readers tell me – “I can see every scene you write.” But actually, visual storytelling is a lot more than just putting a movie into your readers’ heads as they’re reading your book. Visual storytelling actually presents themes that elevate a story and make it resonate in a reader’s consciousness – and subconscious – long after they close the book.

My obsession with visual storytelling started way before I started writing scripts. Production design is a crucial element of theater, too, and we had a brilliant head of design in the theater department at Berkeley, so I got spoiled early on with mindbending, thematic sets that gave a whole other dimensionality to the plays I saw in my formative years. A good production designer will make every single thing you look at on stage – color scheme, props, sets, costuming, shapes, textures – contribute to your deeper understanding of the play’s story, characters and themes.

That was a lesson that served me well when I started screenwriting. And then working as a screenwriter opened up whole new worlds of visual storytelling.

So what can we as authors learn from screenwriting about writing visually?

A lot.

Let’s start with establishing shots and master shots, setpiece scenes, and visual image systems.

ESTABLISHING SHOTS AND MASTER SHOTS

One thing I’ve noticed about beginning writers’ writing is that they almost always fail to set up a chapter visually. Actually a lot of published authors have this problem, too. I find this extremely annoying and frustrating. After all, human beings process the world visually before any other sense, so why wouldn’t we as authors want to instantly establish where we are and what we’re looking at and how that makes us feel right up front, in every chapter? If you don’t, your reader is going to be uncomfortable and disoriented until you finally give her some idea of where she is.

That’s why it’s useful to think in terms of establishing shots and master shots.

An establishing shot, in film – you guessed it – establishes the location. A shot of the Eiffel Tower lets us know we’re in Paris, a shot of the Sphinx tells us we’re in Egypt. An exterior shot of an office tower followed by people working inside an office lets us know we’re inside that building.

A master shot is an angle on a scene that shows all of the players of the scene in the specific location – like looking at a stage and seeing the entire set and all the actors on it. You get all the information about the scene in one shot.

But an establishing shot is more than just information about WHERE the action takes place. It can, and should, convey emotion, suspense, theme – any number of things about the action about to transpire or the character walking into the scene.

Every time I start a chapter or a scene, I think first about the establishing shot and the master shot. I look at the upcoming action from a long enough angle to see everything there is to see about the scene. Where am I and what am I looking at? I might not describe it outright for a paragraph or two but if I don’t, there’s a damn good reason that I didn’t start with it, and I don’t keep the reader waiting long to give them the visual. And when I do give the visual, I think about what it says thematically and emotionally about the scene. Is it a confined space because my heroine feels trapped? Then I make sure to convey that claustrophobic sense. Are the colors of everything muted and leached because of my hero’s depression? Is every tree on the street bursting with bloom and fragrance because my lovers have finally reunited? (Yeah, I’m being on the nose, but my feeling is – be over the top at first to make sure the emotion is there… you can always tone it down later.)

SETPIECE SCENES

This is a fabulous lesson to take from filmmaking.

There are multiple definitions of a setpiece – it can be a huge action scene like – well, anything in THE DARK KNIGHT – that takes weeks to shoot and costs millions, requiring multiple sets, special effects and car crashes… or a meticulously planned suspense scene with multiple cuts that takes place all in a – well, a shower, for instance, in PSYCHO.

If you start watching movies specifically to pick out the setpiece scenes, you’ll notice an interesting thing. They’re almost always used as act or sequence climaxes. They are tentpoles holding the structure of the movie up… or jewels in the necklace of the plotline. The scenes featured in the trailers to entice people to see the movie. The scenes everyone talks about after the credits roll.

That elaborate, booby-trapped cave in the first scene of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The helicopter chasing Cary Grant through the cornfield in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. The goofy galactic bar in STAR WARS. Munchkinland, the Scarecrow’s cornfield, the dark forest, the poppy field, the Emerald City, the witch’s castle in THE WIZARD OF OZ. The dungeon – I mean prison – in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. In fact you can look at RAIDERS and SILENCE and see that every single sequence contains a wonderful setpiece (The Nepalese bar, the suspension bridge, the temple in RAIDERS…)

Those are actually two great movies to use to compare setpieces because one is so big and action-oriented (RAIDERS) and one is so small, confined and psychological (SILENCE), yet both are stunning examples of visual storytelling.

A really great setpiece scene is a lot more than just dazzling. It’s thematic, too, such as the prison (dungeon for the criminally insane) in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. That is much more than your garden variety prison. It’s a labyrinth of twisty staircases and creepy corridors. And it’s hell – Clarice goes through – count ‘em – seven gates, down, down, down under the ground to get to Lecter. Because after all, she’s going to be dealing with the devil, isn’t she? And the labyrinth is a classic symbol of an inner psychological journey – just exactly what Clarice is about to go through. And Lecter is a monster, like the Minotaur, so putting him smack in the center of a labyrinth makes us unconsciously equate him with a mythical beast, something both more and less than human. The visuals of that setpiece express all of those themes perfectly (and others, too) so the scene is working on all kinds of visceral, emotional, subconscious levels.

