Balimore Beckons

by Zoë Sharp

Next week it’s the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Baltimore, with the catchy title of Charmed To Death. Co-chaired by crime aficionado Judy Bobalik, and Jon and Ruth Jordan, the force behind Crimespree magazine, it looks like being one of the biggest and best yet.Bconlogo

It will certainly be one of the busiest. As I look at all the scrawled notes in my pocket diary – cell phone numbers of all the people I’ve promised to meet up with, appointments and get-togethers – I realise that there’s very little blank space left for actually going to panels. Even my own!

This year, I’m lucky enough to have been invited to participate in two-and-a-half. The first is 4:40pm on Thursday afternoon, entitled ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ (Aerosmith) – do you need to kick ass to be kick ass? – with own JT Ellison in the moderating chair, plus Tasha Alexander, Robert Fate, Cornelia Read, and Greg Rucka. This should be a very interesting topic because of the amount of perception involved in whether people pick up a writer’s book or not. Does it help if the reader believes the author actually capable of the things they’ve written about? Does it matter?

The second is 8:30am Friday morning. This one’s called ‘Six Days on The Road’ (Dave Dudley) with me taking the hot seat this time, and Glynn Marsh Alam, Barry Eisler, NM Kelby, Jonathan Sandlofer, and Marcia Talley all bravely agreeing to rise at that hour of the morning. After some discussion we seem to have split this topic into two distinct subjects – using location in the writers’ work, and tales of touring. I’m sure everybody has horror stories of the Tour from Hell and I can’t wait to hear them.

I also asked all my panellists for a quirky fact about themselves just to add to the mix, and they’ve come up with some belters. I shall definitely be asking Jonathan about his experiences with egg yolks and gladioli in Spanish Harlem, and Barry about the book he owns on CONTINGENCY CANNIBALISM. So, if you want to know more, you’ll just have to be there …

But, moderating a panel at B’con is a big responsibility, and one I take seriously. I know people are happy just to wing it, but I know others are very uncomfortable to play it completely off the cuff, and I’ve tried to make sure I’ve done as much prep as I’m able to, reading as many of the panellists’ books as I can, and spending some time on their websites. What’s your preference? As either a panellist or audience member?

Selfdefence0032 And last – but not least – we come to the half a panel I mentioned, which is one of the half-hour slots – at 10am on Saturday morning. This is where Meg Chittenden and I will be reviving our semi-lighthearted talk and demonstration on the gentle art of self-defence. We haven’t given this one for a few years, but the last time we did, we called it ‘You Can’t Run in High Heels’. In deference to Baltimore B’con’s song-title-themed panels, we’ve changed this slightly to ‘In These Shoes? I Doubt You’d Survive!’ (Kirsty MacColl).

As Meg lives in the Northwest rain forest, and I live in the UK, we can’t exactly get together to rehearse much for this. On previous occasions, we’ve found a quiet spot somewhere at the convention and gone through some of the moves we’ll be demonstrating then. And you know the weirdest thing? As any of you who know Meg will testify, a wicked wit and serious mystery-writing skills are hidden behind a butter-wouldn’t-melt white-haired exterior. So, there’s this genteel-looking lady, apparently being strangled by some English ruffian, and does anybody gallantly offer to come to her aid? Do they even ask what it is we’re doing, exactly? Er, no, they don’t.

And if that’s as good a reason as any for learning to take care of yourself, I don’t know what is …

As is always the case when we cross the pond, our first instinct is to try and find a gun range to brush up on our skills. In fact, at ThrillerFest in July 2006, my other half, Andy arranged a big outing to the Scottsdale Gun Club as part of a belated birthday present. After all, what else do you buy a girl except three belts of ammunition to put through a Squad Assault Weapon?

Gun_range0001 And, if we find a range nearby in Baltimore that’s amenable – like we did with the excellent Deerfield Archery and Pistol Center in Deerfield, WI when we were at B’con Madison in 2006, I’ll be delighted to put another ‘Have Breakfast and Go To The Gun Range’ lot into the charity auction. Last time, the winning bidder was Judy Watford, who was determined to take the opportunity to go shoot holes in a target, as she’d never been allowed to do so in her home state of Texas. Now, I’d always thought things like that were fairly compulsory in Texas, but Judy has been blind from birth and could not find a range who would allow her to have a go. The guys at DP&AC were far more laid-back about the whole thing and we had a great time.

But nevertheless, going to a convention is a big outlay in time as well as money. We’ll be away the best part of ten days, including calling in to NYC on the way back to do my one post-Bouchercon event – at Partners & Crime in Greenwich Village, 7pm on October 14th, with Sean Chercover, who’s launching the already acclaimed TRIGGER CITY on the same day my THIRD STRIKE comes out. It was great of Sean to invite me to join his party, as it were, and I’m thrilled and honoured to be able to do so.

So, my question is, why do you go? Is it to meet fellow authors, to get out of that secluded little world we tend to sit in and write? Is it to revitalise your enthusiasm for the craft? Is it to make contacts and meet new readers? Do you have that vital ‘elevator pitch’ prepared for your latest WIP?

What do you hope to get out of attending a convention – and do you succeed?

This week’s Phrase of the Week is knuckle under, which means to submit. It comes from the drinking taverns of 17th century London, where arguments raged. A person admitting defeat would knock on the underside of the table with his knuckle. There’s also some suggestion that it comes from bare-knuckle boxing, where the fighters would keep their fists up in front of them if they still wanted to fight, and down, with their knuckles behind their hands, if they’d had enough. Also corrupted into buckle under.

This should not be confused with knuckle down, which means to concentrate or apply yourself to a task, and comes from the game of marbles. The rules state that a player’s knuckle must be placed in the exact spot where the player’s previous marble came to rest. Those not paying attention, and allowing their hand to come off the ground are told to put their ‘knuckle down’.

