Author Archives: Murderati


the tao of publishing

by Toni McGee Causey

A few weeks back, I wrote an article about publishing — and in light of things like Anderson Distributors parking trucks (which affects mostly magazines, but has also affected thousands of copies of mass market distributions) and HarperCollins' bad news, and other generally frustrating publishing news, I thought this might be relevant here.

Everything you really need to know about the publishing business can be learned from a garage sale.

I know. Crazy. But trust me, it's true. (I am beginning to suspect that there is a whole tao of garage sales just begging to be written.)

A couple of weeks ago, my house was the site of a garage sale, hosted by my son and daughter-in-law. It ended up going exceptionally well, surprisingly. And as they were collecting junk and pricing it and displaying it and handling the crowd, I suddenly realized I finally had a parallel to explain the whole publishing business to non-writing family members and/or friends who were in the first stages of writing, pre-publication.  And so I offer you: the tao of publishing.

1) It's not personal.

When you're selecting items for a garage sale, you have look past the personal value of an item, the sentimental value, and use an objective eye to decide if that item will sell. Something with a deeply personal meaning–a diary page, one ballerina shoe, that swizzle stick (bent) left over from that time you and your best friend had that thing happen in that bar in that other state that you've never told anyone about… those things aren't going to make sense out of context and to a marketplace. They may be vastly important to you; doesn't mean they're going to sell.

Sure, you've written the novel, and you want people to have a personal response to it, because then you'll know you've hooked them. But a personal response does not replace market reality. An agent, an editor, a publisher… these people are not rejecting a manuscript out of some nefarious plot to drive writers crazy. Publishing professionals want to make a sale. The agent wants to sell to the editor, who has to sell it to the marketing department and the publisher, who has to believe that there are enough people out there in book-land who will plunk down money for this property. They've got to weigh how many people will resonate with this project and they've got to be objective about its value as they're making that decision because their goal is not "to make you feel good about being a writer" and not to "support art" but is almost always to "make a profit." Which leads to:

2) Big ticket items draw people in.

When we advertised for this garage sale, we named the big items we knew would draw people in: electronics, furniture, exercise equipment, collectibles, a canoe. We didn't bother to mention the used books (which all sold), the glassware (all sold), the dolls (ditto), the purses (ditto), the shoes (surprised the hell out of me, but ditto). 

We charged a little more for the name brand items than we did similar stuff–even though the quality of the latter was the same as the former. People will pay more for the brand name stuff… but, while they were there, they inevitably picked up some other item and bought it, too. Almost all of the browsers ended up taking something home, and I suspect that the majority of time, it wasn't the item they'd originally shown up to see. 

Bestselling authors are that draw in the bookstores: they get the people in the door. They get paid more because the publisher knows people will likely pick up their book, but they also get paid more because the publisher knows that if they're on a shelf, the customer will stop and probably browse that shelf and, very possibly, pick up something else. When you start out, your book is possibly that "something else." 

3) Group similar things on the same table.

This seems pretty simple: put like things together. Someone looking for the Minnie Mouse collectibles may buy more than one, so put them all in on
e place so they can find them. One guy came early and bought every Cabbage Patch doll we had (ten) and then started buying boy-type-toys. Someone else snapped up all of the hot-wheels. Things which were similar to these items were put on the same table, or near enough by, so that they caught the customer's attention.

Publishers want to know what your book is so they'll know where they can put it in the bookstore. This is why you don't list six genres in your query letter: it's sort of a space fantasy with a love story and comedic elements as the characters solve a mystery is going to get you an instant rejection. They won't know where to put it, and if they don't know, they won't know how to market it, and if they don't know how to market it, they don't know how to let customers know where to find it, or that it exists at all. You've just made their job ten times harder, and frankly, there are a lot more books out there that will make their lives easier. What would you do when presented with two books of equal writing skill, but one was easily marketable and the other one wasn't? You'd buy the one you knew how to sell. If you didn't, and you didn't frequently enough, you would be one of the publishers who are now going under.

But…but... I can hear you arguing, odd, cross-genre stuff sells.

Yes, it does. Generally, though, there's some way of marketing that book–or at least, the publisher believes there is when they take on the project. I am the first to admit: weird shit sells. We sold a porthole table for $200. I know, you're scratching your head, aren't you? I have been scratching my head for 15 years. A long time ago, my husband dragged home a porthole–the kind you see on actual ships–that he had "rescued" from the scrap yard. No, I don't know why. Yes, I asked. The only real answer I got was, "because it was cool," and I suspect that it was because it was a challenge. He then (because he is crazy) made a round table and embedded the porthole so that it functioned (again, he's crazy) and fixed it so that it could be opened (which meant you couldn't really put anything on the table–I mean, seriously, why would you want to do that?–unless you put the item on the tiny perimeter. You had to be careful if you did that, though, because as soon as you opened the porthole, the swinging motion generally knocked off whatever you'd put there). You could put a display inside the porthole (because, and I don't know why, it had a glass backside and yes, I thought that made no sense). He then epoxied the table top in black, but the legs were a very light oak. Ugliest table ever. I was so relieved when he agreed to sell it. Until he put a $200 price on it.

Now I ask you, what is the likelihood that someone is going to saunter over to a $200 table made out of a porthole and think, "gee, that's what I need to spend this week's paycheck on?" I knew I was going to be stuck with that damned table 'til I died. And then my neighbor (who is, not surprisingly, crazy) came over to see what all we had for sale, and he fell in love with the porthole. I would've carried it to his house for free, but when he tried to haggle my husband down, my husband refused. (Again, cornering the market on crazy here, this is the man who dragged home one of those styling salon hair dryers because it was "Only $10!" and "Wasn't it cool?" and couldn't understand why I didn't want it in the kitchen. But he got the last laugh when he turned it into a "time machine" and showed it at a big local art show and it was the hit of the show.) 

As for the porthole table? Apparently, there's plenty of crazy to spare, because the neighbor bought it anyway.  

So the rule is, weird shit sells, but you cannot count on it. You cannot hope that there is always going to be a porthole-buying-nut who lives close enough to your porthole table, who for some reason, doesn't have enough portholes in his life and feels like he cannot go home until he owns yours. So, even if you do have a porthole table to sell, you need to be able to do what my husband did–find its unique selling feature: it was antique. And an antique porthole table becomes, apparently, an entirely different thing. (Hell if I know.) Point is, if your book is not easily categorizable, figure out what is it that makes its uniqueness marketable.

