Author Archives: Murderati Members

Autodigititis

This is the second in my series about occupational hazards for writers.

Lately I’ve become aware of a chronic condition that has dire consequences for my future relationships with copyeditors, my agent and others.

I can trace it back to when I was eleven. That late 1960s’ summer, my mother decided I needed a skill of some sort. While I thought my guitar playing had money-making potential, she insisted on something more mundane. Beginning on the second day of my vacation, I had to walk four miles every day to my pediatrician’s house.

No. I wasn’t sick yet . . .

It was his wife I had to see. Mrs. Levin was a retired typing teacher. She’d spent decades at a “business college” teaching future secretaries how to hit those keys—quickly and accurately.

So for three months while other kids splashed at pools and played in the sun, I sat in a small pantry that had been converted into an office and typed juj juj juj juj ftf ftf ftf fuf fuf fuc fuc . . .uck uck uck . . .

It was hell.

I hated it.

I’m pretty sure that’s when my condition began, though it had a long incubation period.

After 90 days – yes, I had to practice on weekends too – I could type faster than I could think. (It was a more amazing feat back then than it is now). Since that time, my hands have flitted easily on any keyboard, my fingers tap-tapping words without inhibition. With few dexterity issues to block me, I could write whatever wild images came to mind.

However, I’ve noticed that my fingers don’t cooperate as much as they used to. This isn’t the beginning of arthritis . . . or dementia. It’s motor stubbornness, autodigititis – the odd accumulation of habits that I never realized I had acquired.

The worst offender is any word that starts with “par.” I am simply incapable of typing it without adding that damn “i” at the end.

Pariticipate.

Paritition.

Let’s parity.

Not up to pari.

There are other words that stump me too — not because I don’t know how to spell them, but because my fingers want to go somewhere else:

New Mexican always ends up as New Mexico

Michael is always, always Micheal

Does is always doesn’t first.

Apple is Appel (That’s my grandmother’s maiden name. I could use that as an excuse but I didn’t know her much and thought of her even less frequently. Perhaps it’s genetically encoded?)

Familiar and familial become family.

And forget words that end in “on” instead of “ion.” I’ve mistyped Allison more times than I’m willing to admit.

On it goes . . .

I don’t know why my fingers work this way, but they do.

Am I the only person with this affliction? Should I hie me to a yoga retreat to slow both mind and body?

Or . . .

Do you suffer from this too?

If so, what are your symptoms?

Perhaps . . . together we can beat this insidious disease before it bates . . . oops . . . beats us.

focus

By Toni McGee Causey

This past week, I finished proofreading book 3, WHEN A MAN LOVES A WEAPON, and sent it off next day to the publisher, and then I promptly died.

Okay, not entirely dead. Just mostly dead. Apparently, not hanging onto details real well, either, since I absolutely thought I had to be somewhere at noon today (as I write this, Saturday), and it turns out that it’s next Saturday at noon. Good thing it wasn’t last Saturday, huh? My mom said, “But I sent you an email with the date, and you responded.” I probably did. When I’m on deadline, I’ll agree to just about anything that will make the noise of whoever is talking to me go away so I can finish the sentence (or rend my hair). She could’ve written, “By the way, I’ve decided to store a thermo-nuclear weapon in your office, do you mind?” and I would’ve said, “Sure! Over there! Corner! Bye!”

My kids got away with murder when I was like this. (And sometimes, still do.) I have been known to forget major events, family. I am not even telling you how many times things caught fire in the kitchen. (Which was really embarrassing when the oven was just ten or so feet from my desk and I heard my oldest son shouting, “MOM!! MOM!!” and I looked up, saw him standing there, pointing to the oven… which was billowing black smoke while the fire alarm blared. Um. Yeah. This is why I do not cook.)

Über focus. Tunnel vision. Going with the flow. Or, as I like to put it, mad freaking panic. Steep incline, wet roads, no brakes. Get ‘er done.

It is really amazing how creative you can be when you have to be.

Now. That said, I am totally brain dead. [Brain dead enough to not realize that I agreed to PAINT THE SPARE BEDROOM. I would not be the least bit surprised to find out I agreed to purchase some sort of new fangled gadget that would assure me world domination or thinner thighs. (Wow. Wouldn’t that combo be great?)]

Anyway.

As you can see, I’m a goner. I think the only thing I’ve managed to do since then is Twitter (I can sort of manage 140 characters). (sort of) (barely)

So tell me, because I know I cannot be the only one, what have you forgotten to do… or gotten yourself committed to doing… while you were super focused? Bonus points for the craziest.