Now, yes, that’s brilliant filmmaking by director Jonathan Demme, and screenwriter Ted Tally and production designer Kristi Zea and DP Tak Fujimoto… but it was all there on Harris’s page, first, all that and more – the filmmakers had the good sense to translate it to the screen. In fact, both SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and RED DRAGON are so crammed full of thematic visual imagery you can catch something new every time you reread those books.

But this post is already long, so I think I’ll save my discussion on visual image systems for another even longer post, so we can focus on setpieces today.

What are some of your favorite setpieces or symbolic images, literary or filmic, recent or classic?

Oh, and the book I picked up yesterday that inspired this post?

Barbara Vine’s THE MINOTAUR… wonderfully creepy and psychologically perverse – you have a schizophrenic (maybe) brother, four strange sisters, an even stranger mother, and a young au pair on an isolated English estate – and in the middle of this house is a mysterious library built as a labyrinth.

You better believe I’m hooked.

Welcome Guest Blogger Marc Lecard!

He’s irrepressible, funny, clever, and a brilliant writer. He’s also someone I’ve been honored to work with this past year. His first book, Vinnie’s Head, was a huge hit, and I have no doubt that Tiny Little Troubles will follow suit. Please extend a warm and gracious Murderati welcome to my friend Marc Lecard!

THAT SECOND BOOK

Hello, Marc Lecard here. I’m the author of Vinnie’s Head, and the just-published Tiny Little Troubles.
The mighty JT Ellison asked me to blogsit for her while she does some
heavy deadline-wrestling, so I’m taking over this Friday slot. But just
for today, so don’t worry.

My second novel, Tiny Little Troubles,
came out from St. Martin’s Minotaur this week. It’s a caper novel, my
own take on the classic subgenre wherein a group of criminals gets
together to knock over some improbable target–a casino, a racetrack,
an impregnable bank.

I love these novels. I love the guy with
the big idea, the criminal who thinks up the heist. He’s got an angle
no one else has thought of, unique, personal, something that’s been
done a hundred times before but never exactly his way.

I
love the assembling of the "team"–each member with his or her own
specialties, and of course unique flaws and eccentricities.

I
started out wanting to do a respectful homage to the subgenre, a
reprise of all the things that I love about it. I began, like a master
criminal, to assemble my "team"–a nasty collection of thugs and
bruisers, some with unique specialties, all with deep flaws, hidden and
not so hidden.

I was especially proud of the main bad guy, a
real piece of work who was a gift from my subconscious. I mean that
most often I construct my characters by Dr. Frankenstein’s method, a
part here, a part there, quirks and qualities stolen from people I’ve
observed (often from friends, but they’ll never know). I’m fairly
deliberate and conscious in this process, but look for that moment when
the construction begins to walk and talk by itself.

But Pablo Clench, the main bad guy, cut to the chase and just stepped
on stage fully formed. I don’t know where he came from. I only know I
never want to go there.

Then I looked around for something for these guys to do, a target worthy of the team. And that’s where I hit the wall.

Because it looked like it had all been done before–and better–and I
had no new idea, no new angle of approach. My caper was a bust before
it started.

The problem, I thought, was in the McGuffin, the
prize, the thing “all the fuss is about.” A bag of pearls? Come on. A
gym bag full of currency? Nah. Even I had already used that one, as
satisfying as it is.

Stymied, I tried to come up with
something different. I believed that the best place for new ideas is
always near at hand, in your local circumstances (I learned this from
reading William Carlos Williams). Where was I? Sitting in the back of a
garage in South San Francisco that I had made over into a writing
studio with some spare pieces of plywood , a cheap rug or two, and a
semi-antique computer. What was unique to South City? Well, it was the
biotech capital of the country–the chamber of commerce sign by the
freeway exit said so. Genetic engineering, that had to be interesting.
The possibilities for screw-up seemed limitless.

But I wanted to write a comedy, a comic crime novel. And I found myself
unable to get around to the light side of global pandemics. Infection
is just not funny.

The idea of thugs taking over a start-up seemed workable, though. But what kind of start-up?

In my notebook of possible book ideas I had scribbled down a scene that
occurred to me without context or explanation in which a gangster is
suddenly turned into a pile of underwear. I didn’t know why. This is a
book that will never be written, I thought as I closed the notebook.
Maybe a crime novel for very sick little kids. But I’ll never be able
to use it in a novel for adults.

Now the weird vision came back to me. Maybe the bad guy turned into
lingerie from some kind of genetically engineered plague that got out
of hand?

No. I had it. Nanotechnology. Little robots,
made to manufacture things. A common trope in science fiction novels.
Not so common in crime fiction (I hadn’t read Swierczynski’s The Blonde yet).