Driven by Desire

by J.D. Rhoades

I know, sounds like a romance novel title, doesn’t it? But it seems to have gotten your attention…

Writers and critics talk sometimes about "plot-driven" versus
"character-driven" fiction.  I’ve always thought it was a false dichotomy, however. In my opinion, character drives plot. Or to be more
specific, characters have desires,
and it’s desire that drives plot.

I was thinking about
this  a few days ago during an e-mail exchange with a young aspiring writer. He
had all these characters, he said, but he didn’t know what to do with
them. This is what I told him:

Figure out what each of your characters wants,
both
in the short term and in the long term. In real life, people  want more
than one thing, and the same should be true in your fiction.  For
example, the
main character may want to rule the world, he may also want to get the
girl. For each character, then, write out:  what are their deepest
desires?  What will
they do to achieve them? Will they have to sacrifice one desire to
achieve
another?

There’s a lot of potential for drama in that last
question, by the way,  as some of the most wrenching conflicts can
occur where a character has to give up one cherished desire for
another. Classic example: in THE MALTESE FALCON, Sam Spade desperately wants Brigid
O’Shaughnessy, or whatever  the hell her real name is, but he also
wants to find out and bring to justice whoever killed his partner. When
those two desires collide–when Spade finds out that his love is the
one who did the deed–the result is one of the most brutal speeches in all of hard-boiled literature:

"When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.
It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your
partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens
we’re in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization
gets killed, it’s-it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it,
bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere…I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel,
I’m gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That
means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting
for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you."

Another example: in THE GODFATHER, Michael wants to live his life free of the Mob and its associated violence. But he also loves and  wants to protect his family. When his father’s life is threatened, he has to act on the second desire, and finds himself losing the first.

As stated above, characters often have a short and a long term desire. In my Jack Keller books, Jack, of course, wants to track down and bring in his target. But his long term desire, even though he has trouble admitting it, is to learn to connect with people and to love again. Another example: Michael Connelley’s Harry Bosch wants to solve the mystery in every book. But what drives him, book to book, is the desire to  in his words, "speak for the dead."

Which brings us to another way that character can create drama: some characters have  desires that they don’t realize or don’t admit.  Harry Bosch’s  real long term goal is to avenge the death of his mother, to make her almost unnoticed  death matter. So the other thing that drives him is his motto: "everyone counts or no one counts."

Now that you’ve got a handle on what your characters want, figure out  which characters’ desires conflict with those of other
characters. For the most obvious example, in a traditional mystery, the bad guy wants to get away,
the good guy wants to stop him (and probably get the girl). In a heist novel, the protagonists want the loot, but they come into conflict with each because one or more of them wants a bigger share (or the girl). Zombies want
to eat people, the hero wants to avoid being eaten  (and probably get the girl).

Mix those together. See what happens. When you get stuck for what happens next, as an alternative to  having a man with a gun come through the door, remember what each character’s
goal is and think about what they’d do next to accomplish it (which may or may not involve coming through the door with a gun).

Keep in mind as well that, in the words of the famous quote, "no one is a villain in his own eyes." The antagonist, if he’s not a maniacally cackling, hand rubbing cartoon villain, has reasons for his actions which seem perfectly logical and consistent to him, even if they may not seem that way to the reader. Or, as I put it, the villain thinks he’s the hero.

Even minor characters’ desires can move the plot. In JURASSIC PARK, Dennis the computer guy wants the money he thInks Hammond owes him. So he comes up with a scheme to swipe some dinosaur embryos, which involves the crucial plot point of turning off the safety systems, he thinks for a short time. But, unfortunately for poor Dennis, dinos have the desire to eat.

In BREAKING COVER, Tony Wolf wants to hide, to disappear. But he’s
also unable to stand by while a child is hurt, so his gives up his anonymity for a crucial moment. Johnny Trent wants to
find Wolf and do terrible things to him because of the damage Wolf did to him. Tim Buckthorn wants to keep
his town safe, and that means finding out who this enigmatic stranger
who’s moved into the area really is.  Gabriella Torrijos wants the
story behind this guy who suddenly erupted onto the landscape, then
disappeared again. All of these people want something that’s totally
reasonable and understandable for them, but they can’t all get what
they want. And so, you have a story.

So, today’s discussion question: Apply this analysis to one of your favorite books (which, writer ‘Rati, may include your most recent one or even your WIP). What does your protagonist desire? What does your antagonist  desire? How does that drive the plot? How do the desires of supporting or even minor characters move things along?

Get A Clew

By Louise Ure

Magnifying_glass

For the criminally-minded among you, my friend Jude Greber (Gillian Roberts) wrote me recently that she’d just read “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher," a nonfiction account of a homicide in England in the 1860’s, which was full of interesting tidbits on the birth of the detective, and of the detective novel.

* The word ‘clue‘ derives from ‘clew’, meaning a ball of thread or yarn. It had come to mean ‘that which points the way’ because of the Greek myth in which Theseus uses a ball of yarn, given to him by Ariadne, to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

* The word "detect" comes from the Latin ‘de-tegere’ or "unroof" and the original figure of the detective was the lame devil Asmodeus, ‘the prince of demons’, who took the roofs off houses to spy on the lives inside.

* Because of the Brits aversion to being observed or spied on by the police force, a Bobby (named for Robert Peel and also called “Peels” at first) had to be in uniform all the time – even when off duty – so that the populace would know who he was and he  couldn’t abuse his role.


These examples, of course, sent us on a flurry of research into other mystery-oriented words.

* The immediate ancestor of the word “sleuth” is the compound sleuthhound, "a dog, such as a bloodhound, used for tracking or pursuing." The shortened form sleuth, was being used to mean "detective" as early as 1872.

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* There are two schools of thought for the derivation of the word “Shamus.”

One group believes that Shamus, as an American slang term, first meant "policeman", not "private detective" and that it arose as an Anglicized spelling of the Irish name Séamas because so many of the policemen in America’s cities were Irish or of Irish descent.

