Curiosity and the writer

by Tess Gerritsen

I’m often asked, "What kind of person becomes a novelist?" People want to know what we writers have in common, and whether there are special characteristics that make a writer successful. I give the same answers everyone else probably does: A fertile imagination. A love of reading. Sheer persistence. But I also throw in one more characteristic that others may forget to mention, yet it’s one that I consider vital to the craft of storytelling: Insatiable curiosity.

If writers were cats, we’d all be dead.

When story ideas come to me, it’s seldom because I actively went looking for them. More often, they arise out of some interest that’s completely separate from my job as a writer. Or I come across an odd little fact or news item that inspires my curiosity and compels me to find out more, simply because I can’t help myself.

Years ago, I read an article about a newly discovered class of organisms called "Archaeons," single-celled creatures so ancient that they probably split off from the larger tree of life at the same time that bacteria did. They’re sometimes called "extremophiles" because of the hostile conditions in which they thrive, such as in the superheated waters of underwater volcanic vents. Although I couldn’t see how I would ever use the information in a book, I was so fascinated by these bizarre organisms that I collected a number of clippings about them from various science journals. They went into my file of "creepy facts", which I’ve maintained for decades. 99 percent of the information in that file will probably never find its way into a novel; I keep it around just because I’m a weird gal and happen to love creepy facts.

Some years later, news broke of an accident aboard Mir space station. The circumstances were so scary and dramatic that I knew I had to write about it. I imagined an accident in space, with dying astronauts trapped aboard a space station. But what would be the circumstances? Why wouldn’t they just evacuate and come home? What could keep them quarantined aboard a doomed spacecraft?

That’s when I remembered my old clippings about the Archaeons, which are capable of surviving in almost any environment. And it occurred to me: what if scientists discovered a sample of such organisms at the bottom of the ocean, trapped there by crushing pressures for thousands of years? What if such organisms weren’t from earth at all, but had landed here aboard an asteroid?

What if they were actually an advance army of invaders, here to colonize the earth? Sent up to orbit by scientists and exposed to the microgravity of a space station, they would begin to assume their real form –a form that’s deadly to the human race.

That became the premise of my book GRAVITY.

I never could have written that book if I hadn’t delved into the oddities of Archaeons a few years earlier. And it was curiosity that made me do it.

Curiosity can take you places you never expected to go. It makes you turn over rocks and poke sticks in holes and peek behind closed doors. It may never lead to a story idea, but so what? Life is about more than writing books. It’s also about the thrill of discovering some delicious fact that has absolutely no relevance in your life.

But sometimes, sometimes, an obscure fact will come in useful. It may not be until years have passed, but that’s the thing about curiosity. It’s a long-term investment.

By the time you read this blog post, I will be winging my my way home from Egypt. At the moment, my suitcase is lying half-packed on my bedroom floor, awaiting the sunscreen and bug spray. I’m going to Egypt to learn to read hieroglyphs. It’s an utterly irrelevant skill, and I don’t think I’ll ever use it in a book. But I’m curious about ancient dead languages, in the same way I was curious about those humble little Archaeons.

Knowledge is never wasted. Sometimes it just takes a lifetime to figure out how to use it.

I can’t believe you

Pari

Here’s a phrase that gives me hives, gets my panties in a wad:

I can’t suspend my disbelief.

Usually when I hear someone use this — or one of its many iterations — they’re referring to traditional mysteries featuring amateur sleuths. So, of course, I’m irritated. To me, people often lob those five words to intentionally render one of my chosen genres worthless. Why wouldn’t I be irked?

But I’m not interested in self-analysis today, in my own petty responses and visions of revenge. No.
I want to go deeper.

You see, I think all fiction requires — at its very foundation — a suspension of disbelief.

That’s precisely why I read it.

I happen to enjoy escape. Tony Hillerman referred to his works as entertainments. That’s one heck of a noble goal. Let me tell you, if a book can pull me away from thinking about the economy or brutal crime or global warming, well, I’m grateful.

We’ve all seen the rise of the thriller, of one man or woman taking on evildoers in a world filled with creepy conspiracies. These individuals routinely end up saving the planet. Do I believe that stuff? Nah. But it’s fun to read.

Are you going to tell me you’re certain there’s a wizarding school in England? That vampires exist? That werewolves make good detectives? That Dexter would be able to get away with his doings week after week and no one would notice?

Come on.

I can’t suspend my disbelief.

Sure you can. Everyone does it every single day. I was talking with my husband about this and he said, "Every person who has ever been married does it." Ha, ha. But he has a point: we willingly and constantly embrace personal and cultural myths.

And, guess what? They’re just that. Myths, fantasies, lies . . .

To me what matters is the internal coherence of a piece. I don’t really believe that Discworld exists, but it’s tremendously logical within its context. Sookie Stackhouse isn’t real, but I love her nonetheless. John Dortmunder and his crew wouldn’t be able to pull off those heists, but that doesn’t diminish my pleasure in reading about them.

If romance isn’t your cup of tea, admit it. If you can’t — or won’t — wrap your head around the idea that your sweet little next door neighbor is Super Sleuth. Fine. Don’t.

What gets my goose is that this phrase is often used as a universal condemnation. It’s as if by saying or writing it, the person is distancing his personal responsibility in the equation.

It’s Traditional Mystery’s fault that the speaker can’t suspend disbelief.
It’s Fantasy’s fault and Science Fiction’s fault.
It’s Fiction’s fault that the reader is incapable of enjoying the read.

That’s baloney.

Fess up to it. Be honest, please. It’s not the suspension of disbelief that’s getting you; it’s that you don’t like the basic concept. For whatever reason, you’re choosing to write off swaths of literature as being invalid because of your own biases.

That’s okay. We all have biases.

Just stop with the BS.

I think what gets me even more about
I can’t suspend my disbelief is that it’s as empty a phrase as a rejection from an editor that claims something isn’t compelling.

It’s just plain weasle-ly. And even though there’s nothing there, the words are like invisible viruses and carry power anyway.