I didn’t want to write a science fiction novel, a book that would
explore the ramifications of this technology on society, or deeply
imagine how that technology might work. I just wanted a bag of pearls
for my guys to fight over.

But swapping in a nanotechnology
start-up for the casino or heavily guarded bank, and having an idea be
the prize rather than a stack of bills seemed subversive enough to be
worth doing.

The science-fiction-y McGuffin pushed the book out of shape, though,
required some reworking of the original idea, and generated some
characters I hadn’t counted on. The book changed to the point where the
original conception was buried. It was still a crime novel, though. And
it was still funny, or at least I thought so.

I mean, I had my doubts. Little robots that you can’t even see? Underwear? WTF?

But it’s too late now. The book came out last Tuesday.

This is answer 3, 487,992 to the question "Where do your ideas come from?"

———————————

MARC LECARD lives in Oakland now. His next novel features crooked
appliance salesmen, the resurrection of the dead, and Kyrgyzstani
wrestler/gangsters, among other things.

P.S. Friend of Murderati Kaye Barley (AKA Kaye from Boone) is guest blogging at The Stiletto Gang today. Be sure to check her out!

How To Kill Someone With Small Change

by Zoë Sharp

I suppose, first of all, I need to start with an apology. I’ve been singularly absent from the comments section to posts on this blog since … well, since my last post, to be honest.

Summer is the silly season as far as the day-job goes. Not that it seems to rain less, exactly, in the British summer for location photoshoots, but the rain’s certainly warmer. And the last month or so, what with the run-up to the CWA Dagger Awards and trying to plunge into the new Charlie Fox book, well. Let’s just say things have been a little hectic. Spending six days out of seven on the road does not make for a good ‘Rati member, I freely admit. So, apologies again, and I’ll try harder. In fact, when JT originally asked me for a title for my blog, I so very nearly used Must Try Harder instead of Changing Feet. Sometimes it would have been very appropriate. Whenever I do get the chance to catch up, I find you’ve all been having superb posts that I really would have liked to take part in.

Anyway, my last bout of rushing around the country took in the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate . Not quite the glamorous location of NYC for the recent ThrillerFest, but Harrogate still has a fine traditional connection with crime writing. When Agatha Christie did her famous eleven-day disappearing act in 1926, it was in the Harrogate Hydro Hotel she was eventually found.

The crime writing part of the Festival has been going since 2003, rapidly establishing itself as one of the biggest and best. I don’t say that lightly, or to belittle any other events. Everything that promotes crime and thriller fiction is welcome, I feel, but Harrogate is pretty unique for several reasons. The line-up is the first thing. Robert Crais, Jeffery Deaver, Andy McNab, Peter Robinson, Laura Wilson, Simon Kernick and, of course, our own Tess Gerritsen, to name but a few. You have to be invited to take part, are paid a small fee for the privilege, and only one panel track runs throughout the four-day event. Hence the fact that there can often be more than 400 people in the audience for each panel. Which would be quite a scary prospect were it not like being on a theatre stage, where the lighting means you can’t see past the first few rows.

My own bit was part of Creative Thursday, which is aimed at budding crime writers rather than those already established. I seem to be acquiring quite a reputation of sorts, because I was asked to deliver a workshop on How To Kill Someone With Small Change. For this I went trawling through my lists of ordinary objects that could be used to great damage and effect, and came up with things like hairspray, a flashlight and a table fork, which we bent into a knuckle-duster of sorts. So many people subsequently asked to see this that I ended up carrying it around in my handbag for most of the weekend, hoping I wouldn’t undergo a stop and search by the police while walking back to my hotel in the early hours. Indeed, Meg Gardiner saw a police chase and arrest from her hotel bedroom window.

Mind you, one particular writer got picked up by the police himself trying to return to his hotel in a somewhat ‘tired and emotional’ state. He thought they were being friendly and helpful when he blundered into the wrong building, but apparently they thought he was a burglar.

As is always the way, when you get a bunch of writers together the drink flows. Last year, the hotel turned over one of the bars to a wedding party, but I’m told their entire evening’s spend did not equal an hour of author drinking, so both bars were firmly available to the crime writers this year.

Sadly, there was no repeat of the chimpanzee impersonations by literary agent, Phil Patterson, regardless of encouragement by the rest of us. People kept greeting him as Agent Phil, which made him sound like some shady fed. I expected him to flash a government ID at any moment – "Agent Phil: Hominoid Division."

The hotel management could have run a book on how late the authors stayed in the bar. This Kevin Wignall would undoubtedly have won. On Saturday night he didn’t leave until 5:50 AM, only resurfacing just before lunchtime on Sunday, wearing dark glasses and a slightly delicate smile.

Of course, there was some serious business done, too, and the additional number of European publishers present was noticeable this time around, all a sign of how the festival is growing in stature.

