by Pari
One of my favorite people, Tony Hillerman, died of pulmonary failure yesterday in an Albuquerque hospital. I’ll write about him next week. For now, I just wanted to mark his passing. While he lives forever in his books, it’s the man I’ll miss.
I know he’d want us to keep talking about candy and Halloween and writers’ foibles in the conversation below, so let’s do it.
I’m raising a Reese’s peanut cup to him right now . . .
by Pari
Halloween is a dangerous time at our house. Two or three weeks before the holiday begins, the bags of candy start rolling in — creamy MilkyWays, satisfying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, crunchy Kit Kats — and get stowed, supposedly for safe keeping, on the shelves in my office closet.
I’m all right as long as the packages remain closed. But once my husband breaks into them, all bets are off. My willpower dissolves in the acid of desire. It’s ugly. If you could see me now, you’d cower at the glazed look in my eyes, the sugar-induced tremors coursing through my body, the stacks of empty Smarties’ wrappers on every surface of my desk . . .
Writing has the same pitfalls. I try to stay on the straight-and-narrow. I yearn to avoid excessive commas, errant ellipses, those alluring semicolons. Inevitably, something sets me off, some scene will remove the figurative finger from my dike of self-control and blow my abstinence to smithereens.
Yep. You guessed it.
I’m a metaphor slut, an anaolgy ho.
I don’t say this proudly. I’ve tried to mend my ways. I memorized the twelve steps at Flourishers’ Anonymous and, in a horrid moment of relapse, rewrote them all. Electric shock therapy just felt good. Tough love wasn’t tough enough.
Late at night when I can’t sleep, I lay the blame on my addiction to poetry. Damn you, Wallace Stevens! Curse you, William Carlos Williams. I’m thinking of sending my behavioral therapy bills to novelist Alice Hoffman. Believe me, every morning when the sun greets the crisp blue sky, I vow to unclutter my prose. By noon, I’m a simpering metaphorical mess.
As a reader, I’ve noticed other writers have particular weaknesses, too. I find solace in that.
For example: Most authors have favorite words. C.J. Cherryh, whose works I enjoy tremendously, loves the word "coolth." I’m pretty sure she made it up and whenever I delve into one of her books, I look for it.
There are adverb junkies, sex-scene jonesers, multiple adjectival inserters, pedantic peacocks prone to alliteration, and experts who’ll spend more time writing about how a clock was made than plotting the entire story.
Authors have preferred actions too: standing, sitting, leaning a head against a shoulder, widening eyes, narrowing lips. Eyes twinkle, throats scratch.
We all do it. Every writer’s literary addictions come through.
So let’s roll around in the chocolate pleasure of conversation, the fondue of free speech.
What’s your writing temptation?
Have you noticed any author’s addictions? (Do you like them? Dislike?)
Or, simply . . . What’s your favorite candy this season?
Me? Since the Smarties are gone, I’m moving on to Paydays. I pick off all the peanuts first and then eat the gooey core . . . but that’s another post.
Seduction.
If we do it right, from the very beginning, it should be seduction. Luring the reader in, making them forget about the fact that we’re telling them lies. All lies. Lies that hold a truth somewhere, the promise of something rich and memorable. A rush, the suggestion of satisfaction, of bliss. Being sated, while making them forget it’s all based on deception.
Making the experience personal, unique, something the reader believes they won’t find anywhere else. Something meant just for them. Theirs.
Seduction.
The opening to a novel is all about seducing, capturing the reader with just the right tone, the right shift of the body, so that they lean in a little. Tell me more.
The beginning of a story used to be difficult for me, until I realized what it was all about. It’s not about the set up, or the backstory. It’s not about the world or the place or the weather. It’s about titillation. Potential. It does not have to be about understanding, yet. The whole "they have to know this thing happened back then in order to know what that event means" scenario. You don’t start off a seduction of a partner by delving into what your parents did when you were seven or the unforgivable thing you’re ashamed of or exactly who your great-uncle was and why he left you the moose in his will. None of these things matter yet to the audience, and you can’t make them matter in the first two minutes.
You can, though, make them interested enough to stick around to find out more. Understanding will come later.
There are a few components to a good seduction.
Confidence. One hell of a weapon. If someone is nervous and jumpy and suffering flop sweat, it doesn’t exactly inspire a person to think anything following is going to be exciting. Or anything above insufferable. Likewise, starting off explaining too much can come across as wimpy, lacking in confidence. Pick a path, pick a voice, hone it. Own it. Have confidence in it.
Awareness. Pay attention to your partner’s signals. In writing, this translates as know your audience. Know their expectations, and then show them that you have the potential to deliver–in unexpected ways. Sure, you can break rules of the genre, but it’s the difference between being aware that pitching a three-way from the podium of the Southern Baptist convention is not going to get the same results as pitching the same thing in a bar after work.
Invitation. Your partner has to feel wanted. Needed. There needs to be an invitation to continue. Body language, intonation, phrasing, eye contact, laughter… in seduction, all of these things can come into play. You can’t seduce someone if you’re too busy paying attention to everyone else in the room–there would be the blunt sense of not mattering, not being needed, not being unique, and the lack of invitation would turn most people off. So, too, if you don’t raise a question or two in the beginning of the story. The sense that you need to tell this story, to them, that it’s critical, that they, the reader, are important, is primary. Put another way, this is the "don’t bore them with exposition" rule. Think back to standing at a party and having someone go on and on and on about themselves. They start sounding self-important, and you wonder why you even need to be there. They’d probably be saying the same thing without you, and immediately, you wish to be elsewhere. The reader senses this same thing, when there’s tons of exposition. Instead, plunge them into the story, into the conflict, and tantalize them with and interesting angle on what happened, or an interesting voice. Tease them.