Others suggest the Hebrew shammes — "a beadle or sexton in a Jewish synagogue" — as a possible origin. But why would a Yiddish word for a synagogue beadle become American slang for a detective?

The answer may lie in the Yiddish saying: “I know the shammes and the shammes knows the whole town.”

The shammes in an Eastern European synagogue indeed had to know everyone in town. To begin with, he had to know where everyone lived, since it was his job to knock on each Jew’s door and rouse him for the service. And it was his job to know each Jew’s name and father’s name so that he might be called up correctly to the Torah; to know who was getting married, had given birth, was ill, or had recovered from an illness or escaped danger, so that the appropriate blessing might be made for him or her; and even to know what each family’s economic situation was so that he might advise the synagogue’s officials, how big an annual contribution to expect.

The shammes was in a sense the “private eye” of the shtetl: If you wanted to know something about somebody, he was the logical person to ask.

We_never_sleep

* How about Private Eye? Did it come from the Pinkerton Agency’s big eye logo or was it a shortened version of “private investigator”? Given that the Pinkerton operatives were never called “investigators” (they were always “detectives” or “Pinkerton detectives”) it was probably a combination of the two: the “I” taken from “investigator,” and the spelling “eye” taken from the Pinkerton logo.

* Alibi, of course, is the Latin word for "elsewhere." The "al" prefix means "other," and "ibi" means "there." Therefore "alibi" does NOT mean an excuse (the way it’s often misused) but means evidence or proof that someone was somewhere else at the time of a crime.

* Autopsy has also gone through a shift of meaning in its current usage. It comes from the Greek “auto” meaning self and “opsy” meaning eye, reading together as “to see oneself.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the autopsy first meant “seeing with one’s own eyes, eye-witnessing; personal observation or inspection,” and the first uses of the word autopsy were with regards to self-reflection and observation. Anybody know when we first began to use it in its current anatomical and forensic guise?


Word derivation has always been of interest to me, and the argot of our chosen field provides lots of words to explore. Are there any others you guys always wanted to know about? Or any words you just love saying for the way they sound?

LU

Whadda’ya know?

by Pari

Way back when I was writing my very first manuscript — one that never sold — I wanted to know about money laundering and got an appointment to speak with a special agent from the FBI. The interview was a bust. I kept asking questions and he kept avoiding the details that would make my work believable. Both of us became increasingly frustrated until, finally, he said, "You’re a novelist, right? This is fiction. Why don’t you just make it up?"

(If you read CLOVIS, you’ll see the FBI agent isn’t very likeable. We writers get our revenge . . . but that’s another post.)

I’ve never written a manuscript without doing research. Some of it is the obvious stuff. For my New Mexico series, I always go to the town I’m writing about and spend time driving around, staying in the hotels, eating at local restaurants, visiting touristy places. When I write anything with a gun, I ask experts. When there’s actual police procedure, I ask experts. In my new series, I’m reading every book I can find on animal behavior and communication, animal mind and consciousness (or lack thereof).

But in each of my three published books, there’s been a mistake that I didn’t know was a mistake until a reader told me. For example, in SOCORRO, I have Sasha drink from a raku pottery cup. Now I grew up with a mother who collected art. We had several pieces of raku around the house; that’s how I came up with that detail in the first place. Wouldn’t you know?  A woman who was an expert in pottery wrote to tell me that raku is decorative — never utilitarian.

Great. Wonderful. Screwed up again.

Or there was the time I got the wrong kind of freezer in someone’s house. The wrong brand.

Frankly, most of us don’t know how much we don’t know.

But how much should an author second-guess herself? How much should she stop the process when she DOES think she knows? These little mistakes can throw a reader right out, but for others, they’re nothing  — just blips.

There’s probably a fact, something that can be checked, at least on every single page of every manuscript I write. I try to be as accurate as possible without becoming pedantic or boring. But I make assumptions all the time AND I’m NOT EVEN AWARE that they’re assumptions (that’s what happened with the raku and the freezer).

If I stop to check absolutely everything, I’d never finish a manuscript. My hope is that with all the eyes reading my work — my critique group, my agent, an editor, a copyeditor  — that we’ll catch the egregious problems and quite a few small ones along the way.

But . . .

Authors:
How much do you fact check/research?
How do you know what you know AND don’t know?

Readers:
What’s your take on this?
Are you the kind of reader who screams and slams a book to the floor if a restaurant you know is on the wrong side of the street?

Everyone:
I’ll be on the road today but will try to check in. If I don’t make it, I’ll respond to every single comment tomorrow. This is a subject that really interests me and I hope the conversation is a good one!

Thanks.

cultural iconography

by Toni McGee Causey

I heard a discussion not long ago where a writer talked about how he had gone out into his city and literally walked the number of paces it would take to go from point A to point B. He timed it so he’d have an accurate depiction of the action sequence he was writing. In the middle of writing his book, a big catastrophic event occurred which changed that area of his city, rendering his description inaccurate, and he fretted about the fact that locals might hold his feet to the fire for not being exact.

Another time, a fellow author discussed how she was the curse of local restaurants; the restaurant she mentioned in her first book went out of business within the first couple of months of publication. The restaurant she mentioned in her second book went belly up before the print run was complete. To prevent this from happening again for her third book, she chose a restaurant that was a local favorite and had been in business for over thirty years… and before she could turn in that book, its doors had closed (and was a surprise to the community). She really wanted her books to detail real places, smells, sounds, so that people could "walk the paths" of her books.

I think they failed to see that no matter what their genre, what they were actually writing were historicals.

Every book is a cultural reference point, and it can evoke the truth of the place and the time while still being flexible with exacting detail.

Even urban contemporary is still a historical, because you’re writing from the perspective of where you, the writer, are, in your culture, in the framework of what you know, now. You might be writing fantasy, or SF, and you may be creating worlds you feel we’ve never seen before, but you still have to relate them to what we know now, in some way, so that we, the audience, can see what you see. You also (in SF) have to take into account the newest inventions and extrapolate out, so that each generation has an advantage over the past, because we’ve seen more technology. [Those Star Trek transporters don’t look all that extreme once you see a fax. And communicators fail to impress once you’ve had a hands free cell phone.] If you’re writing a crime contemporary, you’re still writing a historical because you’re depicting that moment in time, in that culture, with the tools available to those people for detection and communication and transport.