4) Pricing is determined by what the market will bear

Now, that may seem self-evident, but it's tricky and can make you want to plant your head in your desk when you see things sell too fast (could've gotten more!) or too slow (oops, priced it too high, better lower it). Years and years (and years) ago, I had one garage sale–an estate sale of my great-great aunt's property. I had about a dozen hand-made quilts we were going sell. I'd kept the prettiest ones for family heirlooms, but the rest… shrug. Didn't expect to get $20 apiece for them. I was hanging them on the makeshift clothesline ab
out an hour before the announced time of the sale, and a man pulled up in my drive, made a beeline for the quilts and asked me how much I wanted for them. I eyed him and thought, "He's here at six a.m., asking me for these things, didn't even look at anything else. He's a collector." Then I said, "$125 each." He said, "I'll give you $100 each." Sold. I was pretty proud of myself. He took ten of the twelve, and later that afternoon, a lady asked me how much for the quilts. I'd forgotten them in the flurry of the day, and I think I must've looked at her blankly. She offered $200 each. She lamented that I didn't have more–she would've bought the entire batch at that price per quilt. 

That was (I am not even going to tell you how many) years ago. Today, even factoring in inflation, I could not have gotten $50 each. 

While we were pricing things for this garage sale, we had to take into account several factors: it was after Christmas (therefore, we'd missed the "must find a gift item that looks expensive but didn't cost much" rush), it's a bad economy (everyone's saving their money to spend on necessities, none of which we really had at the garage sale), and it was likely to rain the second day, which meant even die-hard garage salers wouldn't come back the second day to scoop up the "must get rid of it" last minute pricing you can normally do at the end of a sale. By keeping these things in mind, we priced everything to move.

The publishing corollary is that everything has its time. Advances are going to be lower while the market adjusts to the steep drop off in sales and everyone panics. Something that a year ago might've fetched a $100K advance might not get a $25K advance now or the writer breaks through huge with a big sale and lots of marketing dollars thrown behind it because there is something so marketable about the concept, a publisher thinks, "This, at least, I can explain in a phrase and sell it." It's a crapshoot. 

Publishers are looking for ways to make a book work for this market–which might mean that you don't get the hardcover format because it's so expensive and they're not selling very well. It's not about prestige, it's about survival, and it's smart to look at what works for the consumer. I suspect there's going to be a bigger push over this next year for downloads–publicity and marketing–because there's next to no delivery costs–there's no warehousing, no shipping, no returns. In addition, trends will determine price–something that shows up when a trend is just heating up is probably going to get a bit higher advance than something that shows up after the trend seems to have peaked or the market is glutted. It's not personal, it's not about what you, as a person, are worth. It's what the market will bear. It's probably the most difficult thing to remember.

5) Reputation helps.

We managed to pull a lot of people into our sale very early in the day because our neighborhood is considered a hot spot. (We didn't really know that, but there have been a lot of successful garage sales out here… part of it is there are lots of families here, so the sales usually have a big variety of items). We got 'em in through a reputation we hadn't quite earned yet. We kept 'em (and made a bunch of sales) because we delivered: we had a lot of merchandise cheaply priced and people kept complimenting us on what a great, organized sale we had. Lots of people said we should have another. (Over my dead body.) But at least it worked for them.

Blurbs are the same thing–the publishing business is hoping that blurbs (or reviews) up your reputation from that of "who?" to "oh, we should give them a try." It won't work, though, if you don't deliver.

6) Some things are beyond your control.

The first day, we had a ton of people and huge sales. The second day, it rained. Stormed. I think we had two people show up, and one sale for the whole day. We had, luckily, made enough money the day before to have made it worthwhile, but it almost hadn't gone that way–we had almost opted to only have the sale for Sunday, not both days. Luckily, my daughter-in-law is a lot smarter than I am and she insisted we have it both days "in case of bad weather." 

You can't help a bad economy. You can't help if a sales rep doesn't "get" your book. You can't help if a hurricane shows up the day your book is supposed to be delivered or the Anderson people park their trucks. You can't help a snowstorm, or a national tragedy. You really cannot help the decisions made in-house–these are beyond your control. You made the thing and handed them the thing–they have to sell it. Now, you might be able to nudge a few people, but the parallel would've been me putting out a few fliers in the neighborhood. Sure, I can self-promote and that may help to a certain degree, but if the publisher doesn't promote my book on a national level and my book's not available on a national level, no amount of me flogging it locally is going to increase my numbers high enough, fast enough, to make a big dent in "sell-through." If the sale were going on over a long period of time (years), word-of-mouth might spread and bigger and bigger crowds would show up–like some of those big "annual" garage sales held by entire towns, or held near (Camden?) Texas every second Saturday… but for the short-term, I can't do it all by myself. I can't control everything. 

Sometimes, the wisest thing is to sell what you can, look at the rest, realize it is what it is (maybe it's a practice novel, maybe it's your third practice novel), and move on. 

7) There's always stuff left over.

It will surprise you what doesn't sell. You'll be convinced certain items are going to fly off the tables–maybe because it was a popular item when you bought it new, or it's in great condition now (and at such a cheap price), or it's just so cool, of course people are going to want it. You're going to have stuff that fills a niche and you know for a fact people are looking for that type of niche item, and yet, when the day is done, there will be stuff left on your table, picked over, and you'll wonder why. Did you price it too high? Did you not put it in a prominent enough place? Did you put it next to something that overshadowed it?

Who the hell knows?

In publishing, it's a "best guess" business. People are trying to gauge what everyone's going to want in the future based off what they wanted in the past. Except as humans, we don't want to have the same exact experience day in and day out for the rest of our lives–we want something new. Different. Maybe not too different. Predicting that is not an exact science. And if you happen to send in a space-alien-time-travel-love-story right after the editor just had to remainder a rather large order of her previous space-alien-time-travel-love-stories, she's probably not going to be able to convince a publisher to take a chance on yours. If she just had a significant other who was rather space-alien-like dump her for a younger, hotter similarly-looking-space-alien-tart, then she may be turned off space alien love stories for months, and no matter how good yours was, it didn't stand a chance. Someone else, somewhere else, may snap it up. The things that did not sell at my garage sale? We donated to the Battered Women's Shelter, and you know what they're going to do? Sell those items in their stores. They figure someone, eventually, will buy the stuff. Who knows, they could be right.

Which circles back around to rule number one: it's not personal. 


Okay, those are the big parallels… are there others I've missed? 


Valentine’s Day, 14 Things.

By Cornelia Read

So I was going to write part two of my writing and craziness post, on depression, and then realized, “oh, shit, it’s Valentine’s Day.”

Valentine

And figured, hey, for those of you all psyched for today, who needs a downer post, and for the rest of us, why rub it in?

Herewith, instead, I offer you fourteen things for Valentine’s Day, whether your love is requited, or not.

Piaf nouveau:

Once more, with ukelele:

Bling, baby:

Lithuanians and Letts do it:

A youngun with some real pipes on her:

The Billie, the Best:

See if I care:

La Divina:

Fred:

Nothin’ says lovin’ like Lily Von Shtupp:

Girl-on-girl action:

A brand-new recipe:

That baby talk:

How lovely it was:

So long, and

Heart

The Absconding Pen, And Other Tour Stories

by JT Ellison

Well, hi! Happy Friday the 13! Long time no blog, I know. I've missed y'all, so forgive me if this is more chatty than educational today.