Many happy returns to Lizzie Hayes of Mystery Women, whom we helped celebrate her birthday, along with her friend Sue, and Adrian and Ann Magson, in the Drum and Monkey. And no, Agent Phil wasn’t there …

I think one of the highlights must have been Stuart MacBride channelling the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe in the Balloon Game on Friday night, where a bunch of modern crime writers defended their predecessors in a hypothetical sinking hot-air balloon. The audience got to choose who stayed and who was thrown over the side in defence of the others. Despite a downright creepy performance by Stuart as Poe – complete with a raven glove puppet made from a sock – clean, we hope – in the end it came down to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle versus Dame Agatha Christie, as represented by Mark Billingham and Val McDermid with, somewhat bizarrely, a bag perched on her head.

The usual mass quiz on Saturday night was fun, although treated with deadly seriousness by some of those taking part. This year I was stunned to discover that one of the questions was about my books – trying to put the early ones in the right order. I knew writing FIRST DROP as book four would come in confusingly useful one day! Congratulations to my fellow team members, Martin Edwards, Meg Gardiner, Rhian Davies from It’s A Mystery and Karen Meek and Maxine Clarke from Eurocrime, all of whom knew far more than I did.

I was even asked to join a discussion on the BBC Radio 4 arts programme, Front Row, along with Chelsea Cain, Simon Kernick, and Mr MacBride. The programme, all about the highlights of Harrogate, was broadcast in the UK on Wednesday evening, but you can Listen Again Again on the ‘Tinterweb for the next week, if you feel so inclined. I also recorded an interview with the delightful Sarah Walters of the Yorkshire Post for their OutLoud online series.

One of the most interesting surprises was the new book-related board came – Bookchase – designed by Tony Davis. I’d love to tell you how it all works, but I haven’t got hold of a copy yet. Still, it was launched at the Hay Festival last year and it looks fascinating. Tony promises that a crime and thriller edition might well be on its way!

I’m sure there’s lots I’ve forgotten, but it will come back to me. Meanwhile, I offered a small prize to the best suggestion from my workshop class of use of an improvised weapon, or (very) short scene containing one. The deadline for that has already passed, but if anyone wants to suggest something, I happen to have another prize. A copy of the ingenious TELL AN OUTRAGEOUS LIE – 188 Legal Stimulants Designed to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing – by Mandy Wheeler and James de Ville.

Oh, and if anyone’s interested, I will be delivering an evening lecture at Lancaster University as part of their summer programme of events – 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 5th.

This week’s Word of the Week has to be hominoid, an animal of the family Hominoidea, comprising man and the modern apes and their extinct ancestors.

You’ve Arrived On A Rather Special Night…It’s One of the Master’s Affairs.

by J.D. Rhoades

Yesterday was the day.

Drop day. Launch Day. Publication Day.

The day that my fourth book, BREAKING COVER, hit the beaches to try to claw its way to success with nothing but a spunky attitude and a dream of someday making its way into the Big Time.

When my first book, THE DEVIL’S RIGHT HAND, came out, people asked me, "so, are you going to have a big party in New York to kick it off?"

It seemed like a great idea. After all, I’d seen the episode of Sex and the City where Sarah Jessica Parker kicks off the launch of her book at a great big New York party attended by incredibly witty and improbably hot literati.

With big drinks. And shrimp. I love shrimp.

God help me, I was naive enough to ask my editor if we were going to do something like that. Being a kind soul, and not wishing to crush all my illusions (or perhaps knowing that the business would be pleased to do so without his intervention) he did not laugh derisively in my face. No, he gently informed me, the publishers were going to concentrate their resources where they might actually do more good than just getting me drunk and boosting my ego.

I saw his point. After all, I can do both of those things just fine on my own.

So I confess, I’ve never had a big fancy party to kick off one of my books.

But doggone it, I still think it would be pretty cool.

So let’s have a virtual one!

All you guys are invited, of course…and you can help me plan it. You can each bring a guest, and since it’s a virtual party, it can be anyone in any world, real or fictional.

We’ll need to stock the bar, so tell me what you’re drinking.

And the kitchen’s open, with a crack team of chefs, so let me know what you want to eat.

Finally, I’ve got one kick ass band booked and they take requests…so what song is it you wanna hear?

Come on in, folks…you are invited!

Trade Winds

By Louise Ure

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago about the length of books, and whether it mattered that a book was especially long or short. I have another size question today folks, and it’s about paperbacks.

Specifically, trade paper editions versus mass market paperbacks.

My editor recently told me that The Fault Tree would be issued as a trade paperback next spring. Imagine my glee! (Please God, let them keep the same cover.)

As both a reader and a writer, I adore trade paperback editions. There’s just something so posh … so sexy … about them. Something that says “Doesn’t this feel good to hold?” and “I’m something special.” And the fact that they only cost $14 or $15 doesn’t go down hard either.

