by JT Ellison

“I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.”

– James Michener

Well. That says a lot.

I’ve been doing some heavy duty thinking lately. Brainstorming on a new book mostly, but also about some of my goals for the year. I maintain a personal blog on my website, and one of my goals for this year was to create a world that was predicated on what I enjoy reading from other personal blogs – snippets of the author’s life.

There’s just one big issue with that for me. I’m not good at sharing.

Quit guffawing… it’s true. You’re different. You’ve been kindly allowing me to grapple with issues, weighty and otherwise, in this slot for five years now. I feel like we know one another, even if it’s just a little.

For the rest of it – I try, very hard, to measure out my words and thoughts with care, making sure that only the things I want out in the world are out in the world. I am the Queen of the regretful tweet – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back and deleted one after it was sent, cringing for some reason or another. I can’t seem to just toss a little ‘this is what happened to me today’ blog together, either. Oh yes, sharing news is easy, but sharing me? Not so much.

I think it’s more than a natural reticence to be open with relative strangers. I’m barely open with the people who know me.

I think it all comes down to the fact that while we’re all circling the sausage factory, none of us truly want to go inside and see how it’s made.

Because making a book is a very, very messy business.

There’s the title search. The plot development. The character names. And then, the actual writing. The hair-pulling, the cowardice, the grand plans, the failures. The calloused fingers and cramped wrists and lost nights. The attempts to settle your overactive mind with a glass (or two) of wine and prayers to an unknown deity that it will turn off, just for a bit, so you can be normal. See this for some stark reality into what goes on in our brains.

Writing a book is so much more than writing a book.

And nowadays, being a writer doesn’t mean the same thing it did 5, 10, 15 years ago. Being a “writer” now means you’re responsible for creating an amazing product, bleeding onto the page, meeting that deadline and wowing your team, editing and revising and copyediting and galleying, THEN going on the road, tweeting, facebooking, blogging, bookclubbing, skyping, conferencing, and sharing the intimate details of the process with everyone and their brother, all while coming up with and writing yet another masterpiece.

Yikes!

Here’s one of the problems.

Writing is a solitary endeavor. It’s meant to be. I don’t know how many writers could be collaborators as well; I know for a fact that it’s not up my alley. I like to live in my own head. I like to observe. But I also really enjoy talking to my writer friends. I love talking to fans. Sometimes, a little note on Facebook is all we need to turn a bad writing day into a good one. Our virtual water cooler is our office.

Here’s the other thing. Writers are interested in writing. We read books about it. We’re interested in others “process.” We’re fascinated by the agony everyone else seems to go through, and identify because it’s our agony as well. 

We talk at length about our daily word counts. We openly discuss our blocks, our peccadilloes, our nightmares. Our impetus. Our concerns. We gossip and teach and discuss at length. We extrapolate our worlds into the minds of others, daily, hourly, as the thoughts occur to us.

Even our editors and agents are forced into this overshare. My agent doesn’t tweet or blog, but my editor does. They too are expected to open the doors on their process. And I have to admit, it’s disconcerting to know that not only are our fans and friends watching our every move, our bosses are as well. There isn’t a corner of our creative lives that is private anymore. 

Does this transparency help us, or hurt us?

Are we devaluing our art through constant discussion of HOW it’s created, rather than enjoying the end product alone? Because every word that’s written discussing writing is another word that isn’t part of a creation. And creation, to be honest, is the writer’s paramount responsibility.

Do you see James Patterson tweeting? Hardly. But he can put out 17 new books in a year, because he’s focused on creating. Same with some of the other big dogs I admire – the Stephen Kings and Nora Roberts of the world. I look at them in awe and wonder. HOW do they write so much? HOW are all their ideas so clever and original? WHAT IS THEIR PROCESS LIKE?

See, I’m guilty of my own argument – I’m just as curious as the next person. This unknown veil we’ve lifted is quite entertaining, and enlightening. I’ve learned a great deal by following the right people on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve made great friends. And lost a few along the way, when they didn’t agree with me, or vice versa.

But what, exactly, is the point? Are we to be writers, or networkers? I think the time has come to choose.

I read something last week that started me down this primrose path – about the designer, former ballerina Jamie Wolf, who created Natalie Portman’s engagement ring. It was an interesting article, but one line at the end leapt out and smacked me in the face. She said: 

 “To quote one of my favorite ballet teachers, ‘No one wants to see how hard you are working.’”

I read that, and it shook me.

Because it’s true.

Think about the ballerina. She bleeds for her art, in the most literal of senses. Have you ever seen a dancer’s feet? They’re painful to look at. Torn and shredded, bruised and deformed. But will she ever show you the steps that it took to get those feet? The hours and hours of blood, sweat and tears? That the deformities are a point of pride? That if her feet aren’t mangled, it shows she hasn’t been working hard enough? Remember the old quote, never let them see you sweat? Ballet epitomizes that saying for me. Dancers work incredibly hard so that when you experience their art, it looks effortless.

So do writers.

But for a writer …I can’t help but wonder…. Am I littering the world with sausage casings? Do my thoughts on “things” matter? Is that what I’ve been doing for the past five years? Is that what social networking boils down to? Letting the world see how hard you work?

That concept sucked the sharing right out of me.

Maybe it’s what I needed to hear at the moment I needed to hear it. The pressure of continuing a constant chatter of information has started to take its toll on me. I really like my bi-monthly blog here. I don’t know that I need more than that. I want to go back to the days, just a few years past, when the interaction with readers and friends would be through thoughtful essays rather than thoughtless quips. Even as much as I enjoy Twitter….

I seem to have drifted a bit off course here. Apologies. It seemed important to make clear that I love my interactions here, that we all do. I’ve always loved it.

But I think the truth of the matter is this. I’ve started to wonder if readers truly want to see how hard we’re working. Part of creating a product that people adore is the mystique that surrounds it. Do you want to see the desk littered with empty whiskey glasses and spilled bottles of mood stabilizers? Or do you want the fantasy, the aura of the successful writer—the quiet, hardworking wordsmith who’s bringing down the house with an amazingly well crafted story?

Look again at the Michener quote.

“I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.”

I want to be that writer. I want my work to eclipse me. I want my work to be the only thing that matters.

My question for you today – do you think writers should go back to Michener’s era and shut up? Or do you want to see how the sausage is made?

And writers – do you think having to lay bare your soul on a personal level as well as bleed onto the page for your art is worth it?

In the spirit of sharing, a signed copy of SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH will go to one commenter. And don’t forget we have a new CAPTCHA system to alleviate the “Buy my watch now!” spam we’ve been getting, so double check that your comment has posted. We hope this is temporary.

Wine of the Week: Cline Ancient Vine Carignane – so delicious it almost made me cry. You have to try this. Let it open for at least fifteen minutes though.

by JT Ellison

Shalimar.

Quick. What’s that make you think of? Can you smell it?

Shalimar on cold fur, whispering against my mother’s skin as she came to tuck me in after an evening out at a fancy ball.