I've been facing an interesting challenge, a book due March 1, and promotion to do for my January book. JUDAS KISS got moved up in the publication schedule, which is why I've been put in this position of having to cut back on some of my non-writing work in order to make my deadline. And I received copyedits last week for my September book, so it really was the perfect storm. I've got a handle on it all now (she says, with a quick look heavenward) and feel like things are calming down a bit. No travel for three weeks, so I'm breathing a sigh of relief.

I've also decided to do no promotion AT ALL from June-August, to give myself real time to get a chunk of my March 2010 book done so I won't find myself in this predicament again.

Right before Christmas, I instituted a new writing pattern, and I promised to report on how it's working. In a word, it's not. I read all the time management books, built a beautiful color-coded time map, put it in my notebook as a reminder, and proceeded to never follow it. Not even for one day.

My natural circadian rhythms don't work in the way I wanted for my new writing schedule, which was to get up and start my fiction immediately. I am simply not a morning person. I hit my stride around 3 in the afternoon. Once I abandoned the new method and returned to my 12-4 schedule, my word count shot up. So, chalk that up to a lesson learned. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, no matter how pretty and shiny the new methods seem.

What my adventure in time management DID do was help me prioritize my non-writing time in the mornings. I'm no longer losing writing days because I'm dealing with the Internet. My email is under control, Facebook is limited to marketing, a once or twice a day gander at status updates and a firm hand on the "Ignore All" button when it comes to invitations, drink requests, fairies and the like. It's liberating, I'll tell you that. I feel much more settled with my writing. My To Do list is consistently getting dealt with and I don't feel that clawing sense of guilt when I'm not writing. I've even gotten my reading back on track (which is probably a major reason my writing is going better.)

One of the things I heartily believe in is rewarding yourself when you accomplish your goals – major and minor. My latest little reward (for a three day turnaround on a full edit of Edge of Black, natch) was a beautiful, shiny rollerball pen to take on tour with me. I love fancy pens, and I have a gorgeous Mont Blanc that I adore. But I'm scared to death to take it on the road with me for fear of losing it. Which is kind of silly, because I never lose anything. I'm so good about that. I'm still wearing a ring I bought in Hawaii when I was 15. I've only lost one earring, (that was a function of the idiot I loaned it to in a parking lot to pierce his ear dropping it in the gravel. It ws my favorite diamond stud, too. Who's the idiot?) I have a twenty-year-old watch, a twenty-year-old Mont Blanc, and a seventeen-year-old truck. Oh, and a fourteen-year-old marraige, so I haven't lost him either ; )

So I tapped my Levenger coupons and ended up with a hot pink True Writer for $29.99. 

Pink Pen

I never in a million years expected to like a pink pen. It's just so not me. But the price was right, and I felt like if I ended up not liking it, I wouldn't have lost too much. When it arrived, I was shocked. It's beautiful. Darker than it looks in the picture, just the right weight for my hand. I also bought the rollerball refills with gave me some felt tips to put in it which work better than Sharpies on the signing pages because they don't bleed through. HEAVEN! I loved it so much, I decided to get another. One for home, to attach to my Circa and Moleskine, the other to travel with me. And if I lost it, I'd have a back up. But losing it wasn't going to happen – my goodness, I have a track record with objects. I have rollerballs from Staples that have traveled all over the world, literally, and made it home safe. An expensive pen that I'm really paying attention to is safe as kittens.

So the first pink pen went with me to Florida and Illinois, happily tucked into my bags. My pen loved me. I could tell. She was always ready to be opened, begging to come out of my bags to be shown off, the ink rolling smoothly out onto the page, the screw cap never getting dislodged. People commented on my pretty pink pen, teased me for being finicky and using it instead of pens provided for my signings, then oohing when they received the signed copy with the flourished signature. My pen and I were one.

Until the bitch absconded in Chicago, running away from home with a glee I can say still smarts. 

I've searched high and low, retraced my steps, talked to every restaurant and hotel and bar manager where I sat on Saturday night, but she is well and truly gone. I ordered her replacement, which arrived today. From now on, she'll travel in her box instead of in my bag.

Don't think I'm crazy, but all of my inanimate objects are male. My car, my iPhone, my laptop. They're usually termed "Baby," and I identify them with a male entity. Wiccans and Pagans worship the God and the Goddess, so I guess my stuff is all associated with the God. But my pen was a girl, a Goddess, all the way. Figures it was a woman who'd have her own mind and refuse to be controlled.

Aside from the trauma of losing my pen, I had more random craziness over the weekend. I somehow managed to drop a carton of honey into my bag, which spread through the center pocket, got all over the case for Randy's Eee and coated my boarding pass with sticky goodness. I'm covered in bruises from a graceful trip Saturday morning trying to get up from the lunch table. I forgot to bring my postcards to the group signing, never a good thing. Southwest was overbooked on all five flights from Midway to Nashville, which stranded Randy and I at the airport for five hours. It was chaos, all weekend, all the time. I'm just lucky I didn't tip over the exceptionally cool glass decanter at Cooper's Hawk Saturday night – breaking expensive glass would have made my weekend complete. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to get home.

And now you know why my mother calls me Grace.

Regardless, the best part of touring is connecting with people. I've done nine or so events for JUDAS KISS, from Tennessee to Texas to Florida to Illinois, and they've all been wonderful. Love is Murder in Chicago was a fun conference, and I saw a lot of old friends. I also FINALLY met Bryon Quertermous, who is one of the nicest people in publishing, and the man who published my first short story, effectively kicking off my writing career. Thanks Q, for giving me a chance and being so cool.

So, that's the wrap up. To list everyone I've seen over the past two months would take all day, but you know who you are. I enjoyed it all – giggling in hotel rooms over cheesecake with my dear fellow blonde Laura Benedict, GPS tracking with Erica Spindler and CJ Lyons, dinner with Shane Gericke, the bestseller lists, the private dinner in Dallas, the surprise visit from my cousins in Houston, Sherlock's and Davis Kidd and Murder by the Book, the media, the signings, the panels. We'll do it again in September, me and Pretty Pink Pen 2.

But if this one runs away, I'm going back to the $2 pens from Staples.

Do you have a treasured artifact in your life?

Wine of the Week: 1991 La Cave Caluso Passito

This was a very different wine. It's technically a white, though it tastes like port flavored with the tiniest hint of wild apples. It's a lovely amber color too, definitely an unexpected taste. It comes from the Erbaluce grape, grown primarily in the Piedmont region of Italy, which is where my family still resides, so it was a very special bottle of wine for me. Drink after dinner as a treat, with fresh fruit or chocolate.

With my apologies for being a week late, the winners of CJ LYON'S contest for a copy of LIFELINES: Rashda, Debbie K. and Kelly Stone. Please contact CJ directly with your snail mail address. CJ at CJLyons dot net.