Focus. Know what you’re promising, because you’re going to have to follow through. And as you go, you’ll be showing you know this, demonstrating some expertise that will continue the seduction, keep their interest until they’re too far gone to walk away. This means finishing what you started, the way you started it. If you start off with serial killers, ending with the Marx Brothers is probably a bad idea. Consistency. No one in the middle of great sex suddenly wants to start talking about the aliens you think landed and took over your in-laws.
Subtext. Build the tension. The surest way to crash the evening (or push away the reader) is to interrupt the flirting with a sudden need to have a heart-to-heart honest discussion of some issue that is very important to you–when that wasn’t the direction the evening was going. There are things that are said, and things not said, and seduction often takes place in that subtext, in the things not said.
I’ll admit here that I want to be seduced by good openings. I want to feel that rush of expectation, the heightened sense of promise. I have a good many books on my TBR pile because of the seduction of such openings… things like Sean Chercover’s Trigger City, Lori Armstrong’s Snow Blind, Harlan Coben’s Hold Tight, Robert Crais’ The Watchman, [I know, I am the last person on earth to read this one], Tasha Alexander’s A Fatal Waltz, and Zoë Sharp’s Third Strike [an absolutely terrific opening line]… okay, I just looked at my stack and there are more than fifty books in this one stack. In one room. There are stacks in each room.
How about you? What seduces you? And tell me something on your TBR pile (and I’ll follow up and put links to those titles).
Edited to add links from the selections in the comments… (because links are wonky if I try to put them there):
The Given Day — Dennis Lehane
Lost Dog — Bill Cameron
Angel’s Tip — Alafair Burke
The Book of Lost Things — John Connolly
Money Shot — Christa Faust
The Confessions of Max Tivoli — Andrew Sean Greer
EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE — John McFetridge
EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, Declan Burke
THE GIVEN DAY, Dennis Lehane
NOTHING TO LOSE, Lee Child
THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN, James Lee Burke
CHARM CITY, Laura Lippman
THE CRUCIBLE by Arthur Miller
WHITE NIGHTS by Ann Cleeves
BRASS VERDICT by Michael Connelly
TURNAROUND by George Pelecanos
SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN by Siri Hustvedt
The Blonde by Duane Swierczynski
oops, I missed a couple from earlier… and there are a few more!
SILENCE OF THE GRAVE — Arnaldur Indridason
WRONG KIND OF BLOOD — Declan Hughes
ISABELLA MOON — by Laura Benedict
THE HARD WAY — Lee Child
TROUBLE IN PARADISE — Robert B Parker
JUDGMENT IN DEATH — JD Robb
Voodoo Doll — Leah Giarratano
Shatter — Michael Robotham
You all know the feeling… you survive junior high school and finally you’re a freshman, and you’re going to put all that knowledge you accumulated about how to survive school to good use. That first day of high school, you have the jitters. Sure, maybe you’re the star basketball player or you’re on the dance team, or quite a few of your friends are going to be there and you already know you’re sharing fourth and sixth hour with them, so you’ve got a handle on this experience. You know how to navigate the hallways, you’re aware there’s going to be political crap you have to deal with (who likes whom, who’s destructive, who’s dangerous, manipulative), but on the whole, you can handle it. Even if you’re introverted and awkward, at least it won’t be as hard as the previous years, because you’ve been through hell (I defy anyone to tell me junior high is not hell). You’ve traversed it, lived to tell about it, and nothing could be that hard.
‘Til you get there. And the experience is both what you expected and so much more. You realize, then, how very low on the totem pole you really are, experience-wise. Those damned seniors? Man, they rule the school, they know all of the teachers, the quirks, which gangs are running what, how to avoid detention, how to suck up to which teacher to skip out on homeroom, exactly who forges the… uh, okay, moving on. And not only do those seniors know crap, but they’re usually driving the coolest cars or hanging out in the best spots.
By the time you’re a senior, you think, damn, I know how to do this. And when you move on from there to become a freshman in college, you usually bring that maybe-confident, maybe-cocky attitude with you, because damn, you’ve learned stuff and surely it’s not going to be all that different. You’re going to segue into college with the same panache and there won’t be that awful awkward period where it’s clear you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Only by the time you’re a sophomore or a junior, you look back at that pitiful freshman who thought they were so worldly and chuckle. Oh, to be so innocent.
There are a couple of analogies, of course, to publishing that I’d like to emphasize. One, you never know as much as you think you know, and there’s always someone who knows more. Pay attention to them–they’ll help you survive. Two, you will very likely survive it, if you don’t shoot yourself, so try hard not to do that.