Write Like They’re Dead

By Cornelia Read

So, my mother is really pissed at me this week. I kind of don’t care, which has made my sister and my uncle and all my mom’s friends also pissed at me. On the other hand, my friends, my dad, and my sister’s carpenter think everyone pissed at me should get the hell over themselves already. Which is nice. (My niece just says, “With family like this, who needs television?”)

The basic issue is the way I portrayed Mom in my forthcoming novel, Invisible Boy. I told her a year ago that she wasn’t going to like it, since I was dealing with her most execrable choice in our long line of stepfathers, the one who molested my little sister (that part described with my sister’s permission, for which I’m very grateful.) Not to mention Mom’s refusal to stop hanging out with the guy socially even after my sister finally got up the courage to tell her what had happened, some ten years later (or, you know, apologize for having made us live with a shithead sexual-predator fucktard for five years.)

My general attitude at this point is half “The Truth Shall Set You Free” and half “Payback’s a bitch, bitch”—with a smidge of Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense in there somewhere, too.

Anyway, God help anyone whose children write hugely autobiographical novels. I’d be grateful if mine become investment bankers, you know?

The manuscript’s on its way to the copy editors, I’ve said my piece, and Mom’s welcome to write her own book. I just wish her seventieth birthday party and my little brother’s graduation from the California Maritime Academy weren’t this weekend. O joy, o rapture.

I have no doubt that the crap parts of my childhood are what made me a writer—gave me the urge to forge the uncreated conscience of my race in the smithy of my soul and all that. Something about having been denied a voice in the midst of a bunch of evil bullshit grownups as a kid made me want to goddamn own the narrative when I grew up. I know I’m very fucking lucky it turned out this way, in the end, though it’s a little weird to have my mojo prevail in such a profundity of spades, too.

That being said, it would be nice if the critics actually like the thing, not to mention the people who will be generous enough to buy a copy next March. It would suck to be disowned over a shitty book, you know?

On the bright side, I’m on a plane to New York right now, leaving the whole mess 3000 miles away for a good forty-eight hours. Also, I’m watching the Oxford eight row against Cambridge on my Jetblue TV, and all the boys are so pretty.

How about you, ‘Ratis? Ever piss anyone off with your writing? Ever want to?

Being Human

by Zoë Sharp

This isn’t the blog I was intending to write this week. (And no, I wasn’t even going to mention Susan Boyle … Oh, drat …) But, something popped up during the current rewrites. Which are, incidentally, proceeding at the kind of pace that can usually be measured in terms of continental drift.

I have just reached a point in the story where my main protagonist, Charlie Fox, has arrived to see the wife of a client, and discovers the woman was badly injured in a helicopter accident some years previously. At this point, I don’t think there’s any particular reason for this woman to be partially incapacitated, apart from an unwillingness to travel, which has necessitated Charlie going to her. I could have explained this in some other way – that she’s simply too busy running her oil exploration business, for example, or that she has a fear of flying. But when the character came into my head, this back story arrived ready attached.

And now it bothers me slightly. I’m the kind of writer who likes things to have a purpose. In my head, I think of the main strands of a story as different coloured threads, all plaited together, twisting and turning in on one another into a tight mass, so the end result seems stronger than the sum of its parts. The more I can weave those strands back in on themselves, the tighter and stronger the story feels to become.

Of course, you can take this too far, and TV crime shows often do. Whenever you see an extraneous character – the relative of a victim, for instance – who has screen time beyond simply sobbing into the hero’s shoulder as the mortuary sheet’s turned back, you just know they must have had some hand in the crime.

So, this is why I have this niggling doubt about changing this particular character’s back story. Part of me feels it should have some vital significance, while another part of me thinks that, sometimes, you can get away with introducing an accidental injury that really is just accidental, otherwise, every twitch telegraphs to the reader that Something Important is about to happen. I remember years ago reading a book where the main character comes down with a horrible head cold about halfway through – and it plays a vital role in the plot. Every time that character sneezed in subsequent books, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In real life, people do sleep through their alarms, misread directions, or get stuck in traffic. In a crime thriller, such a mundane occurrence usually results in the discovery of a still-warm corpse your hero wasn’t quite in time to save.

In real life, people are sloppy, incompetent or simply mistaken. In a crime thriller, that would often signal a large-scale conspiracy or part of a sinister cover-up.