I don’t know about you, but I resent the infection . . .

Okay, I’ll step off of my soapbox now.
1. Is there a common, but utterly empty phrase that drives you berserk?
2. Do you use I can’t suspend my disbelief and feel that it really does say something? (Convince me.)

Is the New York Times Biased?

By Allison Brennan

I had debated against writing this blog two weeks ago because I didn’t want it to come across as sour grapes. I actually wrote another blog for today, one about smart women in fiction vs. stereotyped femme fatales and bimbos. But as I was preparing my next “lesson” for the online group I’m teaching this month, I put together some statistics about bestseller lists and something jumped out at me. I may be making a few enemies, but at this point, I think someone needs to publicly talk about bestseller lists in general, and the New York Times in particular.

Nothing I say here is proof of anything. It’s just a comparison of the major bestseller lists for October 2007 and October 2008 and something in them that I think is odd. Coupled with the fact that the New York Times does not share how they compile their bestseller lists makes the whole process shadowy. We know, for example, that USA Today gets their numbers from very specific places, and we know that Walmart does not report to USA Today, for example. USA Today rankings most closely resemble the Bookscan numbers which is compiled from point-of-sale (POS) transactions weekly. Bookscan claims to track about 70-80% of all book purchases, and that may be true, but they certainly don’t track 70% of mass market sales. If you are a mass market author selling at Walmart, Bookscan reflects closer to 20-25% of your sales for the first quarter, and over a twelve month period maybe 35-40% of sales. Plus or minus. Because every author and distribution plan is unique.

In addition, different books and authors are released every month and every year so to do a proper analysis of the lists someone with more time and resources than me should pull together every list for the last three years with an algorithm to give an average % of books by genre that are released each month and when in the month. I’m sure some sharp statistician would know what to do; that would not be me.

I’m just looking at raw numbers. And I wasn’t going to write the article not just because of sour grapes, but because I know that publishing is fluid: there may be a glut of romance novels one month, and fewer the next month. But when I looked at the NYT, PW and USAT, something jumped out that made me think that I’m right. And JT’s “genre wars” rant got me thinking that if there was no genre designation, my theory wouldn’t hold any water because there’d be no genre designation in the files.

My theory?

The New York Times and Publishers Weekly use roughly the same formula for figuring out bestsellers, and that formula is biased against romance.

Playing Dead is my second bestselling title based on the first eight weeks of sales (Killing Fear is the first.) Playing Dead (10/08) sold more than twice as many copies opening week as Fear No Evil (4/07) which debuted at #10 on the New York Times list.

We all know that the month of release is hugely important: who is the competition? So to go up or down on the list is not a problem because one month might have a glut of bestsellers. For example, March 07 was a heavy-hitter month and I told my agent that if I was going to hit the print list, I had to do it with my Feb 07 book (Speak No Evil) because See No Evil in March had much more competition-both the number of releases and the heavy-hitter authors. Speak came out #14, See #20. And See had higher opening week numbers. So the ups and downs of the lists is no surprise to me and honestly doesn’t bother me: as long as my sales are doing well and my publisher is happy, I’m happy.

Walmart is hugely important for mass market authors. First, Walmart customers buy a lot of books, but because they are cost conscious, they buy mostly mass markets. Walmart offers very few hardcovers, and those on their shelves are the mega-sellers like King, Grisham, Roberts, Rowling, and Evanovich. Mass markets dominate their book aisle, discounted by a dollar or more. At some point at the end of 2007, Walmart stopped reporting sales to the New York Times. I don’t know if anyone knows why, but it happened and everyone in the business knows it. Around May of 2008, Walmart started reporting again.

But the lists were not the same.

The New York Times does not share with anyone how it compiles its bestseller lists. The general consensus is that they send out a list with pre-printed titles that are most likely to sell well. (How they come up with that list I have no idea.) They send it to a large sampling of booksellers and other retailers where books are a major item in the store. These people fill it out with sales information and return them. (This may be done online now-again, I have no idea . . . maybe a bookseller reader here knows more than I do?)

They do acknowledge that they adjust the numbers to represent a statistical sampling of all such stores.

I had always felt, as a mass market original author, that the NYT weighted their lists and gave more weight to books sold at independent stores than to books sold at mass merchandisers like Walmart. And that may very well be the case-we don’t know because they won’t say.

But whatever they did in the past, they changed it. In the past, the system may have been weighted slightly against romance novels, but since romance makes up 50% of mass market sales, and 39% of all fiction sales according to the RomStat report issued by Romance Writers of America we all know the genre is strong. (Note: The RWA research firm has changed and the last RomStat report is looking at other factors so there is no good comparison in numbers, though they reported that Romance is the leading fiction genre and is growing as a percent of market share even with the slowing economy.)

Playing Dead, which sold twice as many copies opening week as Fear No Evil eighteen months before, debuted at #26 on the NYT list and #37 on the USAT list. I could dismiss the poor NYT slot as being released in a competitive month (October.) And I would have, except that I’m really curious and did a comparison of publicly available information.

With the exception of my debut novel, The Prey, which had one week on the extended list, all my books have enjoyed 3-4 weeks on the NYT list. Until Playing Dead. It fell off after one week.

Week Two: Playing Dead was still in the Top 50 of USA Today (46), so I was optimistic that I’d stay on the NYT another week. Since USAT tracks point-of-sale I figured the book was doing well, even with the slight opening week drop from Killing Fear. (After all, our economy is in the tank.) But I fell off the list–and I’ll admit, I was surprised.

I think what really irked me is that the titles that bookended me on USAT (at numbers 45 and 47) were numbers 4 and 11 respectively on NYT. This was the first real clue that something wacky was going on. Full disclosure: #4 was a romance title that I know sells very well at the major chain bookstores and online. I don’t know if it was at Walmart-I sent my mom out to investigate and she didn’t see it at two Walmarts, but that doesn’t mean much because sometimes buys are regional, or it could have been sold out. I don’t know.