Shalimar means Temple of Love in Sanskrit. And really, isn’t that why we use perfume and cologne? To attract? To comfort. To leave behind a memory? I am fascinated by what people choose to dab themselves in. It’s so much more than smelling pretty, really, it’s more about who you are. Your scent says a lot about you. So don’t laugh when I say this is probably the most intimate post I’ve ever done on Murderati.

I don’t wear much perfume these days. Instead, I’m a dedicated fan of La Vanilla, which is a rollerball delivered essential oil of vanilla. It is yummy. Delicious. When I wear it my husband tells me I smell good. That’s good enough for me.

But I’ve tried my hand at a number of perfumes over the years.

I started out with the age-old classic, Love’s Baby Soft.

I remember how special I felt when I graduated to White Shoulders.

Then on to Charlie, which I always felt vaguely silly wearing.

Anäis Anäis, my first teenager girl perfume.

Tresor, my second teenage girl perfume.

Joy, which trumped all of the above and was without a doubt my signature scent from about fifteen to thirty.

Chanel no. 5, which they’ve sadly just changed the formula on.

Gio, which, to my utter horror, was discontinued and parades now as Aqua di Gio, a pale imitation of its scrumptious predecessor.

Arpege, which I still wear on occasion, but has a tendency to make drunk men corner me by the bathrooms and tell me I smell pretty.

Philosophy Amazing Grace, which I do still wear. Mostly in my hair, at the beach, for some reason.

Despite that list, I’m incredibly picky when it comes to scent. Patchouli makes me sneeze. Red Door gives me an immediate migraine. Obsession was just so, well, obsessive. Most perfumes seem too loud, too forward. And when it comes to men’s scents – forget about it.

My man wears this great subtle cologne that no one can smell but me, because you can’t smell it unless your nose is literally up against the skin. (He’s going to kill me for that. I foresee Randy being sniffed at close range at the next conference bar…)

But I’ve dated them all.

Polo – Sorry, boys, but GAG ME WITH A SPOON. Granted, Polo used with a modicum of discretion probably wouldn’t be bad, but for some reason, men loved to drown themselves in it. There was one guy in high school who you could literally smell coming from two halls away.

Royal Copenhagen – okay, that’s more like it. A subtle, powdery scent.

Davidoff Cool Water – I am so not going there… but I do still have the clear glass heart Christmas ornament he gave me. Shhh….

Drakkar Noir – It sounded so freaking cool – I wear Drakkar – but the guys who did were utter Guidos or on the wrestling team. I always wondered how that felt, being pinned to the mat by a guy wearing Drakkar. Well, how it felt for the guys. Ahem.

My Dad was an Aqua Velva Guy. I am immediately sent into his arms any time I smell it. Same with Old Spice and my grandfather.

But Shalimar… wow. A classic. We were watching MAD MEN the other night, the first season, and Joan’s roommate asks her is she’s wearing Shalimar, and I was thrust back in time, to the mirrored perfume tray on my dresser, chock full of lovely glass bottles. To the feeling of being a woman, fresh from the shower, dabbing perfume in my pressure spots – inside the wrist, inside the elbow, behind the knee, behind the ear, between the breasts. Seeing my olfactory palate change as I matured.

There’s something so indefinable, yet so concrete, about how a woman smells. And no matter what, those smells are attached to memories. Good memories, bad memories, indifferent memories. Memories that make us laugh, or cry, or feel vaguely ashamed.

Think of the pheromones we put off naturally, the undetectable aromas that attract a mate. Think of how we spent so many years disguising them, drowning out our natural scent in favor of smelling like a flower. To what end? Attracting bumblebees?

Well damn. That just makes me think about Spanish Fly.

I thought I’d drag you down memory lane with me. But there is a point to all of this. Tell me about your favorite scent, your favorite cologne, from now, or then. A scent that evokes a memory. Something that you love, or hate. That makes you tingle inside, or draw back in disgust.

And I’ll do a random drawing for a galley of my new book, SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH.*

Ready? Go!

Wine of the Week: Zen of Zin  Good wine depends on scent. It’s part of the experience. Your nose makes your taste buds work properly. This one is yummy – cherry and strawberry; spice vanilla and orange peel. And if I’m not mistaken, a little bit of earth overlaid with Pacific Ocean breeze. Those Sonoma Valley Zinfandels are unmistakable.  

 *I’ll announce the winners on my personal blog, Tao of JT, Sunday night, and leave a note here in the comments. If you’ve already entered over there, please don’t double dip. I’ll do two separate drawings so it’s fair to everyone.

by JT Ellison

For the past two years, I’ve been doing annual reviews of my life and work, based on the format from Chris Guillebeau’s wonderful Annual Review on his blog, The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris’s system is exceptionally detailed, more so than I really need, but the gist is there. It’s a great system for those of us who are self-employed and want to do an assessment of our work for the year.  I don’t know about you, but I like accountability. I like the feeling of accomplishment I get when I look back over the past year’s worth of work and see what worked, and what didn’t. (Here’s the link to the actual post. Go on over there and take a read. I’ll wait.)

My editor gave me the best Christmas present this year. Time. I turned in my book at the same time as four of my compatriots, and my deadline is later than theirs, so I got bumped to the end of the line. For the first time in four years, I had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. My reward? A week without Internet.

I really did it. I left my laptop at home. I didn’t go online from December 24 – December 30. It was shockingly hard for the first few days (and a family emergency necessitated a couple of quick checks through Randy’s computer) but when I got home, I realized I didn’t want to go online. I liked not having to answer email. I liked not having to check Facebook. I still haven’t been back to Twitter formally, though my feeds are up and running. I guess I needed the vacation, huh?

What I did spend my time on was reading – AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman and HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST by Steve Hely. I hung out with my family, watched too much football to be healthy, played a couple of rounds of golf. I did an accounting of the past year – word counts, goals achieved and missed – and set my goals and intentions for 2011.

The Year in Review – 2010: The Year of Evolution

I was struck on Monday by Lee Child’s comment that he gets melancholy on New Year’s Eve, because the past year has been so wonderful that he can’t imagine how the new year can top it. That’s how I felt about 2010. It had several big lows, as all years do, but the highs – oh, the highs! Blessings abounded in the Ellison household this year. It actually became a family joke – we’re having a good year. A very good year. And it wasn’t about money, or tangible items. As a matter of fact, we gave half of our household to Goodwill. Literally, half. 15 years worth of materiel that had accumulated. No, the reason 2010 was so good was our happiness level. We’ve both found what we’re meant to be doing. We work hard, and we play hard. We’ve reveled in each other’s company, and given thanks daily for our blessings. It allowed me to reach out to others and lend a helping hand too, which made the year all that much better.

And strangely congruent to that happiness, I think 2010 was the first year that I felt my mortality. So much happened to so many of our dear friends, so many tragedies, so much loss, that I realized how very short this life is, and found the keys to making the most of what I have left. Things that used to matter don’t anymore. They’re mostly topical, clothes and makeup and worrying about how people perceive me. Professionally, obviously, I have to care about those things, or else I’d never get better as a writer. But on a personal level, I let it all go, and found my bliss. So in a deeply private place, I achieved the overarching goal for the year. I feel I did evolve, and that translated over to both my professional and personal lives.