In real life, accidents do happen – often more than once to the same person. My brother-in-law, for instance, used to work on the North Sea oil rigs. He’s been in two helicopter crashes, ditching within sight of the beach. (And very annoyed he was, too, at having to wade ashore.) In a crime thriller, we’re back to cover-ups and conspiracies again, or attempted murder at the very least.

OK, more examples:

A friend of mine who is a retired Scene Of Crime Officer (SOCO was what CSIs used to be called over here, before they trendied up their image) told me that, although the book says you meticulously bag and label every piece of evidence removed from a crime scene, human nature often takes over. He recalled being sent to a scene where there was an abundance of evidence – I think it was may have been from a drug factory. When it got near the end of shift, the evidence was simply loaded into carrier bags and slung into the boot of a car to be taken back to the station and bagged and labelled correctly at leisure.

He gave me to understand that this kind of thing happened regularly and did not compromise the subsequent case when it went to court. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But if you put something like that in a plot, it would have to signify some vital twist. The drug baron would no doubt get off and swear revenge on the officers involved. Or the SOCO would be fired from his job to sink into an alcoholic haze, from which he would be rescued by the prospect of working One Last Case as a means of redemption.

Another example. When my Other Half’s appendix went bang, we duly trotted him into hospital and, after they’d found him a bed, began the usual taking of bloods. For this, a German medical student arrived and announced that he was going to ‘attempt’ to get a line into Andy. This did not inspire confidence, but then, neither did his ineffectual multiple stabbing technique.

Now, we know Andy has good veins, because they strike oil immediately whenever we go to blood doning sessions, but maybe that has something to do with the fact they use a needle about the same size as the insert of a biro and it’s kinda hard to miss.

So, then a junior doctor appeared (think Doogie Howser’s younger brother) and managed at the first try what the medical student had failed to achieve. I would have been impressed … had he bothered to put on a pair of gloves before he did it. Or if, having successfully punctured my Beloved’s vein, he realised he hadn’t uncapped the syringe he was trying to attach to the needle. Cue blood everywhere, into which the young doctor’s tie seemed to be wafting about precariously …

I was very restrained. After all, it’s never a good idea to annoy people who are sticking sharp objects into a member of your family. I managed, through gritted teeth, to politely inquire if it was standard practice not to wear gloves in the NHS any more. “I can’t really feel what I’m doing if I wear gloves,” the doctor replied.

Well, you’re a doctor, dammit. Acquire the skill!

Again, if I put this into a book, it might strike the wrong note in what would otherwise be a tense sitting-mournfully-by-the-bedside hospital scene.

The final example is another crime scene story. A particular rural UK force was quite excited to discover small particles at a crime scene that matched those found at another, apparently completely unrelated scene. Because, as we all know, serial murders are a lot more of a rare occurrence in real life than they are in the pages of fiction.

A major enquiry was in the offing … right up until a slightly embarrassed CSI owned up to the fact that, having analysed the mystery particles, they turned out to be flakes of paint from the tripod he’d used to position his camera over the body …

If my writing was of a more comic tone, then this is exactly the sort of thing that would fit right in. But can you get away with such moments of real-life light relief in a more serious novel?

So, have you come across any real-life stories like these, and would you put them in a novel or would you fear that nobody would believe them?

Alternatively, have you put real stories into a book, and been accused of going too far in your sense of invention?

This week’s Word of the Week is shambles, a noun meaning to be in a state of complete disarray. It comes from the Old English word ‘sceamul’ (pronounced ‘shamell’) which means ‘stool’ or ‘table’ as in a butcher’s workbench. During the medieval period, most English towns had certain streets occupied by a single trade, and the butchers’ street was known as the ‘shambles’, a street name still found in some old towns like York. Street butchers were supplied by the slaughterhouses and such was the mess of blood and animal parts by the butchers’ workbenches that the word ‘shambles’ became a metaphor for general mess and chaos.

Print the Legend

by J.D. Rhoades

I know what you’re probably going to start thinking very soon as you read this: “Dear God, not another Susan Boyle post.” Well, yes, it is, but hear me out anyway, because the twists the story’s taken lately have gotten me thinking about fact vs. fiction and where the line between the two starts to blur.

Boyle, the plain-Jane chanteuse who went on “Britain’s Got Talent” and silenced the snickering crowd and skeptical judges with her big rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables, became an overnight sensation, thanks to YouTube. Umpty-million website hits, interviews everywhere, etc.

