Book Trailers — Benefits you may not have thought of

by Tess Gerritsen

I’ve heard that book trailers are worthless as marketing tools. I’ve heard they confuse viewers, who don’t understand that the trailer is for a book, not a movie. That trailers tend to look amateurish because authors don’t know what they’re doing, and actually hurt the author’s efforts. Nobody watches them, nobody knows where to view them, and nobody cares. Plus, they’re expensive.

I’d heard all these arguments against book trailers, but I commissioned one anyway — and boy, was it a lot of fun.

Last winter, I contacted Maine Media Workshops, the local film school here in midcoast Maine, because I thought it might be an interesting project for the students, and an interesting marketing experiment for me. I’d pay for all the production expenses and the students would get a chance to work on a short film based on my upcoming book, THE KEEPSAKE. The film school faculty loved the idea, but the project fell through the cracks and was forgotten.

Then about three months ago, two young men connected with the school contacted me. Jonathan and Ryan wanted to make the film. I knew Jonathan, because he’d gone to the local high school with my son. I loved the idea of working with such youthful talent. They were excited about the project, brimming with energy and ideas. It seemed like a win-win situation for everyone.

The book wasn’t in galley form for them to read yet, so I had to describe the plot and the atmosphere I wanted. "Think of THE MUMMY," I said. I wanted something scary and shadowy, something like all the horror films I’d grown up with and loved so much. I handed them my Egyptology books and a book about shrunken heads. Ryan looked at the photos and freaked out. He was so disturbed by the images that he couldn’t even stand to look at them, but he was game to forge ahead.

The first thing they needed from me was a shooting script. Since the trailer could run no longer than two minutes, I kept the script to a page and a half, with narrator’s copy and suggested images. They got to work hiring actors. Since I was footing the bill, I had to approve every purchase. The guys sent me to a website that sells horror movie props. That’s when it was my turn to freak out, as I perused offerings of realistic-looking rubber corpses in various stages of decay and dismemberment. I spent about $600 on shrunken heads, a mummy, and a rotting corpse.

Meantime, the guys were busy building a mummy’s sarcophagus out of drywall, and they reserved an autopsy suite for the shoot.

During the two days of filming, unfortunately, I had to be out of town. I’m sorry I missed the fun, because I heard that they used an unoccupied house that happens to be for sale. Overnight, they left the shrunken heads hanging in the basement, not knowing that the house was scheduled to be shown the next day to prospective buyers.

The realtor reported that there was a lot of screaming. But the buyers put in an offer on the house anyway. (Maybe everyone trying to sell a house should hang shrunken heads in the basement.)

A few weeks later, the trailer was finished. Jonathan and Ryan made two versions, one for my U.S. release, and another for my UK release.

Will it sell enough books to justify the cost? I don’t know. As I said, it’s an experiment, and it’s just one more way to get your name out there to the world. It’s been on YouTube and on my website for about a week now, and so far we’ve gotten 2800 hits.

Some critics of book trailers point out that anyone who views your trailer probably already knows about your book, and viewing the trailer isn’t going to change their mind about buying it. Those who don’t know your name won’t ever go looking for the trailer.

I think these are valid points. However, I’ve discovered one great reason to make trailers — a reason I hadn’t even considered until now. It’s a great device for selling foreign rights to your books. My publisher plans to show the trailer at the Frankfurt Book Fair. And my foreign rights agent is sharing the trailer with foreign language publishers, because she feels it’s a valuable sales tool. And I’ll tell you why.

Foreign publishers don’t have enough English-speaking personnel to read every single book published in English. Instead, what happens is that the first few chapters of an American novel might be translated into, say, Russian — and if those chapters interest the Russian publisher, they may ask to see more of the translated text, or they may make an offer. But this is clearly a labor-intensive process.

A book trailer can speed up that decision making process. Within a minute or two, it can translate the essence of the plot for even a non-English-speaking viewer, the way horror films used to engage my Chinese immigrant mom. They can put your book front and center as something they’ll take a closer look at.

Will the trailer actually make domestic consumers buy books? I have no idea. As I said, it’s an experiment. And I loved working with young, local filmmakers who are just starting out in their film careers.

Plus, I’ve now got a collection of rubber corpses in my garage.

If you want to see the finished book trailer, hop on over to YouTube to take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_hVyZ7xHbM

Dumb luck

by Pari

You wouldn’t think it when you sit in the bar with us, but we writers are an optimistic lot. Staring sternly into our flat beers and swirling the last remnants of our scotch in ice that melted too quickly, we bitch ‘n’ moan ad nauseum.

But even the grouchiest, most disillusioned, complaining-est scribe holds a secret hope that his or her work will hit the BIG TIME, earn out an obscenely large advance lickety split, be optioned for a blockbuster movie and climb the NYT bestseller list purely based on pre-orders.

In short, writers are suckers for the idea of luck.

Lately, I’ve been trying to dissect what we mean by luck. I figure, if I can understand it, I might be able to manufacture a little of my own. Ya know?

I think the unexamined assumption we make, the latent definition, goes something like this: Luck is the confluence of unexpected and fortunate elements over which we don’t have control, but which finds us and bestows wonderful gifts.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered. attr. William Shakespeare

Well, maybe . . .

But that sounds like a cop out, doesn’t it? And it can lead to the following idea pretty easily.

I believe in luck: How else can you explain the success of those you don’t like? attr. Jean Cocteau

I know I’ve felt that way. An acquaintance of mine (and not a very nice person) and I sold our first books at about the same time. Hers went to auction and landed at St. Martin’s for nearly $500,000. Mine went to UNM Press for, um, . . . not quite that much. In the intervening time from purchase to publication, I watched this woman on the Today Show and saw her work hit the national bestseller lists. And I found myself explaining her success in terms of "timing," "riding a wave," and her ethnicity.

Here’s a slightly different twist:
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. attr. Seneca

In some ways, my attributions about this writer’s success were right on. For example, she did cash in on her ethnicity . . . very well, in fact. In truth, she was a shining example of someone who decided to study and craft her work, to CREATE the wave she then caught. She did it deliberately, with tremendous aforethought and skill, and she ended up with a great result.

Oh, and here’s another truth I had to look in the eye . . . she’s a damn fine writer too.

It’s not nice to think of myself as petty, but I was. After the fact, to make myself look good, I tried to put her down (never by name or in public, at least I had that much sense) with the rationale that her success was because of luck.

What a stupid move. It set me back emotionally far too long. (Here’s my post on jealousy, btw.)

[How many of you reading this blog today are silently holding on to equally unpleasant and self-paralyzing thoughts? You don’t have to admit it to me — or in the comments section — but please make sure to admit it to yourself.]

After thinking about the subject for a few weeks, I’m approaching the whole concept of luck differently.
I look at the quote attributed to Shakespeare at the beginning of this post and say, "Hey, Will, that may be true, but someone must’ve put those boats out to sea in the first place."

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. attr. Thomas Jefferson

Yeah, that sums it up. The writer who goes to a conference and meets the editor who changes her life did something to further her career. The novelist who takes Alex Sokoloff’s posts about screenwriting to heart and applies some of the principles to his own work — thereby creating a book that works like a dream AND lends itself to a blockbuster movie — took action.