All we have to do is look at "contemporary" spy thrillers from the late eighties, early nineties and see the woeful lack of cell phones, Bluetooth, internet, signal jammers, DNA recovery methods, etc., to see this in action.

Or, hell, just look at the clothes.

There’s no way to avoid that issue. (Nor should we.) Worlds are built, whether it’s contemporary or SF or an actual historical, and they need to be to transport the reader out from the room they’re in–the one where the dog has thrown up on the carpet or the kids have just bopped each other on the head or the boss was on a tear or someone in the family has a terminal illness. Readers need details to hang onto, to build images in their minds and forget where they are.

Here are a few important things on my checklist of what works / doesn’t work for me as a reader. (As a writer? I’m sure I make mistakes and there’s always room for improvement.)

1) Beware of writing the MapQuest version of a story. Yes, setting details matter and verisimilitude is a cool thing, but I unless I need to know that it’s eight steps from that elevator to that archway for some damned good reason, (like step #9 is gonna trigger a bomb), then ease back. Once or twice? Not a big deal, I’ll roll with the writer. An entire scene’s worth? Very likely to be boring… unless the writer…

2) Make the details relevant to what’s going on, right now, for the character. Two sentences (or, and this is not uncommon, an entire paragraph) about, say, a painting on a wall or the decor of a room is going to jerk the story to a halt. Unless the character cares about that painting deeply, unless [for example] it was stolen from him or she used it as a murder weapon or it’s the center of contention in a family dispute and just seeing it reminds the character of something pertinent to the story, keep it brief. Not only brief, but if a writer is in a character’s POV, give the details as the character(s) would interpret them.

3) Watch out for the name brand cheat. Not everyone in the world will necessarily know the denotation nor the connotation of every name brand under the sun. Ten years from now, is that name brand still going to be immediately recognizable without any descriptors? Using a name brand as a signifier of something about a character is normal, but without any other descriptor, for a lot of people, it’s just a void string of words and the writer has lost an opportunity to create an image and an impact. Does the name brand of the cigarette matter, for example? or the fact that they’re unfiltered? or his anger at people asking? telling him where he can and cannot smoke?

4) Evoke the culture of those characters. If you accept the premise that anything, once committed to paper, is somewhat historical, then realize that a few months to a few years from now, that place and time and culture will have changed. People are going to be traveling back in time to the era a writer is depicting, even if it’s right now. Taking contemporary fiction as my main example here: show me the world they’re in. I know writers who avoid naming any popular restaurants or detailing any technology in the hopes of extending the life of their fiction, an effort to prevent their world from feeling dated, but the lack of cultural details can end up being generic. Generic is not memorable. What do the characters see? Taste? Smell? How is that different from their own childhoods? Early adolescence? Not that a writer needs to have a running commentary on every iconic detail he or she lists, but the character is bound to have some attitude about the items, or else why bother listing them? McDonald’s? Fries to die for or a culinary abomination?

5) Order of appearance. Smell can strike us long before we see the item. Sounds, as well. Keep in mind the texture of the details, and keep in mind that sighted readers (vs. readers of Braille, for whom I cannot speak) operate within a sighted world. If a writer fails to give the description of a character until page 312, the reader will have long long long ago filled in a detail and will be jarred when they get to the writer’s because it will be too different than the way they "saw" that character. Or thing. Our minds’ eye will go where you direct, in the order that you direct, and it then fills in. If I say to you: worn black and white checkered tile floor, scraped raw where the heavy wood door has swung open for years, small tables crammed into every nook, clean white cloths draping onto the cracked leather seats of old ladderback chairs, the candlelight absorbed into dark paneling, where are we? What did you just see on those tables? I’m betting you filled in some details like salt and pepper, probably the short squatty glass globes, silverware (plain, no frills), a taller canister of Parmesan cheese, a little white ceramic tray of sweeteners, possibly even candles on the actual tables, possibly menus.

6) It all means nothing without the character(s). Whether the writer is using first person POV, third, intimate or even second, how the writer sees the world should not be identical to how everyone in the story sees the world. The world has to be filtered through what the character perceives as important. (Probably the only exception is omnipotent where there’s authorial narration, but even then, there should be details built on the characters’ perception.)

7) Context within the framework of the bigger world around them. Writers shouldn’t assume everyone’s going to get the context automatically. I don’t mind (as a reader) occasionally seeing a song title listed, for example, but nine times out of ten, I have no clue what that song is or why it has some meaning in the moment. If a writer uses a lot of such things, then I’m lost. Odds are I–and many people like me–aren’t going to have all of those songs and contexts memorized, and if a writer is relying on that context to add a layer, they’ve just struck out. Doesn’t mean the writer shouldn’t include a song title or mention of a genre, but I chalk this up to the equivalent of preaching to the choir or hanging with the cool kids. Sure, preaching to the choir means the choir is most likely to "get" everything and the writer can show off their detailed knowledge and make inside jokes about what Maddy did last Thursday after the pot luck dinner, but the problem with the choir is that the choir is much much smaller than the audience. So sure, the choir might like to hear that riff, but everyone sitting out in that audience is going to wonder why they weren’t invited to Pot Luck Thursday and why they aren’t important enough to the writer to have the inside information and people don’t really pick up books to feel stupid. (Most of the time.)

Mostly, though, the point of what a writer mentions should be in service of the truth of the place. The truth as it was that minute for those characters.

Okay, there are more, but right now, the granddaughter is waking up and not terribly happy that she’s not the center of my universe and LSU’s about to kick off, so I am outta here. Meanwhile, how about any cultural references no nos for you as a reader? Or tell me who’s done the cultural stuff right, so that you really see their unique world, no matter the time frame?

