Author Archives: Murderati

The Man At The End Of The Bed

By Louise Ure

I don’t have a long history of being read to in bed, but I think that’s all going to change now.

Growing up, there were too many of us tucking in for my mother to have read us to sleep, and my father would have been too drunk to do it, even if he’d wished to. I was twenty-one before I even heard of “Good Night Moon.”

Instead, my sister would tell me stories about the bear in the ceiling – there was proof of his existence, you could see the crack angling from the doorway to halfway across the room – who would become restless and crash down on us if I kept talking and he heard me.

And I have no children of my own, so I’ve missed that part of the “reading to sleep” phenomenon as well, although I was once asked by friends in Sydney to read their little three-year to sleep. She never even closed her eyes, both awed and confused by the American accent intoning “One Woolly Wombat.”

And then there was the experience of those friends of mine in Alaska. Lovebirds, these two. They’d walk around holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. They even put love notes inside the vegan sandwiches they packed for each other’s lunch.

And they set aside time to read to each other every night just before bed. Not a bedtime story, to be sure. And not a different book each night. But whatever they were reading, they did it together, and took turns reading aloud before they went to sleep. Poetry, classics, maybe a biography or two.

Perhaps you think the idea is charming and thoughtful. At the time I thought it was just plain silly, because I knew the only publication that would meet with my husband’s approval would be a car repair manual and that would have put me to sleep even before I started.

So that means the only reading-to-fall-asleep I’ve ever known is the reading that I do myself, eyeglasses pushed low on the nose to accommodate the angle of the pillow and the book. Two pages worth usually, unless I’ve had coffee to keep me awake.

But then I heard about Damian Barr.

Starting this week, Damian will be the Reader-in-Residence at the new Andaz hotel in London, and will be available to read you to sleep in your room.

In real life, Damian is a freelance playwright, author and journalist in London, but said he was interested in this Reader-In-Residence program as a way to avoid writing. (Yes, Mr. Barr, I know just what you mean. I call it blogging.)

Instead of doing his own creative work, Damian will be on call at the hotel throughout the day and night, to share the joy of books with others.

“In the mornings, guests will be able to consult Barr for a dose of bibliotherapy in which he’ll diagnose their literary needs and prescribe appropriate texts—whether it’s ‘a sumptuous Georgette Heyer, a classy giggle with Nancy Mitford or some glamorous gangsters with Jake Arnott,’ Barr explains. Hotel guests will also be able to book him for a private literary lunch or dinner in one of the hotel’s five restaurants and bars, as well as requesting Barr’s in-room read-aloud services from a specially devised Book Menu.”

Ah yes, those in room services. Damian Barr will come to your room, pajama-clad, sit at the end of your bed, and read to you until you fall asleep. You have his word that the minute you fall asleep, he will immediately show himself out.

Now we’re talking.

It may take Bruce a little time to get used to the idea of a pajama-wearing Brit at the end of the bed, but I want one. Now. I’ve got a lot of read-me-to-sleep nights to make up for. And you know I’m not going to last more than two pages anyway.

So, my ‘Rati friends, tell me your bedtime stories. What did you love reading or having read to you? Do you, like me, want a Reader-in-Residence of your own? And what would you ask him to read you?

The right tool

by Pari

I’m sitting here in the airport in Albuquerque, getting acquainted with my new Eee PC. It’s six inches long and about five inches wide. The keyboard is tiny, made for literary gnats perhaps. But I’m determined. I want to use this little baby when I travel. I want to throw it into my purse (it’s solid state so it can take some abuse) and take it to Tae Kwon Do when the kids are in class. I want to go to the coffee shop with it.

In short, I want it to strip me of excuses.

Let me backtrack here. I am sooooooooooo not a technology nut. I shun all those electronic innovations–no iPod, no iPhone. Nada.

I’m a writer in search of the right tools to do my job as conveniently as possible.

Not that long ago, just having a laptop was an incredible gift, a revolution for people who wanted to work on the go. After prices went down far enough, my husband and I bought one. I thought it would revolutionize my work.

Well, it didn’t.

For some reason, I was scared of that computer. I was scared to use it, to lose it, that it would get stolen, that I’d lose all my work. I didn’t trust thumb drives either. Still, determined to work no matter what, I lugged that thing around on all my trips. Only problem was that after I pulled it out for security, it never came out of its case again.

It’s embarrassing to admit that I was so uncomfortable, so intimidated by technology.

When I finally learned how to use it with ease, I still felt creatively constipated. We just never bonded. A pencil and paper yielded more satisfying results.

And now, I’ve got this microscopic machine. Eee PC. Hell, I even like its name.

Today, the main challenge is that I keep hitting the "Enter" key when I mean to hit "Shift." I’m also hunching my shoulders like some kind of she-ghoul. Typing is slow, but the keyboard action is fine.

Sure. I’m predisposed to liking this new instrument in my repertoire. I bought it with birthday money, so it feels more like it’s mine, just for me. It’s a little buddy, a friend that is going to help me do the job I need to do, to write every single day, to practice and hone my craft by doing, doing, doing.

I know too many people who postpone writing for thousands of different reasons. Many of them have to do with instruments: "My computer crashed." "I don’t have the right paper." "My laptop is too heavy, too slow." "My monitor is too big, too small, too bright, too dark." "I can’t get rid of the damn anti-virus software."

I’m not saying that the Eee PC is going to change all of that for me, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Maybe it doesn’t even have to do with this new tool at all, maybe it’s simply my attitude toward it. Whatever the reason, it seems to be working.

I sure am.

My questions for you today:
What writing tools do you use: big computer, laptop, pen & paper, charcoal & papyrus?
How do you relate to them?
Have you ever bought an instrument that opened your mind, eased the process?
Have you ever experienced the opposite effect?

building blocks

by Toni

I’m in that falling-in-love stage with my new book–where the sense of discovery is exhilarating, and I’m sort of gobsmacked at a new character who really came to life, all with one move. I tried to dress him very nicely. I wanted to give him an expensive suit, shoes so fine, they’d cost most people’s monthly salary. Instead, he ended up wearing wrinkled khakis and a stained and horrifically ugly plaid shirt. He chose this on purpose, and his sardonic voice is crystal clear. Particularly since he’s setting out to purposefully annoy the hell out of my heroine.

He’s got his own phrasing, and I’m not entirely sure where he came from. I didn’t set out to consciously create him the way he showed up, but he’s so much more fun this way. Bobbie Faye almost immediately refers to him as a walking pile of laundry, and I hope you just imagined a very disheveled man, hair standing on end.

But maybe it was his own phrasing that did it, that made him suddenly breathe and move for me. With his first bit of dialog, I realized who he was. And I love that aspect of reading others’ work–seeing a particularly adept way of building an image with a colorful, evocative phrase.

"…eyeing real estate in the neighborhood of My, These Kids Today…"

— Heather, on Go Fug Yourself

I love to eavesdrop and read blogs and jot notes from family and friends and my God, the notes I have from so many favorite books. They all inspire. (Okay, I have so many from books, it’s insane.) It’s sometimes a really stunning description, or sometimes it’s one phrase or a sentence or two that encapsulates the character, like:

"Oh-My-God o’clock…"

— Suzanne Brockmann

To:

"And some days, you just get your blues on."

— clerk at copy center

To:

"My foot [hurt so much, it] started developing its own gravitational pull."

— Suburban Bliss

To:

"I was praying he’d shoot me so I wouldn’t have to burn to death. Instead, he looked at me and said, ‘None of this would have happened if you’d just agreed to have kids’."

— J. D. Rhoades, Safe and Sound

To:

"Just because I’m yelling louder doesn’t mean I know what I’m talking about… wait…"

— clearly confused man arguing with his date at the Circle K

Now, I could go through every book by every writer on this site and quite a few others from our list of links on here and post examples, but I’m going to ask you all to contribute. If you’re a writer, please post at least one of your own phrases / sentences that is evocative, and then post an example from any other writer (or two! mentors! favorites!). It doesn’t have to be dialog — it can be a description, metaphor — whatever worked for you. For all the readers out there, please grab one of your favorites and give us some examples. I know you’ll inspire us!

-toni

By the way, a whole bunch of mystery/suspense/caper/romance writers are all going to be at Mystery Lovers Bookshop for a fantastic signing event this week — on Thursday, April 17th. It’s going to rock, this event, and I hope if you’re in the area, you’ll come by and say hello.

Writers’ Style

by Alex

No, I don’t mean WRITING style. I mean DRESSING style.

Someone posted to one of the loops asking about attire for the LA Times Festival of the Book, and someone posted back something like, “Dress nicely. Even if you wear shorts, make sure they’re nice.”

You know, somehow I never got that ‘nice’ memo.

For me, dressing for the LATFOB means sunscreen, sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and as little as possible after that. Plus, of course, a parka stashed away in the bag in case of bone-chilling coastal fog. I grew up in the California desert and I say, what good is it to start out looking NICE if after forty-five minutes you’re burned red as a lobster and sweating through three layers of clothes?

I don’t know, maybe it really is a California thing, but if I have to spend more than two minutes getting dressed for ANYTHING, it’s not going to happen. Having spent so much of my life 1. Writing and 2. Dancing, it’s a good day if I even make it out of pajamas or a leotard and leggings. That’s why I like dresses so much – you can throw one on in ten seconds and everyone acts as if you’ve made some kind of effort or something. Hah!

I get hives just thinking about the RWA national conference in San Francisco this summer. Everyone is going to be business elegant, with the manicures and stockings and salon perms and designer everything and I’m going to look like I just crawled out of the Haight… which, let’s face it, I will have.

Part of it is the hair. I know that. With this hair, a tailored look is just not in the cards. I can live with that. You have to work with what you’ve got, and what I’ve got is what casting directors tactfully refer to as “equestrian” when what they really mean is a rode-hard, put-away- wet look.

But that is not to say that I don’t enjoy clothes. Actually, I enjoy the hell out of clothes. I’m hardly unaware that we authors can communicate a lot about the books we write through the clothing , shoes and accessories we wear. It really is instant branding,

And I have managed to figure out the touring clothes that work for me – things that look a little rock star, a little Gothic, that make people I meet say things like – “Oh, I love that shirt!” when really my only criteria for buying anything these days are: 1. Can I wash it in the sink in my hotel room and get it dry by tomorrow? And 2. Will I be able to wear it two days in a row – or three – without ironing if my suitcase or I get laid over in Chicago (Phoenix, Atlanta…)?

But even though simplicity is my fashion mandate these days, I am thrilled that my intensive touring is ending with my secret favorite conference, the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention. RT doesn’t require business elegant. It does require stunt dressing.

Now, those of you who don’t live in LA have probably never heard this term. Actually, those of you who do live in LA probably haven’t heard the term, either, because I’m fairly certain I made it up. But stunt dressing is the only way I can properly describe the phenomenon I’m talking about. (And those of you in the SCA, World Con, World Fantasy Con, Comic-Con, StellarCon, AnyCon crowd -you know who you are – know exactly what I mean…)

What you’ve probably heard about Romantic Times, if you’ve heard anything at all – that it’s full of women dressed as vampires and fairies, and half-naked male cover models slinking around. Well, this is a normal party for me, and I’ve got to say I miss that kind of hedonism at the more sedate conferences.

This was my packing list for RT last year:

red velvet opera coat
saloon girl parachute skirt
black net crinoline
red velvet corset
black fishnet cape
black lace bodice
1 pair Victorian boots
1 pair red fishnet stockings
1 pair black fishnet stockings
harem girl outfit
3 veils
1 dozen arm bracelets and cuffs
Glinda the Good ballgown
matching wand
1 pair vampire fangs
sparkly Western hat
red lace mantilla
body glitter
hair ornaments
Victorian choker
riding crop
micro leather mini
thigh high vinyl boots
red leather vest

Admit it – it’s a hell of a lot more fun than “business casual”.

Now, I wasn’t born a stunt dresser. It took years for me to even want to try. But I have lived all my life in California and some things just rub off.

Los Angeles is, after all, home to thousands of professional special effects wizards, costumers, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, narcissistic histrionics, and actors – oh, wait, that last is redundant. (KIDDING. Some of my best friends are actors.).

And in LA, event partying is a competitive sport – literally. Costume contests abound, and some people I know make a very nice auxiliary income from them, around October, especially.

Arguably some even more outrageous stunt dressing goes on in San Francisco, where most of my friends have also spent at least half their lives. You want to see some world-class costumes, try the Castro on any given Halloween (I’ll never forget the life-sized walking convertible with JFK and Jackie… well, all right, never mind that.).

Put all that together and you have what I call stunt dressing. Parties where costumes are NOT optional – not if you don’t want to stick out like a wallflower with a sore thumb.

Theme parties used to scare the s – stuffing out of me because I don’t think of myself as a crafty person. (You know, craft as in sewing, not all that OTHER stuff, which is another post entirely.) But I do love excess, and after attending a few L.A. parties like oh, A Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Voodoo Magic, Survivor (yes, that Survivor), Gilligan’s Island, Under the Sea, any number of the requisite Moulin Rouge and Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings and Mardi Gras and Tiki parties… well, I started to think about it. I started thinking about what to actually wear to some of these things. I started to think – isn’t costuming just as much an artistic expression as words?

And that’s how I released my inner Stunt Dresser. I love dressing up as an Elton John song and having people guess which song I am, preferably with touchable clues. I love sequins and feathers and masks. I love a RED party where everyone and everything is – you guessed it. Have one some time and see what it does to the libido – yours and everyone else’s, in every possible combination.

Every thrift store is now an opportunity to collect cheap frothy things that will one day make the perfect drop-dead costume. I have hats. I have Victorian opera coats. I have a menagerie of corsets and boas and headgear. I have chain mail. I have every possible net garment you can think of. I have more sequined gorgeous confections than you can shake a stick at. I’ve also recently started on props. After all, how do you dress as Trillian (for a HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE party) without mice, which you can get three for a dollar at a novelty store? Throw on a string of battery powered fish lights, maybe even add a real fish net, and you’re all set for an Under the Sea party. You see what I mean? It’s not like you have to spend a lot of money or take a lot of time with it.

The thing about stunt dressing is that it gives OTHER people so much pleasure. You don’t have to make much of an effort to make so many people truly happy that you’re wearing part of the party. That’s what’s so great about it – and if you’re shy, I suggest you think about it that way – in terms of how much others will enjoy that you’ve done it.

These are the RT parties I have to look forward to this week:

– Under the Sea Faery Ball
– Hollywood’s Golden Age
– Midnight Speakeasy
– These Boots Are Made for Walking
– Western Extravaganza (at which there will be a real, that is, real staged, hanging)

And of course, the Vampire Ball, at which I will incongruously be tricked out as a kinky Bride of Frankenstein, due to my role in Heather Graham’s always outrageous dinner theater show.

Business elegant… bad. Bride of Frankenstein… good.

I can’t wait.

So I say – it’s Spring. Go ahead. Unleash your inner stunt dresser. There might just be an Elton John song in you that’s dying to get out.

And here are my questions for the day. First, what’s your style? Do you have one? Have you cultivated it?

If you’re an author, have you deliberately changed your style or invested in a new wardrobe as part of your author persona? If you’re a reader, does it matter to you if authors dress “nice”? (Or are you, ahem, on to us?)

And everyone – what’s the most outrageous stunt costume you’ve ever worn?

And, okay – have you ever had your colors “done”? What season are you? Do you incorporate color dressing into your style?

ME RABBIT, YOU COUGAR

Please welcome back our dear friend Simon Wood!

This year’s Left Coast Crime convention, held in mile high Denver, allowed me to bring out my inner twelve year old boy. It was the chance to take part in a surveillance and counter-surveillance exercise. This was one of the extra-curricular activities held during the convention that I jumped on the second I saw it on offer. Short story writer and ex-DEA agent, R.T. Lawton, put the exercise together. A surveillance team would have to track a bad guy on the streets of Denver. The object was for the bad guy to lose the team and for the team not to be spotted and not to lose their bad guy. How super cool is that? This was my chance to join the ranks of James Bond and Harry Palmer as the latest spy about town.

I signed up to be one of the hunted. I put that down to my narcissistic side where I want to be followed by strangers all the time. As the hunted, I was a ‘Rabbit’ and I was going to be hunted by a team of cougars. I got quite excited as I’d heard that cougars were predatory older women. Nice. Sadly, cougars was just the term for the surveillance team that would be tailing me. So I shelved the idea of being chased by women all over town for another day.

I wasn’t alone in my rabbit status. Fellow bunny girls and guys were Marcus Sakey, Reed Farrell Coleman, Margaret Coel, Jason Starr, Donna Andrews, Michelle Gagnon and Twist Phelan. The identities of the cougars were kept from us to keep things interesting. For extra flavor, rabbits and cougars were briefed separately. Us rabbits were taught some techniques for exposing cougars, such as doubling back, entering buildings and watching for who stops, etc. And the cougars were taught their little tricks for avoiding detection. I was given a map of downtown and a list of places and times to meet one or more of my fellow rabbits to make “exchanges.” I was given my start place with a time to be there and told just to do my thing and avoid my cougars.

The game was set.

Hmm, little problem there. I know the streets of Denver like the back of someone else’s hand. Also, I get lost in unfamiliar places. So to avoid wandering the streets hours after the game was over, stopping strangers and asking, “I’m a rabbit and I’m lost, how do I find my hotel?” I did a little homework. I walked the route ahead of time. I timed myself and looked for alleys and neat places to hide. I should add that I was supposed to change into a disguise part way through the exercise and I needed a phone booth or somewhere to do that. I also didn’t want to walk around with a map in my hand looking like a tourist dufus. My dry run was a good move on my part as I noticed there were a lot of police and private security on the streets of Denver. I drew more than a couple of glances from some rent-a-cops during my test. The last thing I needed to do was get picked up and packed off to jail. It gave me time to come up with a little plan.

The game kicked off in the late afternoon. I walked the first leg of my route slowly, looking over my shoulder. It was surprising to note how paranoid I became after the first thirty seconds. I’m going from place to place on my route and all I can think about is that I’m being followed by people I don’t know. They could be anyone. I must treat everyone with suspicion because everyone is out to get me. Will I ever be safe? So I treated everyone I saw as a potential cougar. It didn’t take long to spot cougars milling around Denver’s streets. They were so focused on their rabbit and I was so focused on looking out for people following me, it became easy to spot them. That was the shortcoming of playing a game with so many players in such a small geographical area, but I rolled with the punches. I was here to play.

When I reached the stage of the game where I could break out my disguise, I wasn’t sure if I’d lost my cougars. So many were milling about that I just had to hope my daring costume change would do the trick. I was quite wily, in a way, with my disguise. I have a padded denim jacket where the lining unzips and is a different jacket. I also have a pair of glasses that makes me look like Tim Maleeny and a trusty baseball cap. Because of the law enforcement presence I didn’t like the idea of ducking into a building to change, but I found a very conveniently located building to use as a shield. I walked up to it on the wrong side of the street. I waited for traffic to head towards me and I bolted across the road. If anyone was following, they’d be taking a chance crossing the road after me. The second I went behind the building, I peeled off my outer coat, pulled on my hat and glasses and emerged the other side of the building a new person. I took a couple of odd streets to check for cougars and I seemed cougar free.

I went to my last meeting spot pretty sure I was in good shape. I did check though. I stopped in front of a shop window and pretended to looking at their wares while I was looking for cougars. Sadly, I hadn’t looked at which store I stopped in front of and I was checking out the latest offerings from Bare Essentials. It took me a moment to realize my error which was backed up by three cosmetologists eyeballing me and thinking, he’s not a winter complexion. I decided that telling them I was trying to avoid cougars wouldn’t have helped.
As I walked back to the convention hotel pretty sure I’d evaded my cougars, I thought about the little things that continued to give me away. I was wearing a wedding ring and earrings. I should have removed those when I changed. Although I had changed, I couldn’t change my shoes. I’d realized this when I was packing, so I packed some very ordinary sneakers. Anything unusual would have stood out.

Sadly, I didn’t get to use my big weapon. With all the security hanging around, I decided to use that disadvantage as an advantage. If I hadn’t been able to give my cougars the slip I was going to go up to a rent-a-cop and use my accent. I was going to say, “Hello, I’m a tourist in this fair nation and I hear stories about violence and muggers. I’ve seen Law & Order, don’t you know, and some people are following me. Those people over there to be exact. Now it could be nothing or it could be something, but do you minding talking to them while I find my hotel.” With this accent and innocent face, it would have worked like a dream.

Anyhoo, the teams returned to the hotel and we all swapped stories. Everyone enjoyed playing spy for an hour. The kid in all of us is hard to shift and when you’re as short as I am, it’s nearly impossible. Personally, I had a hoot taking part. I may have taken it a little too seriously, but it will work its way into my books and stories. Check the bookshelves if you don’t believe me.

Yours in disguise,

Simon Wood

Home

Faraway, So Close

As inevitably happens every time, I’m in the final push to finish my next novel and I’m questioning the ending I had in mind.

DAMN IT! Why does this always happen?

Granted, it’s actually a good thing. It makes me really take a hard look at my story and focuses me on creating the best ending possible. But for God’s sakes, it’s annoying.

I know the cause. It’s very obvious. Planning, plan and simple. See, I’m not one of those outliners. I’m a – mostly – fly-by-my-pants writer. I have a beginning in mind, and a pretty good idea of where I want to end up. But everything in between is a mystery. I like it that way. I like the journey of finding out what’s next. Does it mean I sometimes have to backtrack? Sure. But that’s fun to me.

The only time it gets to be a problem is when I approach the end, and realizes the story I’ve written doesn’t match up quite right with the climax I had in mind. And, as I wrote above, I’m at that point right now on book 3.

I really like the story I have to this point. I’ve done a few things differently than I have in the first two Quinn books without sacrificing the Quinn type elements. But now I have to find a way to cap it, to finish it off. I’m on page 375 (times roman, 12 pt), and I usually net out at around 425. But if I continue on, I already know it’s not going to be the best it can be.

I do have a solution to this problem. Something I’ve employed in the past, and will undoubtedly employ again in the future. This week I’ve started my rewriting process. I’ve gone back to the beginning, and I’m tweaking and changing and adding, so that when I reach page 375 again I’ll have a head of steam and a solid idea of how to wrap things up.

It’s just…well…annoying.

Not that I don’t enjoy rewriting. I actually thrive on it. I was just hoping to hit page 425 or thereabouts before I began the process. But I should have known. It’s the same thing that happened to me on THE DECEIVED. It’s the same thing that happened to me on THE CLEANER. And, most likely, the same thing that will happen to me on my next book.

It’s my MO. My character flaw (well, one of many).

I should just embrace it and look forward to the moment I hit that point.

But until I do, I’ll stick with being annoyed.

To outline or not to outline has been talked to death all over the Internet(s). So this is what I want to know: what annoys you about your own writing process?

BONUS INFO: THE CLEANER has been in the top 10 on the Booksellers’ Heatseekers list in the UK for the last three weeks! This, as I understand it, shows the sales ranking of authors who have not appeared in the Top 50 chart since January 1998 (i.e. before the Bookscan figures started.) Thanks to all in the UK who’ve picked up a copy!

Sharers and competitors

by Pari

My mind is a big ol’ pile of mush right now. It’s good mush, steaming on the plate with a dollop of butter and a splash of B-grade maple syrup.

The Novelists, Inc. conference in New York blew me away. I’m still processing. My brain hurts from the massive effort.

It’s astoundingly powerful to hang out with a group of novelists where the average member has had sixteen published books. You know I’m on the low end with three. Think of how many were on the high end.

I went to the conference with no game plan, no highlighted list of agents or editors to pitch, no stores to visit or people to impress. Having such an open mind made the experience even more pleasurable and valuable. I learned so much about the business even my toenails are smarter.

Some of you have heard the sad tale of my two devastating experiences with lit-fic folks days after I signed my first contract with UNM Press in 2003. I won’t go into details publicly, but can say that they shook me and that I worried about being part of the book biz, part of any writing community.

Shell-shocked and nervous, I went to my first Left Coast Crime and was met with pure generosity and warmth. From that, I concluded that mystery writers were the kindest anywhere. This conviction has proven true time and again.

But I’m starting to rethink its parameters.

At the Novelists, Inc. conference, I met writers who’d seen and done it all. Everything. They’d watching publishing lines born, crest and die. They’d had editors buy, leave houses and die. Agents had lauded their work, dumped them . . . and died. (There’s a book in here somewhere.)

Many of the attendees had reinvented themselves so many times they’d forgotten most of their pseudonyms, even the titles of their books.

You know what? They all still love to write. Every one feels there is more to learn, that his or her craft can be honed.

I didn’t witness an ounce of snobbery or self-satisfaction during my three days with them. These romance, science fiction, fantasy and mystery writers talked openly about their lessons learned rather than hold them close or keep secrets to get the upper hand.

On the plane back to Albuquerque, I wondered if my paradigm about mystery writers needed to be expanded.

It does.

Novelists — at least those who write genre fiction — are in the business of entertainment. It’s a glorious profession. And, IMHO, we’re in it together.

We’re the key to continued literacy. Without good, compelling fiction — books that a large audience wants to read — written works will go the way of the Edsel. (This, of course, extends to some nonfiction as well, but that’s another discussion.)

I think there are writers who lose sight of this commonality. They wear a kind of genre or subgenre superiority. Worse, many of them feel like they’re in a life/death race with every other novelist for the much-touted decreasing pool of readers, of book buyers.

Here’s my simple analysis:

There are sharer-novelists and competitive-novelists.

The sharers realize that information is indeed power, that the more we work together for readers, for our rights as creative entrepreneurs, for mutual success — the more we’ll all benefit.

The competitors start from the same place: information is power. Only, they want to keep it all to themselves. They belive it’s only possible to succeed by pushing the competition down. These are the people who denigrate other writers or genres in order to make themselves look better. Frankly, they spend a lot of time spreading negativity and worry.

We can learn a tremendous amount from each other across genres. Together we can either turn, or slow, the destructive tides and trends in publishing. We can unite for our common good AND readers’ good.

I’ve met far more sharer-novelists in my life. I hope others feel that way about me.

So, what do you think? Does this super simple perspective work? Is it way too naive?

postcards from the future

by Toni

I am writing this before my son’s wedding, but by the time you read this, they’ll be off on their honeymoon and I’ll be at a film shoot. So this is the shortest blog for me. Ever.

One of the very best websites for writers (screenwriting or prose) is Wordplay — particularly the columns written by Terry Rossio.

This story, however, is one of my favorites of his and well worth the read. Enjoy!

The Horror (World Horror Con 2008 report)

by Alex

In one of my patented insane tour moves, I split my time last week between the Public Library Association conference (see here) and the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City – and if that’s not a dichotomy, I don’t know what is. The only unifying factor was the snow, actually… what a freaking long winter some parts of the country are having, I’m telling you…

I am a cross-genre kind of girl, which puts me in several convention loops: mystery, thriller, horror, and romance. I’m too dark for some of the attendees of Malice Domestic, but I’m a passionate traditional mystery reader myself and there are enough readers there who enjoy a supernatural edge to their mysteries that it’s always worth it for me to go.
By the same token, I’m not a hard-core horror writer, but my subject matter is dark enough to satisfy most horror fans, even though my plot structure owes a lot more to traditional mysteries, and the scares I offer up are more psychological than overt. And then of course there’s the whole paranormal slice of romance readers – fans of the Bronte sisters, Daphne DuMaurier, Shirley Jackson and Anne Rice – who are attracted to the spooky eroticism of my books.

Which means, basically, that I end up at more conventions than is really healthy for any one sane person. Oh well.

One con that I’ll probably never miss is World Horror. It’s a literary conference, in contrast to most horror cons which are heavy on movies and gaming. And I have to admit – my real love is the mystery beyond the mystery – what happens when even reality seems to warp. So even though I will never see SAW 1, 2, 3, 4 or 13, because I think torture porn is, well, evil – there is nothing so cathartic to me as a horror film or book in which the real battle between good and evil is played out, and in which good ends up with some sort of even temporary upper hand.

I can’t give anything like a full conference report as I didn’t get actually get to WHC until early Saturday morning – I was at PLA for three days and had to get from Minneapolis to Salt Lake City in a mad rush. But despite my incredible lateness I had a very full conference experience – three panels (“On Screenwriting”, “Thinking Outside the Horror Box” on marketing, and “Promotion, What Works and What Doesn’t” – which turned into a roundtable with back and forth discussion between Deborah LeBlanc, Sarah Langan and me and all of the audience, with special help from David Wellington – and turned out to be as illuminating for the panelists as it was for the audience, I think.

It was interesting to me that there were so many cross-genre panels – and two bestselling cross-genre authors, F. Paul Wilson and Heather Graham, were prominently featured. Of course, horror is languishing as a genre right now, and everyone seems to be looking to “The Once and Future King” – Joe Hill (author of HEART SHAPED BOX and son of Stephen King, for those who haven’t been following) and Dan Simmons (author of the brilliant THE TERROR – run, do not walk, to purchase and read this book – it will turn you inside out) and Scott Smith (THE RUINS) to revive the genre, while the rest of us tiptoe uneasily around the H-word at the request of our publishers. That’s okay – I can be a thriller writer, or a mystery writer, or a paranormal writer just as easily. Or just call me “dark suspense” and be done with it. (Actually, I should really write a whole blog on the subject of “When genres tank”. I’m making a note of it.)

I got my academic fix from the fascinating lectures on serial killers, and a chance to hear a taped interview with Ted Bundy… malevolently fascinating. I was also happy to get professional confirmation for my long-held suspicion that Aileen Wuornos is NOT a serial killer (but that’s also a different post).

Heather Graham and I managed to sneak some time to hit six bookstores in the area to sign stock and meet the managers (I drove in the SNOW – very proud of myself!). It’s always a treat to see how a real pro does this – Heather is well past 100 books at this point… I am in constant awe.

The climax of the conference was the Bram Stoker awards – it was of course completely thrilling to see the awesome Sarah Langan (THE KEEPER, THE MISSING) win for Best Novel, and FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT win Best Antho (yay, Gary Braunbeck, Hank Schwable and Deborah LeBlanc!).

Jeff Strand is the Toastmaster of the Gods, as far as I’m concerned – SO funny – can he just please emcee ALL cons from now on, all genres?

F. Paul Wilson was in fine form as he announced Sarah (“I think we should have just named this ‘Sarah Langan Con’. She’s got panels, she’s got Coffeeklatches, she’s got readings… I’m stating to feel like Jan Brady. ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…'”

And Gary Braunbeck had the whole room in tears as he dedicated one of his TWO Stokers to his late daughter. All in all, a much funnier and more emotional evening than you often get at these events.

So I was running around like a crazy person, but I still got a chance to catch up with a lot of people because I stayed over Sunday night for the Dead Dog Party… (it should always remembered that Sunday night is often the most professionally productive and wildly fun time of any con).

And then I was snowed in at the airport the next morning. But despite the fact that it took me 36 hours to actually get home, I got a lot of work done on my third book revision – airports do that for me, and the con inspirational magic was working in full force.

Now, as THE PRICE tour continues, I am in New Orleans this weekend with my darkside-cross-genre pals Heather Graham and F. Paul Wilson, Harley Jane Kozak, Kathy Love and Erin McCarthy, at a conference hosted by the incomparable Molly Bolden of Bent Pages Bookstore. They are going to work us and party us, Cajun-style, into the ground (yes, I can hear the ominous unsympathetic muttering right now, but I deserve this, OKAY?) so forgive my slow response.

But my question is – do you cross genres, as a reader or an author? And what genres do you cross?

(So very, very sorry to be missing NoirCon and the well-deserved tribute to Ken Bruen. I am absolutely there in spirit… X)

Confessions of a Serial (Comma) Killer

by Zoë Sharp

Sorry if I’ve been a bit quiet this last week or so, but I’ve been somewhat out of circulation, if you know what I mean. Been doing a bit of time – hard time, as it turned out, for crimes against the English language.

I’ve spent the last ten days in the custody of the Punctuation Police.

They didn’t so much ask me to help with their enquiries as kick my door down at 2:00am, yank me out of my placid complacency and bundle me, hands tied, into the back of an unmarked car. Then it was a short rough ride to the station, where I believe they may have thrown me down the stairs on the way to the cells, but I can’t be sure about that. Sleep deprivation does strange things to your short-term memory.

All I know is, I’ve acquired some strange psychological bruises that I can’t seem to account for, and a general feeling of having been thoroughly battered.

They read me my rights, of course. Told me that whatever verbs of utterance I dared to omit would be reinserted with a sharp red pen, and undoubtedly used against me in a court of law. They told me they suspected I was a serial comma killer and would be sentenced accordingly. They told me I was wildly inconsistent in every statement I’d made, that I had been caught for the heinous crime of wielding grammar in a manner likely to cause offence to gentlefolk, everywhere.

In mitigation, I asked for numerous flagrant misuses of restrictive which and non-restrictive that to be taken into account.

But after ten days of relentless interrogation, of having to recount my every move, justify why I took every shortcut, why I broke every rule, I came pretty close to breaking myself. I came within a hairsbreadth of saying, "OK! Enough! I give in. Put whatever you like in front of me and I’ll sign off on it." And when they sensed the weakness, I heard them sniggering at me from beyond the circle of the bright lights, in that superior way they have when they know that might is right, and right is on their side.

That’s the thing about the SemiColon Constabulary – they know all the tricks so much better than you do, and they’ll use them to rip the guts out of you. (Or should that be to rip out half your guts?) Then they fashion a noose, stand back and let you hang yourself.

And the worst thing is, by the time they’ve finished, you daren’t even leave a note.

All joking aside, as you can probably gather from the bitter, bitter tone, I’ve just been going through copyedits. And what fun it’s been. Not.

Don’t get me wrong – I like being edited. Factual goofs are factual goofs, whichever way you look at them, and I’m incredibly grateful to anyone who points them out before the book gets into print. It stops us all looking stupid. But what is proper punctuation? Why is it there at all? And when do the rules of the game become more important than the game itself? (Although, as these are largely rhetorical questions, I do realise that strictly speaking they shouldn’t be accompanied by a question mark.)

I know full well that I flout the rules on this score. No, that’s not true. It’s just that I use punctuation for what seems to me to be its oldest, truest purpose. To tell the reader when to pause, when to draw breath. If it’s a fast action scene with no pauses then don’t expect any commas either.

Writing my series in first person, I hear the rhythm of the words and phrases going through my main character’s head, and that’s how I write them down, unencumbered by the tight little corset of formal language and the equally stifling conventions of literary construction.

Charlie Fox might once have been a well brought up young lady, born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, but that selfsame spoon disappeared very promptly when she joined the British Army. Somebody probably pinched it. And if a spell among the rough and ready lads in Special Forces taught her to swear with the best of them, getting thrown out in disgrace taught her a whole new language altogether.

So her view of the world is cynical and weary, tinged with sorrow, fringed by her own humanity and the knowledge of how paper-thin is the veneer between civility and savagery, especially inside her own heart. She knows and accepts what she is, but that doesn’t mean she has to be ecstatic about it. Step over the line she’s drawn in the sand and she will kill you in a heartbeat, even if she’ll hate herself for it in the morning.

All these things are reflected not just in the way she talks, but the way she thinks, and thus in the entire narrative style of the books. Pared down, economical, a hint of the melancholy at times, but with a wry bleak humour that’s probably her saving grace. Attempt to formalise her patterns of speech or thought, and you deny not only who she is, but what experience has made her.

Now she’s living and working in New York – where the new book THIRD STRIKE opens – and this presents all kinds of new narrative challenges. I make the point in this one that she still finds it funny every time she walks into an elevator and sees that the name on the maker’s plate at the back is Schindler, but she recognises that her amusement is not shared by anybody who doesn’t think of an elevator as a lift …

So she’d no sooner say, "with whom" unless she was trying deliberately to annoy the person she was talking to (or even the person with whom she was speaking), than she would say or think "gotten" in any other context than with "ill-" in front of it and "gains" behind. Try to force too many Americanisms into her head and you change the fundamental identity of the character still further. Small wonder that I find myself ever so slightly miffed. And as for Charlie – well, she’d be fighting mad and heading for timber.

My question is, where do you all stand? Have you, also, been roughed up in the cells by the Punctuation Police, or do you silently applaud every time they put on the black cap and pass sentence on one of the guilty? What’s the silliest correction someone has tried to make to a piece of your writing? Is there anything up with which you will not put, to be punctilious about it. Please, tell me, if only to make me feel less thoroughly bracketed around the ears …

And as they lead me to the grammar gallows and offer me a final cigarette, I can only hope that someone will take pity on me and provide a last-minute reprieve. That I will be stetted, at the end.

So this week’s Word of the Week, therefore, is stet, meaning to restore after marking for deletion. From the Latin, third person singular present subjunctive of stare to stand; written on copyedits or proof sheets with dots under the words to be retained.

I’ve got to know this little word very well over the last ten days, having written it no less than one thousand two hundred and fifty-one times …

The pic shows the remains of several pencil erasers and the shavings from much sharpening of my official red pencil, which was considerably longer at the start of the copyedits than it was by the end.

I think I may have to get a rubber stamp made up …