More importantly, I achieved many of my professional goals for the year. I even got to check off a five-year career goal. There were many things that went wrong, but twice as many that went right. On the bad side, I discovered writer’s block, true block, for the first time, and managed to overcome it. That taught me too many lessons to count. I missed my first deadline, only by two weeks, but still. Like everyone, sales took a hit across the board, but e-sales increased. Time will only tell if that’s the exception or the trend. I spent too much time talking about writing and not actually writing.

The highlights included a new contract for three more Taylor books, 7-9 in the series, a new audio contract for books 6-9, the release of All the Pretty Girls, 14 and Judas Kiss into multiple countries, and a sale of the first three TJ books to Turkey. I wrote two Taylor Jackson books, and launched two Taylor Jackson books, with attendant tours and publicity, including a trip to the UK. I also put out a collection of my previously published short stories called SWEET LITTLE LIES. I wrote over 20,000 words on proposals for new material. All in all, though I think I can do better in 2011, I’m pleased with my accomplishments this year.

There’s one more terribly special item that I can’t go into, but will in time, that rounded out a pretty exceptional professional year. Now you see why I’m wondering how in the world 2011 could top 2010.

The Nitty Gritty (AKA Nerdology)

Numbers-wise, I did much better than last year. Here’s the top-line breakdown. All figures are approximate, mostly because I don’t count what was trashed and rewritten, only final word counts:

2010 Word Total: 618,383
Fiction Total: 198,383
Non-Fiction Total: 420,000
Fiction Percentage: 32%

I wrote on average 544 fiction words per day and 1150 non-fiction.

Last year, my fiction percentage was only 27%. I wrote 112,445 more words this year, 62,645 of them fiction. I wrote 11,500 less non-fiction, and (TRIUMPH!) dropped my Facebook and Twitter word counts by 34,500 words. I achieved that by automating all of my blog entries to go straight to the social networking sites, and by closing down my personal Facebook page in favor of the Like/Fan/Reader page. My emails increased, from an average of 6 per day in 2009 to 7 per day in 2010. I attribute that jump to using email to make more personal connections, rather than the fly-bys on Facebook and Twitter. My non-fiction was managed much better, with the totals growing by 40,800 over last year due to publicity interviews and essays I did for AOL and my personal blog.

If you want to get even more detailed, see the chart below. (remember, OCD chick here…)

The Year Ahead – 2011: The Year of Depth

2011 started off as the Year of Love. That goal seemed too amorphous for me – I love. I love a lot. Passionately. People, life. I didn’t see that it would achieve the kind of transcendence I’m looking for. So I’ve altered course. 2011 is now the Year of Depth. I want to dig into the things that interest me, and leave the parts that waste time and energy behind. From my Planner:

A renewed focus on education, learning and expanding my horizons. Spending more time on pleasurable pursuits like reading, Italian and golf, and much less time on the Internet. More exercise, better eating and more cooking – savoring every moment. Working toward a more Zen attitude toward negativity. Increase fiction percentage to 50%.

I want to write two novels, and start a third. I have two short stories to write for anthologies, and a third I’d like to finish and place. I’m judging a couple of contests, and I want to work hard at reading the books I already have instead of bringing new ones into the house. I have three conferences planned: Left Coast Crime, RWA and Bouchercon. Sadly, a family wedding is interfering with Thrillerfest.

Personally, I will continue to chase the elusive dream of becoming a 16 handicap. It’s going to take some time, but I’m willing to give it all I’ve got. I will finish my Rosetta Stone Italian lessons. I will read the books I have instead of bringing new ones into the house. I will read more non-fiction, and be open to new experiences.

And I will continue to track myself. There is something truly satisfying about setting goals and seeing them through. I wish all of you the same peace and joy that allows us all to be productive and happy.

If I could only find a way to track the words that come out of my mouth, as well as my fingers…

So am I crazy for caring about this level of detail? Do any of you do the same?

Wine of the Week: Veuve Cliqout, specifically at midnight on January 1. A must have.

by JT Ellison

On the first day of Christmas, I wrote furiously… 2148 new words.

One the second day of Christmas, I wrote furiously…rewrote 2148 words, and wrote 2741 new words.

On the third day of Christmas, I wrote furiously… rewrote 2741 words, and wrote 4817 new words.

On the fourth day of Christmas, I wrote furiously… rewrote 4817 words, and wrote 4236 new words, which equaled the end of the first draft. Much celebration ensued.

On the fifth day of Christmas, I wrote furiously… rewrote 4236 words, and wrote 2044 new words.

On the sixth day of Christmas, I wrote furiously… rewrote 2044 words, and wrote 2872 new words.

On the seventh day of Christmas, I didn’t write furiously… rewrote 2872 words, which added 479 new words, before having an ocular migraine which I was convinced was a stroke, dragged my husband out of a meeting to take me to the eye doctor because I was afraid to drive, who told me this was a most common experience, and checked my prescription, which hasn’t changed in over six years, wahoo!, to which I responded with an Ativan and subsequent glasses of wine at a holiday party, where good cheer was in abundance and I got to thank my lucky stars that it was simply an ocular migraine and not a serious issue, then ate chicken tenders and went to sleep.

On the eight day of Christmas, I got back down to work… wrote 2829 new words and declared the second draft finished, so I printed the bitch out.

On the ninth day of Christmas, I looked back on the work of the past eight days and felt slightly faint. Knowing a stroke was out of the cards, at least for now, I put all my research away in the book’s box, thought about what I wanted to write next, got a latte from Starbucks, wrote this post, and dove into the big revision.

Is Christmas over yet?

So you don’t have to do the math, that mess above represented 22176 new words in eight days on my newest book. That averages to 2272 new words a day. It was a two steps back three steps forward process. Each day, I’d read through what I wrote the day before, get caught up, then write new words. So I effectively edited the mess whilst writing it, something I rarely do to this extent. The book is now due December 22, thanks to a tiny extension, but will probably get submitted December 13, which might mean that my editor and I don’t have to work over Christmas vacation. Which would be a Good Thing.

I’ve talked about writer’s block here before, the fact that I believe it’s your story’s way of telling you you’re going in the wrong direction. Well, I had a whopping, massive case of block on this book. I’ve never experienced anything like this. I’m betting it’s similar to what many writers experience on their second novel, that soul sucking fear that the world is going to swallow you whole and you will never, ever produce anything that remotely resembled a finished novel, much less anything that real people would want to read, much less pay actual money to read, and you’re the worst writer in the world, with no discipline, and you can’t remember exactly how you wrote the first book, because looking back, you think you must have entered a fugue state and the gremlins in your brain exited, stage right, onto the page and when you woke each morning they appeared as tiny little black scratches on a white background which most of the world’s people have been exposed to because in Europe learning English is mandatory but to you it looks like Cyrillic, which sends you into new waves of spasm because seriously, the whole world can read this but it makes no sense to you.