But just looking at the raw numbers told me that something was off. The following week, seven titles that were lower than me on USAT (I was at #55 that week) were on the print NYT list. I wasn’t even on the extended.

So, until tonight, this was all I had. And I looked at the facts and knew that it sounded like sour grapes and complaining. And it’s not. Seriously, every author that hit the NYT list deserves it and I’m honestly happy for them. It’s like entering a contest. All the finalists are great and deserve it-but we all know that there are other great books out there that didn’t make it for one reason or another that’s more subjective based on judging than anything else.

But the NYT claims to represent the bestselling books in the country. At the minimum they should tell their readers how they compile the list, and what has changed in the past year.

Why do I think something has changed?

In October 2007, romance novels (based on RWA membership-there could have been additional romance novels that hit who weren’t RWA members, such as Nicholas Sparks) enjoyed more weeks on the NYT and PW bestseller lists than in October of 2008:

NYT OCT 07
1 – 24
2 – 28
3 – 26
4 – 22
TOTAL: 100

PW OCT 07

1 – 9
2 – 9
3 – 8
4 – 6
5 – 4*
TOTAL: 32

NYT OCT 08
1 – 16
2 – 14
3 – 21
4 – 16
TOTAL: 67

PW OCT 08

1 – 3
2 – 6
3 – 8
4 – 6
TOTAL: 23

* PW tabulates differently than the NYT and had five weeks for October. To make it as fair as possible, I didn’t count week 5 for PW in the numbers-but it doesn’t seem to affect the numbers. If I did include it, it proves my point even more.

* Also, these numbers reflect hardcover, trade, and mass market bestsellers-the NYT and PW lists tabulate book release formats separately; USAT has all books-fiction and non-fiction, hardcover and paper, adult and children-on the same list. To be fair, I included all formats tracked.

* FYI: The NYT list comprises their top 35 bestsellers by format in h/c, trade, and mass market; PW is top 15 by format; USAT is top 150 ranked across all formats and genres.

* While this may not include ALL romance titles, it’s comparing apples to apples, ie RWA members for all lists.

There was a 33% reduction in romance list weeks in the NYT and a nearly 30% reduction in PW (if I’m doing my math correctly. And if I add in the 5th PW week because they use different days, then it’s almost dead-on the same percentage as the NYT reduction.)

Looking at this means nothing, really, because like I said above the lists are compiled from books selling that week. If there are fewer new romance releases, then the numbers will go down.

But when we look at USA Today, we see something completely different:

USAT OCT 07

1 – 24
2 – 15
3 – 10
4 – 13
TOTAL: 72

USAT OCT 08

1 – 25
2 – 25
3 – 21
4 – 20
TOTAL: 91

This is a nearly a 25% increase in romance title weeks on the USAT bestseller lists in these same months.

All I want is to know how these lists are compiled. Is the USAT list a true POS comparison? Can it be if they don’t include Walmart? And is the NYT intentionally, or through their statistical methodology, discriminating against romance novels?

And does it matter?

I would argue it does matter, but perhaps not as much once you can use the NYT bestseller designation on your books. Most readers don’t know or care how the lists are compiled. My sales may continue to increase and I may never hit the print list again, but because I have hit it in the past I can use NYT on my books. Yet, the industry perception may be that my career has hit a stumbling block. It won’t matter that my sales are strong and increasing, I’m not hitting * the * list. It may down the road affect distribution with vendors and wholesalers who look at the stats and wonder what’s up.

Honestly, the only thing that really matters is the bottom line. I know many authors who have consistently sold well over a long period of time, outselling many of the bestselling authors while they themselves have never hit a list.

But who it really hurts are the midlist romance writers trying to breakout and touch the holy grail . . . to be able to call themselves a New York Times bestselling author.

I just want to know what that means.

Fairy tale structure and The List

by Alexandra Sokoloff

This week I got a truly excellent request: for a list of books that would illustrate some of these things I’ve been talking about. I’ll have to start compiling it.

But this is why I really stress, and I should continue to stress, the importance of creating your OWN master list in your own genre, in that story notebook I talked about.

Anyone who’s developing a new story, or is even remotely thinking about it, who hasn’t done this yet should do it RIGHT NOW: make a list of ten books and movies in the genre that you’re writing in: books and films that you love, that you think are structured similarly to the story that you’re telling, or even that are not in your genre but are your favorite books and movies of all time.

Because what works structurally for me is not necessarily going to do it for YOU.

For me, I am constantly looking at SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (book and movie), A WRINKLE IN TIME (book), THE WIZARD OF OZ (film), THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (book and ORIGINAL film), anything by Ira Levin, especially ROSEMARY’S BABY (book and film), THE EXORCIST (book and film), JAWS (film, but I need to go back and compare the book), PET SEMATERY (book, obviously), THE SHINING (book and film), IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

That’s off the top of my head, just to illustrate the point I’m about to make – and not necessarily specific to the book I’m writing right now.

All of those examples are what I would call perfectly structured stories. But that list is not necessarily going to be much help for someone who’s writing, you know, romantic comedy. (Although the rom coms of George Cukor, Preston Sturges, and Jane Austen, and Shakespeare, are some of my favorite stories on the planet, and my master list for a different story might well have some of those stories on it).

You need to create YOUR list, and break those stories down to see why those stories have such an impact on you – because that’s the kind of impact that you want to have on your readers. My list isn’t going to do that for you. Our tastes and writing and themes and turn-ons are too different – even if they’re very similar.

I will start using more examples of each thing I’m talking about. I’ll go back at some point and revise these posts with more content, too. But in the meantime, I will keep begging for everyone’s examples so we can have a more eclectic and genre-inclusive discussion and so I can learn something, too.

I just taught a story structure workshop last week and it was as always fantastic to hear people’s lists, one after another, because it gives you such an insight into the particular uniqueness of the stories each of those writers is working toward telling. Make your list. Think of the story you are writing right now and list ten books and films that are like it – without thinking about it too much. There will always be some complete surprises on there, and those stories are sometimes the most useful for you to analyze structurally. What you are really listing are your secret thematic preferences. You can learn volumes from these lists if you are willing to go deep.

