Recycling--the Literary Version

Sandra Parshall

I was happy to hear Ian McEwan on the radio last week, describing his habit of saving deleted passages from his novels because they might contain “nuggets” he can use in later work. I don’t have much in common with this renowned writer, but we’re alike in one way: we both practice a literary version of recycling.

I don’t reuse only the nuggets, though. I recycle characters, subplots, whole scenes. Like one of my cloth tote bags, many elements of my books used to be something else.

When Disturbing the Dead was published, I wrote about the transformation of a character who first appeared in a manuscript titled Outside Agitators, a story about young antipoverty workers and the Appalachian people they tried to help during the War on Poverty. I worked on that novel for years and never turned it into a coherent story with a proper ending. But I’ve been carving away chunks ever since and using them in other books.

One of those chunks was a teenage mountain girl with red hair and freckles and the unlikely name of Lana Turner. She longed to leave the poverty-stricken hollow where she grew up and move on to a better life. When I wrote Disturbing the Dead, I kept Lana’s dreams but made her a little older and gave her a Melungeon – mixed race – heritage, which meant changing her coloring to olive skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes. My agent told me I would also have to change her name, because some editors disliked characters with famous people’s names. Lana became Holly Turner.

I wasn’t finished cannibalizing my old unfinished manuscript. In the original, I wrote about antipoverty workers as young idealists, well-intentioned but naive about their power to effect change in a region where gigantic energy corporations control the economy and politics. When I began working on Broken Places (released in February), I asked myself what some of these people would be like decades later, if they had stayed on after their government service ended and tried to continue their activism on behalf of the poor. Maybe they would have had some small successes over the years. Most likely, they would have experienced far more failures and been forced to swallow a bitter dose of disillusionment.

I plucked Cameron and Meredith Taylor from the pages of Outside Agitators, fast-forwarded to the present, and made these two disappointed idealists my murder victims. Meredith, I learned for the first time, had a secret ambition to be a writer, and her final – unfinished – manuscript was titled (ta da!) Outside Agitators. In its pages, Captain Tom Bridger of the Mason County (VA) Sheriff’s Department discovers clues to the motive behind the murders.

Mrs. Lily Barker, the self-educated woman from Disturbing the Dead who believes she has “the sight” (that’s what Appalachian natives call the ability to see beyond the tangible world), wasn’t lifted from any earlier work of mine, but she was inspired by a minor character in Outside Agitators who was too colorful to discard. Mrs. Barker proved popular with readers, and a woman who attended one of my library events made me promise to bring her back, so she returns in Broken Places and also shows up in the book I’m currently writing.

Mason County, my invention, is similar to the mountain community in the original Outside Agitators, but it’s in southwestern Virginia rather than West Virginia, and even the coal companies have largely deserted it by now. In my work in progress, though, Tom will pay a visit to a mountaintop mining operation. Other writers may favor idyllic small communities, but I’d rather write about places where sudden gashes of ugliness mar the natural beauty and decades of lies and rivalries and betrayals simmer just under the surface, ready to erupt and bleed all over the present.

All those years I poured into Outside Agitators, with no end in sight and little hope of ever seeing it published, have paid off richly, and I suspect I’ll use still more chunks of it before I’ve exhausted its possibilities.

When I delete a passage from a work in progress, I’m careful to stash it in a file rather than throwing it out. There must be some reason I wrote it in the first place, and if it doesn’t seem to fit now, it might be just what I need to fill a hole in a future story.

A Mother's Writing Is Never Done

Toni L.P. Kelner

I have two daughters, and I’ve often thought that writing is one of the best possible jobs for a parent. I work at home, the hours are flexible, and now that my girls are older, I can even work once they come back from school.
But lately, I’ve come to realize an even bigger benefit. Writing is the perfect job for bugging the heck out of my kids.

Let’s look at some of the parental pluses to the writer lifestyle, organized into a bulleted list:

• There’s an endless supply of puns and bad jokes. I mean, I get to say things like “bulleted list” and then add, “Har! Bullets! Isn’t that perfect for a mystery writer!” Remarks like this are almost guaranteed to get an eyeball roll, and in some cases, even a groan. I get extra points when I make this kind of remark in front of my kids’ friends.

• I get to groan about how hard my job is. So when my eighth-grader complains about having to write a five-page paper over the course of a semester, I can drop a manuscript in her lap and tell her what my deadline is. Ditto for when one of her teachers insists on extra drafts or corrections--I go through many more drafts than most students, and copy editors are far more annoying than teachers. So she gets no sympathy from me, even though she really hates to accept that somebody else has a rougher time than she does.

• Staying at home looks wonderful from the outside. No matter how hard I actually work, all my daughters see is me hanging around in my nightgown as I chase them out the door into the wet, cold, or even snowy weather. It’s even better when I grin while I wave good-bye, or mention that I’m going to crawl back into bed for another hour as soon as they’re gone.

• My kids freak a little over the violence in my books, and even more over the sex scenes. Admittedly, my books are hardly the most violent ones on the shelf, and I don’t let the girls read that kind of book anyway, even if it is one of mine. But they do hear me discussing creative methods of murder, how long rigor mortis lasts, and great places to hide a body. I get some strange looks during those conversations, let me tell you. As for the sex, my Laura Fleming books were pretty light on that, too, but the protagonist in my new series is a single woman with an active sex life. Again, I won’t let my kids read the book, but you should have seen them wince when I told them why I won’t let them read Ton. No kid wants to admit her mother even knows about sex, let alone writes about it!

• Going to the bookstore makes them crazy. Not that they don’t love going to bookstores, mind you. We’re all book lovers around here. The part that drives them insane is my pointing to books and saying, “I know Donna Andrews. I did a panel with J. A. Konrath. I don’t know Mary Higgins Clark, but I did a panel with her daughter Carol.” I can even get a rise out of them by pointing and saying, “I’ve never met John Grisham.” The corollary is pointing a Harlan Coben book and saying, “I know you don’t remember, but he hugged you when you were just a baby.”

Admittedly, there are some downsides, like when my older daughter started to read Down Home Murder, and then didn’t finish it. Did she hate it? Did she lose it? What’s the problem? And it can be embarrassing when the other didn’t get an A on her English paper, especially since I’d read it over for her.

But overall, a writing parent is a happy parent. After all, these are only the everyday joys. Just wait until career day....

Toni L.P. Kelner is the author of the "Where are They Now" mysteries and the Laura Fleming series. Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, the second anthology she's co-edited with Charlaine Harris, recently debuted on the New York Times best seller list.

The Chipmunk and the Writer

Sandra Parshall


Sometimes I feel a lot like a chipmunk.

No physical resemblance, of course – I’m nowhere near that cute. But while photographing the chipmunks in our yard (great way to avoid writing), I’ve noticed some behavioral similarities.

We both spend much of our time cut off from the rest of the world, emerging periodically to blink at the sun and remind ourselves that there is an existence beyond our burrows. While the life’s work of a chipmunk is foraging for food to stock its larder and mine is foraging for words and thoughts to fill my books, we take much the same approach.

We both have to be selective. We can’t grab whatever happens to come along. We must examine all possibilities and choose something that will be worth our effort, something that will last. We’re both perfectionists.


Watching a chipmunk figure out what to do with a peanut I’ve offered him brings a jolt of self-recognition that makes me smile and groan at the same time. My “peanut” may be a sentence, a paragraph, a bit of backstory, a description, but the same trial-and-error method applies.

It has to go in here somewhere, but where will it fit best?


Ah ha. Right here.


Or maybe not...


I’ll see if it works better over here.


Nope. Back to the first spot. But does it really feel right there?


Oh, heck. It’s time to move on!


For the chipmunk, there’s always another peanut. For me, there’s always another rewrite.
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Boy Books and Girl Books

Elizabeth Zelvin

Not long ago I heard an eminent editor admit that in his publishing house, people refer without irony to “boy books” and “girl books.” Since I became active in the mystery community, I have heard many discussions of the fact or belief that, by and large, men will not read books, or at least novels, by women. That’s why many female writers conceal their gender behind initials, although like the initials in phone book listing, the use of initials in authorship has become a signal that the person thus identified is probably a woman.

Men may object to this generalization, which oversimplifies as generalizations always do. It might be illuminating to ask what books by women they read. Are they “boy books” written by women? Are they crossover books? Noir is very fashionable these days, and women as well as men are writing noir. Megan Abbott comes to mind—a woman who had already written a scholarly examination of the tough guy in American fiction before her first novel was published. Or how about women whose prose style is “tough” and would have been called “masculine” before the women’s movement? I think of SJ Rozan, a writer I admire greatly, of whom I like to say (when I can get away with it) that her prose is built like a brick s***house. Not a wasted word, not a dangling clause, not an adverb. It doesn’t hang together—it grips.

A hundred years ago, when I was a college English major, there were two kinds of writer, or rather, two prose styles: Hemingway and Henry James. Hemingway’s the guy who put the kibosh on polysyllabic words of Latin derivation and made action verbs king of the sentence. Back then, it was possible to say, “I don’t warm up to that Hemingway style. I don’t know that I want to write that way.” I know, because I said it, and no one lynched me. Today, that choice has become an absolute. I heard the highly respected Stephen King tell an audience how to be a writer the year he was made a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America: “Read, read, read. Write, write, write. And lose the adverbs.”

I confess I have mixed feelings about abolishing a whole part of speech, maybe a quarter of the English language, by fiat. Actually, adverbs aren’t lost. They have migrated to the other side of the aisle, where the girl books sit. I learned this from a prolific and talented short story writer named Tom Sweeney. He’s been published in Ellery Queen and SF magazines and also in Woman’s World, which I’ve heard is a tough market to crack and pays well. Tom told me Woman’s World wants adverbial writing. When he writes for that particular market, he makes sure he puts those adverbs in.

Am I saying women don’t write nice tight sentences with action verbs? No, of course not. And I can delete an adverb with the best of them. I think it’s subject matter, focus, and sensibility, to use an old-fashioned word, rather than prose style that separate the boy books from the girl books.

I’ve written before about relational psychology—the theoretical approach that explains how and why men mature through separation and women through connection. Separation and autonomy—the tough-guy loner PI—boy books. Connection and relationship—mysteries, and not just cozies—girl books. Another psychological model uses the gender-related concepts of instrumental and expressive traits. Instrumentality is about how stuff works. Expressiveness is about how people feel. Instrumental—technothrillers—boy books. Expressive—romances, sure, but also character-driven mysteries—girl books.

Am I exaggerating? Still oversimplifying? Of course. But like the eminent editor, I’m making the point that there are boy books and girl books. Let’s tackle the distinction from another angle. Let’s look at the Great American Novel. Suppose we lived in a less patriarchal society. Suppose we had always acknowledged that there are boy books and girl books that have to be judged separately on their merits within their own categories, the same way there’s a male winner and a female winner in the New York Marathon. Here are my picks. Great American Novel, boy book division: Huckleberry Finn. Great American Novel, girl book division: Little Women.

How many men have read this wonderful book? Its author created characters so real that it’s still in print almost 140 years after publication, still read for pleasure—and with pleasure—by millions of readers, and still capable of moving readers to tears on an umpteenth rereading, as well as inspiring some of us to become writers like its protagonist. My husband has. I’m proud to say he’s read almost all of Louisa May Alcott, motivated by an interest in the vivid and accessible picture of life in 19th century New England in the context of Transcendentalism, whose theorists included Emerson, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father. He (my husband, not Bronson Alcott) also wanted to know what was in those battered books that I was crying over every time I read them. I’d like to hear from any other man who has.

It helps to be a little crazy...

Sandra Parshall

Have you ever seen a farmer standing next to the broccoli in a supermarket, extolling the virtues of his product to shoppers and begging them to purchase a stalk or two?

It’s an odd concept, but is it any weirder than seeing a writer in a bookstore, trying to sell her books one copy at a time?

I can’t think of any other profession that requires so much direct salesmanship from the person who creates an item for public consumption. Sure, actors and directors go on TV and give print interviews to promote new movies, but they don’t stand outside theaters and try to persuade passersby to purchase tickets. Promoting the movie is primarily the job of the production company that packages it and gets it into theaters. When a book is published, though, the burden of selling it shifts to the writer, usually at the writer’s expense. If the book tanks, it’s the author’s fault.

Writing books is a strange pursuit. You might complete half a dozen or more novels before you actually sell one. When you do finally make that breakthrough, the odds are you’ll receive a small advance against royalties, no more than a few thousand dollars in compensation for the year or more that went into the writing. You won’t receive another payment until your book has earned back the advance and begun to make a profit – if it ever does.

Most publishers expect writers to do bookstore signings and maintain a web site, at a minimum. Writing a blog and creating an “internet presence” on sites like MySpace is also rapidly becoming a requirement. Genre writers are urged to travel to conferences – which can cost $1,000 or more each when you add in transportation, lodging, and meals – to meet fans and spread the word about their books. Ironically, only authors who are paid large advances receive financial help with promotion from their publishers, and even then only the cost of a book tour will be covered. The unknown writer with a small advance usually must take on the full expense of promotion. That small advance rapidly vanishes, and the writer may soon find herself paying for the privilege of being published. Promotion also eats into the time that an author would otherwise devote to writing, and that makes it harder to finish the next book on schedule.

Every time a survey of writers’ incomes is conducted, only a fraction of novelists report that they earn enough from their books to live on. Small wonder, then, so many work at salaried jobs to pay the bills or do various kinds of journalism or business writing to generate income. It’s not at all unusual for a novelist to work a day job, write at night and on weekends, somehow fit in book signings and conferences, write a blog, and maintain a web site with frequent additions of fresh material. Oh, and family life fits in there somewhere too.

So why would anybody want to write a novel? The most common answer authors give is, “I write because I can’t not write.” It’s a compulsion and an obsession. It’s a joyous act of self-expression. It’s a journey of imagination that takes you away from the mundane world for a few hours at a time. It’s a chance to assert control over events, to make a story come out exactly the way you want it to.

If writing is such a personal thing, why do we go through the ego-wrecking process of trying to get our work published, then trying to sell it to the public? Why can’t the writing be its own reward? I wish it could be, and I wish I fully understood why it isn’t. All I know is that a writer needs readers to make the last link in the creative circle. A story that is never read by anyone other than its author is incomplete. It’s a bird singing in an empty forest.

And so we go on writing, hoping that some stranger in a publishing company will like our work enough to invest in it, praying that it will find readers, knowing the financial rewards are likely to be meager. We write because we must, and for those hours when we’re alone with our evolving stories and characters, that is reason enough.

How being a shrink is like writing a mystery

Elizabeth Zelvin

I’m at a stage in life when about half my friends are reaching retirement age—specifically, those who have been doing the same thing, such as teaching or working for the government, for thirty years or more. Having managed to reinvent myself several times over the course of my adult life, I’m farther from retirement than ever. And that’s okay.

Each new manifestation of who I am and what I do has in some way built on the choices that I’ve made in the past. Without going into all the ideologies and isms I’ve traveled through, or the lifestyle choices and personal roles, I can say that the overall movement has been from writer to therapist to writer. Along the way, I got sidetracked into various publishing jobs in the mistaken belief that they would help me be a writer. (Okay, they did make me a demon editor, which helps.) Similarly, I’ve performed various functions as a social worker and administrator that did not exactly add up to being a therapist. But the heart of what I’ve wanted to do has remained the same.

Writer SJ Rozan talks about the mystery (or crime fiction in general) as one of the great ur-stories in our culture. It is a story of righting wrongs and seeing justice done, and that is why we want to hear it over and over, says Rozan. If publishers and film and movie makers won’t give us good stories, we (the reading public, the media consumer) will take bad stories, so great is our hunger to see things made better, villains caught, safety restored, unfairness exposed and punished, and everything put back in place. We’d like law and order in real life, but too often we’re offered only a tarnished simulacrum. So we’ll take it however we can get it: in the stories we tell and hear.

Therapy is also about righting wrongs. It can’t enforce the law or get wrongdoers, in most cases, to acknowledge and correct their faults. Therapy doesn’t work that way. But to those hurt by the acts and deficiencies of others, it can provide corrective experiences. Those who’ve been rejected and abandoned can experience unconditional love. Those who have repeatedly chosen abusive partners can learn to select and sustain healthy relationships. Those who have internalized harsh parental criticism can come to accept and nurture themselves. It may not sound like an exact analogy for investigating, discovering whodunit, and putting the culprit in the slammer. But in a way, it’s close.

I’ve found that what I do as a therapist—listening—is a lot like what I do (fate and the publishing industry willing) as a writer—being heard. EM Forster’s famous tag, “Only connect,” sums it up for me. In both roles, I am seeking the human connection. I am trying to make contact with another human being, whether it is the client who pours out his or her soul without knowing much about me beyond my capacity for empathy and compassion, or the reader to whom I pour out my own soul and the fruits of my imagination without knowing any more of him or her than their willingness to open my book.

Being a therapist, like being a writer—and a reader—is a way of opening the door to a secret garden. One of the greatest rewards in both is the closeup view I get of other people’s lives. Both legitimate my elephant’s-child curiosity about others’ innermost feelings, passions, and motivations. When I write fiction, I even get to make the other people up, so that I can explore all the possibilities my imagination can reach. At the same time, I make myself vulnerable to every reader who sees my work. That is both scary and exciting. Back in my poetry days, in a poem called “Secrets of the Therapeutic Relationship,” I wrote:

between therapist and client
more tender intimacies are shared
than if we two lay touching on a bed

The same is true of writers and their readers.

Reviewers/Readers . . . what do they mean to this writer?

By Lonnie Cruse



Reviews...What do they mean? Readers, how important are they?


Fifty-Seven Heaven is getting great reviews, which will certainly help promote my book when Five Star releases it on December 12th for readers to buy. (Shriek, am I ready? Have I covered all my bases? Deep breath, deep breath.) The book recently got positive reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, which was a huge thrill. The latest review on Books N Bytes is at:



http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/cruse_lonnie.html



Scroll down to Pat Reid's name and click for the great review. Another great review is due out December 10th at: http://www.romrevtoday.com/



So, aside from me bragging and blatently self promoting (BSPing), what does this mean to an author? Well, for me, I sit in my home office most days, by myself, and plunk out my story, wondering if anyone will ever want to read it. Then I do the first revision, and often I'm surprised to read something I don't remember writing. Sometimes I'm even surprised at how much I love it. Then more revision.



Then I send it to my critique group. Sometimes they're devided on an issue, which means I have to choose which of their suggestions to follow. Of course, I'm prone to take the suggestion closest to my thoughts. Hehe. But if all of them are puzzled by something I've written, (which was perfectly clear to me, so what's the problem???) I obviously have to clarrify that issue for the reader. If all of my critiquers hate something, I have to change it. Sigh. And if all of them love it, I take a bow before my moniter. Ego, don'tcha know.



Then comes more revision. Then I send it to friends who aren't writers or critiquers but who catch errors the group missed, and I missed. And I fix those. And take more suggestions. By this time I'm becoming thoroughly sick of the story. Who would ever want to buy it? Or read it? OR reivew it? And there is likely another story floating around in my head that I want to write because, did I mention, by now I'm sick of the story?



Then I send it to the editor who finds errors the other dozens of readers--not to mention me--missed. Then the publisher makes advanced reader copies and sends them out to reviewers. Now the REAL fun begins. Will they love it? Hate it? I chew my nails and wait.



The reviews come in and I'm (a) shocked that they like it and (b) wondering if anyone will review/buy/read/like the next book I'm working on. Circles within circles. Around and around.



Beyond all that there are times like right now, at the busy holiday season, when I'm trying to find the right gifts, spend time with family, host a party or two, wrap, bake, cook, get some sleep, and writing time is scarce. Think hen's teeth. Family time is hard to come by, with everyone inviting everyone else over. So we're all busy, scrambling to get it all done. Sigh. And I'm wondering if I should go back to the simpler time when my time was my own, not my computer's.



Why do I write mysteries? Who will want to read them? Sitting alone at the computer, day after day, is tough. Time away from family life is tough. Getting critiques is tough. Revising is tough. Then I get a positive review, and I'm back at the computer, writing and wondering. Is it all worth it?



Ummm, yeah, it is. It's worth it when reviewers tell others they liked it. Or even when they don't. Because chances are, others will still be curious enough to read it. And then they write me to say they loved it. Which means they understood what I was struggling to say. They entered my world and spent time there with me. So I wasn't really alone. Thanks, reviewers AND readers. And please, keep reading!

Write, write, write...and smell the roses

Valerie Wolzien (Guest Blogger)

The best advice you can give a writer is write every day. It’s great advice, but sometimes, I think, you need to stop and smell the roses…

Somewhere out there are writers who, when they sit down to type page one, already know what will be on the final page of their manuscript. Many spend months making detailed plot outlines. They have notebooks (or computer files) crammed with descriptions of characters: everything from age and hair color to preferred breakfast food. They research locations and topics before they start writing and they don’t lose their notes only to discover them long after the complete manuscript is safely in their publisher’s hands. These paragons may work in the modern day equivalent of an ivory tower: a table at Starbucks, a private corner in the local library, or just a room of their own where they can close the door, positive no one will interrupt. Many claim that they write every day and they never, ever get up from their desk without completing a few thousand words.

Not me. I think of myself as a seat of my pants sort of writer. When the only thing on the page – or screen – is Chapter One, I rarely know more than who my main characters are (when you write series mysteries, that’s one thing you always know), who will die, and what the setting/season/situation will be.
And it’s fun to write the way I do. Since I don’t know how my characters will develop they frequently surprise me. Since I don’t know what I’m going to need to know when I begin, I can justify taking off to do a little research from time to time. I stay interested in my plot and I hope that means future readers will as well.

On the other hand… characters sometimes develop in directions that don’t fit in with the plot. I pick a murderer and then discover half way through the manuscript that I like him or her too much to make that character the killer. And sometimes I get stuck. Really stuck.

And if that happens to you, I’m going to suggest something slightly radical. Stop writing. Get up and go smell the roses. Or do whatever smelling the roses is in your life. Bake a cake. Take the dog for a long walk in the woods. Pull out those weeds strangling your impatients. Soak in a warm bubble bath. Get a pedicure. Find a road you don’t know well and go for a drive. But whatever you do, do it alone. This is not the time to call a friend and hit the mall. You need to clear your mind, not provide a social distraction. Your writing may be important to your family, but don’t ask them for tea and sympathy. This is time for you and you alone – time to let your subconscious do a bit of the work.

And sometime you’ll have an “ah ha” moment. The answer to your problem will appear almost miraculously. Sometimes. And it if doesn’t?

Sit back down in that chair and write, write, write.

Valerie Wolzien is author of the Susan Henshaw mysteries and the Josie Pigeon series.

The Joy of Diction Begins Early

by Julia Buckley



I blogged at Mysterious Musings yesterday about my son's gift for writing. What I have realized recently is that, like me, both of my boys take a certain joy in words and the way that they can express their individuality through the language that they choose.

Here's a recent example. I overheard my seventh grader telling his friend that a boy in his science class had asked him (my son) for the answers. Ian had responded that he most certainly would not give his. I, nosy mother that I am, interrupted here with my concern that a boy would ask for the answers. Ian shrugged dismissively. "He's just annoying, Mom. He's an oily turd." And then, after some thought, he added, "He's a moist foot." I happen to know the boy in question is none of these, but I was impressed with my son's precise diction--with his attempts to convey a feeling with specific words.

My younger son impressed me equally recently with his description of a bright night sky: "Mom, look! The moon looks like a toenail clipping." And it did look like that--just like that. They have the instinctive desire to avoid cliche descriptions and go right for the honest response, which is often a surprise.

Today both boys were playing Playstation, despite the fact that it was beautiful outside for the first time in ages. I expressed displeasure with their indoor game, and immediately my nine-year-old began to complain. "We're almost finished with this level," he said indignantly. "Why would we stop when we've almost beaten the game?"

Ian, more savvy in the politics of manipulation, said, "Graham, don't! If you want to finish playing we must appease the Mom-god, not anger her."

That's my eldest son in a nutshell. Later he made up an "appeasing the Mom-god" dance, which involved some solo hopping and then some collaboration with his beagle, who is ever willing to jump.

Underneath my disdain for their sass, however, is a joyful realization that they are young poets--that they will use their words to describe their worlds, to understand themselves, to control their destinies to the extent that they can be controlled.

They are writers at heart, and I can only be proud.

Only So Many Stories: The Seven Original Plots

Elizabeth Zelvin

I first learned that there are only seven original plots
by reading Emily of New Moon, my favorite book as a child. I found the text of L.M. Montgomery’s 1923 classic about the other little orphan girl on Prince Edward Island on the Internet at Project Gutenberg of Australia, which states its “eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia.” So I can cite the memorable passage:

“I’m in a scrape and I’ve been in it all summer. You see”—Emily was very sober—“I am a poetess.”

“Holy Mike! That is serious. I don’t know if I can do much for you. How long have you been that way?”

“Are you making fun of me?” asked Emily gravely.

Father Cassidy swallowed something besides plum cake.

“The saints forbid!...Have another slice av cake and tell me all about it.”

“It’s like this—I’m writing an epic….My epic,” said Emily, diligently devouring plum cake, “is about a very beautiful high-born girl who was stolen away from her real parents when she was a baby and brought up in a woodcutter’s hut.”

“One av the seven original plots in the world,” murmured Father Cassidy.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just a bad habit av thinking aloud. Go on.”

“She had a lover of high degree but his family did not want him to marry her because she was only a woodcutter’s daughter—”

“Another av the seven plots—excuse me.”

“—so they sent him away to the Holy Land on a crusade and word came back that he was killed and then Editha—her name was Editha—went into a convent—”

Emily paused for a bite of plum cake and Father Cassidy took up the strain.

“And now her lover comes back very much alive, though covered with Paynim scars, and the secret av her birth is discovered through the dying confession av the old nurse and the birthmark on her arm.”

“How did you know?” gasped Emily in amazement.

“Oh, I guessed it—I’m a good guesser.”

Is that priceless or what? I’ve quoted as little as I could bear to. Having been imprinted on Father Cassidy’s list, but not having read it for many years, I’ve always assumed the list of seven ran something like this:
. Boy meets girl
.The lost heir
.The disguised hero or role reversal
.The hero’s quest (with subsets that include David and Goliath, Hero saves world, and Disney’s favorite, The lost mother)
.Coming of age (or is that another subset of The hero’s quest too?)
and let’s round out the list with two plots essential to mystery writers:
.Boy murders girl
.Sleuth solves crime

When I consulted the Internet, I found that not everybody’s list of seven is the same as everybody else’s. On several sites, I found (with and without attribution), this very different list. The reference is Foster Harris, William. The Basic Patterns of Plot. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.

.[wo]man vs nature
.[wo]man vs man
.[wo]man vs. the environment
.[wo]man vs. machines/technology
.[wo]man vs the supernatural
.[wo]man vs. self
.[wo]man vs God/religion

Yet another seven are proposed by Christopher Booker in The Seven Basic Plots. London/NY: Continuum, 2005.

.Overcoming the monster
.Rags to riches
.The quest
.Voyage and return
.Comedy
.Tragedy
.Rebirth

And I can’t resist quoting a passage from a review of Booker’s book by Adam Mars-Jones in The Observer, Sunday, November 21, 2004. It’s almost as delicious as Emily’s conversation with Father Cassidy.

Christopher Booker’s hefty tome of cultural archaeology is peculiar, repetitive, near-barmy, and occasionally rather good. He takes the commonplace idea that there are only so many stories in the world and follows it very far indeed. Obsession is almost too small a word to describe an enterprise which has consumed 34 years and required a reading list more or less synonymous with the history of literature.

Hmm, I wonder if Mr. Booker blogs.

Even though these ways of conceiving the basic plot are not identical, they are certainly interrelated. On a structural level, the writer is unlikely to break entirely new ground, at least without abandoning plot altogether. Our plots can’t possibly be original. And that explains what’s wrong with all those benighted friends and strangers who tell us they have a marvelous idea for a book and they bet we’d love to write it. The knack of telling a good story is not the plot itself. It’s in how we tell the story: how we paint the scene and how we populate it, what our characters get up to and what they say in the course of meeting and murdering each other, pursuing the quest, solving the crime, and so on.

After a recent panel, a young man came up to me and expressed concern because the brief description of Death Will Get You Sober on my promotional bookmark resembled the novel he’s working on: his protagonist is a drug addict who goes into treatment, somebody is murdered, etc. (Now where does “Boy gets clean and sober” fit in? The hero’s quest? Man vs self? Coming of age—belatedly?) As I assured him, neither of us need worry. I don’t need to read his work to know he can’t possibly write just like me.

.

The Gift of "Oops!"

Elizabeth Zelvin

As a lifelong writer and a psychotherapist with many years experience, I found the perfect way to practice my profession a number of years ago: “seeing” clients online via chat and email on my website at LZcybershrink.com. One thing led to another, and I found myself a member of several online communities of mental health professionals from around the world. My home-based career allowed me time to write the murder mystery I had been carrying around in my head for quite a while. Once I had completed the first draft of Death Will Get You Sober, I discovered the online communities of writers and mystery lovers who would help me hone my craft and market my manuscript. By the time I got an offer from a publisher, I knew the Internet would be crucial to my efforts to promote my book—essential to my dream of continuing to write and publish further books in the series.

So now I’m blogging with Poe’s Deadly Daughters, accumulating Friends on MySpace, hanging out on CrimeSpace, launching my second website, elizabethzelvin.com—and still treating clients by chat and email, IMing with potential clients on LZcybershrink.com, training other clinicians in online practice skills in my group chat room, sharing cases with colleagues in a message board format, and gabbing away on e-lists with my mental health peers as well as the mystery communities of Sisters in Crime, Guppies, Mystery Writers of America, DorothyL, and Murder Must Advertise.

In short, I talk to an awful lot of people every day from the comfort of my seat at the keyboard. Sometimes I even multitask. So with all this cybercommunication going on, how do I keep from putting my virtual foot in my mouth? Without claiming a perfect record, I do pretty well thanks to a couple of features of texting: one, the time delay that allows me to delete before sending if I think better of what I’ve just typed; and two, the magic word “Oops!”

As a therapist, I am committed to the principle that it’s okay to make a mistake. It’s one of the tenets of emotional health. As a neurotic like everybody else, I’m embarrassed and mad at myself when I goof in any way. And as one of many who struggle with codependency, I’m devastated when I say the wrong thing. I hate to hurt anybody’s feelings. Nor do I enjoy having anyone mad at me. In real life, when we say something hasty or tactless, we don’t always get a chance to backpedal or apologize. But on the Internet, the adolescent geniuses who I assume (correct me if I’m wrong) dreamed up the smileys and emoticons, acronyms and buzz words that we use online have handed us a simple way to take back what we wish we hadn’t said.

Take the classic gaffe of inadvertently putting the letter in the wrong envelope: the guy who mails his boss the kvetching meant for a sympathetic buddy, the woman who sends her husband the steamy missive meant for a lover. Once the damage is done, the situation might be hard to retrieve. But if I send an email thanking the agent who’s rejected me for requesting the full manuscript—or get my time zones mixed up and schedule an appointment for a client’s 3:00 AM—it’s simply mended: I send a follow-up email with “Oops!” as the subject line. In fact, if I catch my error immediately, they may see it and know it’s a mistake before they even read the first email. The body of the “Oops!” email, of course, corrects the error and apologizes or explains as needed.

I imagine almost everyone has experienced a situation in which the ability to say “Oops!” saved the day. Or am I the only one? If so—oops!

Alone and Together with the Creative Process

Elizabeth Zelvin

I write alone. When I’m at the computer, I enter a world in which any interruption is an intrusion. If I have a door to close, I’ll close it. When I had a day job in which I had to write and also interact with clients and staff, this became a problem. The appropriate message to send these people was: “My door is always open.” But if my door was open, I couldn’t concentrate. Short term solution: I closed the door after sticking up a sign that said: “My door is figuratively open.” Long term solution: I quit the day job.

The logistics of writing are a little more complicated for me these days. I have two wonderful work spaces, but no doors. In my apartment in the city, there’s what could be called a computer corner in the living room. Tucked away behind the desktop, I’m practically invisible. It’s usually okay when my husband passes through. Occasionally he forgets and tries to start a conversation while I’m deep in my manuscript. But he’s very good about going away if I hold up a “Stop!” palm like a traffic cop. And his day job gives me plenty of alone time five days a week.

In the country, a little house on the East End of Long Island, my computer is also set up in the living room. But rather than looking into the room, I look over the top of my laptop monitor into the garden. The view includes constant activity at the bird feeders, my wonderful flowers—more glorious than ever since I got a deer fence for my last birthday—and wildlife that includes rabbits (loved or hated depending on what they’re nibbling on) and some very smart squirrels (though not smart enough to beat the baffles on the bird feeders). Once in a while I even get a fox, a possum, an owl, or a hawk. The key to solitude here is that my husband is a city boy who hates the country. (I had great fun giving this trait to one of my characters in a future book.) He’s relieved when I say, “It’s okay if you don’t come out this weekend. I’m writing.”

At a friend’s book launch recently, I heard the best answer yet to why—or how the hell—some writers write at Starbucks. She said, “At home, the phone rings, people try to talk to me, the mail comes—there are always distractions. At Starbucks, no one bothers me. I’m surrounded by all that wonderful energy, yet I can plunge into my own little world.” I guess the world is divided into two kinds of writers, those who talk about wonderful energy and those who say, “Leave me alone!” (This particular friend comes from Kansas and writes upbeat spiritual self-help books. I come from Queens and write murders. Hmmm.)

The middle ground between solitary writing and writing in a crowd is collaboration. I’ve heard quite a few mystery writing teams talk about writing together—PJ Parrish, Maan Meyers, Charles Todd, Evelyn David—and I’m always impressed. The chemistry of successful collaboration is a gift and a mystery, a lot like falling in love. On the other hand, I have seen that chemistry created in lab conditions, not as a fiction writer or poet (does anybody ever collaborate on a poem?), but as a songwriter. I’ve attended several workshops with legendary singer/songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who believes that the collaborative process both stimulates and mimics the internal creative process. As he memorably put it once, the voices that say, “Wow, that’s brilliant!” and “No, that’s stupid!” can come from the group or the inside of your head. In his workshops, he proves it by throwing together groups of four or five total strangers on Monday and asking them to write a song that’s ready to perform by Thursday. Talk about a creative challenge! But it works, though not without some acrimony and occasional tears. After going through that process five times, I appreciate the inside of my head.

Between Annette and Marty

Annette and Marty Meyers Guest Bloggers)

Annette Meyers is the author of the popular Smith and Wetzon mystery series. Martin Meyers started his writing career with the Patrick Hardy series in the 1970s. Together, as Maan Meyers, they have written a series of historical mysteries, known collectively as The Dutchman, set in 17th, 18th, and 19th century New York. Annette is a former president of Sisters in Crime.

Marty: So. What’s the topic?
Annette: How we write.
Marty: Okay. Separately or together?
Annette: Separately. Everyone knows how we write together.
Marty: Yeah, with celestial joy.
Annette: More like two great egos fighting for supremacy. But really, writing for me is looking for, or happening upon, something that tweaks my interest.
Marty: I didn’t know that. For me, it’s the money.
Annette: What a joke.
Marty: I have two approaches: A story, a plot, a hook. The other is a character who I fall in love with. Excuse me. -With whom I fall in love.- The best is a combination of both.
Annette: That’s three approaches. And it’s a character that, not who or whom.
Marty: Picky, picky, picky. To me that character is already a human being at that point. Who. Since my first training was as an actor, I don’t know if I work the way everybody else does. For me, if I have the character and know what the story is about, I let the characters loose and let them talk. And act.
Annette: But you sit down and write every day, even when you have no idea what you’re going to work on. You look at a blank scene. I have to have what I call that divine inspiration to get started.
Marty: It’s important to know the time of day you’re most productive. That’s the time you should write. Also, I have to have no distractions. Answering the phone is forbidden. Stopping to eat is okay.
Annette: But you write with music playing from a CD or the radio. I can’t tolerate any noise at all when I’m writing. But I can answer the telephone. I must. It’s obsessive. But whoever is calling me is not going to get my full attention. Of course there are some people who call, ask if you’re writing, you say yes and they keep on talking.
Marty: You haven’t been paying attention –
Annette: I’m writing.
Marty: Very funny. You haven’t been paying attention. It depends upon the project. When I wrote “Snake Rag,” I needed music in my head. What I’m working on now does not.
Annette: So you’re working on something new?
Marty: Actually, I’m working on five things that are new. When I figure out which one is the most interesting, or important, all my energy will go into that one. I take that back. The first book I ever had published and which led to a five book series for Popular Library in the seventies starred an accidental P.I. named Patrick Hardy. That’s the idea I’m working on over all the others. It occurred to me that I’d like to know what Pat Hardy is doing today when he’s all these years older. What about you?
Annette: I’m working on the copyedit of a short story called “Not Just the Facts” that I wrote for the anthology Sisters on the Case, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sisters in Crime and featuring stories by the current and former presidents. It’s due out from NAL’s new mystery imprint Obsidian in October.
Timer goes off.
Marty: Time to stop.
Annette: You’re going to work?
Marty: No. Lunch.

Do Blondes Have More Fans?

Darlene Ryan (Guest Blogger)

Once upon a time, in a past life, I was a late night disk jockey. Back in the early 80s, tuned in to the right place on the dial, you would have heard my semi-sexy voice in between songs from the Rolling Stones and Air Supply. I even had my own fan club of sorts. Yes, my fans were mostly guys. Yes, most of them had a thing for my voice and definite ideas about how I looked. And they were almost always disappointed when they finally saw me in person. You see, it seems that on the radio, I sounded like a tall blonde. That's right, blonde. And, apparently, I also sounded… endowed.

In reality I'm a short brunette and my best friend calls me “chest-ly challenged”. Still, it never failed. We'd be out doing a public appearance, and at least one man would come up to me and say, “But I thought you were blonde,” in a voice that was a mix of annoyance and disappointment. And he’d never be looking at my face when he said it.

I learned a lot of things working in radio. I learned an amazing number of swear words. I saw how men act and think when it comes to women. (I worked with seven guys.) I even learned a few things about music. I could give you a list of one-hit wonders. I could tell you more than you probably want to know about the Rolling Stones. And I learned that you're never going to make everyone happy. Some days you're not going to make anyone happy. (Not everyone likes Air Supply.)

The same thing applies to writing, I’ve discovered. You can't write a book that's going to make everyone happy. In fact, I don't think you should try. But there are a few things I think a writer does owe her readers--her fans:

1. A well constructed book. That means proper spelling, good punctuation, and a story that has a beginning, middle, and end.

2. A story that respects its genre. Romances have happy endings. Murder mysteries have bodies and killers. No, that doesn't mean Cinderella has to marry a prince. She can marry the stable boy as long as she's happy in the end. And that killer? Maybe he's performing a public service. He doesn’t have to end up dead or in prison.

3. No lame tricks to save the day. No “deus ex machina.” No what I like to call, “God in a helicopter.” The heroine can’t suddenly get her memory back, remember she was a contortionist in the circus and turn herself into a human pretzel to get out of the ropes. Thirty-two chapters later, the detective can't suddenly get the significance of the clue on page 15, but not tell anyone.

4. A story that makes sense. In real life people do things for stupid reasons or no reasons at all. But you’d better come up with credible motivation if you want someone to stick around for three hundred pages of your book. And it doesn't really matter if you tell your story from one point of view or six different points of view, as long as readers know whose head they're in.

On the other side, there are a few things we don't owe our fans:

1. A prequel, a sequel, or the next book in a series. (Yes, I know a lot of editors aren't going to agree with me. And by the way, if Tim Cockey is reading this, this doesn't apply to you. Come on, would it be that hard to write one more Hitchcock Sewell novel?)

2. Another mystery. (Or romance, or thriller, or what ever.) You do owe readers your best work, but you don't owe them the same work every time.

3. Another book at all. Yes, I know all about building a career and a reader base. But maybe you want to try a screenplay or poetry or a picture book.

Write the book that excites you. Tell the story you want to tell. Give your readers a good book, your best book. Blonde hair and big endowments are strictly optional.

Darlene Ryan is the author of Rules for Life and Saving Grace.

Interview with Julia Spencer-Fleming

Sandra Parshall

Julia Spencer-Fleming began her career with In the Bleak Midwinter, which was published after winning the St. Martin’s Press contest for best first mystery novel and went on to win a string of major awards. Julia’s series about the Rev. Clare Fergusson and Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne, who solve mysteries together in Millers Kill, NY, while struggling with their forbidden love for one another, has grown in popularity with each entry. Her fifth book, All Mortal Flesh, is a current Agatha Award nominee for Best Novel.

Congratulations on your latest award nomination. You've had so many nominations and wins -- does it ever get old? Are you blase about it now?

Trust me, having readers, critics or fellow writers say they like your work never gets old. Nor does it make me blase--I assure you, I'll be as nervous as anyone else at the Agathas Banquet at Malice Domestic. What those past nominations or wins do give me is perspective--I know if I win, I'm not going to wake up the next day any richer, wiser or more beloved, and I know if I lose, I haven't lost any of the support of my readers, my friends, and my publishing company. And I know that either way, I'll be in the bar afterwards!

What changes have you seen in your writing over the years, and what aspects of craft have you consciously worked to improve?

With each book, I find I'm more and more letting go of rules and trusting in my own voice, my own choices about language and structure. In In the Bleak Midwinter, for example, I bent over backwards to ensure no adverb ever got past my keyboard, because I knew the rule is to convey everything through the dialogue and through active verbs. I've loosened up on that. I trust myself now to use adverbs for color and clarification, not as a crutch for lazy writing.

When I started, I worked very hard to improve my scene setting. Members of my writer's group told me my characters seemed to be talking in a gray fog somewhere! Consciously addressing that weakness obviously helped--critics have frequently commented on my vivid sense of place. Now, I'm working on paring my descriptions down, while still giving readers a clear image of the setting. I've been rereading Lee Child's work to help me with this--Lee is a master at giving you just enough to make the setting come to life,without throwing in a single extraneous detail. I'm trying to figure out how he does it. I suspect, like most of writing, it's practice, practice, practice.

What writers have influenced you most?

Margaret Maron, Archer Mayor and Sharyn McCrumb for their regional settings. Lawrence Block, