Author Archives: Murderati

Ex Libris

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse
And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book

Sonnet LXXXII, William Shakespeare

I’ve not had the most auspicious start to my new year. A rather unpleasant allergic reaction meant a trip to the doctor, a shot in the bum, and a prescription for a funny little drug called Atarax, which has well-deserved warning labels — DO NOT DRIVE, DO NOT DRINK, DO NOT PASS GO… okay, I added that last one, but that’s what it felt like. Because when you take one of these puppies, you need to be prepared to leave the planet temporarily.

Grumpy and itchy and feeling like a horse kicked me in the hip, I left the doctor and needed to kill a few moments while I waited for my prescription to be filled. To sooth my wounded ego, I decided to drop by the library and pick up a book I ordered that had just come in. Why not, right? If I’m going to be ill, I may as well enjoy myself.

I parked and started in. A little old woman, and I’m being as literal as possible — she was tiny, shriveled, with suspiciously blue hair and stick legs under too bulky clothes — came charging out of the doors. Clutched in her gnarled, heavily veined hands was THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE.

She passed me, and I smiled at her. She gave me an unfathomably severe look and kept on going.

Was she a teacher, perhaps? Had she decided she needed a refresher? Or was she like me, just in love with old Will, and wanted to immerse herself in the glory that is his work? Maybe she’d never read him, and he was on her Bucket List. Doesn’t matter. In the midst of my misery, it made me happy. A moment of grace.

It’s the reading that binds us, you see.

Genre matters not a whit. It’s the revelation that comes from the written word, the visceral reaction to the story, the telepathic communication we have when we discuss a book with our friends. Our love of this hallowed form permits entry into the most elite of all secret societies. Don’t you hear people say "I haven’t ever read a book," or "I haven’t read a book since I was in school?" Don’t you feel sorry for them?

Not to be an elitist, but really, as readers, our lives are simply richer than non-readers. We have the gift of imagination. It is the greatest gift in the world.

After my epiphanous interlude with the blue lady and her Shakespeare, I went into the little building. It was busy. They must have just finished a program — ours has tracks for both seniors and children. The lobby was chock full of people, young and old, milling about, getting books off the shelves, reading magazines. The warmth flowed through my chest again. It is so damn good to see people excited to read. It makes my world complete.

I don’t make resolutions, per se, but for the new year, I did commit to spend more of my time reading and less playing on the computer. To that end, I’ve been stocking up on books. I traded a slew of material in at McKay’s, our used book emporium, and brought home several books by Stephen King and Ursula Le Guin, a few of the ones Alex has been talking about here recently, including the POISONWOOD BIBLE, the new Richard Russo, a couple of Harlan Coben’s, and THE SHADOW OF THE WIND, which my friend Mary Saums recommended months ago. Books. BOOKS. Bliss.

You’d think that was enough to hold me for a while, but as I started playing in the library, my arms were suddenly full. I was like a child with a cotton candy machine at my beck and call. "Spin me some more! More! MORE!"

Over the years, I’ve discovered so many writers at the library. After we moved to Tennessee, before I made any friends and started writing myself, it was my refuge. There aren’t a lot of bookstores in my part of town, and I didn’t know my way around well enough to venture out alone. But the library was right down the street. I’d see something that interested me, get the book, read it, and subsequently rush out and buy the rest of the series. Several names came to me because of my library. John Sandford. John Connolly. Lee Child. Laura Lippman. Karin Slaughter. Tess Gerritsen. Barry Eisler. I became a devoted fan for life of all of these incredible writers, all because of a random chance in the stacks.

With the advent of their computerized ordering system, I don’t spend a lot of time browsing in our library anymore. It’s relatively small, and of late, I’ve just ordered the books I need online, then run inside in a hurry to grab the title. Many I simply buy directly from our bookstores, though I’d be homeless if I bought at the rate that I read. After a rough year of deadlines and projects, just twenty minutes in the library stacks felt like coming home.

More than coming home. I felt like me again.

What has given you a moment of grace lately?

Wine of the Week: Woop-Woop Shiraz. and a few extras to boot, to say thanks to the lovely lady from Down Under who made my week. Besides, it fits how I feel after popping one of these little pills. Whoop – whoop!

All Roads Lead To …

Zoë Sharp

I read Brett’s debut post last week and thought it might be a good idea to give my own road into writing. OK, so actually it was more of a clasping at straws in the desperation of a blank mind in the face of so much wit and insight. Apologies to those who’ve already been bored to tears by me at conventions and heard any or all of this before.

I took a weird path into this game. Is there a normal one? I wasn’t a noted student, opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and did correspondence courses until I was legally old enough to go out and get a job. The local authority sent me to see a careers advisor when I was fifteen or so. I told him I was interested in writing. He said, "We’ll put you down for clerical."

I’d already written my first novel by then. It still sits, unpublished, in a folder in the attic. A children’s story, but no fledgling Harry Potter. My father threatens every now and again to dig it out and see if it will fly on eBay. I have it well hidden.

A few years later I ended up at my local newspaper, selling display advertising – the ads in the front half of the paper, rather than the classifieds. A soulless job if ever there was one. Everybody suspects that half the money they spend on advertising is wasted, but they don’t know which half so they resent spending any of it. I lasted six months of impossible targets and nail-biting deadlines and picked up a temporary heart murmur for my pains. Towards the end, my manager – knowing I wouldn’t stay past the probationary period – asked the editor if there was any chance the editorial side would take me on. I’d already written advertorial copy and he knew that’s where my interest lay. The editor turned him down flat. "No qualifications." They fired me.

I looked at getting those qualifications. Seven years of study just to become a cub reporter. I gave it up. Instead I sold pensions, delivered yachts, taught people to ride horses, and a few other things I thought might turn into long-term careers but didn’t. During this period I acquired my first car – a broken-down Triumph Spitfire MkIV wearing more different colours of paint than Joseph, with a six-inch nail holding one of the front brake calipers in place. Not my first choice, but the best I could get for the money. I rebuilt it, worked out how to make it go round corners, resprayed it Brooklands green. And started to write about it.

Before I knew it, I was writing for the classic car magazines. In 1988, with an arrogance that frankly shocks me now, on the basis of a couple of accepted articles I gave up my job – no loss there – and turned freelance full time. It was four years before one of my magazine editors asked me what qualifications I had. By that time I could tell them they’d been sending me cheques for four years. What more did they want?

The freelance market was good, the rates reasonable, so I expanded the scope of my work. An editor asked could I supply words and pictures? I borrowed a camera and gave it a try. My fiction writing ambitions went on the back burner, until something happened to revive them.

I was sent to see a bloke in south Wales to do an interview. But when I arrived it soon became clear that the car I was supposed to be featuring didn’t … actually exist. And he looked kind of shifty when I turned up with my Other Half, Andy, in tow. The bloke made some sort of lame excuse and we left, annoyed at the wasted trip. It was only afterwards that I started to wonder what he had planned. I’d made an appointment, so he couldn’t claim he wasn’t expecting me. The only thing that had thrown him was that I hadn’t come alone. And what then?

A couple of years previously, Brit real estate agent Susie Lamplugh disappeared after going to show a prospective buyer round an empty house. She was never found. It struck a chord. Especially when, after that abortive interview, every time my picture appeared alongside a regular column I was writing in one of the classic car mags, I got death-threat letters. Professionally done, with the words cut out of newspaper like a ransom note. Telling me I was scum, telling me they knew where I lived and my days were numbered.

The only good point about the whole thing was that the letters were going to the magazine’s London address, not to my home, so clearly the ‘we know where you are’ bit was something of an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it freaked me out. The police never tracked down who’d actually sent them.

As for my reaction, I learned self-defence from a little black belt karate and kyushu jitsu instructor with a benevolent smile and steel fingers. I did not, as has been erroneously stated in the past, learn to shoot in order to protect myself. I probably would have done, but it was mostly illegal in the UK by then and, besides, I could already shoot to competition standard.

But I did start to write fiction again. Maybe it was a form of escape, of regaining control. Maybe it was a desire to create a world where the bad guys died screaming. I wanted a strong female lead who wouldn’t buckle when she was put under threat, and one day Charlie Fox turned up on the doorstep of my mind, fully formed, with an attitude and a motorbike, a traumatic past, a failed military career, friends who loved her. She said, "I’ve got a story to tell. You might want to write this down." I didn’t argue.

And, in one of those little tweaks of fate that so rarely happen, several years after I turned freelance I got a call from the publisher of the newspaper who’d sacked me, offering me the editorship of another paper in the same group. I let them take me out for a very nice lunch to discuss the position, then turned them down. Maybe I should have told them I simply wasn’t qualified …

Synchronicity

by Robert Gregory Browne

I grew up playing with tape recorders.
My father was something of a gadget geek and he made sure he had one
of the first reel to reel tape decks when they became available to
consumers. I can’t remember the make or model, but it was one of the
most glorious things I can remember owning. I spent hours recording
my voice then speeding it up to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

When I got older, I fell in love with
old radio shows, so a lot of my time was spent locked in my room,
trying to emulate the western shows I heard on nostalgia radio. I
created characters and voiced all the voices — yes, I was a complete
and utter nerd — and added sound effects and music.

Around the same time, I started using
the family Super 8 movie camera to make super hero movies. We didn’t
have the luxury of sync sound in those days, so in high school, when
I shot and edited a blatant rip-off of the movie Deliverance (minus
the squeal like a pig scene), I was forced to use non-sync sound when
we played the movie for executives from Fuji films, who went on to
sponsor the short in a national filmmaking contest.

All throughout these years I played
guitar and a bit of keyboard. I had been writing songs since the
age of thirteen and a few years later won a couple of local
songwriting contests.