 

How do you know what’s the right book?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

My question today is – “How do we choose what we write next?” And I really, really want to know.

When on panels or at events, I have been asked, “How do you decide what book you should write?” I have not so facetiously answered: “I write the book that someone writes me a check for.”

That’s maybe a screenwriter thing to say, and I don’t mean that in a good way, but it’s true, isn’t it?

Anything that you aren’t getting a check for you’re going to have to scramble to write, steal time for – it’s just harder. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, or that it doesn’t produce great work, but it’s harder.
As a professional writer, you’re also constricted to a certain degree by your genre, and even more so by your brand. St. Martin’s isn’t going to pay me for my next book if I turn in a chick lit story, or a flat-out gruesome horrorfest, or probably a spy story, either. My agent wouldn’t be too thrilled about it, either. Once you’ve published you are a certain commodity.

You’re even more restricted if you are writing a series – a kind of restriction I haven’t wanted to take on, myself. You have a certain amount of freedom about your situation and plot but – you’re going to have to write the same characters, and if your characters live in a certain place, you’re also constricted by place, so I’m really interested in hearing our series authors talk about how THEY decide on the next story they write.

I don’t let a lot of time go by between when I turn in a project and start the next one.

Part of this is mental illness. I know that. My SO sighs and shakes his head. Perhaps one of these days he’ll leave me over it; it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

And maybe I would be a better writer if I took more time to decide. actually. It’s an interesting question.

But I need to know what I’m working on. For me it’s better than Xanax. I’m not a very pleasant person when I’m floundering in the gaps between projects.

It’s a huge commitment, to decide on a book to write. That’s a minimum of six months of your life just getting it written, not even factoring in revisions and promotion. You live in that world for a long, long time.

But how does that decision process happen?

If you’ve been working at writing for a while you have a lot of stories swirling around in your head at any given moment, and even more in that story warehouse in the back of your mind – some much more baked than others. But I find it’s not necessarily the most complete idea that draws you.

Sometimes, maybe often, you need to do something different from what you’ve just done. THE HARROWING was about college students so I wanted to do something more adult. THE PRICE turned out to be maybe TOO adult – it was a very emotionally grueling book to write for me; I had to go to even darker places than usual, so instead of going on to write another book that I had completely outlined already, but was equally dark, I jumped in to a story that I only had the vaguest premise line for. THE UNSEEN has turned out to be much more of a romp than my previous two books, insomuch as a supernatural thriller can be a romp. It’s lighter, more romantic, and more overtly sexual than the other two (that last really was because when I stayed in the haunted estate that I used for the haunted estate in the book, there was a distinctly sexual imprint on the house, and it influenced the story. I had nothing to do with it. Really.)

For my new book, I knew I wanted to do something around water, because bluntly, I want to spend more time at the ocean this year, and research is one of the job perks. You take them where you can.

But again, once I’d turned in THE UNSEEN, the ocean story that I had been working on for a while already was not the one that pulled at me. I wanted to do the beach desperately, but I wasn’t feeling excited about that story, and it finally occurred to me that it was about a character who was very isolated, and a lot of the book would be about what was going on in her head, and I was just balking at the idea of having to write that. I really wanted to do something structurally more like THE HARROWING, more of an ensemble piece, with a lot of dialogue and one-upmanship among the characters. And suddenly it hit me that I did have a story idea about a group of people that also had a lot to do with the beach and the water, which I won’t say much about because I just don’t talk about it at this early stage. But I started piecing that one together and it just started to fly – the kind of can’t-write-fast-enough-to-get-the-ideas-down writing that we all live for.

And that brings me sort of to my point.

The way I really know what to write is when the entire world around me is giving me clues. Like when I keep getting into random conversations with strangers that turn out to be exactly what my book is about. Like when I am writing a scene about rum on the plane and I walk off the plane and the first thing I see on the causeway is a rum bar (I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a rum bar). Like when I meet a person on the street or see someone on television and realize THAT’S one of my main characters that I had been struggling to define.

Synchronicities.

In other words, it doesn’t feel like working – I’m in the flow. When you’re in the flow, your book comes alive around you and all you have to do is write it down. It’s being in love – an altered state in which everything feels ecstatic and RIGHT.

And you can feel the whole shape of the book in your head – it’s almost like being able to pick the story up in your hands and heft it and say – “Yeah, everything’s there. I can do this one.”

That may not make any sense, but it’s a really palpable feeling for me, physical, visceral. And such a relief to finally get there, I can’t even tell you.

So how do YOU know?

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Brett, Naomi and I will be among the hundreds of authors speaking and signing at the West Hollywood Book Fair tomorrow, Sunday, in West Hollywood Park. If you’re in the LA area, hope you can come by!

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ETA: Devastated to report that Paul Newman has died.

A Virtual Montparnasse (Part Two)

by J.T. Ellison

This is the second entry in an on-going occasional series I’ve dubbed "A Virtual Montparnasse." Click here to read the first installment.

The Internet is a devious little succubus, isn’t it?

By all accounts, it is a useful tool that enhances our daily lives. We have instant communication, instant access to our friends, co-workers and teachers. College courses are heavily Internet dependent now — hell, a lot of elementary schools have homework on the web.

And we writers know what an awesome tool the Internet is for research.

But it’s also a force of evil, a direct intravenous line into the procrastination vein.

Can’t write? Check your Facebook page and update your status. Be sure to spend at least ten minutes dealing with your notifications. Return good karma, play a move in WordScraper, read your other friend’s procrastination, I mean status, updates. Throw a sheep for good measure and get back to work.

Tappity Tappity Tap Tap. Tappity Tap. Tap. Tap… tap…

Still can’t write? Do it all again, only this time toss in a few emails, read the Wall Street Journal, run through Crimespot and RedRoom. Check your MySpace. See if Sarah Weinman has updated her blog.

I mean really, if you aren’t doing anything, millions of other people aren’t either. You can prove it to yourself in myriad ways. And there’s great comfort in that.

