Social Media . . .

. . . ain’t what it used to be.

Sharon Wildwind

One of the things I learned at Bloody Words is that I thought I knew about social media—and I was wrong. There is so much new stuff out there.

Unlike the other two panel reports I’ve done from Bloody Words, the Social Media and Marketing was a mini-workshop of three back-to-back panels. Essentially the panelists changed and the audience stayed glued to their seats. Attribute the comments to the moderator and ten other panelists, got too bulky, so I’m just giving the gist of the discussion. If you want to know who made a particular comment, send me e-mail and I’ll tell you.

The Bottom Line
All marketing should be based on a cost/benefit analysis of how much time and money you have to spend on social media versus how much name recognition and/or sales do you expect to generate from what you do? If you are a writer, spend the majority of your time writing. Don’t jump on every technological bandwagon. You can attempt every new thing, but should you? It is more effective to spend your time optimizing the search features of 1 to 2 platforms that you feel comfortable with rather than create multiple platforms are poorly indexed. Sixty percent of your connections with other people will come from searches.

The Big Three
Provide quality posts and people will come to you for the good content. Fun comes across on the web; so will boredom. If you are doing something because you have to do it, your readers will know it. Tailor your content and your form to each platform.

Limit, limit, limit personal information. If you wouldn’t want what you’ve posted about yourself to be on the front page of a national newspaper, don’t post it on the web. Be quirky and innocent in what you post. That you have a passion for strawberry shortcake is a good thing to post; that you have two grandchildren, the city where they live, their names and photos is a dangerous thing to post.

If you make a fool of yourself on the web, the reputation sticks. Once information, tacky comments, or dubious photos are on the web they are there forever.

What is a platform?
A way that information is presented on the Internet. Different platforms have different functions and attract different kinds of audiences. Platform choices are personal preferences.Try different platforms. Give each a six-months trial and assess how well it works for you. If a platform isn’t meeting your needs, stop using it. Don’t just abandon it, close it down and remove it from the web.

Multi-platform postings often turn people off, so the content on each of your platforms should be different and geared to the function of that platform. You should build links from one platform to another.

Web Site and blog
This should be your essential go-to site. You should build one even before your book is published. Facebook makes a poor substitute for a web site. A blog can be used as a web page, but it needs to be updated on a regular basis. 1% of the blogs on the Internet have current information and are up-to-date. Blog posts should be about 600 to 800 words because blog readers are under all kinds of time pressures. Think of the word limit like short stories and poems: make every blog word count.

Facebook
Plan to post somewhere between one daily and once weekly.
Professional Page: avoid self-congratulations. Praise other people who connect with you. Readers want to be friends with an author, not fans. Some authors choose to treat their friends page as professional page. They strip the personal information from it and treat it as a fan page under another name.
Fan Page: Because fan pages don’t have back-and-forth exchanges, some people avoid them. The most popular use of fan pages is for characters. Have the characters give advice. Do a running comment on how the writing is going.

Linkedin
Think of this as a living resume. If you’re looking for opportunities to do workshops or to ghost write, this is the place you should be. Balance out how much information you post versus how much information you’re posting that could lead to identity thief.

Twitter
Far more useful than Facebook for marketing and promotion because you can build a following 140 characters at a time. Tweet at least once every couple of days. If you tweet daily, limit your tweeting to no more than three to four times a day. Don’t post exclusively self-promotion. Share resources. Build up other writers. Do mini-book reviews. Create a community feeling. You can participate in Twitter without having any followers. Use hash-tags instead. A hashtag is the # character. #books is a great place to post; #mysteries is not as good because there are far less people on it. #amwriting has a high noise to information ratio, but you can mind gold there about writing, if you spend a little time looking

Piggy-back on to book and reading sites
Use sites other people have set up. Have your own page. Do book reviews. Promote other writers. These sites are particularly good because they target the niches where the readers are. Sites you might want to check out include
Crimespace
Goodreads
Shelfari
Books N Bytes

Reading multiple sites
If you choose to participate in multiple platforms, checking them every day can become a hassle. Try Hootsuite which is a site that will let you view multiple sites at once.

Social Mention
Yes, you’re on the Internet, but are you reaching anyone? What's your reputation out there in web-land? On this site you can plug in your name, or the name of your book and get a quick scan of four areas: strength—how many times is your term mentioned; passion—how passionate are people when they do mention you; sentiment—is that a passionately good or a passionately bad mention; and reach—how much of the social network are you reaching.

Quick-response codes and Microsoft tags
These are portable hyperlinks that can be embedded in print or electronic formats and accessed by phone applications. And they are popping up everywhere.

This is (I hope) the QR tag for my web site. It tool me all of 3 seconds to create it on line.

Short and Twisted

compiled by Sharon Wildwind

No the title doesn't refer either to my stature or my sense of humor, though both are certainly true. These are notes from a short-story writing panel that I had the pleasure of attending at Bloody Words in Victoria, British Columbia. Moderator: Jake Doherty. Panelists Sue Pike, Linda Wiken, and Eileen Bell.

Jake Doherty is an author and retired newspaper publisher. His Osprey/Sun Media’s Summer Mystery series evolved into the anthology Mystery Ink.
Because the market for short stories was growing smaller and smaller, I floated a plan with a group of Ontario newspapers that we would publish 6 original short stories, 3000 words or less, each set in an Ontario town that was part of the newspaper consortium. This turned out to be a very successful summer series. There have been multiple takeovers in publishing, based on a need for cost-cutting. One result of this is that publishers are moving from anthologies to serialization on web sites. If newspapers run the webs—as they did for the series described above—their bottom line is whether publishing fiction will bring in readers. If not, they aren’t interested. Readers have short attention spans; they will not stick with a long series, which is why we went for only 6 stories.

Sue Pike has had stories in all seven Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies as well as many other magazines. In 1997 she won the Arthur Ellis Award for the Best Short Story.
Yes, short stories have a tougher time making a mark. Traditionally word count is that flash fiction is less than 2,000 words. In some cases it might be as low as 100 words. Short stories are 1,000 to 2,000 words and novellas are between 12,000 and 20,000 words. There really hasn’t been a market for stories between 2,000 and 12,000 words. Short stories can be resold to multiple anthologies. Writers should be careful to sell only the first rights. Personally, I don’t outline. I start with the characters and the fewer of them, the better. You have to have at least two in order for conflict to develop. Use the same reference for a character all the way through a short story. He’s Jack—always—not James, Jimmy, Mr. White, etc. to different characters. This confuses the reader. Twist the ending is fun. Timothy Findley said, “Leave off the final “do” as in do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti---. Allow the reader to fill in the final connection.

Linda Wiken, (writing as Erika Chase) writes the book club mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime.
Yes, short stories are harder to sell but that’s because of the format, not because they are genre writing. Many short story writers are taking advantage of technology to repackage older, out-of-print anthologies as e-books. My number one key rule for writing short stories is to use as few words as possible. If you’re going to do an anthology, pick a theme. There are times that this backfires in funny ways. Menopause is Murder, an anthology by the Ladies Killing Circle of Ottawa, ended up being filed in the medical self-help section in bookstores. If your anthology will be open submissions, instead of by invitation, advertise that you are open to submissions. Do blind judging for anthologies because short-story writers usually know one another.

Eileen Bell is a mystery and fantasy writer. Her Pawns Dreaming of Roses won the 2010 Aurora, Canada's National Science Fiction & Fantasy Award.
Yes, short stories are hard to sell, but mystery short stories are probably some of the easiest. Science fiction and fantasy rate lower than mysteries on the publishing totem pole. The economics of publishing make it more lucrative to put together 20 short stories in an anthology rather than 2 to 4 novellas. Therefore novellas have been harder to sell, but this may be changing. Readers who stopped reading for pleasure freqently cite fragmented time as the reason and they love novellas because they are the perfect length. The best advice I can give to someone writing short stories is to know the the ending and then let the characters go to it. Allow the characters to get into loads of trouble during the story, but also insist they hit their mark at the end. Hitting a mark is a theatre term, meaning that actor ends up in exactly the right spot on the stage. I start with a possibility of two endings, so I can surprise myself with which one I pick.

Things for writers to consider before posting book trailers on web sites and YouTube.
It takes a lot of work to make words visual. The more special effects the better and many writers do not have the time or knowledge to do a really good job with computer special effects. We’re not just talking dissolves here. People want professional special effects. Marketing in the U.S. is different from marketing in Canada or other countries, so one-size does not fit all. Trailers will need to be tailored to the countries where you want the most sales; likely different trailers will do well in different countries. How does the viewer find the video? The audience you really want to attract is the people who don’t already know your name. So if you build a search engine reference around your name or the names of your characters, how will that audience find you?