When I was first writing, my focus was on screenwriting (that was my focus for my MFA), and the first major writing conference I attended was the Austin Film Festival. I probably learned more in that one weekend from other writers than I had the previous couple of years in school. There’s just not much else which substitutes for real world experience, and there are a tremendous number of incredibly generous writers out there who constantly make the effort to pass along what they’ve learned. They remember being freshmen. They probably had mentors of their own who helped them get through the rough spots, people who said, "yes, that’s how it’s done," or "no, be careful of that, it’ll kill you." They have the most important thing any freshman needs: information.
There is no crying in publishing. It’s a tough business because you are selling something that is unique (one hopes) and personal (you created it) and hope that it appeals to a wide audience. It is not a business where you can hide, really–your name is there on the book. Or your pseudonym. But it’s you, it’s your work, and that’s a bit scary. It’s more than just walking into that big long hallway the first day of school. It’s the first game of the season, and you have to perform, you’re in front of the crowd, and if you flub up, everyone’s going to notice. [I was on the dance team for four years, and by my junior year, was choreographing some of the dances. I got it into my head once to do this extravagantly difficult dance with a set of ripples–where everyone was moving one beat behind the person in front of them–and it was a fantastic sequence. Brilliant, in fact. We rehearsed the hell out of it. I was a little worried about a couple of people pulling it off, and they were nervous about remembering each step, because since it was a giant set of sequential moves, one wrong move by one person would ruin the effect. And I was in front of the group, seeing how I choreographed the whole damned thing. Whereupon I promptly went completely blank in the middle of the most difficult sequence and could not remember what came next, and so jumped to another move. The entire line behind me followed. Incorrectly. One half of the team kept going, the other half stood frozen, behind me, waiting for the cue as to what to do next, because they all realized in that moment that we’d screwed up.] [So yeah, public embarrassment. Not much phases me now.]
There are things I’ve learned in publishing–people have kept me from being that lone idiot out on the field, doing the wrong move in front of an entire stadium. Maybe some of this will be of help. None of it is new, ground-breaking, and I am hoping others chime in via the comments and add their own experiences.
1) There is an incredible euphoria when you first sell. Enjoy it. Embrace it. You deserve the thrill, and the joy.
2) Keep in mind you are not the first person who has sold a book. I know, it’ll feel like it, but there may be a couple of others out there.
3) You cannot do absolutely everything you hear about, marketing-wise. Nor should you try. There are going to be things which will work for you, and things you shouldn’t even bother trying, either because you don’t have the time or the money. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.
4) Do put up a website. Do ask people to give you honest feedback. My first website had a background that was bright orange. I did not know it was that bright because for whatever reason, on my monitor, it looked more like a dark rust. In fact, it didn’t really look bright enough. It had been up for several months before I saw it on someone else’s monitor and after I QUIT BEING BLIND, I immediately sought to replace it. I think a couple of people may have mentioned that it "sure was orange," but I didn’t really listen to what they were trying to say. So, set your ego aside, ask, and listen. [That is probably the number one rule in anything, really.]
5) Do put up links from an image of your book’s cover to a place where it can be purchased online. I highly recommend finding a local indie who will be happy to ship autographed copies for you. [Or an indie you’ve visited elsewhere–treasure those booksellers.] If you guest blog somewhere, make sure that your full name is there, a link to your book and your book’s cover. I have purchased many books after reading guest blogs.
6) Book tours work for some, they don’t work for others, and it’s really going to be about trial-and-error to see what works for you. Unless you’re an extreme introvert who cannot speak to anyone whatsoever, drop in and sign stock where possible.
7) This is probably where the hard stuff goes. Publishing has an almost built-in self-fulfilling prophecy mentality at work. Hitting a best-selling list requires volume + velocity in some arcane voodoo spell that no one seems to know. You, by yourself, even with your efforts on the internet, cannot reach the nation. You can help boost your sales to some degree. For all of the marketing access we now have–blog ads, book trailers, websites, blurbs, success (if we call sales the measure of success) is determined by two separate things, which can sometimes join forces.
a) print run — if there is a large enough print run by your publisher to get your book into enough stores, then your book has a shot of doing well. More specifically, the larger the print run, the more likely your publisher will be willing to offer co-op dollars to the book stores (money / incentives) to get your book on a table or an end cap or in some sort of special that has a chance of catching a reader’s attention
b) word-of-mouth — this is where the book sellers and librarians can affect the writer’s career significantly, because if they like something and they hand-sell it to their customers / patrons, word can spread. Readers, however, are the tipping point. Book clubs which pick the book for discussion often recommend the book to other book clubs; readers tell other readers, or loan the book out. Word-of-mouth can mitigate a modest print-run because when it builds–if it builds–more and more readers will ask for the book, which means re-orders in book stores, which can lead to additional print runs, which can lead to the publisher noticing they have a sleeper hit on their hands, which leads to more marketing dollars spent, more effort on their part… etc.
8) You cannot manufacture word-of-mouth (the work has to do that on its own), and you cannot control the print run. Try not to make yourself crazy if the first book isn’t a runaway success.
9)
There’s an essay in the New York Times Review of Books tomorrow called “Shelley’s Daughters”, about contemporary women authors who are writing in the vein of psychological horror opened by such visionary authors as Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
And I’m in it.
Right there beside three other contemporary female authors whose powerful and disturbing work I love: Sarah Langan, Sara Gran, and Elizabeth Hand.