All the World’s a Stage

By Brett Battles

I search for inspiration in almost everything I come across in life. It could be in the emotional tension of a well made, and some times not well made, movie, the turn of phrase in a favorite book, the colors or lack thereof in a thought provoking painting. But I also find it in the more common things. The kindness between two strangers at the counter of a coffee shop, the way the leaves blow across the sidewalk in the fall, the sound of music being played by someone just learning a new instrument.

As writers were are artists, and by definition creative. But that doesn’t mean the creativity is flowing off us from the moment we wake up until the moment we go back to sleep. For most of us it ebbs and flows depending on our mood, how much sleep we’ve had, or maybe what we’ve had to drink. But for me, more than anything else, creativity is often stimulated by outside influences.

As a creative type you can’t always know when or where inspiration will hit you, but you can sometimes put yourself in a position it can find you if it wants.

That’s what I did on Tuesday night.

A very good friend of mine who I’ve known for over twenty-five years has become a successful theater director here in Los Angeles. So much so that he has been able to do something many of his colleagues only dream of doing, and that is directing full time. Doesn’t mean he’s make tons at it yet, but he is doing what he loves. He’s also starting to make a very good name for himself. And I couldn’t be happier for him. He is a great guy, and a loyal friend. If you ever get a chance to look at the acknowledgments of any of my books you see the name Jon Rivera or Jon Lawrence Rivera…same guy, and they are both him. Jon will always be in my acknowledgments because he has proven to be a better friend to me than anyone ever has the right to have. For that, I’ll never be able to thank him enough.

Jon directs several plays a year at theaters all over town. He’ll occasionally be asked to also direct a play at one of the local colleges. In addition, for the past year, the faculty at USC asked him to teach theater directing at their school, something he’s been doing for over a year now.

Anyway, the play he is currently working on is a world premiere called LAWS OF SYMPATHY. He’s doing it though the theater group he formed called Playwrights’ Arena, whose mission is to produce plays written by people who live in the Los Angeles area. A pretty cool idea.

Tuesday night I went downtown to the space they were rehearsing and watch for awhile as Jon and his actors worked on two of the scenes from the play. Since this piece has never been produced before, they were working out a lot of the issues that established shows would have had worked out years ago. Things like “Why is this scene set in this location?” or “Why are you having this conversation now when you could have had it on the phone earlier?” or “What is the emotion behind what you are saying?”

It was absolutely fascinating to watch. Plays, as you may are may not know, are a writer’s medium. Whatever is on the page is what the actors have to say. It’s not like the movies where often the script is more like a guideline. Here, if a director or an actor want to make a change bad enough, they must consult with the playwright, who may very well just say no.

What I really enjoyed as I watched was the first scene they worked on. In the script, the scene starts in the middle of a conversation…a pretty intense conversation, by the way. But even as they began rehearsing it there was some question as to how the characters would have gotten to this point, and why the conversation was occuring in the location indicated in the script. I watched fascinated as Jon and his actors, Ahmad and Celeste, talked it through, Jon often asking the actors why their characters where doing what they were doing or saying what they were saying. Then Jon had them act out the whole seen, not just from the middle as it was written in the script, but from the beginning, improvising so that they could explore the backstory, if you will, and reach the point where the playwright had begun. This was not stuff the audience will ever see on stage, not directly anyway. They WILL see it in the way the actors will be totally comfortable with characters they are playing, making the audience forget they are watching actors at all.

It was great to see how the Ahmad and Celeste handled this. Both were excellent and really seemed to know who they were even while they were still figuring out things about their characters. What was also great was seeing them working together to explore the relationship between the characters, because that is just as important as knowing the characters themselves.

In many ways I found it to be just like what I go through as an author, and what I assume most authors go through. We are the playwrights, directors and actors of our own stories. I often act out parts, looking for motivations, and emotions. But sometimes it’s actually harder when it’s just one brain playing all these parts. I envied the fact that Jon and Ahmad and Celeste could play off each other, and not just themselves, and even daydreamed about having actors come to my house and play out scenes from my whatever I was working.

When I left the theater, I felt like I’d been mainlining creativity. I couldn’t wait to get back to my keyboard. I’m sure this jolt will be with me for several days. But the great thing is once it’s gone Jon has said I can come back any time I want to observe again. I will definitely be taking him up on that.

So what are some interesting things that have inspired you recently? Did you stumble upon them, or did you put yourself in their path?

No song this week, but something even better given our topic. A little piece of incredibly inspired creativity I came across on another blog. Enjoy!

Toast

I'm completely brain dead.

I've been sitting here for a full ten minutes now and I've got nothing.  Nothing.

For the last several weeks, I have been struggling to finish my latest book.  I'm happy to say I wrote THE END last night —

— but at a cost.

I'm completely brain dead.

I'm an erratic writer.  The first half of my first book was written in about three months.  The second half took seemingly forever.  

This book was the opposite.  The first 150 pages took me months, while the last 375 were written in just a few weeks.  Frantically.

It's amazing what a deadline can do to you.

I hear about writers writing several thousand words a day, guys like Stuart Woods who only writes, reportedly, a couple hours in the morning but manages to do an entire chapter in that time — and, frankly, I'm amazed.

Nora Roberts is noted for her speed and output (to put it mildly). And from what I can tell, Carla Neggers and others who came up from the romance ranks ain’t slouches either…

But there was one writer who had us all beat. His name: Walter Gibson, aka Maxwell Grant. 

Gibson wrote the novels I loved as a kid — I was in heaven when I discovered the paperback reprints on my used bookstore shelf. He was the man behind THE SHADOW, and in 1932 alone, he produced twenty-four 60,000 word novels for The Shadow Magazine, a pulp that was published twice monthly.

120,000 words a month. Not to mention the some 680 magazine articles he wrote a year. 

And this wasn’t just some isolated year. He did this for at least a decade.

Argue all you want that his stories were substandard. I freakin’ loved the reprints I read. Still have them on my shelf in fact. The first one I bought — probably in the 70’s — was called THE LIVING SHADOW — and it thrilled the hell out of me.

Just for a moment think about your deadlines and imagine having to write 120,000 words a month.

The mind boggles.

Do you ever have those moments when you're just so mentally exhausted you've got nothing left to say?

In the last weeks of trying to reach this latest deadline, I also received the UK galleys on my next book, saw the release of my second book, WHISPER IN THE DARK (Feb. 2), gave a presentation — along with Brett Battles — at Huntington Beach library, attended Bouchercon, got food poisoning, went to Men of Mystery, did the copy edits for book three, and went to two signings, one an eleven hour roundtrip drive that had me writing in the car as my wife took the wheel.

I'm. Freaking.  Brain dead.

As this post makes abundantly clear.