But is this particular aspect of our Virtual Montparnasse good for us? Is the Internet enhancing our creativity?

I’ll postulate the answer to that is a resounding NO! And I’m not the only one. There’s been a spate of writers addressing the issue lately. I read this article and smiled to myself — I NEED someone to trick me like this. And then my friend Jeff Abbott wrote about his own desire to be Internet free. I agree wholeheartedly with them both. We writers are over-utilizing our online time. It seems like something so simple, so easy. Just turn off your wireless and go. But it doesn’t ever seem to work that way, does it?

Do we need the Internet? Yes, it’s a brilliant research tool. Yes, we can keep up with our friends, blog, check our Amazon numbers. But do we really NEED the Internet?

If you answer yes, I can’t help you. If you answered no, but don’t know how to break free, keep reading.

There is an underlying problem here. It will take a bit of self examination to see why you’re using the Internet as a procrastination tool. And that WHY is going to vary wildly from author to author. 

I’ve come to realize that I have an Internet addiction. No, I’m not addicted to porn, or online gambling. I just find myself almost unconsciously surfing, going to bookmarked site to bookmarked site, checking things out. There are times that I realize I’ve reread the same blog entry multiple times, just because there isn’t anything new out there.

I decided to undertake a candid examination of my problem. I’m not kidding when I say I think it is a real addiction. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been sitting in my chair, utterly frustrated and stressed because I have a ton of writing to be done and a ton of reading to be done and thank you notes to write and, and, and… yet I’ll notice that I’ve left whatever I’m supposed to be working on and am on my laptop, surfing.

After some serious soul searching over the past few weeks, I’ve found my WHY.

Don’t laugh, but after a true and honest reflection I’ve realized that I’m substituting the Internet for cigarettes. I quit a couple of years ago, and still ache for the soothing, relaxing, take-a-break nature of cigarettes. I used to smoke a pack a day. Twenty cigarettes. Twenty little breaks. Twenty times a day when I consciously or unconsciously reached for that cigarette and used it to help me focus, to relax, to de-stress.

Twenty times a day… if I kept count, I daresay I’m probably on the Internet twenty times a day as well. I shared my great epiphany with a psychiatrist friend of mine. She laughed and said the Internet is much healthier than the cigarettes, and to give myself a break. Which I appreciated to no end, but I was left with a nagging feeling that there was something more that I could do. Something to lead me away from this. If I had the willpower to quit smoking after twenty years on the sticks, I can beat this too.

I don’t know about you, but I set millions of little intermediary goals for myself during the day. Finish this sentence and you can make a cup of tea. It’s been an hour, you can go ahead and check your email. No Internet after 5… 6… 7… 8… 9… No Internet when Randy is home. No Facebook before 4 in the afternoon, or after 10 in the morning. It’s the same way I quit smoking, in stages, little permissions here and there to make me think I had control over the situation.

None of that really works. It’s all well and good to say these things, but acting on them isn’t my strong suit. It’s like exercise or dieting for me. I can set all the goals I want, but I’ll quickly become bored with the "rules" and slip. I’ve stuck to some of my initiatives, like limiting my listserves (I’m down to two) and making sure I return email in a timely fashion. I stopped reading most of my blogs long ago – relying on Crimespot to alert me when something that might be of interest pops up.

It used to be we didn’t have wireless, so my laptop was a safe zone. I would work on business upstairs on the desktop, and when I was ready to be creative, shut that one off and come downstairs to work on the laptop. That system worked very well for me. But we’re tech geeks, so we got a wireless router, and my new laptop is built for it, so no matter what, I can plug in seamlessly from anywhere in the house. Great, right?

(Let me add, for the record, that all this shilly-shallying generally comes when I’m between books. When I’m working on a new manuscript, I have a much different focus level than when I’m in between. I made a decision that I needed to take a month off between books, and I’ll stick to that, but it’s these down times when I waste the most time. I could be really relaxing and refreshing my mind, catching up on reading, doing research, and instead I’m throwing sheep. Hmm.)

I don’t know how many of you clicked through on the link that Jeff Abbott had in his post, so let me put it here for you to look at. Kirk McElhearn has a wonderful idea for Mac users. There’s also a cool program for the Mac called Freedom. Just one problem. I’m on a PC, and I can’t find anything like this in PC land.

So I decided to use Kirk’s guidelines and figure out a way to make this happen on my laptop. It’s just as simple as setting up a new user account (in this case, Taylor Jackson) setting the parental controls so Firefox and IE aren’t allowed, and poof. Instant "Freedom." I took Kirk’s idea a step further as well — I don’t like moving files back and forth using a jump drive — I lost a major book synopsis that way. One of my many redundancies for my ongoing manuscripts is through email. So instead of moving files on the jump drive, in the new Taylor Jackson account, I opened an email for her with Windows Mail, and opened a gmail account in her name. I reset the parental controls to accept the gmail url, and activated the pop mail account dedicated to Taylor Jackson. Voila. When I’m done for the day, I email my file to my regular email address. Works like a charm.

I tried this new method on Tuesday. I was shocked to find myself working for three hours straight. No interruptions. No chimes to let me know a new email had come in (just a note, you have to log off your regular account to make that happen. And in the new user account, don’t get fancy trying to change icons around, etc — I nearly deleted my entire iTunes library accidentally.)

This may be second nature for some of you sophisticated techies, but I felt like I’d accomplished something major. I have freed myself from my Internet connection, albeit briefly. It’s such a pain to log off the new account, log in to the main account, etc., that I really did stay focused and productive.

I refuse to let the Internet compromise my creativity. I deleted my unused Twitter account Wednesday. I’ve unbookmarked Facebook so I recognize when I’m going there. I stopped accepted apps on Facebook ages ago, so that’s not a problem. If these steps aren’t enough, I’ll get more drastic. I hope that doesn’t happen though, cause we all know how much fun I have throwing sheep ; )

Will our Virtual Montparnasse be the death of us all? What’s your trick to avoid Internet procrastination?