I have a number of them on my shelves. “Ahab’s Wife.” “Empire Falls.” Christina Schwarz’s “Drowning Ruth.” Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and Wallace Stegner’s “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

They’re about as tall as a big, spread hand, but they have the grace of a fine evening bag. The paper stock has depth and character; the typeface is elegant and cool. They whisper: “This is for the shelves; don’t trade me in at the used bookstore.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love being published in hardcover, too, but there’s just something about coming out in trade paper afterwards that makes me feel like I’ve been made love to two times in one night.

But J.B. Dickey of the Seattle Mystery Bookstore has a different take on it:

“Trade paperbacks are expensive paperbacks. The great thing about the mass market paperback is the reason it was created – to reach a mass audience. There is still a need and a demand from that mass audience and, as the middle class and lower class are squeezed further and further and have less disposable income, a book that costs $14.95 takes the place of two mass market books that cost $6.99 or $7.99. Authors, I think have been hoodwinked – to a large extent – by the false allure of the trade paperback.”

Moi? Hoodwinked? Well, it’s happened before, once by a skydiver named Steve …

“It’s far harder,” he goes on, “to introduce a reader to a new author at $14.95 than it is at $6.99 or $7.99, which hurts newer authors. A lot of folks don’t want to take a chance.”

Damn. And here I was just feeling good about the fact that I wasn’t asking them for $24.95.

“And, from a bookseller point of view,” he continued to dampen my spirits, “trade paperbacks means less cash flow because trade paperbacks cost us more money and therefore more money is tied up in stock on the shelves.”

Well, he’s right. Trade paper is more expensive than a mass market book. But doesn’t it just scream “I’m for discriminating buyers” and beg for face-out placement on the shelf?

I guess the answer is both yes and no. We’ve all become more discriminating buyers in this new economy, now weighing how many soft cover books we can buy instead of how many hard covers. And that decision reaches into the trade versus mass market distinction, too.

Lesa Holstine, uber-librarian from Glendale, Arizona adds this:

"For shelving, I definitely prefer the trade. Mass market doesn’t fit on existing [library] shelves well.

For reading, it’s a toss-up. All I really care about, and all my patrons care about, is the size and quality of the print. Some of the trade paperbacks actually have print that is too light. I hate that, and my patrons complain. We want a nice size, legible print. [And the trade paperbacks are] not necessarily a better investment. The mass market paperbacks do hold up just as well.

I will say, with budget cuts … if we buy anything, it will probably be the most reviewed, most popular materials. Unfortunately, that means fewer mass market paperbacks in our collection. I, personally, think you’re better off with [your book] coming out in trade. We’re more likely to replace a copy with a trade paperback than mass market."

So, from my wee sampling effort, I’m hearing that:

• Readers like trade paperbacks, but it may be a price point issue if they’re divvying up a smaller book-buying budget and now have to choose between mass market and trade offerings.

• Authors like trade books because they make them feel special and loved … unless, of course, they mean fewer sales.

• Booksellers aren’t crazy about them.

• Libraries don’t mind them a bit, but it wouldn’t be the first thing they turn to in a budget crunch.

What say you all, as readers, writers, sellers, librarians?

Don’t mind me, I’m just going to keep rolling around in that great, good feeling that a trade paper release gives me. Even if it’s all in my head.

Kicking Butt

by Pari

I wasn’t a kid who grew up wrestling with brothers, tackling dads in impromptu football games, or even shoving a bully out of my way. The worst I had to contend with was an older sister who’d pin me down on the floor and tickle me until I peed in my pants.

I didn’t like fight scenes in books either. Part of this aversion was a lack of understanding; I couldn’t visualize the reality from the words on the page. But an even larger reason was my idealism. I just didn’t want to think that people really would hurt each other in those ways. I didn’t like the idea of glamorizing violence through literature.

Pollyanna and I had a lot in common then.

But writing about murder has a way of changing one’s perspective.
Wanting "to get it right" does too.

I tried the armchair pugilism route and realized quickly that it couldn’t work.

My first real fight scene was in The Clovis Incident. It was an amateurish attempt, but works — I think — because my protag, Sasha, doesn’t have a clue about physical fighting. Neither does her assailant.

Neither did I. But I did realize that I had to get up and actually try to sense what the fight would feel like. I didn’t punch myself in the stomach, but I did tap it hard enough to leave a little bruise . . .

Today, I no longer can pretend not to know. Since I’ve become a more serious martial artist, I been slammed in the solar plexus by a fist twice my size of my own. I understand what a well-placed kick to the front of the knee can to do someone who weighs a good 100 pounds more than the attacker. A palm strike to the chin or nose, an elbow strike to the jaw, both can take a person out. I also know how to fall well and poorly, how to think in terms of offense and defense.