So it’s inevitable, I suppose, that there’d be a backlash. Most of the kvetching appears to be based on the assumption that the judges, especially producer Simon Cowell, actually did know all along what they had in Boyle and that the whole “oh, my she certainly surprised us” act was a sham. “[T]he notion that Cowell was unaware of Boyle’s existence, let alone discordant looks and talent level, before she ever took the stage, is flatly ridiculous,” sniffed The New York Post’s Maureen Callahan. Movieline’s Kyle Buchanan was even more scathing, accusing the show’s producers of “trotting Susan out and editing her as though she is an innocent naif who just walked on stage and hasn’t already survived at least ten audition rounds in front of the show’s creator/producers, one of whom is the head judge, Simon Cowell.”

Cowell denies knowing what was going to happen beforehand. But he’s reputed to be a bit of a control freak, and he is the show’s producer. And let’s face it, whatever else you may think of Cowell, he’s a master showman. So yeah, it’s believable that he knew how the audience was going to perceive Boyle, he knew she’d blow them away, and the whole “ugly duckling” thing was set up from the get-go. But as I read those snarky pieces, what came most to my mind is, “so what?” I mean, whether it was staged or not, it’s a great story. Maybe I don’t mind so much because I write fiction. But I’m reminded of the words of Maxwell Scott at the end of the great Jimmy Stewart film THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

When I was in college, there was this guy who hung around a lot with my roommates and I. Let’s call him Henry. Henry was…well, “liar” is such a harsh word to describe what Henry did. Let’s just call him a fabulist. Henry had an amazing wealth of stories about the experiences he’d had: he’d test-driven high-end imported sports cars for a living; he’d played drums at a recording session for guitar legend Yngwie Malmsteen (the record was hung up in litigation, alas, and would probably never be released); he was learning to fly helicopters and had a job waiting for him as soon as he got his rotary-wing license, spotting for the tuna fleet. I mean, it was amazing the stuff that would come out of his mouth. One time when he wasn’t around, we discussed it and decided that for Henry to have gone everywhere he said he’d gone and done everything he said he’d done, he would have had to be between 150 and 200 years old.

Here’s the thing, though: no one believed a word of it, but no one called “bullshit”. Partially because Henry never lied maliciously or for any kind of personal gain other than, I suppose, a certain amount of self-aggrandizement. But it was also because the guy was a natural born storyteller. He was funny, charismatic, and entertaining as hell. It was all bullshit, but who cared? It was fun to listen to a guy who never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

But you tell me. Do I have this all wrong? Are you offended by the prospect that the whole ugly duckling schtick was just that–schtick? Or does it matter, because either way, it’s a great story? Does it make a difference that we’re talking about a silly reality TV show, that is to say, would you be more upset if this was something of life or death import?

Make My Day

By Louise Ure

Oh, yeah. She made my day. Marilyn Stasio reviewed my books in last Sunday’s New York Times!

Books, I said. Plural.

She not only said nice things about Liars Anonymous, she also summarized and blessed Forcing Amaryllis and The Fault Tree as well.

Picture Louise preening and scuffling her shoes in humility here. I’ve never been reviewed in the New York Times before. And this time it’s a trifecta. All three books.

Here’s what Ms. Stasio wrote:

“It takes a strong woman to admit she did wrong — and then go after the man who put her in that awkward position. Louise Ure took up the theme in her first novel, “Forcing Amaryllis,” in which a trial consultant with a heightened sense of responsibility for her younger sister resolves to kill the man who raped the girl. The guilt that the auto-mechanic heroine of her second novel, “The Fault Tree,” feels for failing to go to the aid of an old woman under attack by home invaders compels her to go after the killers herself — even though she’s blind. The sense of guilt is even more pronounced in “Liars Anonymous,” which makes sense because Ure’s narrator, Jessie Dancing, killed a man and got away with it. But even though she beat the rap, she bears the scars, and when the sounds of a murder in progress come through at the emergency call center where she works, Jessie finds a way to make restitution. Unrestrained by the housekeeping duties of a mystery series, Ure uses the freedom to push her themes to their limits. All three of her tough-minded novels take place in Tucson, which seems to produce plenty of strong women with blood in their eye.”

So, not only does she say nice things, but she also gives me a unifying theme for all three (it’s news to me, but hey, who am I to quibble with the likes of La Stasio?).

And then she goes on to give me the perfect response when someone asks why I write stand alones.