Tomorrow night I'm having a launch party for WHISPER IN THE DARK.  7 pm at the Ventura, California Barnes & Noble.  A portion of all sales in the store go to the education community.  I hope those of you in the area can come.

If you can't make it then, please join me at The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood at 4 pm on Saturday, February 14th.

I promise to have recovered by then.

Really.

you can’t be just a writer anymore

by Tess Gerritsen

There was a time when all a novelist was expected to do was write books.  One book a year, that was what publishers usually wanted from us.  And that much, I could deliver.

I remember those good old days.  It was 1987 when Harlequin Intrigue bought my first romance novel, Call After Midnight. I had typed it on an electric typewriter.  I photocopied it, page by page, at my local office supply store, and sent it off to my literary agent. Months later, when Harlequin accepted it, my literary agent informed me of this momentous event by sending me a letter of congratulations.  By regular mail. I was living in Hawaii at the time, and I assume he thought that a phone call would be too expensive, but still — a letter!  That's how slowly things moved back in the dark ages. When it came time for the edits, my editor would mail me a revision letter, and I would mail back the revised manuscript. The copy-edited manuscript would follow, and then the galleys would show up on those continuous sheets of printer paper with the side perforations, all of it delivered by the U.S. Post Office. 

The whole publishing process moved at a stately,if glacial pace, and I learned to be patient. While waiting for my book to finally show up in stores, I'd turned my attention to writing the next story. I was raising two young sons and working part-time as a doctor, and just getting that next book written was about all I could handle. And it was the only thing my publisher expected of me.  

Fast forward to 2009. The age of the internet, faxes, email, and Youtube.

Last week, I read an interview with an editor, who was asked: "How much self-promotion should authors be expected to do?"  Her answer: "As much as they possibly can. It's essential to getting your name out there and selling more books."  

She's right.  These days, being a writer is no longer just about the books.  We can no longer slide by like those 1980's slacker writers and turn in one well-written manuscript every year.  Now we have to be novelists, salesmen, speakers, and media personalities.  

We have to have a website.  A fabulous, well-designed website. And since we're now so easily accessible, people send us email — both nice and nasty –and of course we must respond to all of it. 

We blog.  Some writers love doing it, but others do it only because they've been told they must if they want to "get their names out there and sell more books."  Whether you enjoy it or not, blogging sucks up your time — and sometimes your psychic energy as well when your blog sets off a controversy or generates hate mail.  

We maintain Facebook and Myspace pages, and this requires yet more attention and more time away from our writing.  We do it because we've been told — does this sound familiar?– that it will get our name out there and sell more books.  

We waste hours on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, checking our sales index to see how our books are moving, what readers are saying, and whether the latest publicity blitz has resulted in a bump in sales.  And now we feel compelled to blog on those sites as well, because — yes — it will get our name out there and sell more books.

We Google, Technorati, and Blogpulse our names way too often.  To collect reviews for our files and to see if, indeed, we've managed to get our name out there and therefore sell more books.

We're invited to be author guests in online chat groups, and even though we will probably devote an entire hour chatting online to only four people whose faces we can't even see, of course we always accept those invitations because we want to get our name out there and sell more books.

We feel compelled to design and distribute all sorts of promotional materials from newsletters and bookmarks to postcards and cutesy giveaways like tee shirts and refrigerator magnets. We spend hours — and hundreds of dollars — mailing these materials to people who will probably look at them and promptly toss them out.  But we never want to ignore the opportunity to get our name out there and sell more books.

We hear that book videos are now a must-have promotional tool, so of course we have to do one too.  Because everyone else is doing them, aren't they?  We hire a filmmaker and write a script.  Even more important, we write a check.  Sometimes a big check.  But it's all worth it, right?  Because it will get our name out there and sell more books.

We get in our cars and do drop-in signings.  Some of us do lots of drop-in signings.  We spend days or even weeks on the road and use up tanks and tanks of gasoline driving to stores that may have only five copies of our latest book.  We have the address of every Borders and Barnes and Noble within an 8-state radius saved on our GPS.  We shake booksellers' hands, sign books, and slap on hundreds of autograph stickers because it will get our name out there and sell more books.

We turn ourselves into glamour pusses because publishing isn't just about writing now — it's about being mediagenic. We get our hair styled and streaked, we get our faces lifted, we get our bodies toned.  We buy red high heels.  We slather on the makeup for author photos and TV spots.  We hire publicists. We want to be absolutely ready to walk on camera when Oprah calls.  We are determined to get our name out there and blah, blah, blah.   

Meantime, while we're making ourselves insane with all the driving, blogging, primping and Googling, we still have to write those stories. We still have to turn in those manuscripts. 

But now our lives are about to get even more insane.  Because publishers have now come up with the one really surefire way to get our names out there and sell more books.  It's the secret to success, the best strategy for bestsellerdom. And it's this:

We have to write more books.  The old one=book-a-year schedule just isn't enough. Authors are now urged to produce two, three, even four books a year. Because there's nothing that will get your name out there faster, or get the readers to buy more of your books, than to have more of those books on the stands.

God, I miss the good old days.

 

 

Clutterbug

by Pari

If God is a tree, I'm in trouble.

I realized this the other day when I printed out yet another few chapters of my latest manuscript. You see, I've printed out these chapters before . . . many times before. But every iteration demands better editing and changes, so many changes.

My office is full of old paper, too. Up until this year, I carried around things I'd written thirty-plus years ago. I'm not talking about the stuff of legend, brilliant versions of potential books that scholars and librarians might want when I'm nothing more than dust. No. This stuff was just baggage: old term papers, that snippet I'd penned while waiting for a cup of coffee in a now defunct restaurant in Ann Arbor, the address on the back of a napkin of a long-forgotten lover.

In addition to my own piles of insignifance, I'd kept magazines with articles about how to get published that were so old email wasn't even mentioned. There were references to agents who've been dead for decades.

On my no-Internet Thursdays, I've begun to tackle these useless relics. The joy I get when I toss that paper into the recycling bin has been wondrous. Even more pleasurable is the shredding. I LOVE shredding! My little machine has growled its way through reams and reams — more than three industrial size garbage bags — of surplus verbiage.

I'm tossing out many of the current magazines and newsletters I receive as well. The only one I keep consistently is from Novelists, Inc. and that one comes via email anyway. I'm more careful about what I print out from the internet, too. Alex Sokoloff is responsible for destroying a couple of trees because I now have her entire Murderati series about writing in a binder on my bookshelf. (Though the pines may not thank you, Alex, I do!!).

Other than that, I'm being mighty selective about what has access to my office real estate. Sorry, The Economist, you're toast after I've read you. See ya round, New Yorker.

Another paper saving measure: I now call all the nonprofits we donate to that market via snailmail. I ask them to send only one notification/request for funding annually. This means we don't want their newsletters or magazines either — just that one reminder. I decided to make this request because some orgs send so much mail it starts to feel like badgering. We stopped giving to Smile Train because of it. The same goes for National Geographic and The Smithsonian. If the nonprofits' databases can't handle the once-a-year approach; we don't donate to them any more.