During that same time, I also loved to
draw. For many years I was convinced I was going to be a commercial
artist, and even took a job at my local television station as an
assistant to the art director.

When home computers became available, I
took to them immediately, learning to do some minor programming and
jumping onto the Internet long before it became a household word.

And, of course, there was writing. I
wrote my first "short story" in intermediate school,
penning a cops and robbers tale that may or may not have had an
ending. As I got older, I started writing episodes of my favorite TV
shows — Rockford Files, Harry O, Hawaii Five-0 — in hopes that I’d
somehow be able to break in.

As you can see, I had a number of
different interests as I was growing up.

And that was my problem. During all
those years, I was so torn between being a writer, a rock star, an
artist, a computer geek and a filmmaker that I had absolutely no idea which to choose.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I finally decided to
concentrate on one thing — writing — and when I turned 35, I won a
Nicholl Fellowship and sold my first screenplay.

Now, many years later, I find myself
beginning my sophomore year as a novelist — the thing I believe I
was meant to do all along. It took me a helluva long time to figure
that out, but here I am, for better or worse.

But what I find truly amazing is that
it seems that all those years I spent pursuing those different interests were
simply preparation for this phase of my life. Why?

Because now — amazingly enough — in
addition to writing, I find myself utilizing all of the other skills
I acquired along the way to help me promote this career I’ve finally
discovered.

My love of audio recording has helped
me learn the art of podcasting. Fellow Killer Year and Murderati
blogger Brett Battles and I do ~~weekly~~ ~~monthly~~ occasional podcasts
about the craft of writing.

My love of art has helped me develop an
eye for design, and my experience with computers and the Internet has
helped make developing my websites a breeze.

My love of songwriting has helped me compose
music for audio and video promotional materials, and my love of
filmmaking has led me to creating book trailers and short video clips
for Murderati.

And it’s all truly coming together for me this Saturday. I was asked and accepted a gig to teach an MWA workshop on podcasting and book trailers in Little Tokyo.

It seems as if some cosmic force had something in
mind for me when it divided my brain into so many segments. All those
years I spent pursuing these separate passions, wondering what the
hell I was finally going to do with my life, seem to have come
together (just as my kids have left the house) to
turn me into a kind of one-man band, allowing me to do all of the
things I love doing —

— and, I might add, saving me
thousands of dollars in the process, because I’ll be damned if I’ll
hire anyone else to do this stuff for me.

I don’t consider myself a big believer in fate, but what else do you call it? Someone, somewhere must have had a plan, and it sure as hell wasn’t me.

But what I really want to know is this:

How did fate know I’d be such a cheapskate?

The Illusionists

By Louise Ure

You’ve heard of the work of Julian Beever, right? He’s the chalk artist who has been creating optical illusion drawings on sidewalks in Europe, the U.S., Australia and Brazil for the last decade.

Although his drawing surface is simply flat pavement, he uses a technique called anamorphosis to create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

From flat, gray pavers Beever builds a world of chasms and pools, globes and spheres. Entire city blocks that exist just inches under your feet.

But when viewed from any other angle, the drawing makes no sense at all.

That’s the same globe, stretched out over forty feet in order to create the 3D effect.

Anamorphosis — creating a three dimensional world from a flat, blank surface — is a pretty good description of writing, too. But it’s even more relevant to the mystery writer, because this trompe l’oeil can only be achieved when viewing it from the proper angle.

And that’s what solving mysteries is all about.

If the characters in our books stood at the right angle … if they had the right perspective … enough information … there would be no mystery at all. All the pieces would fit.

But one character might be standing at the side. He might only know his tiny bit of the story.

Another character might be in the middle of it all, adding scratchy chalk marks that look inconsequential until viewed from the right angle.

The protagonist may stare at the pavement until the colors swirl and blur before his eyes, but he won’t be able to see the whole picture until he arrives at just that perfect spot and sees how all the pieces fit together.

It’s all about illusion and perspective. The point of view we choose. Whether or not to get inside a character’s head. Red herrings. Lies. Suspects. Subtly dropped clues. Unreliable narrators. Misdirection. Plot twists.

And whether it’s a thriller, a horror story, a bit of noir or a traditional mystery, when we do it right, the reader thinks it’s magic. So do I.

Here’s to the magic.

P.S. The Fault Tree goes on sale today. I’ll be on the road, laughing, scratching and telling lies. Hope to see you there!

Catching it from behind, lobbing it forward

by Pari

Let’s talk mentoring.

There’s the formal route. International Thriller Writers pairs debut authors with seasoned ones. Mystery Writers of America works to partner writers, whose publishers have abandoned them, with others who’ve weathered this traumatic career challenge.

Sometimes, when I’m in self-pity mode, I wish I’d had the benefit of an established mentorship program. But, the truth is, my informal experiences have been pretty darn good.