Wow. The New York Times. I mean, coming from Southern California, specifically from philistine Hollywood, I have to admit this is a little freaky. That’s, like, a real newspaper from a real city, read by actual grownups. It’s so big. And it has so many words. People routinely take a whole day out of their week just to read that paper.
So that’s the first slightly surreal thing about this.
But the other, really surreal thing is – those authors. Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson and the lesser-known Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who wrote a short story called “The Yellow Wallpaper”, about a woman’s descent into madness when confined to her room to rest from an “hysterical condition” by her physician husband, which was an absolutely pivotal shift in my consciousness as a woman and a writer at the time that I read it. I’m linking to it so that anyone who’s missed it has a chance to see what I’m talking about.
If I had to make a list of three authors who had done the most to influence and inspire what I write, and a bit how I live as a woman, that would arguably be it. The top three.
So to be considered in the same essay with them, in such a public forum, is a shockingly intimate thing.
And it means that I really am writing what I think I’m writing. That other people see it that way, too. Now, that might be sort of the point of all this writing to begin with, and I guess I’ve been becoming more aware of that from other reviews that I’ve gotten and from letters I get from readers and feedback I get in person at signings.
But I’ve never had it driven home in exactly this way before. That I am. Writing EXACTLY. What I think I’m writing.
Maybe other authors here don’t have the same genre identity problem going that I do. But look, it gets confusing. Depending on which bookstore or library you walk into, I’m shelved in horror (if there is even a horror section, which these days there usually isn’t), sometimes mystery/thriller, sometimes fiction and literature. I go to mystery, thriller, romance, horror, and even sci-fi/fantasy conferences, and have readers at each. Add to that the fact that as a screenwriter I would work on projects that could start out as adventure thrillers and end up as musicals, through that special process Hollywood calls “development”; and add to THAT my own personality disorder – I mean, chameleon nature – and the fact that my own publisher is careful not to call what I do “horror” – which by all accounts is a dead genre, at least for the time being…
Yes, I’d say I’m confused.
And it’s also frustrating because I know it’s hard for people to find my books. There’s no consistency. It’s worrisome – how many people just give up? I can’t tell you how often I’ve asked my agent if I should just write a straight thriller for the next book, and he always says, No, it’s going to take some time, but you’re doing something that nobody else is doing, and people will find you.
Well, reading that article made me realize that he has it right – that not many people at all are writing this kind of thing – and that’s why I got that shock of recognition seeing my name with Sarah Langan, Sara Gran and Elizabeth Hand, who ARE writing this kind of thing. What it is, is feminist horror. Or since the Right has somehow insidiously twisted “feminism” into as dirty a word as “politically correct” – even just feminine horror.
That’s what galvanized me about Shelley, Jackson and Gilman when I discovered them, growing up. Not just that they told ripping good scary stories, dripping with perverse sexuality and unnerving psychological insight, but that those stories were from an unmistakably and unrelentingly female point of view. About oppression and patriarchy and a kind of madness, but prophetic madness, that comes with always being the Other.
Let’s face it – women have a lot to say about horror. We live with violence on a much more intimate and everyday level than most men do. A walk out to the parking lot from the grocery store can on any given night turn into a nightmare from which some women will never fully recover.
I think security expert and author Gavin DeBecker got it exactly right when he said “A man’s greatest fear about a woman is that she’ll laugh at him. A woman’s greatest fear about a man is that he’ll kill her.”
Women know what it’s like to be prisoners in their own homes, what it’s like to be enslaved, to be stalked, to be prostituted, what it’s like to be ultimately powerless. And they know everything there is to know about rage, even when it’s so deeply buried they don’t know that’s what it is they’re feeling.
(When I start to think about it, the mystery to me is why more women AREN’T writing horror.)
Now, I’ve been writing for a long time, and I’ve known for a long time that that’s what I was exploring in my writing. And because I’ve worked in Hollywood and had to, you know, eat – I’ve learned how to couch that in entertainment, even write primarily about men, when the real story in the story is what’s happening with the women.
But we get caught up in all the chaotic day-to-day of being authors, especially fairly new authors, and we sometimes forget what it is we’re trying to say. We forget the mission statement.
And the mission might change, too, so subtly that we’re not aware of the change.
I know why some authors don’t read their reviews. I understand how it might be better to just write by your internal compass, and not worry about what gets said in print. And whoever said that if you’re going to read your reviews, you have to read them ALL as truth – the good and the bad – I think that person has it right. And I’ve read some whopping bad ones, and I have to – cringingly – admit the truth of them. (And there’s sometimes unexpected gold – I’ll always cherish the bad review that ended with: “I’ll buy her next book, but I’m not looking forward to it.”)
But now I understand a little better the value of outside criticism. Sometimes in all the day-to-day chaos, someone can suddenly remind you exactly who you are, and what you’ve been trying to do all along.
Authors, what would be your ideal list of three other authors to be compared with? Or who would be your three authors who influenced you the most as a writer? And/or – have you ever had a review that reminded you exactly what your mission was?
And readers, who would be the three authors who have influenced you the most as a person?
(As part of my program of complete overextension, I’m also guest blogging at Laura Benedict’s Notes from the Handbasket today as part of her Octoberguest! Series. More on the dark side….)