Comments about selling stories for 99¢ on e-sites
Because people are living short-attention, fragmented lives with 24/7 newsfeeds, the short format fits their lives better. The debate is hot, heavy, and unresolved as to whether the short story market expanding or shrinking because of e-postings. Plagiarism—copying the story from a pay-to-read site and posting it for free—remains a huge problem. Orca rapid reads was originally intended for teens with low literacy skills, but it is moving into a general population audience. Keep in mind that there are different platforms, and each one may have different formats and different payment rules. An on-line short story needs a cover image. Many writers don’t know how to assemble the on-line package, and are paying to farm out this task. Since the usual payment is 10¢ for each 99¢ story published, paying for technical help cuts into the profits. Canadian writer and teacher Niccola Furlong writes some great information on how to e-pub.

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Quote for the week:

I rarely read a novel that wouldn’t have made a better short story.
~attributed to Alice Munro, award-winning Canadian short story writer

I haven’t been able to verify the source. If you know for certain that Munro said this, or didn’t say it, please let me know.

P.S. Happy Summer Solstice everyone.

Canada Calling: Susan Calder

Susan Calder is a Calgary, Alberta writer who has published short stories, poems and a murder mystery novel Deadly Fall, which launches a series featuring insurance adjuster Paula Savard.

When promoting a new book, how do you find time to write - or wash your hair?

In mid-February I returned from a winter vacation. Waiting for me was a box containing copies of my first novel, Deadly Fall, a murder mystery published by TouchWood Editions.

I’d seen a picture of the cover; the concrete book was something else. After months of fantasy, my novel was real.

I knew about the importance of the three-month publicity window following a book’s release, that this was the time to grab attention for the book before my publisher and the public move on to the next new thing. Was I going to set aside my writing and focus exclusively on promotion, or write and promote at the same time? Rightly or wrongly, I wound up concentrating solely on promotion. My husband and I combed our address books and sent launch invitations to everyone we’d ever met. We viewed this as sharing good news, rather than advertising. I created a Facebook launch page and a print flyer to give to neighbors and casual acquaintances. I felt awkward approaching people I’d barely spoken to before, but they surprised me with their interest in my writing. It opened up conversations between us. Some came to the launch and/or bought the book.

People invited me to speak to their organizations. I also participated in two local joint readings, did a presentation for my mystery writers’ group and visited local bookstores to see Deadly Fall on their shelves. Most stores still had the copies in their stock rooms. This provided an excuse to chat with booksellers about Deadly Fall, while they tried to locate the copies and lug them out. Signings in their stores? Why not? For years I’d felt sympathy for lonely authors at signing tables, but was eager to try it all. I started blogging about – what else? - my promotion adventures and shared my posts on Facebook.

Late May. Two months into my three-month push. I drove from my home in Calgary, Alberta, to the Bloody Words Mystery Writing Conference in Victoria British Columbia. I tried not to think about all the new people I’d meet, including my publisher and editor, who I’d only dealt with so far by e-mail and phone. I was glad to have my husband and several Calgary mystery-writing friends there for support. On the drive to the conference I did three book signings and a presentation. My sister organized a mini-book tour through her region of southern Alberta for the week after my return.

My three-month window is now drawing to a close. These months have cost me time, effort, and money. I’ve sent numerous e-mails. I’ve written advertising blurbs, designed posters and prepared my readings and presentations. The events themselves ate into evenings and afternoons.

Success varied. For a library workshop, reading and talk I received a generous honorarium and car mileage and sold a bunch of books. Another presentation drew two participants. A third led to an invitation to speak to a book club next fall. I gather the 10 members will buy the book. I found all of the events interesting, but missed writing and often felt overwhelmed. As my to-do list grew, I wondered how I’d keep on top of my promotional tasks and still find time to talk to my husband and wash my hair.

I didn’t intend to cram so much into three months. At the start, I had little scheduled, so I said yes to everything that came my way. If I could have plotted it out in advance, I’d have probably done a bit less. Opportunities don’t dry up after three months. I already have a tentative event lined up for this summer, a couple confirmed for the fall and more possibilities. I think the three- month window could easily stretch to a year, with events staggered between writing time.

And yet, I’m glad for every single reader my efforts have introduced to my book. Who knows which ones will like Deadly Fall enough to recommend or loan it to someone else or otherwise produce some ripple effect? My promotion blitz this spring has contributed to strong initial sales. This is particularly good for a mystery series, where you want to develop a readership base for future books.

In addition, this immersion into promotion has been intriguing in many ways. It took me out of my comfort zone. I learned a lot about marketing and the book selling business. Every day brought something new, some of it frustrating, some exciting.
Maybe with my second book, I’ll be more relaxed, as I was with my second child, and manage to balance promotion with writing. Meanwhile, I’ll wrap up this blog post, share the link on Facebook and set off on my last mini-book whirl for this spring – five venues in three days and who knows what will happen with any of them?

To learn more about Susan and her books visit www.susancalder.com or search for her and Deadly Fall’s fan page on Facebook.

Cozy Chicks versus Hard-Boiled Dicks

Sharon Wildwind (more the compiler here than the writer today)

This is the first of several blogs that I have planned with material from the Bloody Words convention in Victoria, British Columbia.

We begin with a favorite debate: Which represents the mystery genre more faithfully, the cozy mystery or the hard-boiled detective?

The moderate was Don Hauka from New Westminister, British Columbia. A journalist by profession, he’s the author of the newspaper mysteries featuring Mr. Jinnah. As moderator, he kept his comments to a minimum. He ran a great panel and I’m looking forward to reading his series.

Catherine Astolfo, writes the Emily Taylor series. She is the outgoing president of Crime Writers of Canada.

Cozies faithfully represent the mystery drama because they focus on the impact of the death and extraordinary events on ordinary people. Things go on around us in the world all the time, but people are often unaware of them. We tend to focus on what is in our immediate lives. As far as publishing goes, Canadian publishers are more open to wider experiences and different styles of writing, while American publishers are less willing to bend the boundaries. When I write I make a contract with the reader. that my books will contain no rape scenes and no violence to children. If I have an emotional problem with material, I don't write it.

Mary Jane Maffani describes herself as a lapsed librarian. She writes three mystery series (Charlotte Adams, Camilla MacPhee, and Fiona Silk) and is co-authoring a fourth series with her daughter.

The cozy is about setting the world right, not about the autopsies. It deals with ordinary people stepping up to the plate in a way that we all hope we would step up if the situation called for it. The myth is that women read cozies and men read hard-boiled stories. Writers don’t write according to that myth nor do readers read that way. Every reader chooses the percentage of the pie that he or she wants to make up the total reading list. Yes, there are some readers who are 99% or 100% at one end of the spectrum, but the majority of readers pick books all along the way. Most often we sell a set of expectations based on the size and appearance of the book. Readers get very angry if a sub-genre is packaged to look like something else.

Grant McKenzie is the Editor in Chief of Monday Magazine. His two thrillers are Switch and No Cry for Help.

Hard-boiled stories are about using your power within, the stuff you may not have realized you had in you, against very high odds. This kind of book shines a light on what’s really going on in the world. I like to focus on tension rather than body count because tension decreases as deaths increase. Each time you kill someone, you kill some of the tension. One of the problems that all writers encounter is that once you’re published, the publishing world has slotted you into a narrow readership. You break out of that narrow confine at your peril. The economics of writing often dictates what kind of book you write.

Richard A. Thompson—not to be confused with the musician with the same name (minus the A.)—lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His debut novel, Fiddle Game, was short-listed for a Crime Writers of Amera Debut Dagger Award. He’s written two more books, Frag Box and Big Wheat.

Hard-boiled stories are hyper-reality: the world has become a scarier and sexier place to be and people want a literature that reflects the times. I see the darker stories as a heart of darkness versus happy valley where the cozy characters live. That having been said, I think that both forms have left a legacy to the mystery community: the puzzle story comes out of cozies and the examination of underlying emotional issues comes out of hard-boiled detective stories.

Any horrible thing you can think of, someone has done it in real life. There is a threshold to violence, no matter what the sub-genre. My problem with cozies is the trivilization of murder by having it off-stage. Yes, my books have a lot of violence: one has seven killings, all up-close-and personal-deaths. I believe that violence must advance the plot and say something about the character. Historically all genre fiction started out with no character development, but that has changed across the board. The problem is that we lack an adequare vocabulary: cozies is no longer cozy, and hard-boiled are no longer just hard-boiled. As writers we know the nuiances of how things have changed, but we don't have the words to articulate those changes to non-writers.