And don't tell me we can opt for email contact. It's just as obnoxious (even though paper is no longer the issue).

I often call advertisers and ask not to be included on any of their lists. I don't want to know about their special offers or bargains. No, thank you. You're just cluttering up my mailbox and life with crappola.(Which is why I opt-out of almost all email contact of this sort too.)

When I consistently get something from these businesses after making the request to be left alone, I take what they've sent me — along with the other junkmail I've received — and stuff those postage-paid envelopes to the brim and send them right back. (Of course I strip all personal info off the printed materials.)

This second solution is extremely childish.

It's also incredibly satisfying!

In spite of my efforts, the deforestation continues.

Alas and alack . . .
I continue to print out multiple versions of WIPs for editing. I learned years ago that I can see mistakes and feel the flow of my prose better when I'm looking at hard copy.

So, God, if you're a redwood, please forgive me.

I am trying. I really am.

What about you?
       Are you a packrat?
       Have you developed methods to cut the clutter?
       Do you have a pet peeve as far as orgs/businesses that send you unrequested information via snail mail?
       Are you a hard copy or eletronic editor for your WIPs?

Passion and Sacrifice

I have long admired legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, an inspiration not only to his football players but to everyone. When I was assigned to write a biographical essay in junior high, I wrote about Coach Lombardi because he inspired me personally to always strive to be the best I could be at whatever I set out to do.

I learned pretty quick in life that I would never be the best at everything. I was competitive, but not athletic even after eight years of soccer–sure, I did pretty well and had fun, but once I hit high school sports, the stakes changed. It became harder. Longer practices, tougher competition, more work. I realized I didn't want to work that hard because the payoff of winning–or playing a good, losing game–was not worth it to me.

There were other things that mattered more. That's part of growing up, discovering personal strengths and weaknesses and figuring out what matters to you. What we have passion for. What we are willing to sacrifice for.

My oldest is now in high school. She's my athlete. She's intensely competitive, loves to play sports more than watch them, loves being part of a team with a common goal, and is willing to sacrifice to improve her skills. She's on Varsity basketball as a freshman–yes, it's a small school and she never played basketball in her life and will be lucky if she reaches my height of five foot seven, but there were others cut from the team but her coach must have seen something in her commitment and willingness to work hard to put her on.

Last night I went to her game and was sitting next to one of her classmates on the JV boys team. I said to him, "Did you watch K.'s first game? She was terrified. Now look at her!" She was coming into her own, playing point guard, blocking, passing, shooting, and scoring. She's not the best on the team (which is undefeated), but she's working her ass off to be one of the best. And she scored the final points in the game, making the score 62-27.

High school sports are not for everyone. They aren't for kids who want to "just have fun." It's hard work, but that hard work prepares them to work hard in everything in life. They learn to be part of a team. They learn to trust their teammates–in fact, there are specific exercises to build trust. They learn respect, they learn to take orders, and they learn to lead. 

I particularly am inspired by this Lombardi quote:

"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand."

He also said that the "dictionary is the only place that success comes before hard work."

Last fall, my athlete was on JV Volleyball. (Now her goal is to make Varsity next year as a sophomore–more girls play on the Volleyball team than basketball so the school can field two teams–JV and Varsity.) One of other mom's asked me if K. got upset at the coach for yelling so much and pulling her from the game when she made "just one mistake." Her daughter was upset every day after practice. I often caught the end of practice, and yeah, the coach yells and pushes the girls (though nothing like in basketball!) and I said, "He pulled her from the game because she was mad at herself and copped an attitude." My oldest can not stand making what she calls a "stupid" mistake, and thus on mistake snowballs into more. He was right in pulling her. But even if I thought he was wrong, he's the coach. Which led me to my next comment, "She can quit anytime she wants. No one is forcing her to play. She vents in the car on the way home if she thinks the coach was unfair and then is determined to prove to him that she can do it the next day."

Ultimately, the choice rests with my daughter: I'm not forcing her to play. I love that she's athletic, but this is her decision. My rule is: you make the commitment with your eyes open, and you stick to it. 

My artistic daughter is in 7th grade. She is exceptionally talented. She can draw people that actually look like people. My stick figures don't even look like stick figures. I would love to scan in a history of her art to show how she's developed, so someday I'll post a link for fun. But she's a perfectionist. She constantly frets that it's not good enough. She entered a contest that Libba Bray (author of A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY) had for fan art (the prize: signed advanced copies of her next book) and was near tears because when she scanned her sketch it didn't look like she wanted it to. But OMG, she is incredible. I tell her that all the time and she rolls her eyes and says of course I think that, I'm her mother. See it here, I know you'll agree. 

She almost didn't post it because it wasn't perfect. But she tried, and as Lombardi said, "Perfection is not attainable. But if you chase perfection, you can catch excellence." 

What does this have to do with writing or books? Far more than some people realize.

There are two things that make a successful writer: passion and hard work. You have to want it, love it even with all the headaches and deadlines and frustration. By "it" I mean your goal, whatever it is, from writing greeting cards to news articles to novels to screenplays. You have to love doing it, even though some of the tasks are damn hard–so hard you don't know if you can do it. If you WANT to do it.

When K. first started basketball, she hated running. Her first couple games she was only in maybe half a quarter and she was winded. But her coach is tough–your grades drop? You run. Get a detention? You run. Cop an attitude? You run. Twice. You don't try your hardest and do the best you can? Everyone runs. Now she can play without fear of panting from exhaustion. She told me she doesn't hate running anymore, but she loves the feeling after she runs. (Great, I've created an adrenaline junkie!)

She knows that running hard and fast helps her become a better player. Just like a writer knows that by writing and writing pages and pages of garbage we learn to eventually tell a good story. Both my oldest kids are hardest on themselves when they don't do something as well as they think they can. Hmm, they might have learned that from me, too . . . 

But they both put themselves out there, risking failure, because they are passionate for the end goal. They sacrifice time and energy to . I can not tell you how proud I am of my artistic daughter for posting her art–she hates to show anything to anyone because it's not "perfect." (Again, like me–I never let anyone read anything I wrote until I was, ahem, about thirty-two . . . )

There are so many aspiring authors out there who won't submit their work for fear of rejection. Or they convince themselves that they write garbage. Or they can't handle criticism. Criticism is nothing from an editor compared to some of the readers posting on amazon, or bloggers posting in the blogosphere!

To pull out another Lombardi quote: "It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up." 

It doesn't matter WHAT it is you want. You can want the best garden in the neighborhood ala Mr. Wilson, or to get an A on your final exam, or finish a book when you've never finished writing anything in your life. It's having the passion for it, and be will
ing to make sacrifices to achieve it.

Nothing worth having is easily attained. 