One of the things that has always drawn me to a story, right from when I first started reading as a kid, is when I’m taken to someplace new, someplace I’ve never been. Now, when I was a teenager, more often than not, this meant to space or other worlds guided there by the capable hands of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and James White to name a few. Occasionally I would dip into the world of fantasy, visiting Tolkien’s Middle Earth or journeying along with Thomas Covenant in Stephan Donaldson’s original Unbeliever series or even to Shannara in the first Terry Brooks’ book THE SWORD OF SHANNARA.
These books were perfect for me because I was always dreaming about places that lay beyond the forever-tan landscape outside my bedroom window in the Mojave Desert where I grew up. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? Dirt, dirt everywhere, seeded only by sage brush and tumbleweeds.
I guess that’s why, in between those trips to space I took in my head, I was also pulled into the works of Alistair MacLean. ICE STATION ZEBRA, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, WHERE EAGLES DARE, BEAR ISLAND…holy crap, I could just go on and on. Don’t think I read everything by Mr. MacLean, but I tried.
He served not only as another means of escape for me, but he was also my introduction to the international thriller. Later I would move on to Robert Ludlum and get lost in his European landscapes where an innocent man – usually – got sucked into an far from innocent plot. And, of course, there was Bourne. What a great character. An amnesiac assassin who found he could do things that even surprised him, and who was desperately searching for clues to his past, but then found a life that this new Bourne didn’t believe in. Brilliant.
Not only did these novels instill a love of thrillers, they also fueled my growing need to travel and see the world. In high school I was twice given the opportunity to go on a trip to Europe…I accepted both times. And in the three years after high school but before college, I spent a total of at least seven months out of the country…more Europe but also a lengthy stay in Mexico traveling deep into pre-rebellious Chiapas.
My love of thrillers and love of travel never died. Over the years there have been several more trips to Europe and three to Asia. And I’m not through. There is much of the world I am still hoping to see. Most of it, in fact.
And I guess, because of these two loves, it was only natural that I would want to write international thrillers. To be able to travel to interesting places and write about them? What could be better than that? Because, you see, I don’t like to write about places I haven’t been. It does happen. There are a few locations in my first two books and in my new one coming out next summer that I haven’t been to. But for the most part, I have walked the streets of the cities I write about. I have eaten the native food. I have breathed the air, and listened to the language, and observed how the locals interacted.
Not all authors need to do this. But for me it is a necessity. It gives me the confidence I need. Because I like to think that the locations my stories are minor characters themselves.
This is all a long, round about way of saying that as you read this (if you’re reading on the day I posted or the several before and after) I’m in London researching locations for my next Quinn novel, the one that will come out in 2010. I’m sure I’m have a blast. I’m positive I’m taking TONS of pictures and shooting gigabytes of footage. And notes are no doubt being scribbled in my little moleskine notebook. And the smile on my face will be genuine and unmovable because I will know how blessed I am to be able to be doing what I’m doing.
You see, that’s the point. Those writers out there still trying to find your voice or your “hook” or your whatever you want to call it, my advice is to use something you enjoy in your writing…whether it be travel, or a hobby, or a love of history, or a knowledge of music, or…
You get the picture.
Bottom line: You don’t have to write what you know, but you should write what you love.
So, what is it you love? (And since I’m traveling I’m unsure if I will be able to respond, but know that I will definitely read everyone’s comments!)
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Song of the Day: LONDON CALLING by The Clash
I pretty much live and work inside my computer.
It’s true. If someone could put a computer chip in my brain that would allow me to see the screen on my retinas, I’d be a happy man.
I was on a panel at the Santa Barbara Festival of Books recently, talking about process, and one of my co-panelists, Gayle Lynds, was shocked when I said I never print out my drafts.
When I write books, the first time I see a draft on paper is when the copy editor sends it to me. I never make corrections with a pen until I’m writing STET all over those copy-edited pages. The book is written on a computer, revised on a computer and the only thing my editor ever gets from me is an electronic copy.
Even those STETTED (is that a word?) pages get scanned and sent electronically. Saves me a trip to the post office, and a lot of money. The one time I DID send the paper version of my UK copy edits, the delivery charge was 70 bucks.
Ouch.
All that said, I DO prefer to read paper based books. No Kindles or Sony Readers for me, thank you. Well, sure, I wouldn’t mind having one. In fact, I’d love to have one. But as handy as they might be, I’ll always prefer paperbacks. Lose a paperback on a plane, and you’re only out seven bucks.
But the writing process, for me, is almost all electronic. In fact, if they could find a way to send me the copy edits electronically, I’d jump for joy. Because, let’s face it, the copy edit phase is the most joyless part of the authoring business.
I’ve been a gadget fiend for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I had more tape recorders than I knew what to do with. Eight track recorders, reel-to-reel, cassette recorders, multi-track recorders. I’ve always been something of an early adopter and tend to buy gadgets long before the prices come down.
Back in the early 1980’s, I bought a Yamaha hardware sequencer (and if you don’t know, it’s kind of like the modern equivalent of a player piano for musical composition) for three thousand dollars. That was a crap load of money back then. Hell, it still is. And six months later, Yamaha came out with a smaller, better version for three hundred bucks.
I bought it, too.
Don’t even get me started on mp3 players. I’ll just say that I was buying them before even Apple knew what they were. When the iPod exploded onto the scene, my reaction was, "What’s the big deal?" — because I’d been using something better for a couple of years. And iPods still blow.