That’s where I’m at now.
Working.

I like it better than waiting for my ship to come in.

Go and wake up your luck. attr. Persian proverb.
Yeah, I can live with that.

How about you?

Are we having fun yet?

by Toni McGee Causey

30,439 minutes.

That’s how long I have ’til I turn in this book.

30,439 minutes.

And the story. Wow. Living, breathing, bearing down on me, playing live in front of my eyes.

I might be looking right at you. I probably don’t see you. I’m seeing the story. I’m pretty sure I’ve changed clothes within the last couple of days. I think.

A few people said, "You have how much to write in the next three weeks?" One writer friend wrote to me that she knew how I felt with a story staring at me with blood in its eye.

30,438 minutes.

I cannot explain to you the joy. The absolute utter explosion of high that comes from being in this place in the story and knowing that it works and not really caring about the deadline because I’m having fun. [For the record, I don’t always feel this way at this point in the story. Sometimes, that never comes. Sometimes, I only know that feeling about the time the book has been out for a couple of months and I look back and think, huh, that worked there for that little space, wow, who knew?]

Now, a lot of the times here, we’re talking about craft and marketing and what to do or not do and how to sing the hokey pokey with one foot in while you’re turning around, your hand on your head, fingers crossed in a special voodoo spell, hoping to appease the publishing gods, but sometimes, I think, we all get a little caught up in the angst of the business, all keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times and no standing that we forget what’s really important.

This is supposed to be fun.

I’ve done hard. [minds out of the gutter]

I’ve worked three jobs, making ends meet. I’ve had a baby and gone back to work the next day, because that’s what it took. I’ve scrubbed toilets as a janitor [and for the record, and retroactively to the lady who worked for the state who constantly threw those little circles punched from a three-hole-puncher–the vacuum did not pick those up, so thank you for making me have to stop and get down on my knees when I was eight months pregnant to pick them up because you wanted to be sure I was doing my job]… I’ve made cold calls as an insurance salesman, I’ve wrecked concrete forms, I’ve cooked for crews, I’ve stood in front of a classroom as a grad student and taught Nietzsche and Heidegger, I’ve watched a friend die a bloody death from leukemia, I’ve lost people, I’ve watched a child hooked up to an IV in the hospital, not knowing if he was going to have brain damage from the infection, and I’ve been dealt personal blows that had me sitting in the dark, wondering if I could keep standing, and I am here to tell you, this writing thing? Utter flipping joy.

I’m betting you’ve done hard, too. I’m betting you have life issues pressing down on you, that you’re busy, hellified busy, that somewhere, some of you are hurting and some of you have lost something and some of you feel a little bludgeoned and a whole lot overwhelmed, and somewhere, one of you is wondering why you’re fooling yourself that you’re a writer.

Do you love telling stories? Do you enjoy the spark of the new idea, the look when you sum it up for someone? The hope that this time, you’ll share that dream you’ve had? The pleasure of a nice turn of phrase, of seeing something on the page that you wrought and realized, wow, that was successful, that sentence right there. And maybe that one over there?

Embrace that. Few people in this world have figured out what brings them joy and you’re lucky if you’ve found it. The joy has to be in the process, in the day-to-day, because those are the moments we live. Not the end results. We don’t live there. We live in the process, in the effort. It’s what we control.

It’s easy to be scared in this business. It’s easy to get caught up on the treadmill, and just about every author has had moments of intense fear and doubt. You have the opportunity to humiliate yourself nationally. And if you’re being honest, you’re putting something of yourself on those pages, something of what you know to be the truth, and there’s just no way around that fact, no matter how much of it’s fiction. If you’re doing it right, you’re putting yourself in there. A lot of times, when we focus on all of the details of the writing process, it can feel like the list grows exponentially until you’re weighed down, ground to pieces. In all of the marketing bullshit, the networking, the learning curve, we can forget to celebrate the joy. (And we’re all learning, we’re all looking around, grateful to be in this with fellow writers who are willing to extend a hand and say, "This is what worked for me, this is what failed," because this is a scary, big, puzzle.)

You have to love this to do it. No, that’s not quite right. You have to be insane and in love with the whole notion of telling stories to do this. To keep working through the story, to get it right, to get the words strung out just so, so that they touch the other person on the other end. You have to feel the joy from the right detail, from the moment when it comes together, from the dream.

And you have to take a moment, when you’re writing, to remember that joy, to remember why you’re writing.

Publishing isn’t for sissies. It’s one of the cruelest forms of self-abuse I’ve seen, because there’s just no way to make everyone happy all of the time. You’re going to be putting yourself out there for people to judge, for people to criticize, for people to think you’re absolutely a moron for trying, but if you love it? It really doesn’t matter, because there is just nothing else quite like it.

We tell stories to connect. From the ancient times of sitting around the campfire, from Beowulf to the Dark Knight, we sit around the campfire now, sharing the world. It’s how we know how other people live, feel, think, how they deal (or don’t) with what life throws at them. It’s what makes us human. Politics? Nope, even monkeys have it. Stories? That’s our gift from the universe, our ability to say to someone, somewhere, "hey you, I know just how you feel." To reach into that spot where they’re feeling like there is absolute darkness and share it, or bring them some light, or some laughter, or some feeling of justice. And it’s a gift given to us, the storytellers, not that it’s our gift back to the world, because really connecting? Moving other people? If we get lucky enough to manage that, what an incredible joy.

When I got married, my dad had one piece of advice. We did the typical father-daughter chat the day before, and I don’t know if he remembers it as clearly as I do, and I know there were probably a thousand things he wanted to tell me in that moment, that one quiet moment we had before the chaos began. And he said, very simply, "Keep it fun."

Keep.

Active verb there. Don’t wait for it to be fun. Don’t expect fun to come to you, gift wrapped. Keep. Work for it. Look for it. Make it.

Best advice I’ve ever gotten.

30,425 minutes.

And I am incredibly grateful for every single one.

So how about you? What brings you joy?

More Screenwriting 101

By Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m doing another one of my screenwriting in an hour workshops in New Orleans this weekend, at Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans workshop. Well, yes, and partying in New Orleans, too – I deserve it, okay?

I know, it’s crazy, right? – what can you possibly teach anyone about anything in an hour?

Well, I can’t teach screenwriting in an hour, but I’ve found I can teach people how to start to teach THEMSELVES screenwriting in an hour. (And what I’m really teaching is story structure, and secretly I’m really teaching it to help novelists use screenwriting techniques to improve their own writing, because as I’ve said about a million times, and explained here – if you’re not willing to commit to an actual career as a screen or TV writer, or have a source of independent financing for your movie, then it’s a waste of your time to write a script, except as a learning experience. Write a book instead.)

To teach yourself story structure, you start by making a list of 10 movies and books in the genre you’re writing in and/or that you feel are similar in structure to the story you want to write. From this list you are going to develop your own story structure workbook.