I'm really proud of my kids for finding the passion in something and working hard for success. They are learning what it takes to be a productive citizen as well as happy, fulfilled human beings. 

Writing is the hardest job I've ever had. I stress, bang my head, sacrifice sleep, drink too much caffeine, and fret constantly that I'll never get better while doing everything I can to write the best book I can. But my oldest daughter told me after I quit my job in the legislature and was truly a full-time writer, "I've never seen you so happy."

I admire many people who have shown passion, worked hard and made sacrifices to achieve their goals. Vince Lombardi is just one. My oldest daughters are two more. I love that my agent loves being an agent, and my editor loves being an editor. Neither job is easy, but they both work hard and are passionate in their positions. My daughter's coach is at the school from eight in the morning and is the last to leave at night, staying for multiple practices and late games. He drives kids home if their parents can't pick them up after a late away game. He commands respect because he never asks anything that he's not willing to do himself.

Is there someone– a friend, a colleague, a relative, someone you read about — who exemplifies the attitude of Lombardi and others who know that hard work comes before success? Someone who inspires you to chase perfection? Acknowledge them here . . . 

NOTE: RENEE won an ARC of SUDDEN DEATH last month . . . and I haven't heard from her! Renee, please email me (you can fill out the contact form on my website here.) If Renee doesn't email me by midnight Monday, I'll pick another winner from today's comments.

What Is High Concept?

by Alexandra Sokoloff


I am out of town… all right, out of the country! – this week, and so I'm leaving you with a post about something that I've talked about before here on Murderati, but have never done a dedicated post on – the High Concept premise.
So what the hell is "High Concept"?
There seems to be eternal confusion on this subject. It’s sort of an “I know it when I see it” kind of thing. But today I will do what I can to define it.
If you can tell your story in one line and everyone who hears it can see exactly what the movie or book is – AND a majority of people who hear it will want to see it or read it – that’s high concept.
Here’s another way of looking at it: the potential of the setup is obvious. A movie like MEET THE PARENTS instantly conjures all kinds of disaster scenarios, right? Because we’ve all (mostly) been in the situation before, and we know the extreme perils.
I would also add, not as an afterthought – with a high-concept premise, the moneymaking potential is obvious.
Here’s another indicator. When you get the reaction: “Wow, I wish I’d thought of that!” or even better, “I’m going to have to kill you” – you’ve got a high-concept premise.
Screenwriter/producer Terry Rossio calls it “Mental Real Estate” – a topic or subject that is in a majority of people’s heads already, and his essay "Mental Real Estate" on Wordplayer.com is a must-read on the subject. (Then take some time – got a few years? – and explore the rest of the site. It’s a free mini-film school by two of the best in the business – Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott).
Think about one of their movies – PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Who hasn’t been on that Disney ride? All the studio had to do to advertise it was slap that skull and crossbones on a one-sheet, and people were sold.
But okay, let’s break it down, specifically. What makes stories high concept? One or more of these things:
– They’re topical – they hit a nerve in society at the right time: FATAL ATTRACTION for AIDS, JURASSIC PARK for cloning, DISCLOSURE for sexual harassment (only reversing the sexes was utter bullshit.)
– They are about a subject that we all have in our heads already (THE PASSION, THE DA VINCI CODE, FOUR CHRISTMASES, JURASSIC PARK, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN)
– They exploit a primal fear (JAWS, JURASSIC PARK)
– They are about a situation that we all (or almost all) have experienced (MEET THE PARENTS, BLIND DATE. That movie out recently – FOUR CHRISTMASES – is about a young couple who have to spend a Christmas with each set of their divorced parents. Very universal!)
– They are controversial and/or sacrilegious enough to generate press (DA VINCI CODE, THE LAST TEMPTATION, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR)
– They generate water-cooler talk (FATAL ATTRACTION, INDECENT PROPOSAL)
– They have a big twist (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, THE SIXTH SENSE, RUTHLESS PEOPLE). And not necessarily a twist at the end – the twist can be in the set up. SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE is about two people falling in love – when they've never met. RUTHLESS PEOPLE is about a group of kidnappers who kidnap a wealthy woman and threaten to kill her if her husband doesn't pay – which turns out to be her heinous husband's dream scenario. He WANTS her dead, and now the kidnappers are stuck with a bitch on wheels.
– They are about a famous person or event – or possible event: TITANIC, GALLIPOLI, APOLLO 13, ARMAGEDDON, ROSWELL.
– There's also just the "Cool!!!" factor. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK revolves around an artifact that supposedly has the supernatural power to will any army undefeatable. Well, what if Hitler got hold of it?
Let’s take a closer look at a few high-concept ideas:
JURASSIC PARK – A group of scientists and the children of an inventor tour a remote island where the inventor has cloned dinosaurs to create a Jurassic amusement park – then have to fight for their lives when the dinosaur containment system breaks down.
What kid has not had that obsession with dinosaurs? And who of us has not had the thought of how terrifying it would be to be face to face with one of those things – live? Throw in the very topical subject of cloning (they get dinosaur DNA from a prehistoric fly trapped in amber) and the promise of amusement-park thrills, and who ISN’T going to read that book and/or see that movie?
FATAL ATTRACTION – A happily married man has a one-night stand and then his family is stalked by the woman he hooked up with.
This film hit a huge number of people in the – uh, gut – because even people who have never had an affair have almost certainly thought about it. Also the film came out when AIDS was rampant, with no effective treatment in sight, and suddenly a one-night stand could literally be fatal. It’s easy to see the potential for some really frightening situations there, as the innocent family is terrorized, and of course we all like to see a good moral comeuppance.
INDECENT PROPOSAL – A young, broke couple on vacation in Vegas are offered a million dollars by a wealthy man for one night with the wife.
This is a great example of the “What would YOU do?” premise. It’s a question that generated all kinds of what the media calls “water cooler discussion”, and made it a must-see movie at the time. Would you have sex with a stranger for a million dollars? Would you let someone you love do it? Oh, boy, did people talk about it!
Are you starting to get the hang of it?
One of the best classes I ever took on screenwriting was SOLELY on premise. Every week we had to come up with three loglines for movie ideas and stand up and read them aloud to the class. We each put a dollar into a pot and the class voted on the best premise of the night, and the winner got the pot. It was highly motivating – I made my first "screenwriting" money that way and I learned worlds about what a premise should be.
Whether you’re a screenwriter or novelist I highly recommend you try the same exercise – make yourself come up with three story ideas a week, and try to make some of them high concept. You'll be training yourself to think in terms of big story ideas. You don’t have to sell out. I’m always telling exactly the stories I want to tell, about the people I want to write about. But there’s no reason not to think in more universal terms and be open to subject matter, locations, themes, topics, that might strike a chord in a bigger audience.
When THE PRICE was optioned by Sony the executives pitched it as “The devil is walking around the halls of a Boston hospital making deals with the patients and their families.” And there’s a “What would YOU do?” built in: “What would you give to save the life of a loved one?”
I’ve already gotten unsolicited TV interest for THE UNSEEN and we don’t even have galleys yet! But that book is based on the real-life – and world-famous – ESP experiments and poltergeist investigations conducted by Dr. J.B. Rhine at the Duke University parapsychology lab – and just the bare bones premise line is attracting producers, because that’s “mental real estate”.
The reality is, these days agents and editors and publishers are looking for books that have those unique, universal, high-concept premises, and the attendant potential for a TV or movie sale.
Open your mind to the possibility of high concept, and see what happens. You may surprise yourself.
So, any favorite examples of high concept for me, today?
– Alex

Matters Arising

Zoë Sharp

I had to laugh – albeit in a groaning, semi-hysterical kind of way – when I saw Dusty's Faster! Faster! post from yesterday about productivity. I'm behind with the new Charlie Fox book. Way behind. I mean, lying awake at night and sweating about it, behind.