Always trust something that pops into your head as belonging on your list. The list tells you who you are as a writer.

One thing I’ve learned about myself as a writer is that my favorite stories of all are fairy tales and myths – which are often interchangeable, although Christopher Vogler and John Truby make good arguments that stories with mythic structure and stories with fairy tale structure have their own rules and formulas.

When I respond deeply to a movie or book, no matter how realistic and modern it seems on the surface, chances are it’s going to have a fairy tale structure.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, RED DRAGON, THE EXORCIST, THE GODFATHER, A WRINKLE IN TIME, STAR WARS, THE TREATMENT (Mo Hayder) – every single one of them is a fairy tale. And fairy tales have their own structural rules that just work for me.

This week I finally saw PAN’S LABYRINTH (I know, I’m WAY late on that one, and Del Toro is one of my favorite directors. It’s wonderful, heartbreaking.)

That movie has a blatant fairy tale structure, and as in so many fairy tales, the heroine is told by her mentor and ally the faun that she must perform three tasks to save the underworld kingdom and reclaim her place as the princess of that world (and thus escape her horrifying reality in 1944 Spain.)

The three-task structure is SO useful and successful because it tells the audience exactly what they’re in for. Audiences (and readers – but especially audiences) need to know that things will come to an end eventually, otherwise they get restless and worried that they will never get out of that theater. I’m not kidding. And a reader, particularly a promiscuous reader like me, will bail on a book if it doesn’t seem to be escalating and progressing at a good clip. But with a three-task structure, the audience is, at least subconsciously, mentally ticking off each task as it is completed, and that gives a satisfying sense of progress toward a resolution. Plus once you’ve set a three-task structure, you can then play with expectation, as Del Toro did in PAN’S LABYRINTH, and have the heroine FAIL at one of the tasks, say, the second task, and provide a great moment of defeat, a huge reversal and surprise, that in this case was completely emotionally wrenching because of the heroine’s very dire real-life situation.

Another classic fairy tale structure is the three-brother or three-sister structure. You know, as in The White Cat, or The Boy Who Had to Learn Fear, or Cinderella. In this structure there is one task that is the goal, and we watch all three siblings attempt it, but it’s always the youngest and ostensibly weakest sibling that gets it right.

Another Rule Of Three fairy tale structure deals with the three magical allies. THE WIZARD OF OZ has this – Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion; the animated classic SLEEPING BEAUTY – fairy godmothers Flora, Fauna and Merriwether; A WRINKLE IN TIME – the “witches”: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, Mrs Which; and STAR WARS – R2D2, C3P0, Han Solo (Okay, there’s four, Chewbacca, but he’s so joined at the hip to Han that they’re really one entity.). Magical allies give gifts, and they provide substructure for stories by each having their moment or moments of aiding the hero/ine.

I must point out that you DO NOT have to be writing a fantasy to use any of these structural techniques. They all can work just as well in the most grittily realistic story. Just look at THE GODFATHER, the most classic modern example I know of the three-brother structure. There’s the old king, the Godfather; the two older brothers, Sonny, with his lethal temper, and Fredo, with his weak womanizing; and the youngest brother, Michael, who is the outsider in the family: college-educated, Americanized, kept apart from the family business, and thought of as the weakest. And throughout the story we see this unlikely younger brother ascend to his father’s throne (even though it’s about the last thing we want.)

You can see the three-brother structure working loosely in MYSTIC RIVER, with the three friends who are all cursed by a horrific childhood event that inextricably binds their fates together. Lehane even uses a fairy tale analogy in the tale: “The Boy Who Was Captured By Wolves,” and the fairy-tale resonances in that book and film contribute to its haunting power.

THE DEERHUNTER is another three-brother structure, that opens with another huge fairy tale story element: a curse. The whole first sequence is a wedding, complete with unwanted guest (the Green Beret who won’t talk to the three friends about Vietnam), and at the height of the merrymaking the bride and groom drink from the same cup and spill wine on the bride’s gown, thus bringing on the curse for all three friends.

The point is, if you really look closely at stories on your list, you might just find a similar meta-structure at work that will help you shape your own story. Try it!

And please do give us all some examples today – your own master list, or books and films with fairy tale elements or structure.

Previous articles on story structure:

What’s Your Premise?

Story Structure 101 – The Index Card Method

Screenwriting – The Craft

Elements of Act One

Elements of Act Two

Elements of Act Two, Part 2

Creating Suspense

Visual Storytelling Part 1

Visual Storytelling Part 2

I’m Only Happy When It Rains

I think we’ve probably covered just about every iteration of HOW we write. But if you’re like me, the weather plays into my productivity. Sunny, beautiful days. Eh. Rainy, stormy, gray days? Word count out the roof.

Why is this? Am I just a closet depressive? I wonder what my word counts would be if I moved to England, or Seattle?

There’s nothing I love more than a rainy day. There’s something so romantic about rain, such a "Heathcliff on the moors" quality to a gray sky. (Oh, great. Now I need to break out Wuthering Heights, again.)

The Genre Wars

by J.T. Ellison

I’ve done several book events in the past week wrapping up the tour for 14. Two book clubs, which is always fun, a panel for the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Nashville chapter, and a talk to my local Sisters in Crime chapter. Before my SinC talk, I attended a meeting of my local Southeastern Mystery Writer’s of America (SEMWA) chapter. Next weekend, my local chapter of RWA, the Music City Romance Writers, meets. Both in the book clubs and the organization meetings, I heard the same questions.

"Why do you belong to so many groups?" and "What do you want out of an organization?"

Let me preface my answer by throwing this into the mix – I am also an active member of MWA, serving on a committee for ITW, am lost in the annals of RWA and belong to one or five of their subgroups. I’ve also joined Novelist Inc, Author’s Guild and used to belong to the International Crime Fiction Writers.