For writers, the computer is the greatest invention ever. Years ago, I used to bang out screenplays on an IBM Selectric typewriter, for godsakes. I worked in the CBS script department typing scripts on mimeograph stencils and every time I made a mistake, I’d have to pull out the little bottle of blue fluid, smear some on the stencil, wait for it to dry, then type over it.
When we heard about these new word processor things, we begged the bosses to get us some for the office. "Not cost effective," we were told.
A couple years later, I began my love affair with the computer.
Now I’m working on my fourth or fifth laptop (I bought my first around 1995) and I’m able to take my office with me. I keep my lastest manuscript on a thumb drive that hangs at my neck, and carry it with me wherever I go. I have a portable video player that not only stores all of my manuscripts, but also plays mp3s, and holds about 30 full-length movies and tv shows that I’ve stored for easy viewing during long plane rides.
I bought a high-quality portable stereo recorder for traveling notes and interviewing writer friends. That’s the idea, anyway. Next conference I may well follow through on the threat.
And just this weekend, I was wandering around Target and wound up buying one of these:
I suppose I should point out that it’s the size of a hardback book, weighs about the same, and costs a mere $300. This, my friends (who says that?), is a writer’s dream. No more lugging around that heavy notebook computer. No, not me. Now I have what they call a netbook. And it’s a thing of beauty. Compact. Convenient. Cute. But best of all, functional.
Let’s face it. I can’t help myself. I’m hopelessly addicted to gadgets. Which is why my wife refers to me, affectionately of course, as The Gadget Man.
Now will somebody find me a gadget that can tell me the point of this friggin’ post?
by Tess Gerritsen
I am just about to wrap up my national book tour for THE KEEPSAKE. It’s my twelfth book tour. Over the years, I’ve noticed a number of changes in the book tour scene, some of them specific to my own career. But other changes reflect what’s happening to novelists across the country.
And some of those changes are discouraging.
In 1996, my first hardcover thriller, HARVEST was published. My publisher planned a substantial marketing effort, including quirky giveaways (a little igloo cooler, to go along with the theme of harvested organs), a ton of advance galleys, and a national book tour. Being a debut author has its definite advantages: you have no prior bad sales figures to live down, you’re a fresh face on the scene, and advance publicity about a major book deal always stirs curiosity. (Landing a major book deal, however, is a double-edged sword because it also seems to bring out the nasty side of reviewers. "He got paid how much? Hell, I could write a better book!" seems to be the all-too-common response when a debut author gets a big advance. I’ve seen that backlash happen to many authors, which may be why some now choose to play coy with the size of their advances.)
As the new thriller gal on the block, I did get attention. An AP reporter wrote a nationally syndicated article about the M.D. who switched careers. Reviews (good and bad) came in from multiple newspapers. Bookstore chains, not having any prior sales numbers to judge by, ordered substantial quantities of HARVEST. I set off on my first book tour with fantasies of speaking to huge crowds.
Which of course never materialized. In store after store, I would often sit completely alone at the signing table with only an embarassed bookseller to keep me company. Occasionally, a half-dozen people would turn up, and I’d be ecstatic. The best events, I generally found, were in independent bookstores — places like Poisoned Pen or Mysterious Galaxy, with loyal customers who make it a point to show up at author signings, even when they’ve never heard of the author. Discouraging as some of the poorly attended events were, however, I knew that a tour surely had to make a difference. My media escorts would drive me around to local bookstores and distributors’ warehouses to sign stock. At every airport I landed in, I’d sign whatever was in the airport shop. Even though most booksellers had never heard of me, they all seemed happy to have me sign their copies. And there seemed to be a lot of copies out there.
While I was on the road, HARVEST hit the New York Times bestseller list.
For the next eleven books, my routine was pretty much another year, another book tour. I got to be an old hand at trudging through airports, now wheeling only a carry-on. I learned to carry "Signed by Author" stickers in my purse so I could label the airport copies. For radio interviews, I learned to distill my plot down to only a sentence or two, and focus instead on the interesting nonfiction aspects behind the stories. II started seeing larger crowds at signings and I’d recognize repeat customers. But even as my sales were growing, the tours themselves were getting less bang for the effort.
The media was harder to get. Even if I had some cool new nonfiction hook (corpses who wake up in morgues in VANISH. Or the how-to of shrinking human heads in THE KEEPSAKE) the TV and radio spots weren’t there as they used to be. I’m not the only novelist who faces this dwindling of interest; it seems to be a problem for all of us. The publisher pays to fly you into a new town, puts you up in a hotel, all to speak at a bookstore where you end up selling maybe thirty hardcovers. Without any TV or radio or print coverage, does that make economic sense?
Another discouraging trend is that bookstores now seem to be ordering stock "just in time." Although my sales have grown over the past decade, I simply don’t see the tall stacks of copies that stores used to bring in to last them through Christmas. So drop-in signings make less and less sense, considering the price of gas and the time it takes to drive from store to store. My media escorts tell me that they’re doing fewer drop-ins with all their authors because of this.
And I’ve pretty much stopped doing drop-ins at airport stores. I don’t know if it’s because of distributor consolidation, with more centralized management, but it’s now just about impossible to get approval to sign airport copies. The clerks are terrified of losing their jobs and they won’t let an author touch the books until they get approval from some manager. I told one clerk that the books would sell much faster with an autograph sticker, and he said, "We had an hour-long argument with Kitty Kelly over this just last week. She wanted to sign her books, and we wouldn’t let her do it, either."