Yeah.

I am not a perfect creature. As much as I’d like to be, I’m just not. And this book proved it to me, over and over and over again. It humbled me. It refused to work. As always, I like to challenge myself by writing in new forms, new subgenres, new locales. This book is mostly set in Scotland, and is a gothic suspense. Which, and I know, poor me, necessitated two trips to get the research right, one in July and another just before Thanksgiving. I had such grand plans when we booked the second trip—I’d have the draft complete, and I’d just be filling in the blanks. But the muse is a fickle wench sometimes, and she had other plans for me.

The book wouldn’t work.

No matter what I tried, it just wouldn’t. I talked before about how I was going to write the whole book in Scrivener. After outlining (which I’m convinced didn’t help things at all, but instead made them ten times harder) 30,000 words in I had to switch back to Word. Things started moving along again then, but I got stuck. I was writing words, adding to the page count daily, but it was crap. True, absolutely crap. I don’t normally write like that, but I knew I had to get through it. I went back to the beginning twice and started fresh. Suddenly, it was October, my fifth book came out, and I all stopped to do the promotion (because I suck at creating and promoting at the same time), and then in a blink of an eye, it was November 1. The beginning of NaNoWriMo. And I knew if I had any chance at making the deadline, I needed to figure this out.

Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness

So three weeks in, past the midpoint but not much further, we headed for Scotland for a week. Thank God we did, I had all sorts of things wrong. So when we returned, after a day off for Thanksgiving, I dove back in, thinking it was all going to come together.

It didn’t.

It was Sunday night, November 28, at about ten. I had been banging my head against the wall all weekend. Big word counts, the story was progressing, but I could feel, in my soul, that something was wrong. And that’s when I put on my headphones and dove into the soundtrack, trying to figure out why I’d put each song in, what it meant to me, to the story. I got to the end of the soundtrack when I heard it. A late addition. The song that had been so incredibly seminal in helping me figure out the end of the book. (And I can’t tell you what it is because it will ruin the story.) As I listened, I realized the massive, huge, ginormous mistake I’d made. All the way back on page 60. It hit me like a ton of bricks. A revelation. A lightbulb.

Magic.

Monday morning the 29^th I went back to the beginning. The very first page. I rewrote 175 pages that day, rewrote the next 70 the 30^th. I added nearly 11,000 words. And suddenly, there it was, in all its glory. The story finally, after 4 months of head banging, worked.

Hence the massive word dump that led to the finishing line, which isn’t rare for me, I usually write a substantial chunk of the book in the last few weeks.

Writing Secret #859 – Sometimes, when a book isn’t working, you must open yourself to the universe, drop your preconceived notions of what you’re trying to do, and let something magical happen.

Some of you saw this on Facebook. I put it up at the end of the day Tuesday. I feel like I was given a gift, that all the praying and moaning and teeth gnashing finally paid off, and the Muse, who is a fickle wench, but can be a really lovely woman if treated properly, given gifts and sacrifices and not cursed but nurtured and loved, tiptoed down from her mount on high and touched me on the shoulder.

The Muse Collection

There are just housekeeping details to take care of now – I’m reading through for my first major revision, will send to my betas today, will take a day off to buy Christmas presents and send cards, then buckle back down with their suggestions before sending it to New York Monday or Tuesday. Ahead of the revised schedule.

By the way, the new book? It’s called WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE.

So my question for you today: Have you ever prayed for something that was subsequently delivered? What blessings have you experienced this week?

Wine of the Week: Bivio Tuscan Red, a DOCG Chianti, because we drank a lot of it Tuesday night at the Dutch Lunch Literati Christmas Party, and I think the grapes might have naturally occurring Ecstasy in them, because it made me love everyone, so, so much.

by JT Ellison

This year at Murderati has been one filled with pain, with joy, with sorrow, with compassion. Though we’ve been in business for five years, honestly, this has arguably been our best. Because we’ve all been facing our fears. Dusty covered the idea of true, earth-shattering emotional reaction to fictional things that go bump in the night. Tess talked about her incredibly personal panic reactions to events out of her control. Stephen is facing the unknown, and I daresay Louise is as well. We’ve covered phobias, frustration, anger, change.

We haven’t talked a lot about fear.

If you think about it, fear is truly what drives us sometimes.

Fear of loss. Fear of death. Fear of success. Fear of failure.

Ah, yes. Fear of failure.

For writers, that term is an all too familiar companion. Yes, there are probably a few who are so confident that they never worry about their work, just plow ahead and damn it all. Their work is often soulless, but they aren’t up all hours of the night, fretting.

Fear of failure is my constant companion. Not just as a writer, but as a woman, as a wife, as a human being. It’s what drives me to focus, to write, to love. To jump off cliffs, headless of where I may land.

Failure, to me, is fear. I’ve failed before. Colossally. I’ve had jobs that I wasn’t any good at. I suck at friendships. I’m too frank, too impatient. I’m damn good at the wife thing, most of the time, at least, but when I was first married, I was terrible at that too. Practice made perfect, that and a very, very patient husband. I’ve learned to cook, to manage a house, to handle issues I’d never dreamed of. I think I have it down pretty well, though there’s always room for improvement.

I’d like to think I’m decent at the writing part. Not great. Oh no, far from that. But capable. Getting more and more confident. Learning the things to fret about and the things to let go.
Controlling the things I can control.

It’s amazing, though, that after writing all the books I have, that I hit a point in every book where I decide it’s a hellacious mess that has no business being finished, much less published. I hit that moment last week, minutes before I was due to get on a plane to Scotland to finish the research. I say finish — when we made plans for the trip, I was supposed to be done, and the trip would be a way to finalize little details: smells, sounds, looks. We’d been in July and I was convinced it was going to look so much different — which it did, and didn’t.

Instead, I’m not done, not remotely close enough to being done for my liking, as a matter of fact, and the trip, while brilliant, was too helpful. I know have a glut of information that needs to go in that I didn’t realize before, which is slowing things down at the exact moment I need to be gaining momentum.

And this is the moment when the fear sets in.

You should HEAR my brain.

You’re never going to finish. You suck. This book is too much of a stretch. Why did you break form? What are you thinking? Serial killer books are so much easier to write. Why did you decide to make this a gothic suspense? You’re an idiot. This will be the end of you.

Yeah. Lovely little blackbirds, aren’t they?

But at its most basic, all this is is fear. Yes, I’m taking a chance writing a book that might not “fit” with the previous six. But the desire to keep my series fresh and inviting dictates change. I can’t change the characters too much, but I sure can change the way I tell a story. And sometimes I bite off more than I can chew.

But conquering fear is what every writer faces every day. Steven Pressfield calls it resistance, and it’s true—when you’re scared, you will find anything and everything to distract you from actually putting your ass in the chair and writing the book. But all that does is get you stressed that you’re not living and breathing every moment of the book, and works on the part of your fragile psyche that feeds on negative thoughts.

I daresay that anyone who has had success is well versed in these moments of fear. And let’s face it, all fear and indulgence aside, the idea that you’re going to fail is a great inducement not to.