So why do I belong to so many groups? Good question. I’ve been letting a few lapse here and there because I don’t feel like I’m getting anything from them. But it’s also the thing to do. When you get published in crime fiction, you immediately join ITW and MWA and RWA and every organization that will have you. It lends you a bit of legitimacy and puts you in immediate contact with real live authors. Okay, fair enough. But the second question, coming from within the groups themselves, is harder to answer.

What do I want from an organization??? I’ll take a stab at this. What I really want?

I want them all to meld together and get rid of the genre designations.

John Connolly had a painful and fascinating post last week reporting on his reception at a literary festival in Canada. He was bombarded with the kind of – well, forgive me – ignorance and stupidity that seems to be prevalent in the genre wars. You must read his post to get the full effect of the several "literary" authors whose arrogant attitudes were particularly astounding, but one of the conversations struck a chord with me. Here’s an excerpt:

"[He] posits that mystery fiction is inferior to literary fiction because
literary writers “hone” their work. They fret about it, reworking it
time and time again, whereas genre writers simply churn out novels.
With each book, literary writers are forced to reinvent the wheel,
discarding all that went before in favor of an entirely new construct.
They are original, while genre writers are essentially imitative."

John points out that he does several versions of a novel. I also do several versions. By the time my editor reads one of my books, we’re on manuscript.V6, or version 6. That’s six revisions that I’ve done, six drafts of the novel. Then it goes through her revision, I adjust according to her notes, we do another read through, then copy edits, then page proofs. What’s that, 9, 10 drafts before the book goes into production? Yeah. I’m not doing any honing at all. I’m just churning out two books a year and don’t give a crap about the actual literary merit. Just because I actually write everyday, does that make me less of a writer than someone who stares at their screen and can’t come up with the right word for three years? I don’t think so.

Then there was this wonderful essay (and a fascinating backblog discussion) by Kyle Minor over at Sarah Weinman’s blog. I wasn’t familiar with him until this, but I’m certainly adding him to my list. His essay started me thinking, yet again, about how crime is really the basis for many literary novels, and there are purely literary writers who write about crime. Michael Chabon, Dennis Lehane, Alice Sebold, Curtis Sittenfeld, Paul Auster, Donna Tartt. Are they being accused of being "genre?" No. So why are "we" relying so heavily on the term?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, the genre writers are partially at fault for this impression. You know why? Because we INSIST on segmenting ourselves. We are romance writers, thriller writers, suspense writers, romantic suspense writers, traditional mystery writers, mystery writers, cozy writers, comedic writers, police procedural writers, private investigator writers, psychological thriller writers, craft mystery writers, horror writers, science fiction writers, fantasy writers, vampire and werewolf and shapeshifter writers, GLBT writers, black and white and pink and blue and space alien writers. There are hundreds of sub-genre designations, and when we’re starting out, we spend so much time trying to identify "what" we are, to fit ourselves within that little box, to submit to agents who represent our "kind" of work and to interact only with other writers of that ilk that we lose site of the fact that we all have the same job. Why?

Look at the list of organizations, of subgroups and online groups, and you’ll see a ton of overlap. Heck, every conference I go to, regardless of the sponsor, is populated with my friends. We all write in different genres, and we’re all attending each other’s cons. And how many times a day do you see a message on a listserve that apologizes for cross-posting?

Take it one step further. All the people in my SEMWA group are members of Sisters in Crime. What would happen if we married the two together into one meeting? Is there any reason why we can’t invite the Music City Romance Writers to our meeting, or go as a group to theirs? Do we really need all these minor segments? Aren’t we all, first and foremost, writers? Does it really matter what we write?

It does to some of the literary writers. They seem to float about, bitching about our market share and treating our writing as nonsense. They look down their noses at our petty squabbles, our insistence on labeling ourselves. So long as we continue to do so, we’ll continue our Rodney Dangerfield existence in the literary world – getting no respect.

There are two organizations I’m part of where genre doesn’t matter – Author’s Guild and Novelists Inc. But the problem of genre designation is systemic. There’s no good answer outside of self-awareness that it doesn’t matter. I know I’m going to catch hell over this, but really – IT DOESN’T MATTER! If we would spend half the time working TOGETHER instead of labeling ourselves and segregating into our sub-genres, I honestly think we could start making a dent in the literary snobbishness.

For example, do we need a separate Sisters in Crime and MWA? It seems to me that there is a huge amount of overlap between the two groups. I know the whole concept behind Sisters in Crime is to make sure women writers get equal standing in the literary world. Guess what? We do and we don’t. There are some major female mystery writers, and there are some major male mystery writers. I don’t think anyone would argue with the point that we need to be paid equally, period.

The reading public seems to understand that. The bestseller list is populated with both sexes. The review space is still male-centric, but on the Forbes list of the top grossing authors this year, three were women – Danielle Steele, Janet Evanovich and J.K. Rowling, and Rowling was #1. I’d like to see that list be split 50/50, but there’s a definite presence, and a woman is the top-grossing author. So maybe, just maybe, SinC has served its purpose. Women aren’t exactly equal in the field, but we’re a hell of a lot better off than we were, and SinC is definitely a reason why. But if we were to meld SinC with MWA, and have the legitimacy of both organizations in one umbrella group, wouldn’t that be even better? Do we need to continue separating ourselves out by female and male? Is the opinion still there than women can’t write anything but romance and men can’t do anything but blood and guts? I don’t think so.

I adopted initials because I wanted to grab male readers in addition to
female. It seems to have worked – I have plenty of fan mail from men. At the same time, some of my
biggest fans are men who know I’m a woman. Granted, my picture is on
the book, so it’s not a mystery for long. But is it really true
that men don’t read women? I don’t think so. I think it’s more of a
function of men just not reading as much as women, hence a smaller pool
for them to choose from.

But what about the awards? Each sub-genre has its own awards, though MWA’s Edgar Award has the loosest definition – any book meeting the appropriate publishing criteria that has an element of crime is eligible for submission. And since I met Michael Chabon at the Edgars last year, they seem to have lived up to their word.