Then – write out the PREMISE or LOGLINE for each story on your list – as I’ve already talked about here, and compare your own story premise to those of your master list. The most important step of writing a book or a movie is to start with a solid, exciting, and I would say, commercial premise (because after all, we are making a living at this, aren’t we?)

Now we are going to step back and talk about basic filmic structure. Movies generally follow a three-act structure. That means that a 110-page script (and that’s 110 minutes of screen time – a script page is equal to one minute of film time) – is broken into an Act One of roughly 30 pages, an Act Two of roughly 60 pages, and an Act Three of roughly 20 pages, because as everyone knows, the climax of a story speeds up and condenses action. If you’re structuring a book, then you basically triple or quadruple the page count, depending on how long you tend to write.

Most everyone knows the Three Act structure. But the real secret of writing a script is that most movies are a Three Act, eight-sequence structure. Yes, most movies can be broken up into 8 discrete 15-minute sequences, each of which has a beginning, middle and end.

Try this with your master list. Watch a film, watching the time clock on your DVD player. At about 15 minutes into the film, there will be some sort of climax – an action scene, a revelation, a twist, a big set piece. It won’t be as big as the climax that comes 30 minutes into the film, which would be the Act One climax, but it will be an identifiable climax that will spin the action into the next sequence.

Proceed through the movie, stopping to identify the beginning, middle and end of each sequence. Also make note of the bigger climaxes or turning points – Act One at 30 minutes, the Midpoint at 60 minutes (you could also say that a movie is really FOUR acts, breaking the long Act Two into two separate acts. Whichever works best for you.), Act Two at 90 minutes, and Act Three at whenever the movie ends.

In many movies a sequence will take place all in the same location, then move to another location at the climax of the sequence. The protagonist will generally be following just one line of action in a sequence, and then when s/he gets that vital bit of information in the climax of a sequence, s/he’ll move on to a completely different line of action. A good exercise is to title each sequence as you watch and analyze a movie – that gives you a great overall picture of the progression of action.

Also be advised that in big, sprawling movies like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and THE WIZARD OF OZ, sequences may be longer or there may be a few extras. It’s a formula and it doesn’t always precisely fit, but as you work through your master list of films, unless you are a surrealist at heart, you will be shocked and amazed at how many movies precisely fit this 8-sequence format. When you’re working with as rigid a form as a two-hour movie, on the insane schedule that is film production, this kind of mathematical precision is kind of a lifesaver.

My advice is that you watch and analyze ALL TEN of your master list movies (and books) before you do anything else. Once you’ve watched a movie for basic overall structure, you should go back and watch it again and this time do a step outline, or scene outline – in which you write down the setting, action, conflict and revelation in each scene, as well as breaking the whole down into its three acts and eight sequences. After you’ve worked your way through at least three movies in this way to get this structure clearly in your head (although all ten is better) you’re probably ready to start working on your own story as well.

And the method I teach in my workshops is the tried and true index card method.

(Pantsers will HATE this, but it warms the cockles of my plotter heart.)

You can also use Post-Its, and the truly OCD among us use colored Post-Its to identify various subplots by color, but I find having to make those kinds of decisions just fritzes my brain. I like cards because they’re more durable and I can spread them out on the floor for me to crawl around and for the cats to walk over; it somehow feels less like work that way. Everyone has their own method – experiment and find what works best for you.

Get yourself a corkboard or sheet of cardboard big enough to lay out your index cards in either four vertical columns of 10-15 cards, or eight vertical columns of 5-8 cards, depending on whether you want to see your movie laid out in four acts or eight sequences. You can draw lines on the corkboard to make a grid of spaces the size of index cards if you’re very neat (I’m not) – or just pin a few marker cards up to structure your space. Write Act One at the top of the first column, Act Two at the top of the second (or third if you’re doing eight columns), Midpoint at the top of the third (or fifth), Act Three at the top of the fourth (or seventh).

Then write a card with Act One Climax and pin it at the bottom of column one, Midpoint Climax at the bottom of column two, Act Two Climax at the bottom of column three, and Climax at the very end. If you already know what those scenes are, then write a short description of them on the appropriate cards.

And now also label the beginning and end of where eight sequences will go. (In other words, you’re dividing your corkboard into eight sections – either 4 long columns with two sections each, or eight shorter columns).

Now you have your structure grid in front of you.

What you will start to do now is brainstorm scenes, and that you do with the index cards.

A movie has about 40 to 60 scenes (a drama more like 40, an action movie more like 60) so every scene goes on one card. This is the fun part, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. All you do at first is write down all the scenes you know about your movie, one scene per card. You don’t have to put them in order yet, but if you know where they go, or approximately where they go, you can just pin them on your corkboard in approximately the right place. You can always move them around. And just like with a puzzle, once you have some scenes in place, you will naturally start to build other scenes around them.

I love the cards because they are such an overview. You can stick a bunch of vaguely related scenes together in a clump, rearrange one or two, and suddenly see a perfect progression of an entire sequence. You can throw away cards that aren’t working, or make several cards with the same scene and try them in different parts of your story board.

You will find it is often shockingly fast and simple to structure a whole movie this way.

Now obviously, if you’re structuring a novel this way, you will be approximately tripling the scene count, but I think that in most cases you’ll find that the breakdown of sequences is not out of proportion to this formula. There will be more, but not really very many more.

Now, that’s about enough for this post, but in my next installment I’ll talk about how to plug various obligatory scenes into this formula to make the structuring go even more quickly – scenes that you’ll find in nearly all stories, like opening image, closing image, introduction of hero, inner and outer desire, stating the theme (as early in the story as possible), introduction of allies, love interest, mentor, opponent, hero’s and opponent’s plans, plants and reveals, setpieces, training sequence, dark night of the soul, sex at sixty, hero’s arc, moral decision, etc.

And for those of you who are reeling in horror at the idea of a formula, let me assure you – it’s just a way of analyzing dramatic structure. No matter how you create a story yourself, chances are it will organically follow this flow. Think of the human body – human beings (with very few exceptions) have the EXACT SAME skeleton underneath all the complicated flesh and muscles and nerves and coloring and neurons and emotions and essences that make up a human being. No two alike… and yet a skeleton is a skeleton – it’s the foundation of a human being.

And structure is the foundation of a story.
—————————————————————————————–

THE DARKER MASK, Heroes from the Shadows, came out this week from Tor Books – an anthology of noir superhero stories with an illustration for each story in the pulp style.

Naomi Hirahara and I both have stories in it, along with the great Walter Mosley, Gar Haywood, Chris Chambers and Gary Phillips (co-editors), L. A. Banks, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Tananarive Due and Stephen Barnes, Mike Gonzales, Gar Anthony Haywood, Ann Nocenti, Jerry Rodriguez, Reed Farrell Coleman, Doselle Young, Mat Johnson, Peter Spiegelman, Gary Phillips, Victor LaValle, and Wayne Wilson.

As you might guess from that lineup, these are not your standard white male superheroes (and no clingy helpless white female secretaries, strippers, or cheerleaders, either). THE DARKER MASK offers disenfranchised, marginalized characters who have to overcome personal and societal obstacles to grow into their extraordinary talents.