And do you think there’s a way around the Internet sapping our creativity?

Wine of the Week: 2005 Chateau La Rame Bordeaux — simply delicious.

I’m Free

By Brett Battles

As most of you know, my last post left off with me about to take the plunge into writing full time. I had one more week at the day job, then…bam…I would no longer be answering to anyone but myself on a daily basis.

Well, I’m here to report my last week at work was great. Lots of folks came by to say goodbye, a few even bringing books to sign. A great party on Wednesday afternoon that was supposed to be a surprise, but…well…it’s hard to surprise me. Then two more days of finishing things up. Had lunch with the people I worked closest with on Friday, and then had something they call an exit interview. It sounds painful, but it wasn’t. A few questions, some paper work, and the all important final check. And then…I was done.

Monday brought my first real day as a fulltime author, the weekend having been spent with other pre-planned activities. I got up early, opened all the windows, turned on the ipod, sat down at my kitchen table, and began working on the edits for my third novel. I didn’t stop for another seven hours. Wow. Bliss.

Still, it was early in the day, only 3 p.m., so I went for a hike up one of our local canyons. You see, part of my plan for this new way of life is to get back into shape, something I’ve been neglecting for too long. The hike was great, though exhausting. Even then, after I finished and had dragged myself back into my car, I felt exhilarated.

Tuesday, I did the same, the writing again bliss, but the canyon actually harder the second time. Wednesday, stir and repeat, only this time the canyon was easier. I plan on doing the same again today.

I still have this feeling in the back of my mind that I’m supposed to be at a meeting somewhere, or need to check my messages in case someone needs something. I’m sure that will go away in time. God, I hope so.

But mostly I feel lucky. Lucky that I can spend big chunks of time working on my books instead of shoe horning writing sessions into my schedule in two hour bits here and there. I feel lucky that in the middle of the day I can go for a long walk, or a hike, or can spend hours bs’ing with Rob and Bill Cameron and Tasha Alexander on iChat. (Wait, I used to do that iChat thing even when I had the fulltime job…but you get the idea.)

It’s early yet, and I’m still getting used to things, but what I do know is that I love this. It does mean I need to be on top of keeping a schedule. Thankfully I have a bit of a talent for that.

So that’s where I am right now. Week one almost done and I’m loving it!

I’m not writing this progress report to make those of you who are writing fulltime jealousy or for me to brag. I’m writing this so that you know it’s possible. A few scant years ago I didn’t even have a contract. And when I finally did get one, it almost disappeared because the small press that signed me went out of business. But I kept pushing forward, taking an active part – as much as I could – in keeping my fledging career alive. And now I’m here. So keep the faith, keep moving forward, and keep writing the best damn books you can.

Appearance note. If you’re L.A. this weekend, Sunday brings the West Hollywood Book Festival. I’ll be on a panel:

1:00-2:15
“High Octane Thrillers: How Authors and Screenwriters Fuel the Genre”
Bret Battles, Brent Ghelfi, Heywood Gould, Stephen Hunter, Susan Arnout Smith
Moderator: Evan Kilgore

Signing to immediately follow, so come by and say hi!

Song of the day: I’M FREE by The Soup Dragons (not originally, of course, see below)

or if you prefer…by The Rolling Stones

Aural Pleasure

by Rob Gregory Browne

I remember the day vividly.  I was riding in the back seat, my father at the wheel, my mother beside him, and we were headed over the Pali to the other side of the island.  It was a Friday evening and we were going to Buzz’s Steakhouse in Kailua, our favorite.

About halfway there, my father turned on the radio and something very strange happened.  The radio started pumping out TV sound.  One of my favorite shows at the time was The Lone Ranger, which was rerun every afternoon on television.  And there it was, coming out of the car’s tinny speaker.  Hi-yo Silver.

Or was it?

It took me a moment to realize that even though this sort of sounded like the Lone Ranger that I knew and loved, the actor’s voice was different.  Deeper and more commanding.  And as I listened closer, I realized this wasn’t TV sound at all.

My father must have seen my astonished look in his rearview mirror, because he smiled and said, "This is what we used to listen to when I was a kid.  Before we had TV."

I stared at him blankly, not quite believing him, but the more I listened the more I realized he was telling the truth.  And, god, it was wonderful.

That, my friends (to borrow a phrase), is how I discovered audio drama.

Okay, okay.  I know what you’re thinking.  Audio drama?  Oh, please.  Those old shows with the corny acting and the cheesy organ music?

Yes, I became obsessed with it.  And yes, early radio drama WAS pretty freaking corny.  But as the years went on and I managed to collect more and more tapes, I realized that there was a real progression in quality over time.  The latter years of radio drama, here in the US, offered wonderfully crafted stories with great actors, great music, great sound effects.

But by the early sixties, it had all gone down the crapper.  It was a slow, pitiful death, brought on by television, and not all that surprising.  Why bother with radio when you can SEE your favorite actors in living black and white?

Which, of course, is why a large portion of the people reading this have only a vague idea of what I’m talking about.

For those of you in the UK and Canada, however, radio drama is still alive and kicking.  The CBC still produces it.  And every afternoon on BBC4, and all day long on BBC7 and elsewhere you can hear a variety of dramas.  In countries other than mine, radio drama is considered a true art form, and many great artists create it.

If you want to hear an amazing example of "movies for the ears," try to track down a copy of Julian Simpson’s THE LISTENER, which recently played on the BBC.  A near-future spy story that will keep you in your chair until the last, delicious twist.

Or go right now and listen to INFIDEL, Roger Gregg’s epic audio masterpiece.  You will not regret it.

These ain’t your father’s old-time radio shows.  They are, quietly simply, beautiful examples of the possibilities of audio.  The ability to paint a vivid picture in your mind with a few simple strokes. 

Of all the dramatic arts, I think audio drama comes closest to novels, because most of it happens in the listener’s mind.  Listeners are required to use their brains, their imaginations, to help the story come alive.  Using a handful of words, a few sound effects, and some decent acting, audio dramas can take you anywhere, from beneath the surface of the earth to the farthest reaches of outer space.

I love the medium almost as much as I love fiction.

Which is why I’m a little worried. 

Although there now seems to be a minor resurgence of audio drama here in the US, thanks to the iPod, there’s not all that much more interest in it than there was in the early sixties when it died a dusty death.

So why does that worry me?  I mean, who gives a damn about a barely remembered art form?  Radio shows were quaint, but this is the modern age.  We have movies on demand.  The Internet.  Games at our fingertips.  Thousand of songs on our mp3 players.

Why the hell do we need radio shows?

Well, I’m not sure we do.  Maybe we’re beyond them.  And although the art form has grown up quite a bit, maybe it’s just too late.  Too… dated.

But that’s not what worries me.  What worries me is that I think a lot of people are beginning to feel the same way about novels.

Tell me I’m wrong, but I believe fewer people are buying books every year.  Bookstores are closing.  Kids don’t have time for fiction unless it’s written by JK Rowling.  A trip to Costco and you’ll find a table full of novels with all the same old names on them and few new authors are being read.  Of all the people I know personally, at least half of them don’t even read a book a year.  Why read a book when you can, say, shoot a moose?

So I have to wonder, when will it be the early sixties for novelists?

And, trust me, I don’t worry because of a potential loss of income.  This has never been about money for me.  But I worry about the loss of a vitally important art form.  Just like audio.

And if it can happen to something as wonderful as audio drama — an industry that was filled with stars and had people rushing home every night to listen to their favorite shows — surely it can happen to books.

As Rachel Maddow would say, somebody please talk me down.  Convince me that, sometime in the future, I won’t have to fly to the UK or Canada whenever I feel like cracking open a book.

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By the way, they still do hold book festivals, so if you’re in Santa Barbara this Saturday, stop by the SB Courthouse around noonish, where Gayle Lynds and I will be on a panel talking about thrillers and mysteries.

The librarian’s guide to hosting an author visit

by Tess Gerritsen

I love talking to groups in libraries, and I think other authors do as well. Some of my biggest audiences have been in libraries, where I don’t have to talk over the extraneous noise of cappuccino machines and clattering dishes and bookstore customers loudly asking where the SAT guides are. Library patrons love books, and they actually want to hear what you have to say. From an author’s point of view, there’s only one negative to doing a library talk: the precious time it takes away from your writing and your life. You can only fit a limited number of speaking engagements into your schedule, and you need to be choosy about which offers to accept. Authors need time at their desks and they need time with their families. They can’t spend all year driving around to speaking gigs. I try to limit my library gigs to only one a month, and only if it fits easily into my schedule.

If you’re a librarian, and you want to tempt authors to visit your library, here are some guidelines to making your invitation more attractive. And remember, authors speak to other authors, and if one has had a terrific experience at your library, chances are, she’s going to spread the word around.

OFFER A SPEAKING FEE. While this is always a big plus, it’s not absolutely necessary. Some authors are willing to speak if you’ll just reimburse them for transportation and overnight costs. We all know that libraries have limited budgets, and often I’ll waive any fees when the library I visit is particularly small. Or I’ll return the fee to the library as a donation. Please keep in mind, though, that many authors really, really need the money and it’s unreasonable to ask an author to come speak to your group if she has to do it on her own dime. She’s already donating her time for free. Offering a speaking fee may be the incentive she needs to accept.

PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION. If your library is within easy driving distance to the author’s home, then this doesn’t present a problem. But if the author has to come in from out of state, she’ll need her air travel reimbursed. And once the author lands in your town, how’s she going to get to the library? How’s she going to get to the hotel you’ve reserved for her? Make sure there’s a driver to take her where she needs to go. And offer to take her to dinner — the other librarians on staff may enjoy joining the party too!

PUBLICIZE. You want the author to be greeted with a huge turnout. You also want to use her visit as a way to attract new patrons to your library. So send out press releases. Call up your local newspaper and tell the features editor that there’s a hot author coming to town, and maybe they’d want to cover the story. Put up signs in your library announcing the visit, and mention the upcoming visit to every patron who checks out a book similar to the visiting author’s. If the crowd turnout is big, the author will happily recommend your library to other authors.

INTRODUCE THE AUTHOR TO THE AUDIENCE. It’s always nice to be preceded by a glowing introduction letting the audience know a bit about my career.

SELL BOOKS!!! It’s amazing to me how many librarians don’t seem to understand that this is the primary reason an author goes on the road to talk to readers. She wants to sell books. Selling books is how she makes a living, and if there are no books available for readers to buy at the event, then the author may feel her visit was wasted. DON’T ASSUME THE AUTHOR WILL BRING HER OWN BOOKS. Most well-known authors do not keep a supply of their own books, and if the author has a long list of titles, you can’t expect her to lug around multiples copies of her twelve backlist titles. Besides, we authors want the sales to show up on bookstore ledgers; we don’t want to be handling cash and receipts. So you must, must, must arrange for your local bookstore to come in and sell books during the event. Ask the author to provide a list of her available titles so the bookstore has plenty of time to order in copies. Make sure there are enough copies so that every patron who wants to buy one will have a chance to. (And remind the store that any unsold books can be returned to the distributor.) Provide time after the author talk for a book signing.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A HUGE LIBRARY — TAKE A CHANCE AND INVITE AN AUTHOR. I personally love to talk to libraries in small towns, libraries that seldom see authors. I find that in small towns, the audiences tend to be larger and more enthusiastic. I’ve been considering doing a driving tour to small libraries around the country. I’d love to be able to see states I’ve never visited — West Virginia and Louisiana, for instance. I just have to set aside the time to do it one of these days.

Most librarians do a great job of hosting author events, but for those who seldom see an author visit their library, it helps to know what authors need and expect. A little advance work can make the visit a success — and attract many more authors.