It is difficult to imagine a cozy being nominated for the Thriller awards, and a thriller being up for an Agatha. So maybe we do need to breakdowns, if only to allow more writers to be recognized for excellence in their respective field.

Don’t even get me started on the format issues. Hardcover gets WAY more respect than paperback originals. It is what it is.

So on Tuesday night, while I was tucking into my three-cheese quiche, I was on this rant. Do away with the genre designators and let us all coexist in one big happy stew of fiction. One of the writers at the table said, "But how would the bookstores know where to place our books?"

Okay, that’s a legitimate question. But when you look at how bookstores work, you have to wonder. In Barnes and Noble, I’m shelved in Literature and Fiction (which I particularly like.) Borders shelves me in Mystery. Books a Million puts me in Romance half the time, Suspense and Mystery the other half, and many of the independent stores have me lumped in with all the "genre" genres alphabetically. My library is all alphabetical too. Those crazy Dewey Decimal kids…Does it really matter what the genres are and where they’re shelved, or is this idea simply the biggest OCD nightmare ever conceived?

B&N came out with a dismal Christmas forecast. Borders can’t pay their bills. Rumblings about the collapse of the book industry seem to come every couple of months. Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to work in concert with all the organizations to promote BOOKS so we don’t lose everything?

So what say you? Am I just being naive? Is genre, and subgenre, and a plethora of organizations vitally important to our daily lives? Is there a way to have a bit tent and get everyone under it, or do we like to segregate? Is it too hard to believe that in 2008, we could be treated as equals to the literary writers – just men and women who write damn good books; writers first and foremost? Would the bookstores collapse if they didn’t have the genre designations? Could we create a group that didn’t define itself through genre alone, but as a whole, like the Screenwriters Guild? Should I just shut up and get back to work?????

And readers, do the designations make any difference to you? I understand that not every readers wants to do serial killers, and not every reader can do knitting. Is that the sole goal of the sub-genres, to keep out unwanted stories?

Wine of the Week: Apparently I need a large glass of this – 2003 Saint-Emilion Jean Pierre Moueix

‘Tune in Next Week …’

by Zoë Sharp

More years ago than I care to recall, I used to watch a regular TV drama call The Champions about three agents for a shadowy international law enforcement agency called Nemesis! In fairness, the exclamation mark may not have been part of the official title, but every time anyone said the name, it definitely seemed to have one attached. Nemesis! were based in Geneva. You knew this because of a badly back-projected shot of the cast against the giant Geneva fountain, the Jet d’Eau, in the opening credits.

The basic premise was that in the first episode, three agents of Nemesis (just take the ! as read, will you?) Richard Barrett, Sharron Macready and Craig Stirling, played by William Gaunt, Alexandra Bastedo, and Stuart Damon, are in a plane crash in the Tibetan mountains. They are rescued by an ancient sect of monks who not only nurse them back to health but, for reasons of their own, also bestow upon the trio various superhuman talents. ESP, precognition, superior strength, speed, etc.

So, every week this fearless trio undertook a different vitally important assignment in a different corner of the globe. The assignment always saw them utilising their unique powers, whilst hiding their abilities from their enemies and their incredibly dim-witted boss, Tremayne. "So, Craig, exactly how many minutes did you manage to hold your breath under water …?"

(Stick with me on this – I think I know where I’m going with it, honest…)

Recently, somebody lent us the complete series on DVD and it was much funnier than I ever remember. Sadly, it was not intended to be a comedy, but Tremayne’s wig appeared to be constructed from ginger Astroturf and could not have looked any more artificial if it had come equipped with a chin strap – maybe that was the purpose of the also-obviously-fake beard he wore. And despite the numerous exotic locations called for in the storylines, they only seemed to actually have three sets – submarine, country house and underground lair. These did duty for just about anywhere, from small South American dictatorships, to the Australian Outback, to the Arctic, inter-cut with what was patently stock footage.

In my defence for taking weekly enjoyment in what might sound like the shonkiest bit of TV fluff going, I should point out that when the original series came out, I was about four. Not exactly of an age and level of sophistication where slightly dubious production values – not to mention a good deal of overacting – were what caught my eye.

I loved it.

I can still remember sitting utterly glued to the TV set in my grandmother’s living room, twisting myself into absolute knots of desperation as I watched the characters attempt to extricate themselves from whatever apparently hopeless predicament they’d got themselves into, in time for the closing credits. And my grandmother would always reassure me with the same words.

"But nothing terrible can possibly happen to them," she’d say, adding with the perfect logic of grandmothers everywhere, "It can’t – they’re on again next week."

And, of course, although it never seemed to reassure me much at the time, she was quite right. They always beat the bad guys and lived to fight another day.

Just like a series character.

(See, I told you I knew where this was going.)

When you pick up an ongoing series, you do so in the knowledge that the characters you’re going to read about – those you’ve come to care about – will survive past the final page. Conan Doyle did his best to kill off Sherlock Holmes, but was forced by the resultant public outcry to come up with a way of him surviving his encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, and go on to further adventures. Of course, Lee Child has famously promised that he’s going to kill off Jack Reacher in the final instalment of his series, but until we reach that book – and we hope it’s not for years yet – we know he’s still going to be around to walk off into the sunset.

In a standalone, on the other hand, you can reach the final page to find it’s not so much a case of Last Man Standing, as no man left standing at all. And anybody who’s read any of Duane Swierczynski‘s wonderful visceral novels will testify to that one.

Our next-door neighbour, who’s a big reader of mystery/thriller/adventure novels, comes round occasionally to have a browse through our book collection and borrow a few books, and he won’t read series. He claims this is because he likes a totally self-contained story with no loose ends, rather than because he prefers the uncertainty of not knowing if the main protagonist and the ongoing surrounding cast will make it to the end of the story.

But do they always?

We’ve talked before here about how much can you progress and grow and change your series protagonist from one book to the next, but I want to pose a question one step further. Can you have sudden cataclysmic change in an ongoing series and get away with it?