I’ve spent most of the past two days thinking about all the things I’m thankful for. Getting home safe from Scotland. My health. The love of my family and friends. The success of my novels. The simple joys of my life–petting the cat, watching a crackling fire, sipping a glass of wine, reading a book, talking to a friend on the phone. My husband, en totale, everything about him. The freedoms we enjoy in this country. That God gave me a gift and allowed me to put words to the page and tell you stories. The world we’ve created here at Murderati — all fourteen of us, and all of you — where we can share our joy and fear and success and sorrow among friends.

And I am also thankful for the fear. Because if I didn’t have anything to lose, I wouldn’t have much to live for. After a week delving deeply into the lives of Randy’s and my Scottish forebears, of seeing what they had to lose if they gave into the fear that must have plagued them constantly, the fact that their decisions were based in courage, in a desire to better themselves and the lives of their families, that the wrong decision meant an almost certain death, and the right one did too – all my “fear” seems a bit silly.

What about you, ‘Rati? What puts fear in perspective for you?

Wine of the Week: I did it the last time we went to the UK, but this one is such a winner, I’m recommending it again. Côtes du Rhone “Heritiers Plantin” Mont-Redon 2007

by J.T. Ellison

Sigh. If only we could apply the Pythagorean theorem to words. Just think of it, the ease of plugging A² + B² = C² into your manuscript and watching all the 1s and 0s percolate, get red hot on the screen and suddenly pop up with an answer – Choose Frank, you imbecile!

Love triangles suck.

I became a writer from sheer necessity, as numbers began to look Greek to me around the same time as my advanced algebra teacher caught me kissing a boy in the hall before class, pulled me aside, got in my face and yelled at me. “You’re not in love, you’re in heat,” were his exact words. I was wildly insulted. I found myself neither yowling aloud nor turning in circles with my tail in the air spraying urine on passersby (though I was in my preppy handbook stage, but that hardly qualified.) Turned me right off quadratic equations, and I didn’t find the love again until I met up with Euclid and his lovely triangles in my sophomore year. But by then it was too late. I spent much too much time in geometry extolling the virtues of Cal Ripken’s ice blue eyes with a fellow student and popping out my contact lens so I could sneak into the girls’ bathroom for a smoke. Trigonometry was great, we were allowed to use our circles in class, and I loved the way the word cosine sounded in my mouth, (try it – cosine. Co… sine… sexy, yeah?) but by the time I hit calculus, boys, books, sports and stories were paramount and I could barely give the numbers my attention.

But back to eighth grade. Said kissing, and apparent early onset estrus, was quickly followed by my first love triangle. The other boy, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, was older, darker, taller and richer – by God, he was in high school and drove a Saab. A SAAB, people. In comparison, my current relationship seemed like mere puppy love. I mean really, what girl’s going to pass up an opportunity to be driven home instead of holding sweaty hands in the back of the bus, watching the cowboys do snuff and cough their lungs out, and wondering just what base made you cool and what base made you a slut?

I labored over the decision (not the bases, the boys. The bases were later. Ahem.) The guys were friends. The older boy a sort of mentor to the younger. But he was so damn charming, and invited me to go skiing with him (up to the mountains in his Saab…) Who was I to hinder fate? I went. We skied, we drank cocoa, I felt cool in my new blue moon boots. Eventually, toward the end of the afternoon, on the ski lift for the last run of the day, we kissed. It was magical. Puppy love at its finest. And then I had to come back to earth (literally down the mountain, ah, the imagery slays me even now) and break up with the other boy, explain that somehow, without it being my fault, I fell in love with his friend.

I felt like a total heel. Still do, all these years later. The second relationship worked for a very long time, but eventually it too disintegrated, the vagaries of time, hormones and 3,000 miles of distance proved too much for its fragile beauty to withstand. We’re all Facebook friends now, because really, who doesn’t want to relive their most humiliating moments and painful decisions over and over and over?

My first love triangle proved to be painful for all involved. So when I approach the page with the concept, I am very, very careful. I know what it feels like to be the girl trying to make a choice. It’s not fun. No matter what, someone is going to get hurt.

That makes for a great story, because you’ve got a stellar opportunity to have character development. Pain makes your characters grow. And growing is what we’re all striving for in our fiction and hoping for from our characters, right?

But to have the logic and simplicity of math in the equation… We would know exactly what formula would work when presenting two love interests to a female lead. As it is, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. When I introduced James “Memphis” Highsmythe, Detective Inspector for the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard, Viscount Dulsie, I knew I was about to shake things up a bit. But I had no idea the impact it would have. I’m hardly in Stephanie Plum or Bella territory (though if someone were to establish a Baldwin versus Memphis fan club, who am I to interfere?) but I was shocked at the reactions. My male readers HATED Memphis. Some of the women did too. Though some really liked him; it’s been a completely mixed bad from the feminine side. I attribute this to the eighth grader in all of us who found themselves in exactly the same pickle I did, and the boys were obviously on the receiving end. Makes perfect sense.

As a writer, I adore Memphis. He is my own personal earthquake. He gets to step in, screw things up and make everyone mad, then trot off back to England and mourn his dead wife. No one can stay mad at him for long; though a confirmed rake, he’s got that special something all rakes have, which makes him catnip. Taylor is so far above the fray when it comes to these issues because she is a hero, but the fun of being a writer is watching heroes fall down on their way up Mt Olympus. Her fiancé, John Baldwin, FBI profiler extraordinaire, has always been the one to catch her when she falls. But not this time. When Memphis and Taylor shared a kiss, I mourned for Baldwin. Taylor was now interested in two men. I find myself suddenly backing into a love triangle, though I’d be more inclined to call this a polygon with modified vertices and segments with three non-collinear points and a distinct plane, because the word triangle is just too simplistic to explain the situation.

I’m working on the 7^th novel in the series now, and Memphis is back, in a big way. He is a catalyst. But I can’t help but wonder what would happen if he were to become… more. The unknown is always fertile ground for playing…

So tell me – love triangles: Love them? Hate them? What are your favorites? Do they have any place in crime fiction?

Wine of the Week: Tenute Rapitalà Nero D’avola – we’re heading into winter, so we need heavy wines that pair well with stews and soups. This one does the trick nicely.

 by JT Ellison

I had to make an executive decision about my writing this week. As I’ve discussed here before, I switched from Word to Scrivener, and tried writing my 6^th book in it. Things went well up to a point, but in the end I caved and went back to Word.

Then I went to Pages. Then back to Scrivener. Then back to Pages. Then back to Word. When we started revisions, I needed to restructure a few things, and I cursed myself, because if I’d stuck with Scrivener, it would have been so easy to just drag and drop to reorder the scenes…

I spent days pulling my hair out because I couldn’t figure out the most effective tool to use for my writing.

In other words, I was royally screwing around with my process.