“Unrestrained by the housekeeping duties of a mystery series …” (Sing it, sister!) “Ure uses the freedom to push her themes to their limits” (Amen to that! Here’s to freedom and pushing and … yeah, what she said!).

And all this time I thought it was because no one had ever asked me for a repeat performance by one of my heroines.

In truth, I love writing stand alones. Creating that whole new world out of thin air, and not carrying the baggage from any previous books along for the ride.

My series-writing brethren – although they start each book with a relatively stable voice and cast of characters already on board – are challenged to make each book distinct and fresh and new.

Stand alone writers don’t have that problem. But we do face another, perhaps more daunting, task. How to bring readers along from one book to another when there’s no familiar face there at all.

I think the answer lies in voice. They’ve met Calla Gentry, with her guilt and regret about not helping her sister in time. They’ve met Cadence Moran, a woman stronger and more determined than I’ll ever be. And now I want to introduce them to Jessie Dancing – liar, killer and friend.

Hopefully they’ll come to understand each of these women, not through the repetition of a series, but because they’re friends of mine.

P.S. I’m on a plane to New York today, ‘Rati, so I’ll be out of touch for a few hours, but will check in again late in the day.

P.P.S. And did I mention how cool it was to meet and spend time with our ‘Rati pal Tom Barclay and his wife at the Mystery Bookstore party last Friday in L.A.? Thank you, Tom. That was a treat!

The fingernail

by Pari

It’s strange what’ll break down a person’s defenses.

The fingernail got me. That scrap of keratin, the bright pink acrylic polish in two half moons that — to my eyes — formed the top of a heart. The nail, magnified several times, flecked with specs of dirt from a young identified woman’s last resting place.

The Albuquerque Police Department (APD) released the picture last Friday with the hope that someone, somewhere, will recognize the artwork and help them put a name to the victim. Last Friday was also the day that APD announced it’d no longer be digging at what is now known as the country’s largest crime scene area. Close to one hundred acres, eleven bodies and a fetus, dirt and dust and rocks all on the west side of our city — a burial ground of horrific magnitude — a barren monument to the kind of sorrow parents should never, ever have to know.

The “West Mesa Mystery,” as it has now been packaged by the media, began to unfold in mid Feburary this year when a jogger found human bones in the middle of a large tract of land surrounded by newer subdivisions. There’s a lot of this kind of unused space in Albuquerque, a fast-growing city with a marvelous climate and an amazingly steady/low unemployment rate (compared with the rest of the country).

Soon the bones of one person became two, three, four . . .

Of the seven young women identified so far, all had had difficult lives, had taken bad turns into drug use and prostitution. In the early days of the investigation, debates raged. People were angry that the victims’ lives had been negatively characterized and profiled. The police countered with the fact that they needed to find common links between the dead, a way to understand why all of them had been dumped in those crude graves around 2004-2005.

And the police needed to identify the remaining four victims.

Hundreds of parents from around the country had contacted APD, desperate to know if those bones could be one of their missing children — gone around the same time period, maybe sending a postcard from Albuquerque . . .

Though I’m a writer and a mother, I cannot and don’t want to imagine their pain, the emptiness of not knowing.

I don’t want to and cannot imagine the utter life-shattering moment when someone calls to say that it’s your daughter’s bones crime scene workers have uncovered under the hot New Mexico sun.

So I did what most people do. I let myself watch the news about the women — there’s been something almost every night since the discovery — without permitting myself to think too much of the suffering and misery that went along with the stories.

It was easy to do in a way. Though the interviews with parents were sad, they were other people’s pain. All the pictures of the identified victims showed the women when they’d been happy and alive. It was easy . . . convenient . . . to be detached.

It was the same thing that happens with other mindboggling tragedies: Darfur, the Holocaust . . .

Then came the fingernail.
That small piece of decorated protein.

And all my rationalizations and comfortable distancing crashed down.

I look at my children differently now, at the promise of their youth and want to scream, “None of those West Mesa victims deserved their heartbreaking brevity! None!”

To think that an entire life, a young woman’s whole identity, comes down to one fingernail.

It saddens me to my very core.

___________________________

If you want to know more about the West Mesa Mystery, America’s Most Wanted did a good job last Saturday night (April 25).

And, for heaven’s sake, if you — or anyone you know — has any information, please call the APD hotline at 1-877-765-8273; the line is staffed 24/7.

Is Marketability More Important Than the Story?