This week’s Word of the Week is borborygmus, which is the rumbling sounds made by the stomach, caused by the movement of food, gases and digestive juices as they migrate from the stomach into the upper part of the small intestine. The average body makes two gallons of digestive juices a day.

Just to apologise in advance, by the way – I’m out on a shoot all day Thurs, but will answer all comments when I get back in the evening!

Veteran’s Day

by J.D. Rhoades

Yes, I know, it was yesterday. But it got me to thinking about how many characters in crime fiction are ex-military…and why.

Harry Bosch is an ex-Vietnam "tunnel rat." Elvis Cole’s an ex-Army Ranger, while Joe Pike’s a former Marine. Jack Reacher’s an ex-MP who got caught in the explosion of the Marine barracks in Beirut. Our Zoe’s Charlie Fox is ex-SAS. Both of James Crumley’s PIs, Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue, are ex-military intelligence. Travis McGee’s a veteran of a war that’s never really specified, but we assume it’s Korea. Chris Grabenstein’s John Ceepak is a veteran of the Second Gulf War; my own Jack Keller’s a veteran of the First, while his lover Marie’s another ex-MP. Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlins is a WWII vet, as is Stephen Hunter’s Earl Swagger and Spillane’s Mike Hammer. Even Lindsey Davis’ Falco is an ex-legionary, while Brother Cadfael served in the First Crusade. I could go on, but you get the point.

So why are so many crime fiction protagonists ex-military? Well, for one thing, it already gives them a certain amount of built-in bad-ass cred. It’s a little more plausible that someone who’s been in the military, particularly in combat, would have less trouble handling guns and would be less likely to fall apart in a fit of the shakes in the event that they have to drop the hammer on some bad guy.

Then there’s the increased possibility that an ex-soldier or Marine will have some sort of tragic backstory. Jack Keller’s still shaking off the PTSD caused by a "friendly fire" incident in the First Gulf War. Rennie Airth’s John Madden is still trying to get over the horrors of trench warfare in the First World War.

On the up-side, the virtues the military instills (or at least tries to) in its members can come in handy for a crime fiction protagonist: Duty. Honor. Sacrifice. Self-reliance. Courage.

The same types of things, it should be noted, apply to another oft-seen breed of protagonist: the cop or the ex-cop.

But this raises the question: is it sometimes too easy to clothe a character in an ex-military uniform to make him either admirable or tortured or both? Do we risk getting cliched?

(I’ll note that Our Zoe manages to dodge the trap of cliche quite nimbly by giving Charlie Fox’s story a particularly dark twist: she hasn’t been in combat, but what happened to her at the hands of some supposed comrades leaves scars just as deep and lasting.)

What do you think about characters who are ex-military? Done to death? Can’t get enough? How else, other than making a character an ex-soldier or a cop, do you give him or her that bad-ass credibility and sad past? And while we’re at it…who’s your favorite ex-soldier?

The floor is open. And to all our veterans…thanks.

The Dreaded Query Letter

By Louise Ure

Since I became a published writer, there are two questions asked of me more often than any others.

• Readers, friends and family always ask, “Where do you get your ideas?”

• Beginning writers, however, ask, “How did you get an agent?”

In some ways, I think the agent search is more difficult than actually writing the book. Remember, eighty percent of Americans say they’re going to write a book one day. If even ten percent of them finally sit down to try it and only one percent actually finish it, that still means that 300,000 people are trying to get their first book published. And there are lots more who are trying to stay published. That’s an awful lot of people vying for an agent’s attention.

There are other options than going the traditional get-an-agent-get-a-publisher route. Some small publishers do not require an agent. Some writers choose to use a print-on-demand process and self-publish.

I decided to go the traditional route because I wanted to be published, not just in print, and because I wanted the marketing, editorial and distribution arms of a major publisher behind me.

To do that, you need an agent. And to get an agent you need a query letter.

The query letter is a deceptively simple document, and harder to write than you ever expected. There are several variations on specific formatting. Here’s mine.

A query letter should have four parts to it:

• The facts

You should include the title of your work, the genre, the approximate word count and the fact that it is completed. (In mystery fiction the book must be completed before you submit your query, you know that, right?)

This paragraph should also include the reason you’re writing to this particular agent. Did you see a blog post they wrote that intrigued you? Have you read every book by one of their clients and thought the agent might also be interested in a similar tone or theme in your work? Did you meet them at a conference? (I will admit that sometimes it’s hard to come up with a believable reason for selecting each agent. I was once tempted to write, “Your middle initial is C and my middle initial is C!”)

• The hook

The hook is a one-sentence tagline for your book. It’s meant to hook the reader’s (agent’s) interest and keep them reading. It can either go at the beginning of your query letter, or as part of the mini-synopsis.

The hook for The Da Vinci Code might have looked something like this:

“A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ.” (From www.agentquery.com)

The hook for my most recent book, The Fault Tree, might be:

“When blind auto mechanic Cadence Moran becomes the only witness to a brutal murder, she sets herself up as the killer’s next target, and she won’t even be able to see the danger approach.”

• The mini-synopsis

This is an entire summary of your book, in no more than two paragraphs — maybe 150 words – told in the most compelling way possible. You need to lay out the story, and introduce the major characters, the situation, the setting and the era, the motives of the characters and what obstacles they face. And you need to do it in a way that reflects your voice and writing style.

Example:

“Steve Hartz, a postal worker in Miami, has a peculiar talent. He’s very good at sketching, but he isn’t an artist. In fact, all of the sketches are done in his sleep. More disturbing, all of the sketches are coming true. First, there was the portrait of Maria Seever – two days before he met her. And then, more sinister, came the sketches of the crimes, all two days before they occurred. The places in the sketches are all familiar haunts of his, and Hartz begins to wonder if he’s involved in the crimes somehow. Fearful of turning to the police, Hartz determines to solve the mystery himself – with the help of Maria, the psychic from his first sketch, who knows far more than she’s telling.” (From Writers Digest.)