Read more about the book on Amazon, here:

But of course, please order from your local independent bookstore!

Memphis in the Meantime

by J.T. Ellison

It’s very hard to introduce a new character into a series.

Honestly, that’s not true. It’s easy to introduce a new character into a series. The difficulty lies in bringing said new character to life, giving them a purpose, a role, a reason. Doing it seamlessly is what’s so hard to pull off.

There. That’s better. Now that we’ve established the ground rules…

What if you’re an American writer, and somewhere deep in the recesses of your brain a character is born who isn’t going to be easy to write because he’s not anything you have any experience with. He’s not even from your own country. And you haven’t got the foggiest idea of how to make him come to life.

Meet James, the Viscount Highsmythe, officially called my Lord, but more commonly known (in my mind and his work) as Memphis.

What?

Exactly. This was what I saddled myself with. Don’t ask me where he came from, he simply appeared one day, cleft chin and all. And in the way of all stubborn characters, he simply refused to be anything but. James "Memphis" Highsmythe is the son of a Scottish Earl, works for the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard, lost his wife (who looks eerily like Taylor) and his unborn child. He got the name Memphis because his mother was an Elvis fan. He’s got blue eyes, blond hair, a strong jaw and is exactly Taylor’s height. And he’s not subtle when it comes to wanting her.

Excellent. Wonderful. I know who this man is inside and out. But I haven’t the foggiest idea of what he sounds like. And herein lies the problem. Not only is my command of British vernacular limited to Bridget Jones’s Diary, I don’t have any idea about the written form. Despite a valiant attempt on Lee Child’s part to help —

Me: "Lee, just say "Please, do call me Memphis."

Lee: "J.T.," shaking his head sadly, "Memphis sounds the same no matter how you want me to say it."

— I still had no idea what he sounded like. Sigh.

I’ve been writing this book (EDGE OF BLACK, 9/09) for months now, killing myself trying to get Memphis’s voice in my head, watching Oxford Blues (mistake #1) and interviews with Hugh Laurie (mistake #2), trying to get the wording right. You can’t write British phonetically, I found out, it just doesn’t work well. And no matter how faithfully you try to recreate the right sounds, it doesn’t work.

I went back to the drawing board a couple of times. What was important about Memphis was the parallels in his life to Taylor’s. Privileged upbringing, idealistic natures, a strong sense of right and wrong. He had to be someone who – despite the fact that she’s very much with Baldwin – she found attractive. Which meant humanizing him, making him real. I found all the universals for Memphis — family issues, career issues, woman troubles — everything that an American male would have common ground with. But then I stumbled across a real problem.

Memphis, who is coming to life on the page bit by excruciating bit, ahem, had an erection to deal with.

And I was in his point of view.

And I don’t know what the Brits call an erection.

And that’s not exactly the email you want to be sending to your few British male acquaintances: "’Scuse me, can you tell me what you Brits call a woodie?"

So I called upon our glorious

Zoë. I could see her arched eyebrows all the way here in Tennessee.

Zoë immediately jumped into the fray with me, pointing out that what a regular British male might call an erection is completely different from what an upper class British peer would call an erection. We spent a glorious afternoon trading slang terms across several time zones and a wide blue ocean, both of us cracking up on our respective computers. Her husband and my husband got quite a charge out of it too, I’ll tell you. Really, what’s two nice girls doing with the gutter talk anyway???

When we hit upon ‘sporting a stalk like a spotty youth,’ I knew I was in serious trouble. Zoë, in a kindness that was so far above and beyond the call of duty, offered to read the pages Memphis was on, and make sure I was hitting the mark with his terminology.

Suffice it to say I accepted, and got myself quite an education. I was so far off base, if Zoë hadn’t saved me, I would have made a real fool out of myself. I had a character named Penelope who went from uneducated British to Cockney to Irish and back all in a single sentence. Yikes. She was just a good British girl, and I mangled her to pieces.

Aside from the most egregious of my errors (and one rather massive generalization that I thought was completely obvious but was surprised to hear no longer mattered) what struck me was how by simply changing a word here and there, Memphis started to sound like an aristocrat. He came to life. He fulfilled his role, and his purpose. And I learned a very difficult lesson.

If you’re trying to be authentic, you must, must, must do your homework. I did mine, and it wasn’t right, because I didn’t realize just how complicated the class structure is in the UK, and how very different each segment of society sounds. We don’t have that here. There’s educated and uneducated, and regionalisms that are dead giveaways (hoagie, sandwich, grinder, sub, anyone?) But we don’t delineate our class structure by our accents.

This carries over into any kind of research you may be doing. If you’re writing about guns, you need to get the guns right. If you’re writing about medical terminology, you need to be accurate. Accuracy is what makes you a reliable author, one who the readers trust to give them the right information. As a writer, I am certainly not an expert. But I sure need to sound like one, because my characters ARE.

This is true of anything. Jews writing Christians. Blacks writing whites. Southerners writing New Yorkers. Knitting aficionados writing about murder. Anytime you write about something that you aren’t intimately familiar with, you have a chance. A chance to make it right, or a chance to screw it up. A little extra effort, and the good luck to have the right people to ask, can make the difference between a good book and a great book.

You know, I had a horrible time writing this book. For the first time, I honestly thought I might miss a deadline because it JUST WASN’T WORKING. When Zoë stepped in and bailed me out, all of the little pieces I was looking for fell into place. For the record, she also made a tiny little comment that blew up the entire end of the book, which I had to rewrite this week. And thank God she did, because the book is ten times better for it. I was able to turn it in yesterday, at 3:00 p.m., a full two weeks early.

When you step outside your comfort zone, you have an opportunity to shine. Or to fall flat on your face. You MUST be open to criticism, to hear that you got it wrong, in order to have a chance to make it right. You have to check your ego at the door and open your mind. Otherwise, why are we doing all of this? For our own edification? Naw. We want to create stories that the reader remembers long after they close the cover.

Writers, have you ever researched completely outside your comfort zone?

And readers, just how much are you willing to forgive a writer who makes mistakes in a book?

A small P.S. –

My new Taylor Jackson novel, 14, is set to release on Tuesday, August 25. Rumor has it (okay, it’s not a rumor) Amazon and B&N are already shipping copies, and it’s slipped into a couple of stores (Walmart in Maine? You gotta love that.) You can order your copy here or here, and please, don’t forget to support your independents. Here’s a link to Indiebound — you can find a local indie store that’s carrying 14 through them. We’ve also launched a brand new website, designed by my intrepid and patient husband, which still needs some content updating, but has information on my tour schedule, etc.

Next week I may talk about how surreal it is to have two books on the shelves, or I may just regale you with stories of my search for the perfect margarita during a much needed break at the beach. We’ll see what I’m up for : )

Wine of the Week: I have to do it. I’m not proud of myself for this, but I’ve always vowed to be honest here on the blog. I’ll admit it now: I drank "champagne" from a can. And liked it. It’s called Sofia Blanc de Blanc.

“I’m Mad About My Flat!”

Zoë Sharp

If you’re a Brit, the title of this piece will have a completely different meaning than it does for an American. To an American, "I’m mad about my flat," means, "I’m very annoyed about the puncture to my car tyre." (Or should that be ‘car tire’?) To a Brit, on the other hand, it translates as, "I’m very excited about my apartment."

And then there are all the other phrases that are ripe for misunderstanding. If a Brit says somebody’s ‘pissed’, he or she means they’re very drunk. To be annoyed is to be ‘pissed off’.

On this side of the Atlantic, a ‘sorry ass’ is a donkey that’s feeling under the weather, a ‘fag’ is a cigarette, and I’d be extremely careful before you remark on the pertness of a young lady’s ‘fanny’, as you’re liable to get a proper smack in the mouth.

If someone ‘jacks’ your car over here, they’ve lifted it off its wheels rather than stolen it, although if you’ve had your wallet ‘lifted’ that does mean stolen. If a person is ‘lifting’, however, you might want to stay firmly upwind of them.

Confused? You will be.

Whoever said we are two people separated by a common language got that dead right – and I’m not just talking about the way words are spelt – or should that be spelled?

UK English is a real hotchpotch, a melting pot of words misheard and garbled over centuries, or just plain mugged from other languages. The English slang for a lavatory is ‘loo’, which apparently dates back to Elizabethan times. With no indoor plumbing, people kept a chamber pot under their bed for use during the night. To empty it, they’d simply open an upstairs window and fling the contents out into the street below, with a warning cry of severely mangled French "Gardez l’eau!" (Mind the water) to anyone unfortunate enough to be passing at the time. I blame the Norman Conquest meself.

US words and phrases have slipped under the radar into common usage. I’m more likely to say ‘guy’ than ‘chap’ or ‘bloke’, which might be considered altogether more English. But I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that an Englishman cannot open his mouth without another Englishman despising him. Thus, the subtle indicators of class signalled by the use of ‘what?’ or ‘pardon?’, ‘may I? instead of ‘can I?’, and ‘who’ rather than ‘whom’ can be real giveaways to social position and background.

Of course, today’s influence of US TV and film has caused a certain hybridisation of the language on this side of the Atlantic. It seems to me that if a US series is successful, we get it verbatim over here. But if a UK series is a big hit here, the idea is exported and the show tends to be remade for an American audience. Hence US versions of ‘Men Behaving Badly’ and ‘The Office’. Steve Carell may be very talented, but what was wrong with Ricky Gervais?

Not having watched these shows side by side, I’m not entirely sure why this was done. I get the impression that some people either think the whole of the UK is something out of ‘Jeeves and Wooster’, or alternatively it’s just like ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’, and there seems to be very little in between. We’re an uneasy mix of twee thatched cottages and inner city lager-lout mayhem. Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones might have done their bit to bring something of a genuine Cockney accent to a wider audience, but then you hear Don Cheadle’s frankly bizarre attempts in ‘Ocean’s 11/12/13’, and we’re straight back to Dick van Dyke’s cheerful Cock-er-ney chappie in ‘Mary Poppins’.

I’ve travelled a good deal in the US, and not just the usual tourist destinations. And more than the difference in language, I’ve found it’s speed and delivery that seems to cause the most problem. I had to learn to ask a question with a rising inflection in my voice, otherwise it would not be recognised as a question. And to speak a LOT slower. A friend once said that when she was tired we sounded just like the Peanuts parents from the Snoopy cartoons. And last time we were in the US we saw an interview on CNN with the baggage handler from Glasgow Airport who’d helped foil a terrorist attack. His Scottish accent was deemed so thick that they actually subtitled him.

Regional UK accents can cause problems all by themselves, and it’s not hard to see why utter confusion can arise. Take something simple like an endearment, for instance. In the East End of London, I’d be ‘dar-lin’ or ‘awright mate?’ In the West Country, ‘moy luvur’. In Liverpool, ‘laa’. In the Northeast, ‘pet’. In Scotland, ‘hen’. In the East Midlands, ‘me duck’. Whereas in parts of Lancashire it’s not unusual to hear two blokes call each other, ‘love’. And I haven’t even scratched the surface there, although I did discover a long time ago that the best way to disarm a Regimental Sergeant Major was to call him ‘petal’.

Setting a book outside your home territory is one of the biggest challenges for a writer, I feel. Not just in terms of geography, but of character and mind set. Writing convincing characters outside your home culture is a skill all by itself, and certainly not for the faint-hearted. The decision to move my main character to work mainly in the US was not taken lightly. But I wasn’t trying to write an entire book from inside the mind of a foreigner. Charlie’s a Brit and she remains resolutely so in her sense of humour, thought patterns, outlook and speech. The tricky part is always trying to get the US characters’ dialogue to ring true.

There are so many little subtleties in the use of language between us. In the US, someone would be ‘in the hospital’, would ask you to ‘write me’ or ‘call me’, might invite you to ‘go see a movie’, would learn about something ‘in school’. In the UK, you’d be ‘in hospital’, asked to ‘write to me’, or ‘give me a ring’, be invited to ‘go and see a film’, and would learn a subject ‘at school’. Dates are usually recorded day, month, year in the UK, not month, day, year (although I do mine like that, just to be awkward) and the first floor of a building is at ground level.

OK, now are you confused?

I was asked recently if I wrote differently for the US or UK markets, and as I’m doing my series for both at the same time, it has to be something I bear in mind. Mainly, though, I just use the words that spring to (Charlie’s) mind, and wait to have them queried. ‘Liquorice’ was one of the more surprising ones in THIRD STRIKE that I was asked to find an alternative for, I seem to remember. And ‘nip and tuck’ was suggested to mean a close result, which is a phrase that’s only familiar in the UK because of the US-import cosmetic surgery series of the same name. I’m fascinated to know if you’ve come across words that aren’t familiar, or been asked to find substitutes for ones that you thought would be self-explanatory.

One last thing, though. If you’re a Brit invited to someone’s home for a meal in the States, don’t ever offer to ‘lay the table’. It really doesn’t mean the same thing at all over there …

This week’s Word of the Week is hijack. Although it’s come to be associated mainly with airliners, the origins come from old English highwaymen, who would rob horse-drawn coaches at gun point, and of whom Dick Turpin was the most famous example. The traditional opening gambit to the occupants was a shout to "Hold ‘em high, Jack!" meaning everyone on board should stick their hands in the air while the robber took control.

PS This whole train of thought arrived when fellow ‘Rati, JT Ellison asked me if I wouldn’t mind reading through some of the dialogue for a UK character in her next book, EDGE OF BLACK. Having done so, I have one piece of advice – pre-order it NOW! It’s a terrific read and I can’t wait to get my hands on the finished version.

Exorcism, Escape, and the Book That Wants to Be Written

by J.D. Rhoades

One of the questions I get asked a lot these days is, "Why a standalone?" That is, why did I break from the Jack Keller books and write an entirely different set of characters in a different fictional setting?
I have a lot of comebacks, some serious, some not so much.

The fact is, though, this was just the book that wanted to be written.

People often look strangely at me when I say mystical stuff like that, which is why I have all the other responses. But it’s true. I’ll spend some time kicking around ideas, writing the beginnings of several projects, sometimes even doing two at a time, going back on forth between them, a process a friend of mine once dubbed "book adultery."

Eventually, though, one story will start to break through.That’s the one I start seeing scenes from in my head. That’s the one whose characters I hear whispering in my ear. That’s the one I have to write, whether I’d really planned to or not. I wrote BREAKING COVER as a standalone because the voices I was hearing this time weren’t those of Jack Keller and Marie Jones. They were the voices of Tony Wolf and Tim Buckthorn and Gaby Torrijos and Johnny Trent (and let me tell you, that last one is a voice you don’t want to hear in your head for an extended period of time).

As I think I’ve said here before, when people ask me why I write, the answer I often give is "mental illness." I write, I often say, because if I write down the movies I see playing on the inside of my skull, I can tell people it’s because I’m creative and not having a psychotic break.

I’m only partially joking.

Writing for me sometimes is like exorcism, because the stories and the voices are often the embodiment of topics that nag at me, sometimes to the point of obsession. Topics like: the different faces, sometimes even different names we wear with each other; the randomness and futility of violence; the emotional damage that violence does to both the victim and the perpetrator; crimes against children.

Which leads us, at long last, to the question for discussion today. I’ve talked to writers who’ve told me that not everybody sees writing the way I do. Some time back, I was talking with a friend who was going through a particularly harrowing personal crisis and was having trouble working. "Write it out," I said. "Put the pain onto the page." No, my friend said, it doesn’t work that way. For my friend, writing is a means of escape, not catharsis, and the events in the work in progress cut a little too close to that particular bone.

I have to confess, that one rocked me back a little. Not having the solace, however slight, of being able to put what’s riding you you onto the page and thus achieve some measure of control over it? Man, I thought, that’s got to be hard.

Then I started thinking about the divide between the readers who like their crime fiction dark, violent, maybe even grim, and the people who won’t even look at a murder mystery with too much blood and violence. "I read to escape," this second kind of reader tells us, "and all that dark stuff just depresses me." I, on the other hand, and I suspect people like me, find some comfort even in the darkest, grimmest stories.

The Greeks, as they say, had a word for it. Aristotle wrote that the purpose of tragedy was to provide catharsis (literally "purging") through the evocation of "horror, pity and fear." I suspect that Aristotle would not have been a fan of cat mysteries, but he would have loved him some Ken Bruen.

So how about it, writers and readers? Do you write what you write, do you read what you read, for exorcism or for escape, or for something completely different?

Half an Acre of Thanks

By Louise Ure

Maybe you’ve seen those recent TV spots from Liberty Mutual insurance that feature ordinary folks helping those around them by performing small good deeds – picking up a dropped baby rattle, letting someone cut in during gridlocked traffic.

The song in the commercials is “Half an Acre”, sung by Sally Elllyson of the Brooklyn band, Hem.

I am holding half an acre
torn from the map of Michigan
and folded in this scrap of paper
is a land I grew up in

Think of every town you’ve lived in
every room you lay your head
and what is it that you remember?

Do you carry every sadness with you
every hour your heart was broken
every night the fear and darkness
lay down with you?

A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
and light is only now just breaking

So we carry every sadness with us
every hour our hearts were broken
every night the fear and darkness
lay down with us

But I am holding half an acre
torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper
that can crack the darkest sky wide open
every burden taken from me
every night my heart unfolding
my home

Both the good deeds-visuals of the commercial and the heart-carried sadness-of-home from the song merged together for me this week.

My heart’s “half acre” lies in Tucson, just south of a dry arroyo that dares to call itself the Rillito River, bordered by tamarisk trees on one side and the fragrance of honeysuckle vines on the other.

It is my mother’s house.

The half acre where all my hopes were born and some died. Where I was both shaped and shriven. Where love still lives in my mother’s gauzy memory. This is soft focus love in a harsh land – as blurred as a Vaseline- coated lens, as ephemeral as the sound of a wind chime.

The half acre where my mother now settles into her soft decline. (You might remember this post I wrote about her advancing Alzheimer’s. Or this one.

Now to the good deeds part of the story.

My brother went over to my mother’s house one afternoon last week and found a strange man in the living room with her, patting her hand and giving her little sips of water from a plastic glass.

He was the garbage man.

He’d been driving his massive truck down the street, stopping at each house to position the steel arms that would lift the big plastic garbage and recycling bins into the appropriate caverns on the truck. The sun was hot. He was in a hurry. He put the truck into gear and moved on past the house.

That’s when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. It was an elderly woman’s form, unmoving, perched on the edge of a wooden bench on the front porch.

He idled there for a moment, already behind schedule and closing in on late. Should he disturb her? She had probably just settled there for a moment in the sun – he’d seen her basking there before.

But it was over a hundred degrees out, and the sun was fierce.

And the bathrobe she was wearing had come open and she was naked underneath.

Sweet man — this garbage man whose name I do not know — said to himself, “What if she was my mother?” He stopped, woke her gently from her deep sleep, tied the robe’s sash securely at her waist, and guided her inside.

Thank you, Mr. Garbage Man, not simply for the preservation of her modesty, but for caring. For noticing that someone might need help and then taking action.

He tended my half acre when I wasn’t there, and I’m deeply grateful for that. I hope that I can return the favor some day. In the meantime, I now carry him in my heart, as well.

And Happy Birthday, mom.

Tell me, my ‘Rati friends, have you seen one of those gracious moments of unsolicited caring recently? And where is your half-acre of the heart?

From Black to Pink

NAOMI HIRAHARA

After crafting three noir short stories in between novels, I’ve now really wandered into the dark side. I’ve come out with a children’s book and not one of those edgy YA ones, but a heart-wrenching middle-grade one with a pink cover.

I’ve already discussed here a couple of years ago of why I’ve entered this territory. As often is with the case with me, the story—not the genre—pulls me like a magnetic attraction. As the story emerges then I usually try to push it into the form I THINK that it should take before I finally SURRENDER (hopefully sooner than later) and follow it towards its natural inclinations, voice, and rhythm.

Actually I thought I had embarked on a women’s novel until my agent and her agency intern at the time informed me that the voice of the tween was stronger than the thirtysomething-year-old looking back on her life. “You mean I have a YA novel,” I said weakly. I didn’t have anything against YA novels, but I just didn’t picture myself as writing one. So I returned to the desk and the computer and started deconstructing and reconstructing and yes, they were right—I had a book for younger readers on my hands, but I learned later that it wasn’t YA. It was an age category younger than that—middle grade, which in the case of my book means 10 years of age and up. (Here’s not a fast and firm rule, but a guideline—usually your core youth readership skews two years younger than the age of your protagonist.)

Since my published fiction up to this time has been geared towards adults, I’ve faced a steep learning curve. Writing is writing, but publishing is always another matter.

Myths About Getting a Children’s Book Published

1) It’s easier to sell a book for children than for adults.

We’ve all witnessed the Harry Potter and Twilight series phenomena. Young people are finally crazy about books. So that must mean that means publishers are on the hunt for children’s book writers and stories, right? While that may be true, it’s also true that many, many people—perhaps more than any other genre—want to write children’s books. Many editors (mine, in fact) even write themselves for this market. As a greater number of people are competing for limited slots, competition is pretty fierce. Once I got a literary agent, my first mystery sold in a manner of weeks. In contrast, the sale for my middle-grade book took a number of months.

2) It’s easier to write a book for children than for adults.

What can be so hard about writing a book for children? There are not many words, especially in picture books. If we are used to writing 1,000 words a day, than a book that totals 1,000 words shouldn’t be that difficult, right? I have never attempting to write a picture book because of one word—poetry. I’m convinced that you need to be a poet to write picture books, and I’m definitely not one.

In terms of middle-grade literature, the standard word count is 40,000, but I hit 50,000. It’s not difficult for us established mystery writers to reach our word quota. But with children’s book, it’s not about volume, but about each scenario and point of view on the page. My observation is children’s books are much more heavily edited than mystery books for adults. Anyone else have an opinion about this?

3) You need to have children to write a book for them.

I know that some of my girlfriends furrowed their brows when they heard that I was writing a book for middle-grade children. I don’t have kids, after all. So what would I know about being a kid in this day and age? But the thing is, we were all children at one time. We often talk about the good ole days, how we were different when we were young than “this generation,” but the truth of the matter is deep down inside there is not much which separates “them” from “us.”

Technology is, of course, the great divider, but it’s actually not that difficult to learn how tweens and teens communicate this days. If you’re reading this blog and you’re over forty, you’re more with it than most people of your generation. Being a mystery writer and engaging in blatant self-promotion through websites, blogging, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc., is actually a training ground in learning new ways to communicate. And what are we communicating? Love, lust, anger, information, selling and buying—the same old stuff.

And ironically, as a children’s book writer, you need to always take the viewpoint of the child. That may mean the parents are not seen in a favorable light. The writer has to literally stop thinking like a parent or teacher, but literally like a child.

So, What’s the Payoff?

I’m still not clear how average advances for children’s books compare against ones for adult books (for picture books, the author and illustrator split royalties 50-50), but I’m told that children’s book deals tend to be lower. I’m sure that this differs from case to case, but in general don’t be chasing a children’s series because you expect the same riches bestowed on J.K. Rowling.

My children’s writer colleague said it best: “When you receive that letter, e-mail from a kid saying how much your book means to them, it’s all worth it.”

Juvenile Mystery Series Recommendations

I had the great opportunity to serve under Sujata Massey in judging the Edgars in the YA category last year. It was wonderful to get acquainted with the work of some great mystery writers for the children’s market. I’m also always on the lookout for good mystery books for my friends’ children. Encyclopedia Brown, Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys are all classics from my era, but there are some newer series for younger readers:

CLASSIC P.I. a la Raymond Chandler: My favorite current mystery series is NATE THE GREAT by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat. These are easy readers (meaning that children 4 to 8 can read them themselves). The child sleuth, Nate, of course, has a dry wit and cool detachment that makes his adventures a delight to read. The plots and puzzles are very well constructed. The CHET GECKO series by Bruce Hale for middle-grade children is also popular. Here a gecko plays Sam Spade with plenty of references to noir movies (titles include FAREWELL, MY LUNCHBAG, THE BIG NAP, MALTED FALCON, and THIS GUM FOR HIRE). Adults will get the references better than children themselves.

CALIFORNIA FEMALE a la Sue Grafton: Wendelin Van Draanen, the author of the SAMMY KEYES series, incorporates a literary device used by Sue Grafton and Jan Burke. She’s made up a California coastal city, but modeled it after a real town. Grafton has Santa Teresa (Santa Barbara) and Burke, Las Piernas (Long Beach and its environs). Well, Van Draanen offers Santa Martina, which is actually Santa Maria, a city which I have come to love. SAMMY, like Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, is full of pep and vinegar. Grafton even states in her blurb for SAMMY KEYES: “If Kinsey Millhone ever hires a junior partner, Sammy Keyes will be the first candidate on the list.”

SCI-FI MEETS THRILLER a la Dean Koontz: I heard Margaret Peterson Haddix speak at this year’s Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and I knew that I’d have to run out and read her books. Her popular SHADOW CHILDREN series deals with overpopulation of the earth and how “shadow children,” born after a family’s second child, are either executed or imprisoned. Her series centers predominantly on a shadow child, Luke. Her new series involving time travel, THE HIDDEN, deals with how a set of adopted children discover their true historic identities.

JAMES BOND or SPY THRILLER a la Robert Ludlum: “Foyle’s War” is hands-down my favorite current PBS Masterpiece series. Its writer, Anthony Horowitz, also behind a very popular spy series for children, I just learned from Barry Martin, the proprietor of Book’em Mysteries in South Pasadena. It’s the Alex Rider series and you can read more here.

SHERLOCK HOLMES PASTICHE a la Laurie King: Laurie King has Holmes’ wife, but Nancy Springer has Holmes’ younger teenage sister, Enola, as her star protagonist in her award-winning series.

JAPANESE HISTORICAL a la Laura Joh Rowland and I.J. Parker: There’s a samurai apprentice boy sleuth in Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler’s series set in Japan in the 1700s.

There are a number of standalones, especially for YA readers—dark stuff that would make some hardboiled mysteries for adults look light weight. Have you come across an interesting mystery for younger readers? Have you thought about writing a book for the middle-grade or YA market? If so, please comment. If you would never consider writing for children, we’d like to hear from you, too.

I also want to make note of my mystery colleagues who have recently published books for the youth market: Susan McBride (her DEBS series debuts this week and it’s listed on Kid’s Indie Next List [formerly Booksense Picks]—congrats, Susan!) and Lauren Henderson. Susan, Lauren and I all have the same editor at Delacorte. And Chris Grabenstein has his hands full with a launch of a children’s book, THE CROSSROADS (been getting great reviews) and his next installment in his John Ceepak mystery series for adults.

I’ve asked Susan to stop by here today so if you have any questions or comments for her, please leave her a note and she may reply. And thanks, Murderati, and specifically Pari Noskin Taichert for having me here. Happy last days of summer or back to school!

JAPANESE WORDS OF THE WEEK: kurai and pinku.

Kurai means dark, not only visually but emotionally/spiritually. In terms of noir, it’s usually phoeneticized as “nowaru.” There’s even an anime series with two female assassins by that same name.

One guess what pinku means—the Japanese love their gairaigo, their transliterated words from foreign languages (most often English). For those who haven’t waken up yet, pinku is pink. Remember the Pink Ladies, a Japanese girl band from the 1980s? I guess pinku also refers to Japanese soft-porn movies from the Sixties to the Eighties. Learn something every day from Google.

Benefit of the Doubt

note from Toni McGee Causey – please give a hearty Murderai welcome to guest blogger Allison Brennan today — Allison’s a NYT and USA Today bestselling author and phenomenal friend to Murderati.

by Guest Blogger Allison Brennan

Conference season is winding down for 2008. There’s a few left, like Bouchercon this fall, but for the most part all the biggies are done. It’s a time to reflect on what we’ve learned, what we loved, what didn’t work for us, and remember that in the end, conferences are primarily for networking, learning about craft and business (even us published authors still have a lot to learn), meeting with agents and editors, and even a bit of promotion. It doesn’t hurt to have new bookmarks printed or a few books to give away!

I wanted to take this time to reflect on a larger problem that was only highlighted at the RWA conference, but really is not just a conference issue. It’s a blog issue, a local meeting issue, an industry issue. In fact, it extends to all facets of life–family, friends, work, church, school. That is, giving people the benefit of the doubt.

In this era where celebrities are caught with their pants down, without make-up, looking too fat or too skinny or seen whispering intimately with another woman’s husband, we often make snap judgments about their lifestyle or what is going on. The cliché a picture says a thousand words” is true–but in the era of photoshop or carefully framed shots, we might not be seeing the whole picture and thus basing our judgment on misinformation.

This reality of the modern information era was really highlighted during my years working in the State Legislature. The obvious example–reporters misquoting someone–happens more than I had ever thought. I could sit in an interview and know exactly what was said, and dropping a couple words can make the subject either seem more brilliant than he really is, or a total idiot. In committee hearings, I could listen to hours of testimony and be moved beyond words, but when you read about it in the paper, you get the one idiot who said something stupid and that’s the “quote” and result of the hearing.

In the writing world, there are authors who never participate in conferences. Perhaps they’ve never been, or used to go but don’t find them valuable, or are so introverted they don’t want to be around 2,500 other writers. In RWA, we have career professionals outside of writing–lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists, cops–the list goes on and on. We have career authors, new authors, midlist authors, unpublished authors. We have people at every level of their writing career. There are agents, editors, publicists, bloggers, reporters, family, the list goes on. There are women with young kids, grown kids, no kids. Grandmothers and daughters. Black, white, Asian, and every other race. Christian, Jewish and Atheists. Married, divorced, single. Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Americans, British, Australians, Canadians, and more. We are diverse in ways few organizations are. We’re united by one thing: writing romance.

But because we are so diverse, and we don’t know each other well–outside of a few close friends or an annual sitdown at the conference bar–we can build up an image and then that image is distorted, we balk.

A favorite author who you picked up at the airport at your last RWA meeting only three months ago doesn’t remember your name; worse, ignores you completely when she sees you.

A friend doesn’t wave back when you see them across the lobby.

Your chapter member–who you see every month–doesn’t remember you’re in the same local chapter.

Your agent ignores you and goes off with who you believe is her favorite client.

Your editor takes you to lunch, but Jane Smith to dinner. Worse, your editor doesn’t remember you by sight.

Our reaction is to be sad, angry, flustered, slighted. We were wronged, but maybe we can’t articulate why we feel wronged. Or we articulate it, giving voice to our frustration, seeking justification that we were slighted in some manner. Often, the slight gets spun out of control as the rumor mill starts churn.

The rumor weed–for those who’ve watched Veggie Tales can attest!–can grow under the poisoned water of perceived slights, wrongs, or repeated rumors. It grows and can tear apart a person, a group, an organization.

But what really is happening is that we aren’t giving someone the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, an author you picked up from JFK and drove two hours to your chapter conference should absolutely remember your name.

But what if she had just gotten off the phone with her daughter who had a miscarriage the night before?

Yes, a writing buddy should acknowledge your greeting–it’s only polite.

But what if she had just discovered her suitcase–with not only her Rita dress but her laptop with the book due Monday–had been lost by the airlines?

Your editor should know you by sight–she has your author photo, doesn’t she?

But what if she didn’t recognize you with the new blonde ‘do and glasses? Or you’ve never met her, but you’ve talked on the phone for three years and she knows you are Jane Smith . . . but maybe she left her glasses in the hotel room and your badge is blurry?

Every day, people have small and large problems that they have to deal with and sometimes, being “on” constantly at a conference is hard, especially when the problems seem overwhelming. What if your husband dropped your daughter off at one place, and there’s a small family emergency and you try to reach your daughter, but she’s not there, she’s not answering her cell phone, and none of her friends know where she is? Would you be making small talk with a friend?

At this last conference, I know people who had to deal with some pretty tough stuff while trying to fulfilling their obligations at the conference.

. . . A bestselling author whose mother had a heart attack the night before, but she wasn’t told until she arrived at the conference.

. . . An editor whose long-time, elderly cat went missing.

. . . An author who learned via email that a close friend had cancer.

. . . A writer who was woken up late nearly every night of the conference by her husband because his sleep was interrupted taking care of their child and he wanted her help.

These aren’t things that someone is going to just offer up. We’re mostly women so we tend to want to know everything and we want to help fix it. It’s hardwired into us, we think that talking about the problems and commiserating is a solution. And I believe it is–just not with everyone in the world.

People get jet-lagged and aren’t at their best and brightest. People can be preoccupied, with good news or bad news or maybe even no news. People are nervous meeting their agent or editor for the first time. When I first went to the Reno conference, six months before my first book came out, with my JD Robb book in hand, waiting in line . . . I put the book in front of Nora to sign and inserted my foot in my mouth. Something about her inspiring me to keep my ass in the chair. Oh, yes, I said the “A” word. I’d wanted to say something more about her setting a good example, yada yada, but instead I blurted out the first thing I thought of. (Fortunately, I figured, Nora Roberts meets so many people at every conference she couldn’t possibly have remembered my name even if she did read it on my badge.)

This goes beyond personal connections and into email, but this post is already getting too long! I respond to all my email, usually within a week, but sometimes I get backlogged. Or, when I was moving, I was without Internet access for a couple days, moving, and on deadline . . . and was hugely backlogged. Sometimes cyberspace can eat a message and the intended recipient didn’t receive it. No one should assume that just because someone didn’t respond in a day, week, or month that they even received the message. And sarcasm? Sarcasm often falls flat in written form, especially in email. But I could do a whole blog about misunderstanding the intent of information emails.

I’m not saying anything new or noteworthy. But a few mutterings I heard at conference about this author or that editor or such-and-such a writer upset me. How do we know that the person we’re criticizing didn’t just have bad news? How do we know the person actually saw us? Or maybe she was late to her editor meeting–and she’d never met her editor before?

Things happen, and we’re not always at 100% all the time. We all know this, but sometimes we think that at conference everyone should be completely with it whenever they are out of their hotel room.

This is why I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I rarely know the whole story. Maybe the author really is a complete bitch, but most of the time, I really do believe something is going on and my perception of what is or isn’t happening is skewed.

I’m sure there are plenty of stories out there where you made an assumption that was wrong, or where someone assumed the worst about you based on part of the picture. Maybe if you all share your stories, everyone, including me, will take perceived slights in stride next time around.

~*~

Allison’s latest:

Tempting Evil, is out right now and her next, Playing Dead:

will be out September 30th. Check out her website for her own great blog and additional details.