I got the book done on time, and all was well. But for book the 7^th, I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to write the whole thing in Scrivener. I started the outline, populated the character lists, dropped in research, even started a book journal. Looking back over that journal, there is a consistent theme – this isn’t working. Oh, I couched it in all kinds of different terms – Taylor isn’t speaking to me, the story isn’t holding up, I’ve been swamped with THE IMMORTALS book release – but what it really says is Scrivener is messing with how you write, drop it and go back to Word. NOW.

We all have different ways up the mountain. One of the biggest mistakes new writers make is finding another method that sounds cool, trying it, and suddenly finding themselves blocked because something isn’t right, something isn’t working. I daresay that with seven novels under my belt, people wouldn’t categorize me as a new author, but sometimes I feel like just that, a newbie who’s trying to find her way.

 The joy of connecting with our fellow writers, with writing blogs and conferences and Tweets and books on writing etc., is finding out that everyone has a different way of doing things. I used to be intractable about my process. Open a Word Document. Put in the header. Start writing at Chapter One, and finish at Chapter Last. Plug away every day, 1,0000 words at a time, and poof, solid first draft in a few months. Then I started meeting other writers and hearing how they do it. I tried shaking things up. And boy, oh boy, was that a mistake.

When you’re thinking about your method, you aren’t writing.

And when you aren’t writing, you’re going to have serious problems. Because if you’re not writing, you just might be thinking about how to fix your method again. Cue roiling circle of hell.

I spent months telling myself that if I just tried harder with Scrivener, learned more about it, figured out all its little quirks that I’d be able to whip the manuscript into shape. Guess what? That’s not the case. There’s nothing I can do in Scrivener to make the software adapt itself to how my head tells a story. If I had only figured that out months ago instead of agonizing over the process, I’d be done with the book by now.

(Note: that’s the kind of thought process that starts its own roiling circle of hell in your head, whilst you beat yourself up for being stoopid. Stop that immediately. Pronounce Immediately with upper class British accent for maximum effectiveness – im-MEE-dgiat-ly)

The writing’s been on the wall for a while now, but I am loathe to admit defeat in any form, so I’ve been slogging away at it, hopeful that things will come together. Being mean to myself, taunting my fragile psyche with nastiness: Writers write. That’s what they do. Your equipment doesn’t matter, it’s just getting words on the page. You aren’t much of a writer if software is messing with your game. You suck. Etcetera.

But is that really true? Does the equipment matter? I know in golf it does. I was recently gifted with a heavenly driver, a Calloway Diablo Edge. This is a sweet club. It’s beautiful, like a newborn, all black and red and sexy. I paraded it in my bag proudly. But every time I hit the thing, it either sprayed off to the right or dropped well short of my usual spots. I tried all my tricks, but nothing worked. No matter what I did, I couldn’t hit it as far as I hit my current driver, a 460cc offset King Cobra 10 degree. Finally, I admitted defeat, went back to my Cobra and gave the club to my father, who promptly took it for a test drive, hit it straight as an arrow down the middle, with extra distance. What didn’t work for me worked perfectly for him.

But did that convince me? No. Physical prowess and mental acuity are two different things, right?

But then I took a large chunk of work to my critique group last week. As I was reading it aloud, multiple typos were springing up. Frustrating, and embarrassing – my group knows my weaknesses, but this level of mess isn’t normal. I’d read this all the material. I’d edited it. Yet I’d missed a ton of errors. Why? I was editing in Scrivener. Which doesn’t have the same kind of grammar and spell check system that Word has, which means my dyslexic typing skills were being hidden in the program. So now I had physical proof that the program was causing me double the effort, because I had to go back and fix all the stuff that Word would have automatically fixed for me. Grr.

I’ve also been having a terrible time keeping track of where I am in the story. Pacing is vital to a thriller, as is story structure and narrative flow. I wasn’t getting that in Scrivener, I was seeing the story as a whole broken into multitudes of scenes (I used Scriv to outline this one… another mistake. I get B.O.R.E.D. when I know what’s going to happen.) I figured that’s been my problem all along, this inability to get excited, when in fact it’s simply that I had no idea where I was in the story.

But the final straw came when Apple released Word 2011 for Mac. It is a glorious program, much more like what I used on my Vaio. I nearly cried when I saw the editing tools, and the beautiful floating screen that blocks all distractions, and the ease of reading two pages at once. I spent two hours moving everything out of Scrivener and back into Word, saw how many actual manuscript pages I have, knew where the transitions needed to go, and suddenly, I’m back working on a book like I should be.

Phew.

I bring all this up because NaNoWriMo starts Monday, and Scrivener for Windows is just releasing, and the Scrivener 2.0 is releasing for Mac. I’ll probably buy the upgrade, just to see. I don’t want to turn anyone off of Scrivener, I know a bunch of writers whom I greatly respect who couldn’t write without it, and it’s a terribly cool program. But I’ve finally realized that my brain doesn’t work in segments, and never will.

Now maybe I’ll be able to make my deadline.

Have you ever tried to force your square peg self into a round hole? What was the result?

Wine of the Week: Bodegas Montecillo Crianza

Please bear with me if I’m slow to respond this morning – darling husband is having his wisdom teeth out. Send ice cream! And lots of Percocet.

by JT Ellison

This is an irreverent title for a very serious post, and I chose it specifically to show that sometimes, we need some irreverence to deal with things in our life. Humor heals all wounds, and writing cop novels means I’ve dealt some really off color moments which defuse the tension of the situation at hand. Humor helps with most every circumstance—with nervousness, with fear and tragedy. Thank goodness we have that, at least.

I attended my first autopsy this past weekend. Allow me to amend, I spent a full morning at the Medical Examiner’s office, which meant not one, but four autopsies. Don’t worry, I’m not going to gross you out with freaky details. Not too many, at least. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss some of what I experienced and the way the day is haunting me. There are images seared into my brain now that I’ll never erase.

Names, places and details have all been slightly altered to protect the innocent.

#

I recently received an invitation to attend a postmortem, and I honestly didn’t want to accept. I’ve done a lot of boots on the ground research for my novels, but attending a real post wasn’t something that I’d ever really felt the need to do. There are great virtual autopsies online, and with my truncated pre-med background and subsequent fascination with doctors, I have enough of a familiarity with anatomy that I can manage. I’ve worked with the Manhattan Medical Examiner’s office to get specific details so my Medical Examiner in the book, Dr. Sam Loughley, doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes or misstatements. But I’ve always felt like a fraud. People ask all the time if I’ve attended autopsies, and the answer is always no.

But in the book I’m writing, Sam is a point of view character. So it was time. Plus, I mentioned the invitation in an interview last week, effectively outing myself, which meant culpability. Damn it. After a week of hemming and hawing, I accepted the invitation. We set the day for Sunday.

I dreaded Sunday all week.

#

I didn’t eat Sunday morning. I got a green tea from Starbucks. I figured that was as safe as anything. I was to call when I was in range. It wasn’t a quick drive, so I had plenty of time to think about backing out. I will freely admit to pulling into a gas station and sitting for about ten minutes, getting up the courage to make the call that I was close. Finally berating myself for being a total idiot, I called. I was ten minutes away, and I did my best not to think about what I was about to do. Or rather, I imagined fourteen different scenarios, in which I passed out, threw up, freaked out or otherwise embarrassed myself.