Easy? No, but possible. Keep rewriting the hook and mini-synopsis. Ask your family and friends to read it. Cut out all the flowery language and get down to the guts of what makes this story special.

• Writer’s bio

If you’ve got writing credentials, this is the place to brag. If you don’t, that’s okay, too.

Keep in mind, this is not a resume. Include only that information that gives the agent a reason to believe that you know what you’re writing about and you’re the only person who could have written this book. If you were in the military and your book is a spy thriller, that’s relevant. If you grew up in Boise and that’s where your book is set, that’s relevant. But if you published two computer-training manuals and this book is a private eye novel, that experience should not be included.

One final example. Here’s the actual query letter I sent out for my first novel. You’ll see that it doesn’t strictly follow all the rules I’ve laid out above, but it worked for me. And yep, that’s how I got an agent.

____________________________________________________________________

Dear (Specific Agent Name),

I have completed my first novel, FORCING AMARYLLIS (approximately 80,000 words), and am now seeking a literary agent. Your representation of (Specific Author Name) and (Specific Author Name) who also set their works in the desert Southwest made me think that you might be receptive to my work.

For this story, I’ve chosen to write about the world of trial consultants and jury selection specialists, a group not widely known outside of legal corridors and the O.J. Simpson trial. My research suggests there is no series and no protagonist in current crime fiction that focuses on this area. It is a garden ripe with stories to be told.

In FORCING AMARYLLIS, Calla Gentry is a Trial Consultant in Tucson, Arizona. She has been asked to help defend Raymond Cates against a murder charge, but soon realizes that he could be the man who violently raped her sister, Amaryllis (Amy), seven years ago and left her for dead. Calla reluctantly accepts the help of private investigator Anthony Strike, who is also part of the Cates defense team, to discover the truth about her sister’s attack. Through it all, Calla is torn between professionally executing her job – juror selection, strategy planning, witness preparation, mock trials – for the accused man who has put his faith in her, and a growing awareness that he might be her sister’s attacker and must be stopped. When the legal system fails her, she confronts the real villain and he lashes out against her in a battle that ends in a remote desert canyon in the moonlight.

Like my protagonist, I spent years in advertising, marketing and market research. In my case, my experience covers more than two decades and includes work on three continents. I found it fascinating to translate those same communication and research skills to the courtroom through this story. And while I now live in San Francisco, I am a third generation Tucsonan, and have tried to bring the legends, the mystery and the magic of the desert Southwest I love to life in this work.

FORCING AMARYLLIS is finished and available upon request. I’ve enclosed a synopsis, a sample chapter and a self-addressed stamped envelope, as you suggested on your published contact information. Please let me know if you’d like to see the rest. Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Name
Address
Phone
Fax
Email

______________________________________________________________________

Do’s and Don’ts Checklist:

• Do make your query letter short, professional and businesslike. That means one page or at most one and a half pages with a 12 point font. No typos. No grammatical errors. No colored paper or glitter.

• Do address your letter to a specific agent, not just “Dear Agent”

• Do include all the information on how to reach you, including phone and email

• Do include a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) with all snail mail submissions

• Do write your hook and mini-synopsis in the present tense. It gives it more immediacy.

• Do thank the agent for their time and consideration of your project.

• Don’t sing the praises of your book like a huckster. (“My friends all say it’s hilarious!”)

• Don’t compare it to a famous bestselling novel. Let the agent come to that decision on his own.

• Don’t send anything other than what the agent’s website suggests. If they say “query letter only,” send that. If they say “query letter and first chapter” send that.

• Don’t include any attachments with email submissions. Include the file in the body of the email, but only if the agent’s guidelines tell you to send something more than the query.

In my next blog post (Tuesday, November 25), I’ll cover the other half of the query question: Who do you send it to?

In the meantime, do any of you have any query letter tips or horror stories? Do tell.

Murderati Rules You Betcha

What a joy when this kind of post lands in the inbox! Our beloved Ken Bruen sent this to Louise Ure and she offered to have it run today. What a gift.

Have a blessed week,
Pari

End of year approaching

Wondrous wind of change in America.

That elusive near dead concept, HOPE, has re-surfaced.

One of the highlights of 2008 was being part of Murderati.

It is quite unique to have such a disparate crew of writers in nigh perfect synch on one site and the outstanding aspect is the huge affection they have for each other.

You only had to see the crew in Baltimore to see how like family they are.

And between them, they cover just about every aspect of mystery.

The lack of rancour, vindictiveness, envy is magical.

I will always be delighted that I was a part of such an unique and warm team.

How rare it is to make deep friends with people you’ve mostly never met!

And a sad and wrenching year with the terrific people we’ve loved and lost.

Still love and deeply grieve.

They are carved in our hearts, imprinted on our psyche and live in our collective affection.

To have known nigh most of them, being close friends and sparring buddies, is the grace I was given gratis.

I cherish that.

The year saw awards go to so many deserving emerging writers.

Of course, during any year, feuds develop, arguments flare, words are spoken in rushed anger but as Baltimore demonstrated, they are but part of the whole tapestry that is the mystery community.

I truly believe there is no other family quite like it.

I had a brew with a writer who has often professed to hate me guts, we had a beer, talked of books, deals, agents and if there was any lingering enmity, it dissipated on the B’con air.

As it should.

Already, I have received galleys of new books that have fired me imagination.

From tried and trusted names to new and stunning debuts.

The economy sucks

The dire warnings of gloom proceed apace

Nothing really new there.

But you log on to Murderati, Bill Crider, Dusty Rhoades, and guess what, business as usual.

That’s the real hope.

My heart aches for those we’ve lost, I deeply regret losing touch with many I care about, but that is, if not exactly, the business of living, it certainly is the way life continually sideswipes you.

As sure as hurleys are made of ash, as sure as new controversies will arise, I know one thing for sure. Mystery is the beautiful game and in all its manifestations, I’m grace-d to be a player.

Con corazon