Two weeks ago I participated in Curtis Brown agent Nathan Bransford’s “agent for a day” contest. I contributed the query letter I used for THE COPYCAT KILLER, my fifth completed manuscript that became my debut novel THE PREY. The contest was simple: read fifty query letters and request only five. Amidst the fifty were three published novels, mine plus two in production.

If you’re interested in the contest, you can go to Nathan’s site, my blog to read my reaction to the rejections of my query, or Murder She Writes where I reflected a bit more. I don’t want this blog to be about the contest, but since it’s Sunday and you might have some reading time, it is interesting to review the contest, especially Nathan’s post on the results and his subsequent post on concepts.

One of the comments on my blog has bugged me since I read it. Both Nathan and I had blogged that ultimately, selling was all about the writing–not whether the query letter followed all the “rules” or whether the premise wasn’t “unique.” (Seriously, it’s all been done before–and long before printing presses were invented.)

But Adam said:

A lot of people like to say this but it just isn’t as true as we’d like it to be. Marketability is more important than writing. I got a slew feedback from agents and editors that was of the “great book, very well written but I don’t know how to sell this,” variety.

On the other side of that coin, a good friend of mine has had several books published at a major house and he readily admits they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. He had no trouble selling them though because they fit a certain market. Those books are so bad that we routinely mock them in conversation and he loves it…he also loves paying the bills with the money they make.

In short, if it’ll sell, the writing need only be mediocre. Sad but true.

I’m not picking on Adam–I don’t know him from, well, Adam . . . and he didn’t leave his email. His comment is certainly valid and based on his experience. Yet it annoyed me. Immensely.

What successful published author is going to go around and mock his readers? Because, ultimately, that’s exactly what he’s doing. It’s not that the books are “so bad,” it’s that people are willing to pay money for these allegedly “bad books.” To me, this is the epitome of elitism: “The masses don’t know what’s good” or “they’re ignorant.”

“The masses” make the world go ’round. Commercial fiction sells because it’s entertaining. Authors with a mass fan base give their readers what they want, which is the emotional or physical feeling the reader gets from reading that author’s stories. The story is only the vehicle; readers want the feeling of the story.

Is it the puzzle of the mystery, or the feeling of being intelligent or observant we have while trying to solve the mystery with the protagonist? Is it the sex in a romance or the emotional warmth of knowing two people who love each other will live happily ever after? Is it the stakes in a thriller, or the physical reaction to a fast-paced dangerous situation?

If a novelist is churning out books that “aren’t worth the paper they are written on” then they’re not going to sell en masse. They apparently “fit a certain market.” Obviously, a market that craves bad books.

Oh, to make a living writing bad books. That would be easy. /sarcasm.

I’m not so naive to think that every book published by a major house is outstanding and worthy of awards and NYT status. And honestly, I’m sure all of us have read a NYT bestselling book and thought, hmm, why? And then there’s the books we love that never seem to go anywhere, and we think, for the love of God, why isn’t this a #1 NYT bestseller? Is everyone an idiot?

The first time I had that “Why isn’t this a NYT bestselling author” was when I read PSYCHOPATH by Dr. Keith Ablow. You might think the name sounds familiar–he did write a #1 NYT bestselling book called INSIDE THE MIND OF SCOTT PETERSON. It was a good book. Rather simple and direct, but illuminating. But Dr. Ablow published six thrillers with St. Martins and never hit a list. They are among the best books of the genre, and he’s not writing them anymore. Probably because he’s making plenty of money in the NF world. The books are very dark and edgy, the protagonist–Dr. Frank Clevenger, a forensic psychiatrist like his creator–is certainly flawed, but they’re captivating stories.

What if we shouldn’t say, “It’s all about the writing;” and instead say, “It’s all about the story?”

Are you more willing to forgive an author who writes simply but tells a terrific story, or an author who writes beautifully but the story is mediocre?

This leads me to Adam’s key point:

In short, if it’ll sell, the writing need only be mediocre. Sad but true.

I’d like to know what “mediocre” means. Because if something is selling like hotcakes, I doubt it’s mediocre. There’s SOMETHING about the book that resonates with readers. And if it truly is mediocre, maybe the author is selling based on past performance–we all know this happens to some authors. They get burned out and start writing retreads. But I think I speak for most authors when I say we are always trying to write a better book than the one that came before. For me, this is my greatest struggle. I have been late turning in my last two books because of a great fear that my writing is subpar. You’d think that after writing eleven books that number twelve would be a breeze. Not! If anything, it’s harder than all the books that came before. (Okay, that’s not quite true. Number eleven, FATAL SECRETS, was the hardest book I ever wrote. It gave me fits. I wondered if my readers would allow me a dud. If my career was over. I just found out it got a top pick in RT Book Reviews. Which goes to show that authors absolutely can NOT judge their own writing.)