If Kitty Kelly couldn’t manage to persuade him, I sure wasn’t going to try.
Finally, there’s the ever-worsening hassle of airline travel. When I started going on tours, I don’t recall having to suffer through cancelled or delayed flights. Nowadays, when I manage to get to my destination on time, or even on the same day, I consider it a miracle. Since they don’t feed you on planes, you arrive at a hotel late at night, starving, after room service has shut down. Forcing you to binge on potato ships from the mini-bar. And since airline reservations for book tour are sometimes made close to the travel date, you end up too often flying cross-country while wedged in the middle seat.
Airline travel has become such a nightmare that one thriller author recently chartered a private jet to fly her to all her midwest stops. (It had to be on her own dime, because I can’t imagine a publisher ever paying for that.) That’s an extravagance that I (an old Yankee) would never consider, but I understand completely why an author might resort to it.
Are these difficulties leading to fewer book tours? In some parts of the country, media escorts tell me that their tours are down 50%, even 75% since last year. Perhaps publishers are re-thinking the economics of tours. Perhaps authors are finding tours to be a costly distraction from their writing.
While I acknowledge that their value-to-cost ratio seems to be diminishing, I still believe that book tours are important to building your readership. I also happen to love doing them. I love meeting readers and visiting stores across the country.
I just don’t know how much longer it will make sense.
by Pari
Decades ago when I lived in D.C., I read a cartoon in the Washington City Paper (if anyone can remember the artist, please let me know) that had a bunch of people at a typical cocktail party. This was soon after the release of the first Rambo movie. Everyone at this event — men and women alike –dressed in power suits and had one sleeve ripped from their clothing. Their exposed arms were muscle-bound (think Sylvester Stallone) and in their hand each one carried an uzi.
These D.C. insiders would approach an unsuspecting person and say, "Hi. Who are you? Whaddya do?" Depending on the answer, the interviewer would either shove the respondent in a pocket saying, "I can use you!" or throw that person over a shoulder with "I can’t use you!"
This, I think, sums up how many people regard networking.
Common wisdom holds that the more people you know and the more powerful they are, the further you go.
I’m not sure I buy that anymore.
In my public relations workshops for writers, I stress the importance of networking and I still believe, if done right, it’ll serve them well in their professional careers.
But something has changed in my perspective. I’ve become a quality rather than quantity kind of gal. And quality isn’t necessarily what you might think . . .
Before I earned my first book contract, I went to every writers conference with a specific game plan. My quarry: agents and editors. I didn’t bother with anyone else because I couldn’t use them — they wouldn’t get me published.
Something changed when I actually signed that first contract. I remember the exact moment. It was at Left Coast Crime in Pasadena (my book wouldn’t be in stores for another year). I was sitting in the bar with Suzanne Proulx, Sinclair Browning and Steve Brewer (who’d taken a naive fellow New Mexican under his wing). The three of them were talking about their experiences with agents and editors; they gave me a crash course in the realities of being a writer and the writing life.
I went back to my hotel room and realized I’d been a fool. I’d spent so much time trying to find the "players," that I’d ignored the true gems, the people who had the time and inclination to teach me the ropes. A few months later, I went to my first Bouchercon and realized there was another group I’d never considered: potential readers. Sheesh. How could I have been so myopic before?
Something else has changed during the last few years, too. I’ve stopped trying to meet everyone in the room. Now I just want to meet a few people, to connect in meaningful ways — to learn and share and not worry about trying to impress or persuade.
It doesn’t matter to me anymore if I meet the famous folks. Most of them are off at their parties, special dinners and power meetings at these conventions anyway. And you know what? I find myself enjoying the ride with the people right there.
This hasn’t been a business decision; it’s been a life one. My time is important. I don’t want to spend it pandering or figuring out ways to use others. I want to enjoy myself and to be sincere with those around me.
Don’t get me wrong; I hope to meet new folks at every venue. Quantity can still benefit my career; the more people who read, buy and talk about my books, the more I’ll succeed.
And even though I no longer try to cozy up to the biggies, I end up meeting a great cross-section of people anyway.
At Wrangling with Writing, I had the wonderful opportunity to share time with many aspiring writers, the con’s incredible organizers and volunteers, and people like: Corey Blake and David Cohen of Writers of the RoundTable, agents Cherry Weiner and Loretta Barrett, and Victoria Lucas. None of these meetings were planned. All of the connections were real.
At Bouchercon, I got to pal around with the international guest of honor John Harvey and others such as J. Kingston Pierce, Linda Richards, Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Ali Karim, Thalia Proctor (it was a very international con for me this year) and so many more.
What wonderful experiences. And I had absolutely NO agenda at either one.
People can sense that.
They can feel that I’m not calculating what they can "do" for me — whether I want them to give me a blurb or a bigger book deal, if they’ll turn my work into a movie or decide to promote me in their magazines. They understand that I’m more concerned with having a good time, being real, engaging in the true conversations that bring new perspectives and enrich life.
If, along the way, some of these relationships fruit benefically for my career — all the better.
If not — at least the journey was damn fun.
What about you?
What’s your attitude about networking? Has it changed over the years?