They met me outside, and whisked me in. I’ve been in this particular morgue before for identification of skeletal remains, passed a few spots I recognized, then suddenly, we were in the changing area. I handed over my purse, pulled on tons of protective gear, and grabbed my notebook. The following conversation ensued:

Tech: “She’s going to get blood on that. I’d leave it.” (She being the M.E.)

M.E.: “Hey, I’m pretty neat.”

JT: “She’s just kidding, right?”

Tech and M.E. have small, secretive smiles on their faces, which remain blank. I am certain they are teasing and decide to bring my notebook. My mask is around my neck. My heart is doing double time. I have enough familiarity with panic attacks to know that I’m pushing into the borders of one. I breathe deeply, square breaths.  

JT: “You should probably have the smelling salts ready, just in case.”

M.E.: “You’re going to be just fine. I’ll take good care of you.”

JT: “Seriously. I have no idea about how I’m going to react. I’m not kidding.”

Tech and M.E. realize that I’m quite serious, and make a plan for me.

Tech: “If you start feeling hot, step out. I’ll come and give you a coke or something.”

ME: “Are you ready?”

I swallow, hard, and nod. In we go.

#

It is white, clean, pristine, with shiny stainless steel and a man lying naked to my left. This is not my first dead body, but it is my first unclothed, which is momentarily shocking. My greatest fear is that there will be one of two demos: a man my father’s age, or a child. I immediately see the board says the man is in his 70s. Shit. I realize I’m breathing through my mouth, which isn’t necessary, there’s no real smell. The M.E. checks if I’m okay, and says we have four autopsies this morning. (FOUR? WTF? I only signed up for one. Panic sets in again, then abates. Surely I’m only going to observe one. I can handle this.)

We move further into the morgue. I immediately see a young boy on a gurney further away from the sinks. Nightmare scenario two. I stop cold. The M.E. asks again if I’m okay, tells me not to personalize. There are two more bodies, one woman with blood on her face and a young man with tattoos along his ribcage. I feel the urge to run and not look back. I also have the most absurd reaction—I keep looking for chests to rise, for eyes to open, for bodies to sit up. I’ve got a full-fledged horror film running through my brain—one that never really goes away.

Everyone is waiting for me. The techs are standing at the ready by their bodies. The guests, they call them. All the bodies have been stripped, weighed and measured. Since none of the deaths are criminally suspicious, evidentiary precautions are not in play. Each station is set up with a white board with things written on it like heart, liver, kidneys. I know enough to know that’s for weight measurements of the organs. I am still on my feet, though looking over my shoulder expecting a ghostly white hand to grab me. When we’ve established that I’m not going to barf or bolt, the M.E., who is no nonsense and an excellent teacher, takes me to the computer and we review the cases.

The first step is to cover the details of each individual case. We have an unattended death outside, an unattended possible overdose, a possible suicide, and the child with severe head trauma. I am hugely relieved to learn that his autopsy will be external only, the cause of death was established by the hospital. Thank God for small favors.

We step to the first body, the woman. On go the masks. The M.E. does an external exam, explaining to me in detail what she’s looking for. The woman has marks and scratches on her body, we spend some time determining what they might be. When the M.E. is finished, she nods to the tech, who takes a vitreous fluid level and begins to get femoral blood. I watch rather indirectly, really expecting the gorge to rise, but it doesn’t. So far, so good. A block is placed between the woman’s shoulder blades – not under the neck like we see on TV. I understand why moments later.

We’re standing in a spot when I can see all four bodies when the tech makes the Y-incision on the woman. This is quick, brutal and astounding. The pristine whiteness is replaced by glorious Technicolor. Things start happening very fast. We move to the next body, the probable heart attack, and start the external exam. Then on to the suicide. I know I’m not supposed to be personalizing, but I can’t help it. I feel horrible for these people. I am angry at the man who decided life wasn’t worth it. I feel sorry for the heart attack. I worry that I will look similar to the woman if I’m ever in her place. I am over-personalizing. I stare into a chest cavity, focus on the ribcage, and knock it off.

That’s when I realize I will be attending all four autopsies, because they are done simultaneously. Oh.

We work in circles, moving from station to station. There are unexplained noises, and odd smells. Mostly alcohol, wafting from the bodies. There is a pattern to our concentrics. This is a team effort, a coordinated, choreographed dance. When the breastplate is off, the M.E. looks at the heart in situ, then the organs start to come out. The bone saw didn’t bother me at all, I’ve got contractors in the house laying a floor upstairs and it sounds no different. It is easier when I don’t have to look at their faces. When the skull is off, the tech yells what I think is “Head” and we go back to look at the brain before it too is removed.

Autopsy is a surprisingly physical job. It takes more than one person to move the bodies around on the table. It takes strength to get through bone.

We move on to dissection. Each organ must be looked over thoroughly for signs that the death isn’t what they think. I see things I’ve only read about—cholesterol, plaque, nodules, cysts—and make plans to lead a healthier life. Microsurgery suddenly makes sense. I’m going to stop with the description here and save a bunch of it for my books, but suffice it to say, it’s fascinating.

And bloody. Biggest misconception I had about autopsies—I always envisioned them bloodless, sterile, clean. Yeah. Not. The tech wasn’t kidding when she said I’d get blood on my notebook. It actually sat quietly on the counter awaiting my return—I really didn’t need it to take notes. Sometimes, visuals do all the talking for you. This would have been a bit different if any of the bodies had lost blood at the scene, of course, but these were all intact.

The boy was last, and that was as hard as you could imagine.

#

We wrapped at 11:30. We’d been at it for three hours straight. One of the techs asked me if I’d had fun. I told her fun wasn’t exactly the appropriate word, though it was a fascinating, enlightening and educational morning.

Remember the humor? There were some really funny moments, both during and after. A nicked aorta that had people rushing around for ladles. The M.E. getting the band wrong on one of the songs – it was David Essex’s ROCK ON, not New Kids on the Block. Listening to AC/DC while watching a liver dissection. Realizing when we finished that I was starving, and assuaging my hunger with Milk Duds. Going to Waffle House after and needing my bacon very, very well done. Freaking out a friend when I overshared about how to differentiate tissue samples from the lobes of the lungs. The rest goes in the books. Hey, a girl’s got to have a plan, right?

I’m so glad I finally broke down and did this. Sam will be a much, much richer character from here on out. And I was so proud of myself for actually making it through without problems. I’m still haunted by visions; I doubt they’ll ever leave me. But I did it.

I will end with this. My own spiritual path has evolved from the dogma I learned as a child. I find beauty in all religions, can see that what I was taught isn’t the only path to God. But what of the soul? We are all the same inside. Organs designed to function in very specific ways, our body structure and development meant to be exact, past the point of similarity. So there is something that makes us all unique, special, different. Ourselves. Id. Ego. Superego. Soul. Spirit. Essence.

Me.