Dozens of people have taught me in my career so far. These are the folks — not always writers, btw — who took the time to answer my questions thoroughly. They’re the ones in whom I’ve confided fears and awful emotions such as jealousy and envy. They’ve responded with compassion . . . and a punch to the solar plexus when necessary.

In the past, many of these informal mentors didnt realize I’d thrust them into that role. People like Steve Brewer, Connie Shelton, Susan Slater, Suzanne Proulx, Deborah Donnelly, David Corbett, Barbara Seranella and Maryelizabeth Hart took me under their wings at my first Left Coast Crime convention. Because of them, my introduction to the mystery world was a glorious one.

I didn’t ask these generous souls to guide me. They just stepped up and did it.

Right now, my life is filled with informal mentors again. In my critique group, I’ve got five astounding teachers — all experts at one thing or another. At the First Friday group I attend in Alb. (started by Tony Hillerman and Madge Harrah among others), I sit, listen, and am agog at the wealth of information and perspectives I can get in one little room. The writers on this wonderful blog, all my fellow ‘Ratis, are incredible teachers, too.

On listservs such as the one for the American Crime Writers League, Mystery Writers of America’s breakout, and the one for Novelists, Inc., I’m simply floored with the responses to my — and others’ — serious questions.

I apologize if I seem like I’m gushing. I’m on the verge of a new book release and, boy, I’m feeling mighty grateful.

Think about it . . .

There are authors in our community who serve as examples to us all — without even trying. Lee Child can wow a roomful of fans and make every single one of them feel valued. He’s also extremely kind to new authors. Charlaine Harris has her incredible following because of her writing — and the risks she’s taken with it — AND is nicer than warm peach pie a la mode. Jan Burke saw a problem with crime lab funding and did something about it. Donna Andrews tirelessly volunteers for Sisters in Crime and Malice Domestic.

These people are my mentors, too, though I rarely contact them privately.

And I haven’t even mentioned booksellers; professional reviewers; or the fans who create and man listservs, write reviews, work at and organize conventions. So many of them have given me pearls and helped me avoid pitfalls.

Isn’t it amazing? Doesn’t this astounding altruism just blow you away?

Most of the time, I still think of myself as a neophyte in the publishing world; I’ve got the same jitters and joys in anticipation of book #3 as I did with #1.

Yet I’m no virgin.

People have begun to ask me questions. They pull me aside at conventions now and trust me enough to keep confidences and respect their vulnerabilities.

I only hope to be as gracious and giving as those who’ve taught, and continue to teach, me.

So, let’s celebrate the givers today. Let’s celebrate our mentors. Are there people who’ve helped you — either formally or informally — to achieve your dreams?

I can’t wait to read what you’ve got to say.

i don’t know what the hell to call this one

by Toni

Part I

Conversations while I am copy editing:

Someone Who Is Remarkably Still Alive*: "Are you done yet?"

Me: "Am I still breathing?"

SWIRSA: "Does growling count?"

Me: "Then I’m not done."

later

SWIRSA: "I’m curious. You made all of this up, right?"

Me: "Yes."

SWIRSA: "It’s your writing. You got to pick and choose what went in there."

Me: "Yes."

SWIRSA: "So why didn’t you put only the stuff in that you wanted to keep the first time around and save yourself all of this trouble?"

Me: "Do you prefer burial or cremation?"

Part II

Writing comedy is a lot like stealing a car while on crack and with a couple of AKs in the back seat while you’re moseying on over to the police station to thumb your nose at the cops, just to see if you can get away with it.

Part III

There is no "easy" — no matter what the genre. Not if you’re reaching for the high bar. There’s comfort knowing other writers feel the same way.

Part IV

Writing well, I’ve learned finally, isn’t some big, mysterious code to be broken, and there isn’t some aha! moment where all is revealed if you just click the tumblers to the right one more click. There are a lot of little truths writers pick up along the way and each writer’s application of those truths is what gives the writer his or her voice. Some of these I heard early on, but didn’t quite get them the way I do today, after years of practice. Some I wish I’d heard a lot earlier–I think I would have learned quicker.

Elmore Leonard has done this better, but here are a few basic little black dresses of truth:

story = character in conflict

I used to hear a lot of people saying story = character, but that leads to the misapprehension that a writer can go on at length about a character’s background or childhood, where we’re learning all about how the person became who they were, and we’re bored to tears (if we’ve gotten very far). Unless the conflict — the story that’s going to be resolved one way or another in this telling — starts in that childhood, cut to the conflict of the now.

This also means that each scene should have conflict. If it doesn’t, the story has stopped. Find the conflict, whether internal or external, and let it inform the action of the scene.

Active voice:

This is a personal choice, but I prefer active voice. Examples (caveat — it’s one a.m. and I am copy edit blind, so these aren’t great):

(passive) Joanne was running down the street.

(active, but flat) Joanne ran down the street.

(slightly better) Joanne sprinted down the street.

(more visual) Joanne’s tennis shoes slammed against the asphalt, faster than her heartbeat. (Feel free to chime in with better examples.)

Another point: commitment. Whatever type of story you’ve decided to write, commit to it. Don’t try to be all things to all people. It’ll never work. Expect to offend some, and be disliked by others. This is like choosing shoes to go with the outfit. (I have just lost every single guy who reads the blog.) The red ones may go or the black ones may go, but you’re gonna look pretty dumb if you wear one of each. And if you decide to pick the purple, then by God, work the purple and don’t be worried about whether or not purple is popular.

Be specific. You don’t appeal to a wider audience (generally) by being generic and appearing to write about Every Man (Woman), but by writing about a unique experience. Sci-Fi notwithstanding, this is generally about what it is to be a specific human facing a specific trial that matters in a very specific way.

Okay it’s your turn–what writing truth or preference do you keep on your mental checklist of things to do to improve your writing?

(*no, this wasn’t my spouse, who has way more sense and is very supportive)

What’s your personal mythology?

by Alex

There was recently some cyber question somewhere, I think on Backspace, I swear I can’t remember where I’ve been lately, about whether the authors there consciously considered theme when they were working on their books.

I was startled, maybe even stunned, to see anyone at all answer that they didn’t.

Personally, I will abandon a book very early on if I can’t see or feel a theme building in it. And I’m mean, as a writer OR a reader. I’m not interested in books that have no clear, dynamic, fascinating theme.

But how do you build theme?

Obviously this is going to be a topic that requires more than one column, but I think I’ll have a crack at it, because it’s winter, and time for introspection and reflection and those bigger, underlying ideas.

Now, first, let me say I don’t think that you have to necessarily know a theme from the inception of a story, but I think that’s true ONLY because – we all come with our own themes built in, and pretty much ready to force their way into a story whether we like it or not. And once you see a theme working, I think it’s both crazy and a betrayal of your story and audience not to work it.

About ten years ago, I think, there was a cocktail party question going around in LA about “personal mythology”. Now that I think about it, it might have been after some broadcast of Joseph Campbell’s THE POWER OF MYTH, or maybe just after the great man died.

The idea was to get to know a person quickly by asking them what their personal mythology was, and people would answer – “Well, I’ve always felt a little like Charlie Brown.” It was a bit of a misleading term, “personal mythology”, because the questions and answers focused around literary or film characters, and it sounds a little coy when I write about it now, but you could get some startling insights into people from their answers, and it sure as hell beat “What’s your sign?” as a pickup line, because the first thing that comes out of a person’s mouth when they’re not anticipating a question like that is very revealing. For example, knowing that a boyfriend had always seen himself as Luke Skywalker, and why, gave me a lot of perspective into his relationship with his father and what he expected of himself. I think we all see ourselves as mythic figures, and project our myths onto the world. And as authors, it’s a great starting point for building character to identify what personal myths our characters have.

Like, at the time that question was being asked I would say I’ve always felt a lot like Alice in Wonderland – yes, part of it was the enormous squiggly hair and long legs and small feet and the fact that half the people I’ve ever met assume my name is Alice because they’re not really listening when I say Alex (or I’ve never quite learned to pronounce it, maybe….)

And then of course, there are the mushrooms —

Well, all right, never mind that.

And then I could go a little deeper and say that Alice is my personal myth because I always feel like this logical little girl in the midst of a bunch of completely colorful and whacked-out characters. I mean, look, I did grow up partly in Berkeley, after all. My first images of adults and the world were pretty crazy.

And I’ve used Alice in Wonderland imagery countless times in my own writing – I often write from the point of view of a feminine observer who ends up in a special world, trying to make sense of a chaotic Wonderland of over-the-top characters around her, who ultimately has to take charge of those characters and that world. When I write a story like that I don’t necessarily think at the time, “Oh, this is another one of my Alice stories” – it’s so ingrained a theme that I don’t have to think about it, but I sure can see it in retrospect.

That wasn’t my only personal myth, either. Meg Murry in A WRINKLE IN TIME was a big one (after the great Madeleine L’Engle died, the women on WriterAction, our screenwriter board, got into a knock-down drag-out brawl about which of us was REALLY Meg Murry. When you think about it, Meg and Alice have a lot in common – they both go into fantastical worlds and end up – sort of – saving the day. The stakes are much higher for Meg, of course – it’s the whole planet she has to save. But the point of view is startlingly similar in many ways.

While I still deeply relate to Alice and feel all the time that I’m living in Wonderland – a fantastical, not quite real world – I’ve moved on from Alice as a core myth (maybe because I’ve become much less an observer and more one of those characters I used to watch, which I’m not sure is completely a good thing…).

I’ve cycled through other myths, of course – there are really dozens when you start to list them. Ophelia is a big one. I’m obsessed with HAMLET (yes, I know, how original of me!) but it’s not Hamlet I relate to in that world, it’s Ophelia. I’ve always found it fascinating that while Hamlet postures and anguishes and pretends and finally works himself into a state that he can have his archaic and pointless revenge, Ophelia just does everything Hamlet is pretending or struggling or agonizing over. Hamlet pretends to go mad over the death of his father – Ophelia does it. Hamlet ponders suicide – Ophelia does it. While I’m not as self-destructive as Ophelia (although I can’t deny I’ve had my moments in the past), I can absolutely relate to her quiet, unobtrusive determination. Because of the profession I’ve chosen I’ve always been in the midst of a lot of mainly men trying to do what I’m trying to do. In high school I was the only female director in the theater department, in college I was one of very few women director/playwrights, and in my screenwriting career I was often the only woman in a room in development meetings. And while a lot of my male college friends strutted and postured about writing, and got a lot of attention for it, I just quietly did it.

In a very dark way I was thinking of that dynamic for my husband and wife in THE PRICE. The husband agonizes for the entire book over what he knows he needs to do, and creates all kinds of sidebar plots for himself about it – but the wife just does it. (Because you know, that’s what women do).

I could go on and on about how I’m also Persephone, and Beatrice from MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, and Cassandra, and Dorothy Parker, and Galadriel, but I think you get the drift by now.

And obviously, the point of all these examples is to get you thinking about how considering your own and other people’s personal myths is a great basis for developing deep and interesting and thematic characters, and how that can be a good start on overall theme.

So here’s the game for today.

What’s YOUR personal mythology?

Where Is My Mind?

J.T. Ellison

Have I ever mentioned that I have a truly terrible memory? Well, if I have, forgive me. I’ve obviously forgotten. I kid you not, I am the epitome of the absentminded professor, especially when it comes to remembering books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched. I’ve always admired people who can trot out remembered first lines of books, who can remember everything they read. I mean, I can, sort of, but I generally need some sort of mental prompting to get there.

It’s never been a big deal. Almost a joke really, something hubby can trot out at parties to tease me with. Harmless. J.T. Ellison channels inner ditz, blind squirrel finds nut, news at 11.

But now I find that I can’t remember what I’ve written as well, which can be mighty embarassing. I was at dinner over the holidays with a friend who was reading the book. He told me he was right at the spot where Baldwin goes to Virginia. I stared at him blankly, thinking Huh? Virginia? There’s no murder in Virginia in the book. To prove that I’m a complete imbecile, I proceeded to tell him that. You must mean Georgia, or maybe North Carolina, I said. He looked at me like I’d grown three heads and said, no, pretty sure it’s Virginia. It took me a moment, then it connected. DUH! I set a huge murder scene in Roanoke.

In a flash, all the research I’d done, the scene, the plot, the point, the why all hit me. It wasn’t a minor point in the book, either — dump site, grassy field, helicopters, news vans, interviews, a hotel crime scene, another girl missing… Sheesh. Of course I had a murder in Virginia. Good grief, where is my mind?

I laughed it off at the time, but this is a serious issue. It happened with the edits of my second book. I got my ed letter and there was a comment about a secondary character — and I thought, who’s that? Ten seconds later it connected again, just like the Virginia thing, but man. How can I not know my own work by heart?

I just know it’s going to happen out on the road, on a panel, at a signing, and I’ll end up looking like a complete fraud because I can’t remember all the details in MY OWN BOOK, the one I rewrote a thousand times. Either I’m going mad, or I have a legitimate memory issue.

The day after my dinner faux pas, I picked up a book I’d bought at the airport. I’ve been salivating over the trailers for ATONEMENT, and was determined to read the book before I saw the film. Christmas frivolity behind me, I curled up with a cup of tea, preparing myself for a journey of the highest order. I neglected to read the back cover . . . okay, I’ll admit it, I rarely read the cover flaps and copy, simply because I like to be surprised. I’ve bought the book, why chance ruining something for myself?

I was two pages in when I felt the oddest sense of familiarity. Predisposed to it, I told myself, having just finished THE NIGHT CLIMBERS, a story redolent of Donna Tartt’s brilliant THE SECRET HISTORY. I kept reading. Five pages in I decided I’ve had just about enough of writers openly copying the form and function of each other. I mean really, how many books can you open in a country estate with the children preparing a play? Seven pages in I stopped, annoyed as hell at myself. I had a sneaking suspicion that I’d read this book before. But how could that be? Surely I’d remember the title of such a book? Onward I pressed, promising myself that if there was a broken . . . damn, there it was.

Grr… Full stop. I checked the copyright, pulled up IMDB, read the movie synopsis, then sat, shaking my head. I’ve read ATONEMENT. I LOVED ATONEMENT. Somehow, I completely blanked the story of ATONEMENT, and I’m so clueless that I have been watching the trailers over and over and never put the two together.

I don’t know whether this is a blessing or a curse. Yes, I can reread books and rewatch movies. Get more bang for the buck, right? What I don’t understand is how some I remember with such clarity, and other I can’t get past the sneaking unease of déjà vu.

So as a test, I tried to remember what my first blog post of 2007 was. Surely I could remember my first foray into my debut year . . . not. I had to go look it up. What I read was eerie. Downright creepy. I’m repeating my first week of January.

Last year I was upset by the death of Gerald Ford. This year I’m horrified at the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Last year I was starting a new book. This year, you guessed it, I’m starting a new book. Last year I was examining the art of procrastination and concerned about having to work on multiple projects at once. This year I’m trying to wrap my head around the promotion schedule I’ve set for January (5 events, the teaching gig next week, plus launching the Killer Year anthology, a guest blog stint at Moments in Crime, an essay, an interview and hello, I still have to feed Randy and do laundry. What the heck was I thinking?) and juggling the down time I need to get started on this book with the errant expectation of people who like to make sure I’m still alive that I ever want to leave my house.

Gaaaaaahhhhhhhh…………..Maybe I don’t have a memory issue. Maybe I’m just on sensory overload. Too much work, too little time. I was able to complete and shelve two MAJOR projects that ate into all my free time last year, and now I know what to expect from book launches and sales and all that, so I won’t be utterly preoccupied with that. And to my credit, I did read ATONEMENT when it originally published, while I was still down from back surgery and not all the synapses were firing due to a lengthy run of anesthesia. Not a great excuse, I know, but a legitimate one.

After living almost half my life with a man who has the gift of perfect recall, I have realized that trying to remember is simply the universe’s way of playing a cruel joke on me. I’m much better off in my little dissociative cocoon, happily rereading books I’ve looked forward to for months and forgetting the endings of movies I’ve seen four times. The real world is too scary for me. I will go on making my lists (if it doesn’t get written down, it doesn’t happen, trust me) and spluttering through my imperfect mind.

So, a poll to start the new year:

Insanity – blessing, or curse?
Have you ever read a book, gotten to the last page and then realized you’ve already read it?
Do ginko and crosswords really ward off dementia?
Should I read ON CHESIL BEACH, which I’ve heard described as a smaller version of ATONEMENT and I’m sure I haven’t already read?

Wine of the Week: Faustino V 1998 Rioja Reserve A brilliant, brilliant wine.

Okay, I’ve just proven to myself that memory is linked to desire. I came up with the name without having to look in my notes. I’ve been excited to share this one since we had it over Christmas, and I fell in love with the heady scent of snapping black cherries and vanilla — a very nice little wine. Hubby said that it was "impetuous, and if it were a baby, I’d spank it." He’s funny like that.

P.S. — With apologies to the amazing Ian McEwan. ATONEMENT was truly wonderful.

Believe

2008.
2008.
2008.

I’ve been practicing writing it down for a few weeks now. It seems every year whenever I have to write down the date I’ll spend the first few months writing the previous year by mistake. Sometimes I’ll get he hang of it fairly quick only to revert inexplicitly in June or even July. Neuro pathways get crossed for no obvious reason at all.

But 2007? Yes, 2007.

I never had a problem writing 2007 down. From January 1st I was on it. Never a mistake. Never a crossed out ’06.

See 2007 was a special year. Like a couple of the other Murderati bloggers – Rob, Toni, & JT – 2007 was the year I debuted as a published novelist. It was something I’d been dreaming about since I was in Mr. Hodge’s sixth grade class back in the High Desert of California. Honest. I’ve wanted it that long.

As has happened to many of us, perhaps most – and perhaps is still happening to many more of us – life got in the way. School, youth, doubt, family, career…they all threw up roadblocks that I let stop me, sometimes for a month, sometimes for a year, and sometimes for several.

Then I finally got my act together, and really began concentrating. I finished a novel. It was actually my second, the first having come ten years earlier. It was great to get back in the groove again. I knew that with my concentration back, publication would soon follow. So I prepped a batch of queries and fired them off. When the majority of those came back as form letter no-thank-yous I didn’t worry. I just checked them off the list and moved on to the next batch.

In total, I sent out 72 queries: 54 form rejections, 3 bad address, 5 no response, and 10 requests to see material. Out of the 10 who requested more, 5 passed and the other 5 I never heard from again. I know all this because I kept a spreadsheet tracking progress. Yeah, pretty geeky of me.

But again, I didn’t let it deter me. I credit my mentor, the late William Relling, Jr. He taught me that it wasn’t easy, and that sometimes you just had to say maybe this wasn’t the one and it was time to move on to a new story.

So I did. I wrote another novel. Truth be told, I began it while I was sending out queries on the other one. That was another hint from Bill. Keep moving forward, always have a project your working on.

When I finished, I sent out queries again. I didn’t keep quite as good records this time, or if I did, I must have hid them someplace I can’t remember. Nonetheless, I’m sure I sent out about the same amount. And, as it turns out, with basically the same results.

This time I couldn’t help but feeling a little discouraged. I’d written a book I thought was pretty good, and I’d had a lot of very positive feedback on it. But it looked like I was going to have to put it on the shelf and start something new. I did start something, a book I was going to call NOT FOR US, about a writer who got feed up with being rejected and who goes to confront the person who rejected him last and accidentally kills him. It was a black comedy…with an emphasis on satisfying revenge.

But not long after I’d started, my mentor unexpectedly passed away, and I lost interest in the book. Because of Bill’s passing, I came into contact with an old friend and writer, Nathan Walpow. Years ago, when I’d written that first novel, Nathan and I had been in a writing group that Bill had run. Now Nathan had several novels published. When I told him about my frustration with all the rejections – an aliment I was well away all authors share – he offered to help me out. At that time he was being published by a small, well respected house called Ugly Town. He told me to send them the manuscript for the novel that I’d gotten the latest batch of rejections for to them, and he’d put in a good word for me.

So naturally I did. What happened next was…well…a whole lot of nothing. For almost eleven months I hear nothing. I reverted to what I knew Bill would have told me to do, that is write another book. Then one evening, while I was sitting at Starbucks doing edits on my newly finished book, I got a phone call…no, not a phone call, THE phone call. Ugly Town wanted my novel.

I was going to be published.

Only that wasn’t the end of the story. Six months later, just three months from when Ugly Town was going to release my novel, they had to suspend operations. Being a small publisher is never an easy game. I thought I was back to square one, but I wasn’t. Jim and Tom at Ugly Town didn’t kick me out the door. Instead they got a hold of an editor friend they had at Bantam Dell and pitch my book to her. Long story short, Bantam Dell bought my contract, and subsequently gave me a three book deal. That book that I almost shelved was obviously THE CLEANER.

So not only did I know every day of 2007 what year it was, 2007 is a year I will never forget. For God’s sake it was hard enough to get there.

For all of you out there still chasing that first deal, I don’t recommend using the path I took, but you should note that there are many paths to get there. But the two most important things you need to always remember is patience and persistence.

Patience and persistence…and then hopefully you’ll have your own year that you will always remember.

Thank you Pari and JT and the rest of the ‘rati gang for inviting me to play.

Murderati Newbie,

Brett

Pain and Adverbs, or Pinning the Butterflies

by J.D. Rhoades

Something Alex said in her post on Saturday set me to thinking. “I’m one of those authors,” she
wrote, “who really doesn’t like writing all that much. It has its moments,
sure, I’ll give you that, but I don’t skip to my computer every morning with a
smile on my face and a song in my heart.”

I read that, and I went, “yeah.”
Because I often feel the same way.

A commenter expressed some dismay
at Alex’s sentiment: “it’s tough to read that you really don’t like writing
that much when I would give my left toe to be able to write more!” And,
ironically, I also said ‘yeah,” to that. I’d love to have the time to write
more, and then actually do it. Even though it’s sometimes almost physically
painful.

Not everyone has this problem, or has sympathy for
it. Garrison Keillor once amusingly if unkindly wrote that, if you think writing
is hard,

“Get a job. Try teaching eighth-grade English, five classes a day, 35
kids in a class, from September to June, and then tell us about suffering.

The fact of the matter is that the people who struggle most with writing
are drunks. They get hammered at night and in the morning their heads are full
of pain and adverbs. Writing is hard for them, but so would golf be, or
planting alfalfa, or assembling parts in a factory.

Keillor’s right, of course.
Writing’s easier than, say, than working with hot tar on a sunny summer day in Florida. Or teaching eight grade English for that matter. But there are still days I have to drag myself to it.

So why do it? And how to explain the
contradiction of writing being both exquisitely painful and joyful at the same
time?

Well, as I so often answer when
asked about motivation and why I write, “You can’t rule out mental illness.”
But that’s a flippant answer to a serious question, so I’ll try a little harder
to explain.

I once read an interview with a writer (and I wish I could remember who) who
compared the act of writing to hunting butterflies. You’re out there, and it’s
a lovely day. You’re surrounded by all this beauty, and you’re amazed at some
of the things you see flying around.

But eventually, you have to chase
one of the little buggers down with the net. And when you do, you pop it in the
killing jar and pin it to a board. Once it’s there, it’s still pretty. People
may come and look at it, and ooh and ahh, and sometimes you may get kudos for a
new and previously undiscovered butterfly.

But it’s never the same as when it
was fluttering free.

And that’s how writing feels to me
sometimes. The things I see and hear in my head sometimes get my blood racing
and make my eyes light up. But then I have to sit down at the computer and pin
the lideas onto the board, or in my case, the page. And it’s never as
good as it was in my mind. At least to me.

Oh, it’s getting better. I’m
getting more proficient, I hope, at getting the words to match what’s in my
imagination. And that’s one of the things that keeps me coming back to the keyboard.

The other is, if I don’t hunt them down and catch them, these damn butterflies fluttering around in my head are going to make me nuts.

Best wishes for the New Year to you all…