Do you go to conventions or conferences with a list of must-meets?
Now that I have your attention . . .
When JT asked me to come up with a tagline for the Murderati site, I was at a loss. I simply couldn’t come up with something as witty as the pun comma sutra, or the cool double meaning of ghost writer. As the only romantic suspense writer here, I decided to simply tell it like it is: sex and violence.
My books have a little sex, a lot of violence, and bad stuff happens. My disclaimer is that they are “Rated R” whenever someone asks me about my books in a non-book related setting (for example, I’d never say this at RWA or Thrillerfest unless someone specifically asked.) But when I’m at my kids school, or at church, or even at the grocery store when my favorite checker tells everyone in line about my books (see why she’s my favorite?), I stick with my standard line.
This habit came about when a friend of mine, a woman a few years younger than my mom, was thrilled for me when I sold and wanted to read my book. She’s a huge fan of Nora Roberts, was so excited that I had written a romantic suspense novel, and told everyone about my books-she has a lot of friends. So of course I gave her an Advanced Reading Copy. She read it and emailed me a week later saying that while she enjoyed the book, but she had to skip the sex scenes which were more graphic than Nora wrote, and said “I think of you like a daughter. It made me uncomfortable.”
I appreciated that, but then I thought, wait-my mom reads ALL my books!
Mystery readers who like my books tell me they skip the sex scenes, too. I just smile and nod, but inside I’m scratching my head. The scenes are there for a reason-to show the emotional connection between two people, as well as to both resolve and create conflict in the story. Much like sex in real life. It’s not gratuitous, or there “just” to sell books, as I’ve been accused of (as if selling books is a bad thing!)
Then I get the emails from people who don’t like that bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, I want to say, “Bad stuff happens.” (Well, I really what to say sh*t happens but figure this is a PG blog.) Bad stuff happens because that’s the story. I’m really sorry that Lucy Kincaid was hurt in my book Fear No Evil. I’m thrilled that readers became so attached to her that they cared what happened to her and were worried about her. But if she didn’t get hurt, the story wouldn’t have been the same. It wasn’t the book I was writing.
And then the people who simply think I’m a closet psychopath because I can even conceive of such ideas in the first place. As if I have control over my imagination. If I actually had fantasies about killing people, I certainly wouldn’t put them in print first!
I try to maintain a balance. The sex scenes serve a purpose in the story to raise the stakes, add characterization, solve problems, and increase conflict. The violence . . . ditto. I show it because it happens and I want the reader to care about the resolution, to empathize with the victim. If I wanted to write a cozy mystery, then I’d write a cozy mystery. I’ve chosen to lay it all out there on the page because I like a solid dose of reality in my fiction. I like it when people email me and say that my characters feel like real people, that they come alive off the page. Well, sometimes these emails scare me, like those who ask me what my characters are like in REAL life. :/
There are some who feel that writing stories with sex and violence-and especially movies with sex and violence-spread said activities. That violent shows beget violent behavior. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that romance novels are fantasies that distort a woman’s perception of relationships. Yes, they are a fantasy, but to have a man love you for who you are and be faithful is a distortion? Well, sorry, I’ll cling to that fantasy as being ideal, thank you very much.
Human beings are violent. We are sexual creatures. Obviously, both activities can go to the extreme and be dangerous to ourselves or to others. But I don’t buy into the philosophy that sex and violence in media-television, movies, or books-has increased sex and violence in our culture. There’s been plenty of both, long before commercial books and movies existed. Cain slew Abel, after all; hordes of people watched gladiators fight to the death; and men have paid prostitutes for sex before there was online pornography.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t a point where gratuitous sex and violence doesn’t have an impact on society. I do think that our acceptance threshold is higher-meaning, it takes a lot more to shock us. I believe strongly in keeping kids young and innocent for as long as possible . . . yet at the same time, to keep them safe we still have to warn them about bad people. In an episode of CSI that aired a few years ago, Catherine Willows young teenage daughter was making some bad choices in her life. A girl of the same age was murdered, and Catherine–who at first feared the victim was her own daughter–took Lindsay to the morgue to show her what could happen if she didn’t get her act together. Several characters on the show criticized Catherine for this action, but I applauded her. Damn straight–your kids start going down the wrong path, there’s nothing wrong with showing them what could happen. It’s the same philosophy as bringing a wrecked car to a high school before grad night–look kids, don’t drink and drive, you could have died in this car. Other kids did–kids who won’t be going on to college because of one stupid decision.
Well, I segued into a completely different topic! Back to commercial fiction. Sex and violence . . . there are lots of books out there-statistics vary depending on whether you include non-fiction or vanity press and others-but because of the marketplace, more publishers are trying to fill more niches. And I know not everyone wants to read books with sex and violence-I’m okay with that. In fact, when I need a break from writing and reading my favorite genre, I’ll pick up a romantic comedy, still one of my favorite genres to read . . . maybe because I can’t write it.
But my books are Rated R, and I have to forewarn people, at least in certain situations. My personal disclaimer so I don’t get any more emails from friends who were scared spitless at the violence or whose face turned scarlet during the sex.
I ask you: do you think that violence and sex in media (either books or movies) propagates violence and sex in society? Are we just so desensitized to it that to sell more books and tickets, writers and directors are upping the stakes to shock us?