I felt God in the room, whoever he or she may be. I dare anyone to look into the human body and not believe that there is some kind of grand plan. The design, the way we fit together, is stunningly beautiful. Couple that with the knowledge of our differences, and trust me, I’ve been struggling with some weighty philosophical discourse ever since.

So tell me, ‘Rati – have you faced your worst fears lately? Is there someplace you’d like to go that you don’t think you could manage? Any research you’ve skipped over?

Wine of the Week: Vihno dos Mortos, Portugal, which has a fascinating history.

by JT

Hi ‘Rati bretheren,

Bunny Rabbits! (It’s the first of the month, quick, say it aloud! There, I just gave you luck.)

I hope you’ll bear with me today – I’m touring for THE IMMORTALS, which released on Tuesday. Yay! I’ll do my best to get to comments once I land in a single spot for more than 5 minutes. In the meantime, I’m posting an article I did for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers on research. It fit so well as a follow up to Zoë’s great post yesterday…

I’m curious to know two things from you today – what’s the craziest thing you ever did to research a scene? And what authors do you think do the best job with their research? I’m partial to Daniel Silva, myself…

xoxo, JT

Growing up west of Larkspur, Colorado, nestled deep into the Pike National Forest, I developed a fascination with all things moss. Moss, and lichen, and striations in the red rocks, and smoky quartz. I’d come home from my daily forays into the woods with multitudes of samples tucked into my pockets, and invariably the first thing out of my mouth when I happened upon my mom or dad was, “What’s this?”

My parents, being smart sorts themselves, always answered the same way: “Look it up.”

Daily discoveries of new moss, lichen, rocks, bark and dinosaur tracks led to evenings in front of the fire with the Encyclopedia Britannica (the green and gold on white version) learning all that I could about paleontology, and meteorology, and biology. I adored learning. My parents speculated that I might be a scientist when I grew up, bought me a microscope and a rock tumbler, all the accoutrements upstanding young girls need.

What I was preparing myself for, of course, was not a life in a laboratory, but a life playing with words. I was readying myself to be a writer.

Insatiable curiosity is what drives most of us to the page. I’ve always preached one thing about writing: don’t write what you know, write what you want to know about. Write what turns your crank, what excites you. That way, research won’t feel like work.

That’s how I ended up writing thrillers. I’m fascinated by psychology and love the idea that it can be applied to determine the motivations behind a crime. But when I set out, the only thing I knew about being a cop, or a profiler, was what I saw on TV. And that’s so far from accurate most times it’s laughable. I learned quickly that writing thrillers can be many things: fun, challenging, an education. But there’s one thing you must, must do – get your facts right.

We all make mistakes. That’s the nature of being human. I know that sometimes when I’m doing research, I suffer a bit of forest for the trees syndrome, and thank goodness I have great copyeditors to ferret out those little problems. And sometimes, mistakes make it all the way into the printed books, and then I have to bit my lip and turn red when the emails come in.

But you as a writer are fully in control of your research destiny. You make the choices. Do you write a police procedural? The choice there is simple – you either do the research or you don’t. Do you write a historical? Again, an easy choice, do you rely on primary source material or do you make it up, hoping the history books had it right?

There are many choices when you’re writing a novel – genre, setting, characters, plot. And each of these choices helps you decide the level and relative accuracy you need.

Genre is paramount – are you writing science fiction? Chances are you’re going to create a world that’s alien to what we experience on a daily basis, so you’re in the clear. Romance? You’re going to strain credulity and coincidence a tad in order to have a happily ever after, so you’re probably pretty good there. Spy thrillers give you quite a bit of leeway, actually, because so much of agency work is Classified that chances are the reader isn’t going to be familiar with the internal machinations, and you have the freedom to push the envelope. Historicals and procedurals, though, that’s where you must get your facts right.

Setting is a biggie too – are you going to pick a real place or create a fictional town? I chose Nashville, Tennessee as my setting for a number of reasons, and I spend a lot of time making sure that roads are open, the views are correct, the timing is right on. I go out and drive the scenes to see exactly what my characters see. Then again, my setting is a character in the novels, which means I need to be pretty close to exact with my depictions. I’ve only fudged once, with a bar name, just because I didn’t want to get sued when they found out it was a base of operations for a couple of serial killers.

Your characters will drive your research as well. Is your heroine a librarian? She’s not going to know the difference between a revolver and a pistol, (unless she’s from the South, and then she’d probably be carrying a Remington shotgun anyway…) Is your hero a cop? Right away you know that your duty as a writer is to research police procedure, lingo, everything that will come into play in his daily world.

Plot is the fourth consideration when it comes to research. What’s important to think about is how the story will change your hero or heroine, and if your villain uses something tangible to create that alteration.

Stephen King, in his brilliant book ON WRITING, says you have to know all the rules so you know when to break them. This is applicable to research as well. Learn all you can about the subject, so you know what you can leave out. None of us want to read a story that’s been obviously researched, with minutiae irrelevant to the pace thrown in to show the author’s done their homework.

So how do you do research? Since I’m a thriller writer with a focus on police procedurals, I’ll lay out my general course of action. I write two books a year, and the pattern usually follows this formula – 1 month of research, 4 months of writing, 1 month of editing. That doesn’t leave me a lot of leeway time wise, so I have to make the most of that month of research. When I first started, I knew nothing at all about the police, so I called my local homicide office, told them what I was about, and they invited me down for a ride-along. Granted, I lucked out that the person who answered the phone was interested in writing himself, but if I hadn’t made that initial call…

Now, several books in, that relationship is so solid that I can call or email with a detail and he’ll be able to help. Cultivating relationships is vital to good research.

Being hands on helps too. In my 2^nd book, there’s a large section set in Long Island City and Manhattan in New York. I sent out questions online to all my listserves, but I wasn’t getting what I needed – how it smelled, and what my character would hear, and the exact shade of the gray skies at dusk…  so I booked a research trip. Fully tax deductible, and it made those sections of the book come alive.  I’ve done that with Italy and Scotland too – see, we’re writers, no reason why we can’t make it fun, right?

Online research is vital as well – no matter what I do in person, I always back things up, double-source them online, to make sure everything is spot on. The beautiful thing about Google is its variety – the Google Earth function lets you go anywhere and see anything, and they’re adding in audio now, so the only thing missing is smell. Pretty cool.

There are ways not to do research, too. Asking a friend, and not double-checking their answer. Seeing something on TV, or reading it in a book, and not questioning the source. That’s mighty dangerous.  I know there was a spate of “cordite” smells after a gun fired in books and television – but that’s not what happens in real life. In the movies, when someone is shot, they go careening backwards into walls – in real life, they drop. Hearts don’t stop immediately; it takes a few minutes for people to die. Medical examiners can’t tell cause of death by looking at a body. You can’t cock a hammer on a Glock. These are the little details that people get wrong all the time, and it drives readers mad.

So take your time, be patient, and ask around until you’ve confirmed the answer from two or three places at least. And then check again. Create a world that invites your readers to settle in and be amazed, and do it well enough that they will suspend disbelief and follow you anywhere. If you get it right, they’ll do just that.