As for publishing, there comes a point in an author’s career where they are on the threshold of being a best seller. At this point, the publisher is likely to demand certain required elements in the next book in order for that author to cross over into the best-seller list. to cross into best-seller list. Some authors say no. They would rather be true to their style of writing than be forced into writing something that goes against their principles. I would never write a rape scene.

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Quote for the week:

Random House employes about 19,000 people in its warehouses just to move stock around. When you have that kind of an investment in books, you can't afford to take chances. Their publishers admit that they want the next "the Nabisco cookie," something familiar, produced in large quantities, but just enough different to pique the reader’s interest.
~Richard Thompson, Bloody Words 2011, Victoria, B.C.

Yes, No, and Maybe

Sharon Wildwind

As I write this, the sun is shining on Victoria harbor, the flowers are blooming, and the wonderful Bloody Words 2011 convention has come to an end. I had a marvelous time, met loads of people, and collected tons of new ideas, but since I have to leave the hotel soon to catch a plane and will get home late tonight, I’ll share just a mini-report right now. More next week.

This is from a panel on How to Maintain Pacing in Suspense and Comedy. The question posed to the panelists was, “Does humor have any place when the story reaches a climax?”

Yes, it does. It humanizes a very difficult situation and can add depth and texture to the climax.
~Don Hauka, reporter and author of the Mister Jinnah series.

Absolutely not. Crisis and the climax is all about tension and humor defuses tension.
~Phyllis Smallman, author of Sherri Travis series.

Maybe. If humor has been a part of the character’s personality all of the rest of the way through the book, it’s unnatural if the humor disappears in the crisis moment. The humor may change, diminish, become darker or brittle, but it shouldn’t go away.
~Anthony Bidulka, author of the Russell Quaint series.

Which just goes to show there are very few absolute answers in writing.
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Quote for the week:
Every trip you take should produce a minimum of five written pieces:
a. A memoir
b. A character sketch
c. A poem
d. A travel piece
e. A piece of fiction, even if it’s only a few paragraphs long
~Verna Driesbach, author, editor and literary agent

(Looks like I have my work cut out for me after this trip.)

Obsession

Sharon Wildwind

Whether you’re writing from Debra Dixon’s goal, motivation and conflict idea, Donald Maass’ raising the stakes, or other conflict-development theories, if you want a story to have depth and interest, give your protagonists and villains obsessions. Some characters may appear to have a passion rather than an obsession, but that’s just a nicer-sounding word for the same thing.

Being obsessed with marrying England’s Prince Harry would likely be thought a bad thing, especially by Prince Harry; being passionate about ending homelessness, a good thing. Watch those passions, however. When a good idea gets in the way of a normal, balanced life, it turned into an obsession. Remember that as writers, we want to stress, stress, stress our characters so passions that get out of hand can be a good thing.

Passion or obsession, the character can’t get away from the one grand and glorious thing they believe they must do with their lives. Lord Peter Whimsey became obsessed with proving Harriet Vane innocent of murder. Harriet, for her part, was obsessed with maintaining her independence. Those two competing obsessions carried through several books until both of them, passions spent, fell into each others arms.

There are a lot of theories about why obsessions/passions develop. For character development, I favor the traumatic event in the past situation.
1. Something happened to the character that planted the seeds of obsession or passion. Strangely enough, with Peter and Harriet, the sticking point was likely money. Peter had lots of it, but even all of that wealth could not protect Harriet from going to the gallows. He had to give more than money to save her. For Harriet, having to earn her own living after her father died set up that streak of independence.
2. It was an event with emotional significance and it occurred at a time when the character was either truly helpless or thought that they were helpless.
3. Something prevented them from getting counseling, medication, understanding, perspective, or hope after the incident.
4. Something happened to reinforce the victim’s story. The victim’s story says they did this to me. I did nothing/could do nothing to prevent this from happening.

Victim characters are often not very interesting. They tend to whine and that gets tedious. When Peter and Harriet meet, both have moved through the victim’s story to the survivor’s story, though Harriet has a bit more of a victim about her. Her line is that she allowed Philip Boyes to set the parameters of their relationship, that she was a fool to do so, and that her being brought to trial just might be what she deserves for being so stupid.

The survivor’s story says, this thing happened. While I couldn’t prevent it, I did these things to survive. Peter knows what he did to survive the Great War, and more important, what he is doing to survive being a younger son in one of the richest families in England. That bally-ho, fatuous man-about-town image is his survivor’s story, constructed so that people will let him alone.

Both of their survivors’ stories have crystalized around them. What makes their relationship work is that each can see in the other something that other people miss. They challenge one another to come out of their glass prison and be real, true, and vulnerable. Doing this takes time. It’s not a straight shot from survivor to thriver.

Remember that stress, stress, stress? Good fiction is one step forward, and two steps back. Whatever the character risks has to turn on them. This way, when they take a risk again, there has to be a whole lot more motivation, courage, hope, or love pushing them to take that second chance. And yet more for the third time, and so on until the reader feels that there is no possible way that the character will take that final chance, the one that brings them out of being a survivor and into being a thriver.

The thriver’s story says, “I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone, but I’m a better person because I’ve come through the experience and participated in my own healing.”

That’s a great outcome for heroes and heroines, but alas, life never works out so well for the villain. Fortunately for the writer, a good villain remain stuck in the victim’s story. Life has been done to him. He has no way to participate in his own rescue and that warps his view of the world. Think of heroic characters as moving forward and villains as repeating a circle over and over, only the circle gets deeper and harder to move out of each time.

Want character development in one question? That question is What is their obsession?

If you’re interested in knowing more about victims’, survivors’ and thrivers’ stories, see Dr. Rob Voyle’s Book, Restoring Hope.

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Quote for the week
Your biggest problems and your worst obsessions contain the seeds of your own growth and development.
~Sara Halprin, writer and process work therapist

Reality Fiction

Sharon Wildwind

I have a confession to make: I rarely read outside of genre fiction.

This choice has more to do with reading time available than for any prejudice against literature or, even worse, Literature. That’s why, several times, I passed up a book on my local library’s “staff’s picks” shelf until I finally said, “What the heck” and checked it out.

The book is Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). It is a maybe, maybe not work of fiction about The Brown siblings, Maxine, Jim Ed, and Bonnie. What made reading this book weird was not only that it was impossible to tell where real life left off and fiction began, but that I have, however tenuous, a connection to the Browns.

There is a slight statistical possibility that they performed during one of the rare times I was privileged to see the Louisiana Hayride in person. Without a doubt I heard them on the radio, when the Hayride was broadcast over KWKH Radio, Shreveport, Louisiana. We’re talking icons of my childhood here.

Bass thanks the Brown family for a five-year association, so I assume that this book was written with their help and blessing. Since the other major characters—Gentleman Jim Reeves, Mary Reeves, and Elvis Presley—have long since departed this world, I assume as well that their estates had no problems with the book. In fact, I found the book an enjoyable read, a fascinating glimpse not only into country music life, but into the hard-scrabble life of a logging family in 1950s Arkansas. My two questions were what was true, and what wasn’t? And did it make any difference if I couldn't tell? In these days when photos can be “shopped” and reality shows are scripted, has that distinction between truth and fiction disappeared? I don’t know.

It also brought to mind one of the favorite writer questions. Is is okay if I use the names of real people, places, brands, and events in my fiction? If you’re on any sort of writers’ list, you know that this question reappears with such regularity that you can set your calendar by it.

The only absolute negative answer has to do with song lyrics. While you can use the titles of songs, you can not—absolutely can not—use any song lyrics, of any length, without written permission from the person or company who owns the copyright. And good luck tracking down that person or company. You can, however, bend yourself around the rule with occasional obscure references, such as “In the background, the Beatles complained about how hard the day had been.”

As far as any other real-world reference, the general consensus is usually if the reference is positive, go ahead and use it. If it’s negative, don’t. So if you want to mention that your protagonist enjoys a certain brand of soda pop, fine. If poison is going to be administered in that same soda pop, forget it.

If the reference is in passing, “I got home just in time to see George Stephanopoulos start a rundown of the latest political scandal in Washington.” you’re okay, but if George S. is to be your amateur detective, you’re not okay. There is also the school of thought that the more real-world references, the more you date—and likely out-date—your book.

The problem is that general consensus, even among writers, isn’t the law. And publishers are becoming very, very wary. Some are requiring that an author have written permission for every real reference used.

The murders take place in Madison, Wisconsin? You’ll need a letter from the Madison City Council saying that is okay with them. The protagonist watches Good Morning, America? That better be backed up by an approval letter from the ABC legal department. Your street-wise detective stops off for a burger and fries from a recognized establishment? You’ll have to have the golden stamp of approval before that happens.

Is it any wonder that writers go a little crazy?

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Quote for the week:
There was a certain sound, a ringing, that a fully tempered saw made when it had achieved that absolute perfect edge. . . . The sound they listened for—the perfect blade—held an eerie resonance, the faint sirenlike echo of a high harmonic that was a little different from the tempered harmony the Browns were already learning to achieve with their voices.
~Rick Bass, Nashville Chrome

Canada Calling: The Arthur Ellis Shortlist

Once again we are that heady time of year between the short-list announcement for the Canadian Arthur Ellis Awards, and the banquet where the winners will be named. The banquet happens on Thursday evening, June 2, in Victoria, British Columbia.

For a more in-depth look at the nominated books, go the Crime Writers of Canada’s special Cool Canadian Crime issue dedicated to the A.E. shortlist.

If you’re building your 2011 summer reading list, I suggest you print off this list and take it with you to your library/book store of choice. It’s the best of the best from Canadian crime writers. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to get a copy of the unhanged Arthur yet, but we all have our fingers crossed for the nominees being published soon.

Best Crime Novel
A Criminal to Remember, Michael Van Rooy, Turnstone Press
Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny, Little, Brown UK
In Plain Sight, Mike Knowles, ECW Press
Slow Recoil, C.B. Forrest, RendezVous Crime
The Extinction Club, Jeffrey Moore, Penguin Group

Best First Crime Novel
The Damage Done, Hilary Davidson, Tom Doherty Associates
The Debba, Avner Mandelman, Random House of Canada
The Penalty Killing, Michael McKinley, McClelland & Stewart
The Parabolist, Nicholas Ruddock, Doubleday Canada
Still Missing, Chevy Stevens, St. Martin's Press

Best French Crime Book
Cinq secondes, Jacques Savoie, Libre Expression
Dans le quartier des agités, Jacques Côté, Éditions Alire
La société des pères meurtriers, Michel Châteauneuf, Vent d’Ouest
Quand la mort s'invite à la première, Bernard Gilbert, Québec Amerique
Vanités, Johanne Seymour, Libre Expression

Best Crime Nonfiction
Northern Light, Roy MacGregor, Random House
On the Farm, Stevie Cameron, Alfred A. Knopf Canada
Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright, HarperCollins Canada

Best Juvenile/YA Crime Book
Borderline, Allan Stratton, HarperCollins
Pluto's Ghost, Sheree Fitch, Doubleday Canada
The Vinyl Princess, Yvonne Prinz, HarperCollins
The Worst Thing She Ever Did, Alice Kuipers, HarperCollins
Victim Rights, Norah McClintock, Red Deer Press

Best Crime Short Story
In It Up To My Neck, Jas R. Petrin, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
So Much in Common, Mary Jane Maffini, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
The Big Touch, Jordan McPeek, Thuglit.com
The Piper's Door, James Powell, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
The Bust, William Deverell, Whodunnit: Sun Media’s Canadian Crime Fiction Showcase

Best First Unpublished Novel (Unhanged Arthur)
Better Off Dead, John Jeneroux
Uncoiled, Kevin Thornton
When the Bow Breaks, Jayne Barnard

Object-ivity

Sharon Wildwind

This is the first time in six days that I have touched the keyboard. My significant other and I spent the past week organizing a garage sale for a woman in her late seventies.

Last Wednesday was a disaster. Whatever we needed to do always demanded that something be done first, and that something inevitably couldn’t be done without the input of a third party, who wasn’t available. The log jam finally broke about four in the afternoon, by which time it was too late in the day and we were too stressed to do anything. A whole day down the tube.

Thursday we started at 9:00 AM bringing stuff from different parts of the house to the staging area in the living room. We were dealing with your typical 1950s three-bedroom, bath-and-a-half, full basement, large yard, and storage shed situation. T and T had lived in that house for over fifty years. T(him) died several years ago, and T(her) has decided to move to smaller quarters.

They were a fascinating couple who had a lot of interests. They raised a child, made art, wrote music, enjoyed camping and traveling, loved the out-of-doors, and gardened. Each activity required stuff: tools, materials, references, places to store everything. Both of them were older teen-agers during World War II, one with a father away in the military until 1949 and the other growing up in occupied Europe. So both of them had an appreciation for having spares and for hanging on to things “that might come in useful one day.”

Not that their house was a mess. It was an extremely clean and tidy house, full of fifties-style furniture, original art work, and a lot of storage space. Emphasis on the full of furniture and lots of storage space. We started Thursday morning at the furtherest back corner of the basement and did a walk-through of the entire basement, followed by a walk-through of the entire ground floor. Everywhere we went there were drawers and cupboards, and closets to open. Every one of them was packed. By Thursday at 6:00 PM we hadn’t brought more than a fraction to the items to the staging area.

We started again at 9:00 AM Friday. The whole day was non-stop sorting, matching, cleaning, pricing, and stacking. We oohed, ahed, squealed with delight over a particularly juicy find, occasionally teared up over a sentimental one, and eventually evolved three piles: garbage it, sell it, and what the heck is that? Every couple of hours, the significant other and I made the grand rounds of basement and house and every time we discovered another darn cupboard tucked away in some obscure corner.

At 1:30 Saturday morning I fell asleep on a black leather couch, surrounded by complete chaos. I started working again three hours later, significant other showed up at 6:00 AM—there wasn’t room for us both to sleep there—and with the help of a whole whack of gracious and generous friends that T and T had known for years, the sale started on time at 8:00 AM Saturday morning.

It was utter chaos until about four in the afternoon, when a Stanley Cup Playoff game started and the crowd thinned considerably. It appears that hockey beats garage sales.

Item we salvaged and sold the most of: fabric. T is an avid seamstress and there were multiple cupboards packed with fabric, all of it clean and pristine. We spent hours unfolding, measuring, labeling, and rolling fabric, then attaching labels with the fiber content, length, width, and price. But it was worth it. The fabric went away almost as fast as we restocked the table.

Item we discarded the most of: plastic bags. We pulled them out of hiding places not by the bag full but by the pound.

Most unexpected item we found: a piece of silver-and-turquoise jewelry that T(him) hand-cast decades ago.

Strangest objects we found? It was a toss-up.

Initially it was two tubes of silicone caulking so old that they had hardened completely. When the cardboard tube was peeled away, the silicone was still the same shape. I looked at my sig other and pondered, “Can you carve that and use it for stamping?” As it turns out, you can. I’m looking forward to experimenting with the rest of it.

The silicon came in second for strangeness to a bottle of high-proof Vodka with amber necklace beads filling the bottom third of the bottle. T’s brother considers drinking amber a spring tonic and a cure for what ails you. I’m wondering if I can salvage amber that has been immersed in alcohol for a couple of decades. If I can, I’m going to make something out of those beads.

After the garage sale ended, it took us fourteen hours on Sunday and nine hours Monday to strip bare every one of those drawers, cupboards and closets. The haul-away-your-stuff truck pulled out of the alley at 1:30 Monday afternoon, and there is a huge pile of garbage bags and recycling bags to be gradually put out for pick-up over the next few weeks. We still have to make some trips to vintage stores, record stores, the fire hall chemical collection point, and the pharmacy for disposing old, no make that vintage, medicines. Vintage become our by-word this weekend.

Through all of this what stood out the most were the friends who came to help. There were a ton of them, all the way from someone who knew neither T, but lent a sunshade anyway, to two of her long-term friends, both about her age, who worked rings around us younger folks all day Saturday. I hope I'm that fortunate in my friends when I get to be T's age.

All in all, we had a great time. Now we’re going to take the next two days off to have a great rest.

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Quote for the week
If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
~Edgar Watson Howe, (1853 - 1937), American novelist and editor

Background List

Sharon Wildwind

As much as I love DCI Tom Barnaby, both as played in Midsomer Murders by John Nettles, and as written by Caroline Graham, I love Graham’s stand-alone Murder at Madingley Grange even more.

A brother and sister who are in need of spare cash decide to take advantage of their aunt’s departure for the continent to raise capital. Simon Hannaford thinks a murder weekend will be a breeze. They have Aunt Maude’s imposing pile, Madingley Grange, complete with peacocks, as a backdrop. They have his sister, Laurie’s, cordon-bleu cooking skills to feed the guests. They have a trunk full of 1930s regalia for the guests to wear. What they don’t have is a group of hired actors and a plot for a murder weekend.

No problem, Simon says. He’ll whip up a little murder outline and the guests can do improv theater for the weekend.

The punters arrive—not as many as Simon had hoped for—but enough to anticipate a profit. Each comes for his/her own reason, not all of them having to do with murder. Derek, an obsessed Sherlockian arrives wearing a cape and deerstalker. The weekend is a bitter disappointment to him. He’d envisioned cozy evenings by the fire with fellow aficionados discussing blood spatter patterns, obscure South American poisons, and the Reichenbach Falls. Instead he’s awash in people who not only don’t read mysteries, but some may not have read a book at all.

One evening Derek holds forth with a convoluted discussion about Jane Marple and Maude Silver, finishing with, “And it must be noted that they constantly knit baby clothes. Now what do you think of that?” Half of the punters think Derek is a nutter, and none of them have the slightest idea what the deuce he’s talking about.

To tell the truth, I don’t either, and Graham never explains it, which makes it all the more fun.

At least Derek recognized the importance of the background list. A background list is a way to use tiny details to enhance a story.

Background lists work like this. All books have a theme, a global umbrella under which the author works. It might be is revenge any less deadly when served cold, or the consequences of not being able to let go, or—one of the romance genre standards—a second chance at love, as in the British TV series As Time Goes By. Two young lovers are separated by circumstances during the Korean War. Forty years later they meet again. Is it too late for love?

Second chance is great for a background list because you have three words to work with: second, chance, and love. Draw three columns and head each column with one of those words. Then think of as many related words as you can. Usually 10 or less per column is enough. For example: Second—two, twins, pair, second-place, second-class, runner-up, second-best. Chance—luck, gambling, chance meeting, no chance in hell, odds, dice, chancer, risk, opportunity. You can do love for yourself.

What you use the background list for is fine tuning a manuscript, the place where you can take advantage of eensy-bitsy-tiny details to reinforce your theme. A character has to stand in line at a bank. Put him second in line. She has to do an activity that the man doesn’t approve of. She goes out gambling with the girls. He refers to immigrants as, “Being treated like second-class citizens.” The woman’s daughter is upset because she was a runner-up in the school’s election.

What you’re doing is bombarding the reader with subtle references to second-chance-love. It’s called subliminal messaging, and it’s so powerful that it’s illegal in Australian and British broadcasting. Nothing has been said about books.

The way I see it is, he’s going to have to stand in that line anyway. Why not make that count for something? She has to have a conflict with the daughter. Why not make that count for something, too?

John Nettles, incidentally, is leaving Midsomer Murders after 13 seasons. You can read about the change here. I’ll miss him, and there’s nothing hidden or chancy about that.

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Quote for the week:
I wanted to die in noble fashion in the service of my country and then be buried with full military honours in Westminster Abbey.
~John Nettles, actor

In fact, the producers assure us that Tom and Joyce will simply retire.

A Writer’s Fantasy Tool Box

Sharon Wildwind

Last week I had a wonderful time at a non-writing-related conference. Saw old friends and acquired new ideas.

One of the speakers talked about tool boxes. About how we all start our careers with a basic tool kit (the equivalent of having only a hammer, screwdriver, and pliers) and how, over the decades, we both acquire new tools and toss out what no longer works.

That got me thinking about a useful toolbox for writers. Not the mundane one filled with grammar, spelling, writing dos and don’ts, or even marketing tools. What I want is more akin to Dr. McCoy’s medical tricorders or Batman’s utility belt. I want a writers’ tool box filled with impossibly useful tools that fly in the face of the way the world works.

The first thing I want is a Digital Plot Generator with optional Plot Analyzer. Come across a great fact or piece of information? Enter it in the machine. When you’re ready to write, ask the machine to combine mini-ideas at random to form the plot for your next story. Or, if you’ve got a plot, feed it into the machine for analysis. It scans millions of stories stored in its memory and gives a readout of how often individual elements have been used before.

Next, I want a Sexy Spellchecker, something with a silky masculine voice, who says, “Love, you’ve misspelled that word the same wrong way five times in a row. Let me lead you through the correct spelling. I have a reward for you if you learn to spell this word correctly.” I’m sure I’d learn spelling a lot better if there was a lascivious component to it.

Speaking of spelling, how about a Homophone Head’s Up? This would be a grammar checking that can tell when I type in their for there or brakes when I really mean breaks. That would be a mighty useful tool.

So would a Literary Trend Identifier, a tool that could peak into the future and predict what stories will be hot, say, five years from now. That way I could hit the market with a winner every time.

The ultimate fantasy tool would have to be an Automated Manuscript Distribution Coordinator. All the writer has to do is polish the finished manuscript and the tool does the rest. Researches the markets. Picks a likely list of agents and editors. Writes and sends a dynamite query letter. Packages up the manuscripts and mails them out. Keeps track of how many manuscripts are out, whose got them, how long they’ve had them, etc. It would have a little bell that would ring when I get an offer to purchase. Meanwhile, I’ll be writing the next book down the line — with a lot of misspellings, of course. Got to keep that Sexy Spellchecker busy, don’t I?

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Quote for the week
The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors.
~Emil Nolde, (1867 – 1956), German painter and printmaker

Latching on to characters

Sharon Wildwind

Last week I wrote about inspiration for a new novel. I’m thrilled to report that it’s been a great week in novel land. I’ve had so much fun auditioning bits and pieces of my use-one-day collection to see if they might work in this book.

The only downer was day I found out that the marvelous 1890s brick school building where I attended first grade has been torn down and the land it was on turned into a mall, but such are the perils of research. At least I was able to add to my do-some-day list writing a story set in that building as I remembered it.

This is that heady period, before the first word of Chapter 1 is written, when anything goes and everything works. My plot is inspired, my mystery is devilishly clever, and my characters paragons of just about everything. We all know, of course, that first paragraph in Chapter 1 will begin to rub off the shine, but I’ll just hang on to my illusions for a few more weeks, okay?

I’ve also been re-reading my basic tips binder to remind myself of things I should have already learned. Some things I have learned, for other things the refresher is a good idea. Here are some tips I came across about how to develop characters whom the reader will want to latch onto.

Introduce the character in media res; that is, smack dab in the middle of something with a high physical and/or emotional content.

Give each character a unique name. Mix up names so that there is a variety of sound mixes, number of syllables, and ethnic origins.

Give each character a unique ways of relating to the physical world. This includes their physical description, clothes, food, living spaces, possessions, automobile, electronic gadgets (or lack thereof) and their relationship to each of these.

Limit the number of names and titles referring to one character. For example, a character named William Smith, should not be referred to as William, Bill, Billy, Willy, Willy-Boy, Mr. Smith, the Boss, and Old Red-Face by different characters.

If two or more characters share the same descriptive title—several doctors, or priests, or detectives—give each character a unique name and character sketch so that Father D’Arcy won’t be confused with Father Rafael or Father Whitcombe.

Make it clear immediately how characters with the same last name are related, or if using name confusion as a plot device, give each character an attitude toward being frequently mistaken for the other person.

At the beginning of a book, the reader files every new character with due diligence until she can figure out how important a particular character is to the story. Avoid minor characters in the first three chapters, other than background characters who make the story flow. The doorman at the hotel or the dry cleaner who ruined the protagonist’s best dress, can set events in motion, but they should be mentioned in passing without names or details. The more details the reader is given—that the dry cleaner is named Moe, he’s fifty-five years old, he lives over the shop, and he speaks with a New York accent—the more the reader expects Moe to play a major part in the story. A summary like, “On Tuesday, the dry cleaner ruined my best dress” will cover what’s needed to move along.

A character doesn’t usually gel with a reader until they have appeared least three times, in three different roles or relationships. It’s important to gel all of your major characters with the reader as soon as possible. There is no hard rule about this, but as a general guideline, all of the major characters should be firmly fixed in the reader’s mind by the end of chapter three. The only exception is your detective(s); it’s hard to have him or her show up before the first body is discovered. But then, there are endless discussions about needing a body by the end of chapter three as well.

If you must hold a major character in reserve until later in the book, at least making a general reference to him or her. Statements like, “My sister is arriving tomorrow. You’re going to love her. She has such a sense of humor,” or “What really pisses me off is a guy in a thousand-dollar suit, with that look-at-me attitude” sets up reader expectations. They’ll be expecting the sister to arrive or for the protagonist to meet a guy in a thousand-dollar suit.

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Quotes for the week (It’s a two for one week)

Give your reader time to sink into one person’s mind and experience what’s going on there, before you yank them out and pull them into another mind.
~Beth Anderson, mystery and romance writer

Choose names very carefully. Pay attention to the meaning and the sound, and to connotations that people will give a name.
~Elizabeth George, mystery writer

Folk Music

Sharon Wildwind

Last Friday night I went to a performance at a local folk club, and had a terrific time. The house band played the first set. A young local performer — a little unpolished, but great potential — did the second set, and a person I know off-stage and love listening to on-stage, the third set. I listened by candlelight (tea lights in orange globe holders), with people around me eating meat pies and sausage rolls, and drinking beer, and realized I’d been going to this kind of thing a darn long time.

Earlier that day I’d heard a CBC program about Record Store Day, which happened on Saturday. RSD is a celebration of vinyl records and the record stores that still sell them. Part of the show was someone asking people what was the very first vinyl album they bought.

No brainer. Summer of 1962, with money saved from baby sitting, I bought Peter, Paul, and Mary. Sometime around there I briefly took up the guitar long enough to learn the G-D-and A7 cords before giving it up as a bad job. The problem was tuning. I couldn’t turn a tambourine, much less a guitar. I realized very early that my role was going to be listening.

For a long time my contacts were records and later cassette tapes, and the all-too-infrequent performances by folk musicians on radio and television. None of my family was musical, except my brother who played clarinet in the high school marching band, so we had very little connection to live music. I knew about the Newport Folk Festival because of Bob Dylan being booed off the stage there in 1965 because he dared to go electric instead of acoustic, but I had no idea that folk festivals were springing up across the country. It didn’t dawn on me until decades later that I could climb in a car and go to a folk festival.

My first folk festival was a consolation prize. Big vacation plans fell through. I ended up with two weeks off and nothing to do. I decided to go to Vancouver, British Columbia because I’d never been there. When I picked up my room key, the motel clerk asked me if I was in town for the Vancouver Folk Festival. A folk festival sounded a whole lot better than doing nothing, so I took a cab to Jericho Beach Park. The only time I saw my motel room for the next three days was to sleep.

I was hooked. I listened to Simply Folk on CBC radio. I went to local clubs. I went to every Canadian folk festival within reachable distance. I volunteered several years with one of the festivals. I met a few musicians and became a groupie. I had a great time!

Getting married put an end to all that, going to folk festivals I mean, not having a great time. Different interests, different uses for money, different ways to spend our vacations. I went back to CDs and music on the radio. Only by now the Internet had come along. Every year it became easier to listen to a global range of folk artists in the comfort of my living room.

Which was why it was such a treat to go to a live performance again. The weirdest thing happened in the middle of that second set. One after another, images going way back to that Peter, Paul, and Mary album flooded through me. I realized that each image would make a great scene in a book. I realized that I had a lot of good stuff tucked away about folk music, about musicians, about clubs, about folk festivals. So much good material that I’m pretty sure I’ve just started my next book.

By Saturday morning I knew who my protagonist would be. Her name is Robbie Breland. She’s the volunteer coordinator at a folk music club, and one night, while she sits in the club listening to music, everything she thinks she knows about herself, her two ex-husbands, and the folk music scene starts to unravel. Then, of course, a body is discovered.

Stay tuned for further developments.
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Quote for the week
Alan Barrows: I always thought it was “hey nonny no, nanny ninny no” and I’m getting kind of confused with all the nannies and the ninnies.
Jerry Palter: There’s no nanny, just take that out of the equation. It’s “hey nonny no, nonny ninny o”.
Mark Shubb: Iron clad rule, Alan. Nonny before ninny.
~from the inimitable movie, A Mighty Wind, which is a very cool riff on folk music

Story Circle Network: May Sarton Award

Sharon Wildwind

Two days ago I started Book 59 of my memoirs.

Okay, it’s not exactly Book 59. There’s my baby book, the book I kept the summers I went to music camp, a few abortive attempts to do something campy and art-journaly before returning to black ink and black cloth-bound sketch books, my equally-abortive attempts to keep a journal using a computer journaling program, a couple of travel journals, and my art-portfolio journal which works terrifically on line because I can put information, instructions, reference links, and photographs all in one place. If I included every one of those in the count, I’m probably at book 75 or so.

But those 58, consecutively numbered books—my hard-backed, hard-core journals—extend in an unbroken line to Thursday, August 10, 1978. Not that I have written every day, or every week, but those books still document 32 years, 8 months, and 2 days of my life. One of the things I’m most proud of is that I started working with Julia Cameron’s morning pages May 30th of last year, and for the past 10 months I do have almost daily entries.

They’re not exactly memoirs either. More like memory seeds. When I started back in 1978 I made myself two promises. I was allowed to write anything in the journal and I would never rip an entry out. I’ve kept both of those promises. Yeah, there is good stuff in there, but there is also a huge amount of sloppy, sleazy, huffy, despondent, raucous, glib, weird stuff. That’s okay. When I either get around to mining this gold field—or someone else, say an underpaid graduate student—gets to mine it, all that stuff will go into the memoir pot.

Which brings me around to an organization that’s worth it’s weight in gold, and to a new award that is now accepting nominees.

Story Circle Network is an international organization “for women with stories to tell.” It’s focus is to help women share the stories of their lives and to raise public awareness of the importance of women’s personal histories. From their Internet story circles to their quarterly publication of women's writing, True Words for Real Women, to their sugar bowl scholarships that pay the membership dues for low-income women, to their writers’ mentoring program, to the on-line Lifewriters Group this organization has gone from strength to strength since founded in 1997 by Dr. Susan Wittig Albert.

SCN had just launched its first May Sarton Literary Award dedicated to women’s memoirs. First-person memoirs, printed or e-book format, first published in 2011 are eligible for nomination. The author, the publisher, a friend or relative of the author may make the nomination. Authors do not have to be a member of Story Circle Network in order to be considered. Deadline for submission is 2011 December 15 and full details on eligibility, how to submit and a submission form can be found here. The winner will be announced at the sixth Stories from the Heart Conference in Austin, Texas in April 2012.

I cannot say enough good things about this organization. Copy down the web address. Keep it with you. I’ve printed it out on business-card blanks and I always have three or four of them with me. Every time a woman tells me you she is thinking about writing about her life, or has written, or just wants to read some terrific writing about being a woman, I give her one of the cards, and encourage her to visit the site at least once. I’m encouraging you to do the same.
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Quote for the week:

Stealing From Art

Sharon Wildwind

Some of you know that I use art to relax from writing. This week we’re going in reverse and use art to energize writing. This all started back in September 2009 when I read a Cloth Paper Scissors article by the Portland, Oregon artist Robin Olsen. In “Spontaneous Combustion: Using Prompts to Spark Design,” Robin wrote about using prompts to take her quilting in new directions.

She printed about fifty prompts, cut the page into small pieces, folded the papers, and threw them in a bowl. When she wanted to stretch herself to try something new, she drew a prompt, did it, drew another, did it, and so on until she felt the piece was finished. Sometimes she used only a few prompts, sometimes as many as ten. She also used a single prompt when she felt stuck about what to do next about a piece.

I loved the idea, but no way were folded pieces of paper going to work in my office. I’d lose them or they would disappear amid the mounds of paper I collect.

What I did instead was print prompts on tissue paper and glue the strips to colored popsicle sticks. The jar in the photo started life as a vitamin bottle, before it was covered with paper clay and painted. I’m on the look-out for another vitamin bottle so I can have a can of writing prompts as well as these art prompts. Since we’re doing writing today instead of art, you don’t have to go to that length (unless you really want to).

You can also number your prompts, print them on a single piece of paper, and role dice to generate numbers randomly for which prompts to use.

The first thing you’ll need is a list of prompts. To start you off, I’ve given you twenty-five, but I’m sure you can thing of a lot more. Feel free to copy-and-paste this starter to a word processing document so you can print them out. As you think of a new one, write it on a piece of paper and toss it in your bowl or add it to your list. I've found that quirky or funny premises work better for quick exercises than dark serious stuff, but as they say in the ads, your mileage may vary.

The setting is a place you’ve visited, but didn’t like.

No more than 5% of the words can be “the.”

The protagonist comes from a ethnic background different from yours. (Yes, research will be involved here.)

Two characters communicate an important message without words.

The protagonist is a fish out of water.

A mini-story of 100 words.

The heroine gets what she wants but it turns out not to be what she wants.

A betrayal.

A page of dialog filled with technical jargon.

Missing an opportunity turns into disaster. Then turn it around: taking advantage of the same opportunity turns into disaster.

Characters go on a road trip.

An unlikely male thinks of himself as a dark and dangerous hero.

An unlikely female thinks of herself as a dark and dangerous heroine.

A character thinks up a quirky cover story that has unexpected consequences.

Phone sex, and it’s a wrong number.

A package is passed from character to character and each one thinks he/she know what’s inside, but all are wrong.

A familiar fairy tale told from an odd perspective (Cinderella from a feminist perspective or Jack and the Beanstalk as told by a corporate executive, etc.)

Being nibbled to death by ducks. The protagonists are out to save the world, but mundane details of daily life get in their way.

Kidnappers discover they have the wrong person for the right reasons or the right person for the wrong reasons.

The first person you see tomorrow after walking out your front door becomes the protagonist.

Rip a story from today’s headlines.

It’s a “one day we’ll laugh over this” story.

A story composed entirely of cliches.

Welcoming someone home goes terribly wrong, but is funny at the same time.

How to use prompts for writing exercises:
1. Start with the blank page.
2. Draw or randomly roll dice to select at least 3 to 5 prompts.
3. Weave them together into a scene or story.

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Quote for the week:
Creativity likes constraints and specifics. … it is both beautiful and ironic that constraints can actually give you more freedom. They activate your imagination.
~Bert Dodson, painter, teacher, author and illustrator, Keys to Drawing with Imagination

Rare Birds

Sharon Wildwind

It’s incredibly difficult to be next in line the day after what Julia’s posted yesterday.

I was casting around for a lead into this week’s blog and remembered a (perhaps apocryphal) story of a middle-aged woman in England during World War II. The woman volunteered at a military convalescent hospital. She had been assigned to the patients’ library with the task of gluing cardboard covers onto paperback books to make them last longer.

A British general came around to jolly along the patients and staff. When he and the hospital commandant reached the library, the general commended the woman for how straight she was gluing on the covers and said jovially, “Maybe one day you’ll write a book yourself, eh what?”

“Maybe one day I will,” the woman replied.

In the background, the hospital commandant was close to apoplexy. You’re probably ahead of me on this. The woman was, of course, Agatha Christie.

I’m sure soldiers in that hospital appreciated the sturdy book covers. They might even have noticed that they were glued on straight. But I also know that the books Christie wrote have comforted a lot more people in a lot more difficult situations. There is a statistical probability that someone in a Fukushima Prefecture shelter is reading one of her books right now.

We forget sometimes what wonderful rare birds we are as authors. Meaning no disrespect to anyone who hasn’t crossed the line yet, we also forget that we are more wonderful and rarer as published authors. We lose sight of that because we live shoulder-to-shoulder with other writers.

Public use photo from the Tazzone.

Pick your favorite public venue. I’ve chosen the Scotiabank Saddledome. Scotiabank is obviously a bank and the Saddledome is where the Calgary Flames play hockey. Imagine the Saddledome tomorrow night, 7:30 PM. Flames versus the Anaheim Ducks. Seating capacity, a little over 19,000, and since it’s near the end of the season, most of those seats will be filled. The majority of those 19,000 people not only don’t know anyone who has written and published a book, but never in their lives have known a published author, and never expect to.

There is more relief needed in the world all the time and I fear it’s going to get worse. Whatever else we choose to do in our other life: contributing to charities; doing volunteer work; working for peace, social, economic or ecological justice, the most important thing we can do every day is to sit down and write.

Lots of people can do rescue work. Lots of people can staff shelters. Lots of people can clean up gosh-awful messes. But writers are among the few who can tell stories that mobilize, that entertain, and that comfort. We may not think about it very often, but writers are those rare birds in the business of hope.

Goodness knows that the world needs more of that.

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Quote for the week:

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.
~Dame Agatha Christie, DBE (1890 – 1976)

Rotten Mood

Sharon Wildwind

I am in a Rotten Mood. Yes, capital rotten, capital mood.

Too many disasters in the world? Daylight savings time starting far too early? Familial responsibilities piling up like a derailed freight train? A tragedy happening to a co-worker over the weekend? Frigging snow predicted for the next three days?

I think the bottom line is cabin fever.

If you’re not familiar with the late Stan Roger’s take on Canadian cabin fever, I recommend this YouTube version of his song, Canol Road. It’s thin on visual excitement, but Stan’s voice comes across the way we remember him.

Or try Stan’s son, Nathan, singing the same song. His voice is such a ringer for his dad that it’s downright spooky.

“He’s a bear in a blood-red mackinaw, with hungry dogs at bay, and springtime thunder in his sudden roar.”

That’s what I feel like, except that I have a gray parka instead of a red mackinaw and the bear I most resemble is Winnie-the-Pooh. Winnie and I wouldn’t last three seconds in a Yukon bar brawl. Except maybe in my imagination. I figured the best solution to cabin fever was to take my imagination out for a run.

About three years ago I mentioned my all-time favorite role playing game: Frank Chadwick’s Space 1889™. It came out long before steam punk was on the horizon. One of the things I liked about it was that the characters were quick to roll up. All you needed was two previous careers, three physical characteristics (strength, agility, and endurance) and three psychological characteristics (intellect, charisma, and social level) and Bob’s your uncle.

The career choice possibilities made for some odd combinations like missionary-telegrapher or foreign office-inventor (sounds like the prototype for James Bond’s “Q.”) My favorite two-career combination was always dilettante plus adventuress.

Dilettante meant I could muck about in anything I felt like and adventuress meant I certainly wasn’t the kind of woman you’d take home to mother. Both left a lot of room for imagination.

When I realized that cabin fever had truly set in I knew the possibility of producing any sensible writing for the next couple of weeks was zilch and since I didn’t want to stop writing, I decided to play a game. It needed a Victorian name and after a couple of days I came up with Cloud Captains of Endeavour. It didn’t have to make sense, it just had to sound Victorian.

My protagonist is a woman who is between careers. She’s already a dilettante and is going to become an adventuress.

Here are the rules I set for playing the game:

1. The story takes place in October 1889. I picked October because the first sentence that came to mind was, “Rain and sleet pelted London throughout October.”

2. My protagonist had to start in London and end up in Scotland. She had to be forced to make the journey so that going to Scotland was the only option left to her.

3. Every Victorian detail I used had to be substantiated by at least one reliable on-line reference.

I figured I’d knock out a couple of thousand words and get the game out of my system. Well, I’m up to the beginning of Chapter 5 and she doesn’t have a clue yet that she’s going to Scotland. This may take longer than I thought, but I’m having a great time and at least I have some diversion until the cabin fever breaks.

I completely recommend this kind of writing play. Pick the most absurd protagonist you can imagine, someone you can have fun with. Put her in an impossible situation. Make the goal another impossible situation and write until you’ve moved her from point A to point B. This is writing just for the sheer pleasure of it. We all deserve to do that once in a while.
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Quote for the week:
People say I live in my own little world, but that’s okay. They know me here.
~Anonymous

Canada Calling: Young Adult Mystery Lovers

Recent books by Canadian authors for young adult readers. Links are listed in place of just showing you the covers because
A) covers are copyrighted
B) You’ll learn lots more about the books, and their authors by visiting the sites, and
C) the sites have Facebook and Twitter links.

A dozen cool Canadian authors for your summer reading list. Yes, I know it's only March, but since these are Canadian authors it may take a little while for you to get the books. If you get them early, you have my permission to read them before school lets out for the summer.

Kelley Armstrong, The Reckoning, Doubleday Canada
Third book in a trilogy. Lots of other-world stuff happening. Ties in to just about every para-normal genre going.
http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/the-reckoning/


Marty Chan, Mystery of the Cyber Bully, Thistledown Press
Also third in a series. Three kids pay a price when they take on a cyber bully.
www.martychan.com/fiction.html



Lisa Harrington, Rattled, Nimbus Publishing
Debut novel. New neighbors move in across the street from a fifteen-year-old girl, but they aren’t as nice as they appear.
lisakharrington.wordpress.com/my-work/

Y S Lee, The Agency: A Spy in the House and The Agency: The Body in the Tower, Candlewick Press, Random House of Canada
Books 1 and 2 in the series. Victorian London, a reformed girl, and a group of young female private enquiry agents.
yslee.com/a-spy-in-the-house/



Paul Marlowe, Sporeville and Knights of the Sea, Sybertooth Inc.
Late 1800s in a boring Cape Breton, Nova Scotia fishing village. Or is it all that boring? The mushrooms don’t seem to think so. Spooky, quirky, strange, and very funny.
www.paulmarlowe.com/pm/sporeville.htm



Norah McClintock, In Too Deep and Something to Prove (Robyn Hunter Mysteries), Scholastic
She’s bringing her nine-book series to a close with these two. I recommend starting at the beginning with Last Chance. Robyn is a teenage girl confronting the harder issues of the adult world. (homelessness, smuggling immigrants, suicide, etc.)
www.scholastic.ca/titles/norahmcclintock/robynhunter/index.htm



Shane Peacock, Eye of the Crow, Death in the Air, Vanishing Girl, and The Secret Fiend; Tundra Books Canada
Sherlock Holmes solving crimes as a young boy.
www.shanepeacock.ca/books.html



Yvonne Prinz, The Vinyl Princess, HarperCollins Publishers
A teen-ager, a set of headphones, and a vinyl record collection. A combination that turns out to be not your average summer job.
www.thevinylprincess.com/my-book

Shirlee Smith Matheson, Jailbird Kid, Dundurn
Think your family doesn’t understand you? Try having an ex-con for a father and an uncle in the “business."
www.ssmatheson.ca/jailbirdkid.html


Allan Stratton, Borderline, HarperCollins Publishers
Sami Sabiri is the only Muslim kid in his school. His father is lying to him. The FBI is investigating his family’s terrorist contacts. Sami is determined to save his father, his family, and life.

www.allanstratton.com/strattonyoungfic2.html

Barrie Summy, I So Don’t Do … Mysteries, Spooky, Makup, Famous (Four books in the Sherry Holmes Baldwin! series);Delacorte Press Random House of Canada
Sherry has a ghost for a mother, a step-mother for The Ruler, a cute boyfriend, a gaggle of girl friends and mysteries to solve. Personally, she’d rather drop the mysteries and spend more time with the cute boyfriend, but then whoever gets what she wants?


barriesummy.blogspot.com/p/my-books.html


JoAnn Yhard, The Fossil Hunters of Sydney Mines, Nimbus Publishing
A thirteen year-old and her friends believe that an accident was something more.
joannyhard.ca/TheFossilHunterOfSydneyMines.aspx

Suspicious of Sudoku

Sharon Wildwind

I’ve always been suspicious of Sudoku. It’s not that I don’t like math puzzles. I quite enjoy figuring out if I have a piece of fabric that is 22 inches by 8.5 inches, can I made a 1-inch zest strip for a quilt that is 36 inches on a side?

But I’m skeptical that filling numbers into squares will be the solution to all of mankind’s ills. Of course, I’m also skeptical that broccoli, flax, or Omega 3 oil will fix everything. Moderate amounts of consistent exercise is another matter. It just may be the solution to a lot that is wrong with the world—if we can get people to do it.

Anyway, back to the current belief that mind-training games can improve memory and prevent dementia and other mental declines. I felt vindicated last week when I read that it just ain’t so.

Fortunately the author of the article, Andrea Kuszewski — a behavior therapist, teacher, researcher, and graphic artist — had some ideas about what might work instead. You can read her Scientific American article here.

Fluid intelligence isn’t facts or data. It’s the ability to learn something new, and use that new knowledge to build on learning the next thing or solving the next problem. Ms. Kuszewski contends that improving and maintaining fluid intelligence depends on seeking novelty, challenging yourself, thinking creatively, doing things the hard way, and networking.

Man, it sounds like writers have a tremendous advantage here.

Seeking novelty does all sorts of good things to the brain: gears up brain chemicals, increases motivation, and causes the brain to build new neurons. Remember that the next time you’re up to your eyebrows in creating a new character, world building, or trying to come up with the strangest murder weapon ever. (My vote on this, so far, goes to Barbara d’Amato. I’ll give you a clue. It was in Hard Christmas.)

Here’s the two reasons that Sukodu and other brain games don’t work. First, they aren’t designed to increase fluid intelligence; they’re designed to teach you how to play the game. Yes, certain areas of the brain get bigger, faster, stronger, etc. while you are learning the game. But as soon as you do learn it—here comes the second problem— those areas shrink back to pre-game size, even if you continue to do the activity. What’s happened here is that as soon as the brain knows how to do something, it puts that something on a back burner in order to free up brain power for something more novel and, therefore, more interesting.

Forget thinking with the right side of your brain. True creativity involves switching back and forth between both sides of your brain and, in essence, getting the two sides to talk to one another. How do you do that? You think both creatively and practically about a problem. It’s what writers call plotting. Mystery writers are fortunate enough to get double and triple whammies because we have to be conscious of how clues, red herrings, forensics, and downright practicality fit together.

Technology is not our friend, particularly when it comes to spelling and grammar checkers and auto-correction programs. I realized this a few days ago when my computer at work was down because of a password problem. While I was waiting for IT to agree that, yes, my login really did exist and, yes, I really was entitled to a password, I had to write a report draft in long-hand. Guess what? There was no spell-checker built into my gel pen. Not only that, but there was no dictionary anywhere in the office.

I finally had to phone someone to verify how to spell several words. To my credit, I did the hard work first. I wrote down a few options for each word and picked the one I thought was most likely correct. I was right on two of them, but wrong on the third. Never could get those -able and -ible words straight.

The point is when you’re using a spell-checker or other technology, learn from your mistakes. Look at the way the word is correctly spelled. Mentally break it down into syllables. Figure out what part of the word you trip over the most. Come up with a mnemonic for how to spell it correctly the next time.

And finally on the how-to-really-develop-brain-power check list is that none of us can do it alone. Save the Internet for factoids that you need in a hurry, like exactly how far is your character going to have to drive to get from Bismarck, North Dakota to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho? (About 13 hours, according to Map Quest. I’ve always wondered if the allow for bathroom breaks when they calculate those times.) I also just learned that Bismarck is the capital of North, not South Dakota.

For the really juicy stuff, like what’s it’s like to work a graveyard shift in a big city police department or does a lawyer have any qualms about defending a person they suspect is guilty, go to the source. Network with real life human beings. Interestingly enough the more a person talks to people who are not like her, the more her brain grows. Get out of your comfort zone. If you want to make your brain think better, put the Sudoku down and go talk to someone who knows a lot about something that you know very little about.

Right now, I’m on my way to talk to someone at the fabric store. I need 222 square inches of fabric to make my zest strip and the piece I have on hand contains only 187 square inches.

For those of you who don’t quilt, a zest strip is a tiny (usually 1/2 to 1 inch) strip of cloth, in a contrasting color, that add “zest” or zing to the colors in the quilt. See you’re smarter already.
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Quote for the week:

One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.
~Albert Einstein

Comedy

Sharon Wildwind

I love comedy. If I could, I’d write great comedy like Neil Simon or Larry Gelbart, the creator of M*A*S*H. My heroine is the Canadian writer and actor, Susan Coyne, who wrote and stared in Slings and Arrows.

I’m not ga-ga over all comedy. Jokes based on putting other people down leave me cold. So does physical comedy like The Three Stooges and the Keystone Cops, though I have to admit that Buster Keaton, Jackie Gleason, and Art Carney had such marvelous timing that their physical comedy was a pleasure to watch. Most TV sit-coms produce more yawns than giggles.

What I don’t like in books or plays is a steady stream of one-liners. There was an author I loved several years ago, when I first read her. Her first two books were hilarious. A couple of more were tiresome. Then I stopped reading. She hadn’t changed her writing; I’d changed my reading. I got tired of waiting for the characters to stop slinging zingers and start developing as people. I figured it was never going to happen.

My favorite fictional comedy character is an unlikely choice. He was born with severe birth defects into a society that tolerated no physical imperfections. Only his family’s social status and a troop of armed housemen kept him from being smothered in his crib. His childhood caretaker died saving his life.

The first woman he became involved with dumped him. The second was disfigured because he made a serious error in judgement. The third had her own genetic problems that guaranteed her a short life. The fourth was married, and he was tried for killing her husband.

He started his career by risking being executed, and ended it by lying to one of the few people who had stood by him when there was a price on his head. He spent a lot of time between those two ignominious points either under medical care or drunk out of his skull.

A relative was tortured to the point of madness because of him.

Are you laughing yet?

Comedy is so elusive, and so personal, it would seem that a writer has no hope of making large numbers of people laugh. And yet, writers do it. Recently I came across a quote from Clem Martini, the Head of the Drama Department at the University of Calgary. He said this about comedy.

“What makes a play comedic instead of tragic: light tone, the improbable treated as entirely probable, an ability to withstand punishment without suffering, an intense unyielding desire approaching an obsession, highly complicated plots, and speed. Humor rises out of the unexpected turn of events.”
~Clem Martini, The Blunt Playwright

Some of you have recognized my favorite comedy character: Lord Miles Vorkosigan in the series written by Lois McMaster Bujold. She’s managed not only to include everything in Martini’s list, but to build on each one. A light tone with a dark twist. The improbable is so entirely probable that you stop noticing any improbability. It’s not that miles withstands punishment without suffering. To borrow a phrase from last year’s Olympic Games, Miles owns the podium when it comes to suffering. But he does withstand punishment without bitterness, and he learns from the suffering. Whatever terrible ordeal he’s just come through, once he’s watered, rested, and properly medicated, he’s obsessed to right the wrong that caused the suffering in the first place. Highly complicated plots? He’s got several planets and a space mercenary fleet to play with. Can’t get much more complicated than that.

Or funnier.

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Quote for the week
“Your forward momentum is going to lead all of your followers over a cliff someday.” He paused, beginning to grin. “On the way down, you’ll convince ‘em all they can fly.” He stuck his fists in his armpits, and waggled his elbows. “Lead on, my lord. I’m flapping as hard as I can.”
~Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior’s Apprentice