As I’ve learned more, I’ve also become a much more attentive — and critical — reader of other writers’ fight scenes. There are those that contain reams of information; the author obviously knows a tremendous amount about the logistics and effects of the techniques. But after a page or two, I tend to get bored for some reason. Maybe it’s because when you’re in a fight, time passes so quickly and the description doesn’t convey that urgency. Other scenes don’t have enough information to help my imagination flow; these frequently assume the reader has the same specialized knowledge the author does — that everyone knows what a tornado kick to the head means. I usually skip ’em too.

And then there are the writers who seem to get it right every single time. Dick Francis comes to mind. I bleed and ache with his protagonists. I can feel the dull thud of a fist connecting with the hard muscle under flesh. I can hear the crack of a broken rib.

Do you have any favorite fight-scene writers? Can you share a sentence/paragraph of what you consider to be an excellent example?

P.S.
I passed my pre-test for my black belt in Tae Kwon Do last Friday night and have been invited for the formal test on August 2. Hold a good thought for me. I’ll post the results on August 4.

nuking the ‘fridge

by Toni McGee Causey

By now, I assume that anyone who was really in love with the Indiana Jones movie would have gone to see #4. If you haven’t seen Indiana Jones and the Crystal ~~McGuffin~~, er, Skull, there be spoilers here. The entire blog. I would warn you away from if you haven’t seen the movie yet and still wanted to, but I am doing you a favor. (And let me just stop for a second and to say to those of you who
enjoyed this film… I love you, you know I do. I think you’re smart
and funny and all kinds of great and your hair is really cute today, but I want to know where you got the
crack you used while you were enjoying this film, because clearly, I
needed some.)

This movie was so classically bad, so widely panned, it generated a phrase — "nuking the fridge" — a new way of saying "jumping the shark" — which occurs when a series has "passed [its] peak, since [it has] undergone too many changes to retain
[its ]original appeal, and after this point critical fans often sense a
noticeable decline in the show’s quality."

Near the beginning of the film, Indiana Jones has escaped from the Cold War Russian Bad Guys with Bad Accents in the dessert at area 51, and has managed to find himself in a small town… he goes to the trouble of climbing over a fence, if I remember correctly, and breaking into a house–his plan? To use a telephone to get help. I will go along with that. The initial sequence was bad, the whole magnetic skull thing bad (if you put a cloth over something strong enough to pull coins to it, the magnetization is not going to stop because of a cloth. Or a piece of wood, like the lid to a box. And if the box is lined with something blocking the strong magnetization, then you can’t use magnetization to find the box.)

So okay, I’m going to forgive the opening. Fine. Indy’s inside the house and he then sees that there’s a family sitting in the living room, and on closer inspection, realizes they are mannequins. Indy runs outside, only to have the camera pull back and show that there are plastic people on the lawn, mimicking real people–a child pulling a wagon, I think someone’s mowing or watering a lawn, whatever, all plastic.

Supposedly, the town is filled with mannequins. I’m not entirely sure how he missed all of those as he was making his way to the center of that town, nor why he didn’t choose to break into the house on the very outskirts of town (maybe only the center of town had phone service back then). A loud siren blares, with some sort of loudspeaker announcement that the nuclear blast is imminent.

You know, because those mannequins needed to be told to brace themselves.

So Indy runs back inside (after bumping into one of the nicely painted mannequins–and they needed to be pained… why? exactly who was supposed to be around to care if they were lifelike?)… anyway… he’s running back inside to try to find a solution (because saying, "I am so fucked" at this point in the movie is probably a bad thing) (which is what most of the audience was thinking)… and Indy’s great solution? He climbs into a lead-lined refrigerator (thank you Speilberg for that shot of the "lead lined" on the refrigerator, because without that? your credibility might have been completely questionable) and closes the door just as the nuclear warhead detonates, melting all of the mannequins and destroying the houses.

Whereupon we cut to a scene supposedly far outside the blast zone to see that refrigerator (and no other furniture or real debris) flying through the air and landing and rolling and then Indy popping out of the fridge. Safe.

I’ll be the first to say that story logic? Sometimes can out-maneuver a writer. Sometimes a writer will put in months of work and revisions and the story has evolved in their head to the point where they will give a character a reason for doing something toward the end of the book or movie that is completely illogical when taken in context of the beginning. Sometimes in the process of writing, a writer will figure out a better person "whodunit" or a better villain or a better piece of dialog, whatever, and they’ll have to backtrack, rewrite or polish… and when doing so, small threads or hints from the original plot may be left behind which can screw with the ultimate, final logic. Occasionally people don’t catch it, and it can make a reader not really trust that writer if they are yanked out of the story with conflicting information that’s never resolved; however, most of the time they will forgive the writer a bad sequence or flubbed clue if, ultimately, the story makes sense. If, in the final moment, the emotional journey they traveled on was worth the price of the toll, the reader will be okay.