I think, perhaps, that Adam and his published friend have a love-hate affair with commercial fiction. Because, let’s face it, the money is primarily in commercial fiction. Read: stories for the masses. These are stories that resonate with readers because they tackle universal themes; they may be adequately written or beautiful written, but they are 1) accessible to the average reader and 2) they tell a universal story well.

Telling a story well doesn’t necessarily mean the writing is exceptional.

I recently read an email where someone had in their signature attributed to a best selling author (and I can’t remember who–but this is not my quote) “It’s hard to write a book that’s easy to read.” That sums up commercial fiction. I’ve never been offended when readers tell me my books are “easy” or “a quick read.” People are busy; I want to satisfy their human need to be entertained. And most of the time, we don’t want to work to be entertained.

I don’t want my readers to pull out a dictionary and look up words. I don’t want them to be confused or have to re-read sentences that are beautifully, but archaically, structured. For me, it’s not about the words, they’re almost the necessary evil of a story well-told. Because in the best of commercial fiction, the words themselves almost disappear.

But there are people out there who think that anything “easy” is therefore “inferior” or “bad.” Books that are fun and accessible are thus “mediocre writing.”

And sometimes that’s true. But ultimately, it’s about the STORY.

There was a brouhaha a few months ago about Stephen King saying that Stephanie Meyer was a poor writer. But he acknowledged that she was a good storyteller writing for a specific audience. I’m sure some people focused on the “she’s not a very good writer” part of the story and missed the “people are attracted to the stories” part. He commented that Dean Koontz could “write like hell” and sometimes is “just awful.” King has been self-critical of many of his own books and I, a diehard King fan, never made it through a couple of them. But King is all about the story–and most of the time, he tells it better than anyone.

Publishers want to make money. It’s business. This is something I tell myself every time I go into negotiations. It’s not personal, it’s business. Publishers want to make a profit, and publishing itself has a low-profit margin. So yes, marketability is important. Crucial. Publishers need to know where the book fits into the realm of sales. That’s why they love genre so much. It’s a romance! It’s a mystery! It’s a fantasy! They know the audience, they know how to design the cover to appeal to that audience (well, we hope they do–sometimes they, too get it wrong), and they know how to sell-in to the buyers. They’ll say, “This debut author will appeal to fans of Janet Evanovich” or in my case, my publisher put, “Julie Garwood meets Thomas Harris.” Sales needs to sell the book, and thus marketability–the value the book has to a defined readership–IS important.

But is it MORE important than the story?

I doubt it. The story has to resonate in some way for readers to pick up the next book and the next book. The story has to deliver on the story promise.

If it’s a romance, it has to have a happily ever after.

If it’s a mystery, the crime has to be solved.

If it’s horror, it has to be scary.

If it’s comedy, it has to be funny.

Marketability is important otherwise publishers don’t know where to plug in the book. Fair? No. Reality? Generally. It’s much harder as a female author to sell as a straight thriller writer than to sell as a romantic suspense writer, which is why many women choose to adopt gender-neutral names if they’re not writing romance.

It kind of sucks, really, but it’s not so much the publishers as the readers.

When I worked in the California State Legislature, it was common knowledge that if you were going to have a major tax policy or economy statement, you had a man present it. If you were going to have a major education initiative or statement, a woman had better be the speaker. This was based on extensive polling that showed that voters had a more positive impression of an economic plan if it was “male” and a more positive impression of an education plan if it was “female.”

I suppose one could argue that the industry is continuing the bias by feeding the bias. But when it comes down to it, it’s not the industry as much as deep-seated values that are neither right nor wrong. So politicians, and publishers, and every other successful enterprise will look at who the consumer is and target their idea or product to that “type” of person.

So yes, marketability is important. But if you don’t have a good story–however it is told–you have nothing to market.

Post Draft Analysis

In honor of this weekend’s NFL draft, I thought I’d do a post draft analysis. Now, of course, if this was a post about the NFL draft, it would be a pre-draft analysis. But it’s not about the NFL. What I thought might be interesting…well, at least to me…is to take a look back at the draft of my fourth Quinn novel, finished on Tuesday, from a technical standpoint.

First, a big sigh of relief, and an internal, “Oh, yeah!”

Now let’s start with some loose stats:

Book proposal written: July, 2008
Book started: approximately September 22, 2008
Book research trip to London and Paris: October 20 – 30, 2008
Hit 100 pages: approximately December 19 (I had a lot of distractions during the fall so didn’t write nearly as much as I had planned)
Hit 200 pages: approximately January 16
Hit 300 pages: approximately February 27
Spent most of March doing tweaking and rewriting
Hit 400 pages: approximately March 30
Finished Rough draft: April 7
Rewrite: April 7 – 21
Off to agent: April 21
Off to editor: Probably April 24
Plus or Minus on Deadline: 1 week early (deadline May 1)

Initial analysis:

Not happy with the amount of calendar time this book took, especially since I’m supposed to be doing this fulltime now. There were several reasons why: research trip, laser eye surgery, the holidays, and just the general distractions of starting your life as a fulltime novelist. What I am happy with is that around mid January, I buckled down and began spending large amounts of time each day at my computer. Probably 80% of the book was written after New Years.

Moving Forward:

Don’t waste so much time, and plan things so that I don’t have things like research trips coming in the middle of writing the book. Since my goal is to write as much as I can every year, doing this will help me create more time to write more than just the Quinn books.

So, based on this, here’s my plan for Quinn 5:

Write Proposal: Next week (April, 2009)
Research Trip: In the next two to three months
Start seriously writing: September
Rough Draft Completed: Christmas
Submit Draft Completed: January, 2010
Plus or Minus on Deadline: 3 to 3 ½ months early (deadline May 1)

Worst case I want to be done with it by sometime next February. None of this should be a problem as long as I put my mind to it. And what this does is free me to work on other things also.

So, by analyzing my performance and making adjustments, I should be able to create holes to work on other things this summer (though summer is going to be pretty busy, see below) and then late winter next year.

Here’s what the next four months look like:
L.A. Times Festival of Books (This coming weekend!)
That research trip
Thrillerfest
A couple of weeks up at my parents with my kids
The release of THE DECEIVED in paperback (June 23rd)
The release of THE UNWANTED in the UK (July 2nd)
The release of SHADOW OF BETRAYAL in the US (July 7th)
(No, that’s not two different books, SHADOW and UNWANTED are the same, just different titles…maybe I’ll discuss that next time.)
Book tour for SHADOW OF BETRAYAL on the west coast (details here: my Book Tour info )
AND work on one of those non-Quinn projects

I know this all seems kind of clinical, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look. By writing it, it’s actually helped me focus more on what needs to be done. So thanks for hanging in there as I did that!

So what do you think? Am I crazy? Did this help you? What’s your writing plan?

SWEEPSTAKES!!! I’m giving away 2 ARCs of SHADOW OF BETRAYAL a month starting this month through June. Details for entering are here: SOB Sweepstakes

And here’s this week’s inspiration. Imagine the amount of time and planning that went into this!

It’s Your Turn

by Rob Gregory Browne

Okay. Believe it or not, I was going to talk about Susan Boyle today. I was going to go on a long rant about how people who do not look like movie stars tend to get less respect in this world, and how some of that seems to be spilling over into the publishing industry.

But since both Toni and Tess have already touched on Ms. Boyle, it makes little sense for me to contribute another post to the subject.

On top of that, as I write this I am sitting in a hotel room in Orlando after a long plane ride, only three hours sleep, and getting my brain to work beyond “Nuhhhhhhhh” is extremely difficult.

So guess what? I’m going to let YOU do the work this time. Yes, that’s right. After trying desperately to come up with a non-Susan Boyle subject to talk about (damn you, Toni and Tess), I started flying around the Internet (with my special cyber wings) and stumbled across an interesting website called StoryCorps. It’s a place that generates questions to help stir conversation.

So that’s what I’m hoping to do here. Stir some conversation. And I don’t want to see little namby-pamby responses. Feel free to express yourself. Go wild. But do answer the questions.

And if I can steal away from the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention tomorrow, I’ll answer them myself.

So have at it. It’s your turn:

1. In the spirit of the Romantic Times conference: When did you first fall in love?

2. What was the saddest moment of your life?

3. How is your life different than what you imagined?

4. What is your earliest memory?

I look forward to reading your answers.