But, finally, the end is in sight. In fact, with good luck, a following wind, and half a dozen policemen, as the saying has it, I should have something completed by next weekend. It kind of helps that we've been snowed in again this week, and I've already had to cancel one photoshoot, which has meant more writing time.

Reaching the end of a book is exciting and frightening, both at the same time. I know what is going to happen, but I don't quite know how it's going to happen, not until I actually get there. And it's frightening because then I have to show it to people, and they're going to pull it to pieces and point out all the bits that don't work. But, better constructive criticism than no comments at all.

Endings, though, are a post topic all of their own, and that's not what springs to mind today.

You may recall that I did a post last October called Tricks of the Trade about all those little bits of inside information, which people in certain trades know automatically, and which can really add that authentic flavour to any work of fiction. People came up with some fascinating snippets, and I just love all that kind of trivia.

Before I begin a book, I research my main subjects carefully, because so often you find out something at this stage that really shapes or alters where you thought the plot was going. In HARD KNOCKS, for example, I knew at the outset that, after the handgun ban in the UK, most close-protection training schools moved to Europe, with the most popular destinations being France, Holland, and Germany. As I knew Germany better than either France or Holland, that became the location of the majority of the action in the story. And, having made that decision, various other aspects of that country – particularly the lack of speed limits on the autobahns, for example – became an integral part of the plot. Trust me, you haven't lived until you've driven at over 170mph on the public road … ;-]

But, by the time I've finished – or nearly finished – a book, I have a file called Queries. Queries could best be described as Matters Arising. It contains all the little nitty-gritty questions that have cropped up during the writing process. Rather than break off and go looking for the answers at the time, and therefore interrupt the flow of the story, I jot a note to myself in Queries, and come back to it at the end.

And, when I come to look at my Queries file for this book, there are some very odd questions. Nothing at all to do, you might think, with a crime novel. Of course, there were specific crime-related questions, but the kind of contacts you make in this industry are invaluable for answering those.

I needed to know about US police interview procedure, for instance, so I called on former cop turned mystery author, Robin Burcell. I also needed to know, among other things, how long a person's heart can stop for, before they incur brain damage, and for that kind of thing, mystery author and cardiologist, Doug Lyle MD is your man. (And for anybody scribbling in this field, I can heartily recommend copies of Doug's excellent books, such as FORENSICS AND FICTION: Clever, Intriguing, And Downright Odd Questions From Crime Writers.)

A friend in the travel industry answered my query about how best to fly a coffin home to the UK from the States, while Stuart MacBride, bless him, filled me in on the best hotel in Aberdeen - the Caledonian Thistle, in case you're making travel plans – and the name by which the locals refer to it – "The Calley".

Of course, back when I first started writing, finding out these answers involved a trip to the reference library. But now, with the wonders of the Internet, you can find out just about anything about … just about anything.

If you know what questions to ask.

For example, a chance conversation with another mystery author, Linda L Richards, at Bouchercon, brought up the name Synanon, and pointed me in the right direction for researching about certain cults in California. Without that name to put into a search engine, I would have been overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of pages on the subject.

Sometimes, there's just too much information out there. And trying to describe something you've forgotten the name for, and then search for it, can prove a frustrating business.

I had a total brain-dump about the correct term for carrying a rifle with the butt in your cupped hand, and the barrel slanted back over your shoulder. How do you ask that in Google? (OK, finally remembered it's called 'slope arms'.)

And now, as I look down my list of queries, it seems a bizarre selection:

  • How long does it take to go from LA to San Francisco by Greyhound (or similar) bus?

  • Are there free walk-in medical clinics in Manhattan?

  • Are California vehicles required to display a front licence plate?

  • What's the most common type of helicopter used by the oil exploration industry?

  • What wild animals – if any – do people commonly hunt with rifles in southern California?

  • Driving from Newark Airport into midtown Manhattan in the morning, what's the most logical route across the Hudson River?

  • What's the correct name for the air ambulance service in LA? (I needed similar info for New England and discovered it's called the LifeFlight helicopter, incidentally. People have a habit of being critically injured in my books and requiring emergency transport to the nearest trauma centre.)

  • Do late-90s' model Ford Econoline vans have one rear door, or two?

  • Does Interstate 405, which runs north-south through LA, have a High Occupancy Vehicle lane?

  • Do US schoolteachers specialise in a particular subject, ie, geography – and would that cover geology?

  • What is the likely temperature in LA in the early evening in February?

  • How would a US cop refer to someone he or she suspects is working for Homeland Security? (I would have thought this was "spooks" but I know the UK TV series about MI5 had its name changed from 'Spooks' to 'MI5', so I assume it has a different meaning over there.)

  • How does the door open and the steps unfold on a Gulfstream G550 executive jet?

  • Is Rohypnol, which is a brand name for flunitrazepam (a benzodiazepine sleeping and date-rape drug) a recognised trade name in the States?

  • Are there any oil refineries currently operating within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska?

Nothing exactly earth-shattering in that lot, is there? Nothing the entire story hinges upon, but all important little bits and pieces that help round out the story and settle it in its surroundings. Nothing a few Internet searches can't probably pinpoint without too much difficulty. At least, I'm hoping that's the case!

I should point out, by the way, that I have not put these up as an idle way of short-cutting my research – although if anybody does know the answers I will certainly not stuff my fingers in my ears and go, "La, la, la. Not listening!" There will be a nice mention in the Acknowledgements, of course ;-]

But, I just wanted to highlight what strange little bits of information go into writing a book. And, my question is, what's the oddest inconsequential bit of info you've required when you've been writing, and if you read a book where the answers to any of those questions – or ones like them – were incorrect, would it spoil it for you?

This week's Word of the Week is psychopomp (from the Greek, pompos, a guide) meaning a conductor of souls to the other world. And if I haven't finished this book by next weekend, I may need one … 

Snow willing, I should be out on a shoot today, but will answer all comments as soon as I get back.