But there are two kinds of logic at work in any story. There is the immediate plot structure (which can be told out of order, but at some point, has to have a cause-effect sensibility), and there is the logic of the world created (these kinds of things happen in this world, these kinds of things don’t.) That latter kind of logic skips hand in hand merrily down the street with tone.

If logic is skipping to a samba beat and tone is skipping to an aria, the audience is going to see the result and feel everything is off-kilter, out of focus, and feel like the world in front of them has been violated, out of sync.

I’m not sure what kind of movie Indy 4 was supposed to be; once they set down the road of hyperbole, someone somewhere decided, and then a whole lot of other people agreed, that the logic of the sequence of events–the set pieces–was more important than overall story logic. If your sequence works, but violates the point of the world, the audience is going to feel it. They’re not just watching that sequence–they’re watching it in the context of the entire frame of the story. In addition, the tone has to match. If Indy 4 was madcap camp–completely intended to be something like Airplaine or any spoof? It would have totally worked. But we were not lead to believe they were spoofing themselves.

There are rules to the world a writer creates. Always. Worlds built on reality, worlds built on hyperbole. No matter the genre, the writer has to take the rules of the world seriously and honor the characters they’ve created.

And in the world of Indy 4, Indy is supposed to come upon incredible obstacles and then outsmart them. The solutions may be outrageous, but they are within the bounds of the bigger-than-life world. He’s supposed to be this affable, sort of smart ass professor, who in secret, is really a kick ass archaeologist.

He is not supposed to be the kind of guy who could walk into a town, climb over a fence and not notice that all of the people he’s scurrying from have not moved even a fraction of an inch. And are plastic.

I maybe couldda forgiven them that, if the rest of the movie had made some sort of sense. The McGuffin: must return the crystal skull of super smart alien to its body. Don’t really have a reason, other than it told Indy to. Okay. Fine. When he finds the location that he’s to return the skull to, there are 13 crystalline skeletons in a circle, one with its head missing. The one that is all of the way across the room from the door. The way the skeletons are sitting there, all intact except for the one missing head, the implication is that the skull was stolen after they were all on their thrones.

Um, how, exactly? When the skull is returned, they all come back to life and merge into one. If they were so smart, why wouldn’t they have noticed that someone was tiptoeing across the room? Were there aliens strippers distracting them? What? And I’d love to give the storytellers credit at this point that the skull was stolen before the beings were all sitting on their thrones, but that’s not how they told the story–and that’s not how the scene is shot.

The movie was not only ruined for me, because the tone and logic were so out of hand, but the series* in retrospect just looks silly now, instead of the cool iconic hyperbolic heroic kind of story that it was: where intelligence was sexy and capable of adventure.

So, story logic: vital. Don’t leave home without it.

Instead of us all skewering specific writers (I feel like Speilberg and Lucas can handle the rant)… what are your pet peeves that break you out of the story and ruin the experience for you?

*I will admit to sort of loathing the second one, but it really wasn’t this bad.

And yet another Thrillerfest wrap-up

by Alex

I’m one of the ones who grumbled about TF being in NYC again this year – not that I don’t love New York, I mean, please! – but I felt last year’s con was very – UNintimate compared to that magical first one in Phoenix. To be fair, last year I was having a rough time personally – a longtime friend of mine had died that week and I felt like an open wound.

This year, though, every single thing that went wrong about last year went beautifully right. Con organizers bent over backward to make sure that this Thrillerfest was awesome in every way. I can personally attest to the remarkable efforts of Steve Berry, the truly amazing Liz Berry and Kathleen Antrim – can we just bottle them? – Jim Rollins, Jon Land, Laura Benedict, Michelle Gagnon, and I know there are many more that I should be thanking. The panels were imaginative, lively, and well-attended, the mixers seemed to be as well (I was mostly running around too much to attend), everyone’s energy was WAY up, and the banquet and awards show (which I personally was sweating bullets about after last year’s 17-hour debacle) came in at under three hours and played like a variety show with debonair sweetheart Jim Rollins emceeing. There was much laughter (including everything Jim said and a Dating Game style introduction to the board members and a hilarious send up to the NY Times Bestseller list by those gorgeous and multitalented Palmers, Michael and Daniel…) and some incredibly moving moments (Tor editor Eric Rabb’s heartbreaking tribute to NYPD Auxiliary Officer Nicholas Pekearo, slain in the line of duty, whose first novel The Wolfman was bought four days before his death)

I was so thrilled to see Doug Clegg post this on another message board:

“It is the single best, most professional writers’ conference I have ever attended in 20 years in this business. It reminded me of the way Hollywood might portray a writers’ awards and events weekend.”

That is I think exactly what ITW is going for, and it’s working like a charm.

As usual I was doing way too much at this con this year:

– Singing for the banquet with some of the Killer Thriller Band again, down and dirty garage style this time… with Heather Graham, F. Paul Wilson, Dave Simms and Jeff Buick (although singing without Harley Jane Kozak was like trying to perform with a limb missing…)

– Meeting with my fantastic editor, Marc Resnick, and the St. Martin’s crew. As JT said yesterday, it’s gold to have that face time with your publishers – the planning you can do for the year is exponential, and I’ve got to admit that having TF in NY makes that all easily possible. St. Martin’s also hosted their usual packed-to-the-ceiling cocktail party, this time without any alcohol whatsoever. (Yeah, right…)

– Meeting with Eric Raab, my Tor editor on the almost-out THE DARKER MASK anthology and getting the first copies of the book.

– A fantastically successful book reading/signing at Borders on Thursday at 7 pm called “Quick Thrills from Out-of-Towners, with Michelle Gagnon, Laura Benedict, JT Ellison, Mario Acevedo, Shane Gericke and Tim Maleeny, emceed by James Bond… I mean Lee Child. We were standing room only and it really showed that putting some group effort into an event can pay off in spades.

– A Screen/vs. Page panel on Hollywood and publishing with Paul Levine, Thomas Sawyer, John Gilstrap and Lorenzo Carcaterra, emceed to the hilt by the irrepressible Jon Land. Those guys put together are their own film school and so funny – we could have gone on for hours.

– A spiritualism/parapsychology panel with Heather Graham and Wendy Corsi Staub, Friday night. It was billed as “a séance” which the three of us quickly nixed (we’ve all participated in them but for numerous reasons didn’t want to do that for entertainment). All three of us write on topics of parapsychology and the paranormal from a very realistic standpoint, and we were privileged to have Dr. Lauren Thibodeaux, a professional psychic – and psychologist – from the Lily Dale spiritualist community with us to discuss the real-life explanations of psychic events. People from the audience shared some amazing stories. We’d dimmed the lights for atmosphere and halfway through the program the recessed spotlight above Lauren started flickering on and off. None of the rest of the lights –just her light. And the second the panel concluded, the light came on full strength, completely normal. Our audience ate it up.

– Lunch with my uber-fabulous agent Scott Miller… perfect combination of work and play. Unfortunately I had to miss the debauched 3-hour dinner with the Scott Miller posse (we do have the coolest agent on the planet…)

– An interview with NPR.

Plus all the usual conference magic and madness… an outside highlight of the trip this year was going to the drag restaurant (yes, that’s what I said) Lips, where seven foot (in platforms and screaming pink wig) All-Beef Patty served us frozen Cosmos and dinner in between hilarious Karaoke and comedy acts and “Bitchy Bitchy Bingo”.

I thought the debut authors’ breakfast (which I managed to wake up for) was a great success – it’s not unique to Thrillerfest but a really important feature. I was happy to meet Jordan Dane – what a lovely person, I just adored her instantly – and get a few moments with Kelli Stanley – a study in noir all on her own.

I heard mixed reviews about Agentfest – the speed-dating session with 140 writers and 40 agents (a few editors), but it’s a great concept and the lineup of agents was just stunning. I think they just need to work out some logistical kinks, and I have no doubt that will happen.

On the slightly darker side, maybe because I’m so comfortable with this group and the whole drill myself, this year I was more aware of some underlying pain and trauma at the con. Hopes are so high, and I know some people who attend looking for an agent or a deal feel like they’re putting all their eggs in this one basket, or all their chips on one number – whatever metaphor you want to use – they think they’re taking their one shot. That really isn’t true at all – for example, I see Agentfest as a chance for an aspiring author to get a good look at and vibe from 40 great agents – and THEN do the querying and follow-up with the agents they feel a click with. But there was a bit of an undercurrent of all-or-nothing desperation, and I’d really like to see ITW do more of a prep session for aspiring authors – on conference etiquette, on how to pitch, on how to make the most of this divine madness. A kind of mini-mentoring program for aspiring authors, just as there’s a mentoring program for debut authors.

Finally, I had to mention what I think is a canny move by ITW: they’ve abolished dues for active members. Read here. It’s really not about the money – what it means is that every traditionally published thriller author is automatically a member of ITW, dues free. Of course, you the writer have to reach out to ITW to get the benefits of the organization, but this policy instantly swells the ranks of ITW in a way that can be profound.

So okay, call me converted to Thrillerfest in New York. What ITW does pretty brilliantly is star power – and the agents and editors and publishers and reviewers and journalists flock to that light. Having the con in NY makes it easy for all those people to attend. And as for the cost? Well, what I say is – slumber party!!!

FYI, I’ll be a guest in the Writers’ Chatroom this Sunday evening, so please pop in if you’ve always wanted to know what I most like in…

Well, okay, maybe never mind that.

Sunday, July 20, 2008
7-9 PM EST.
http://www.writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm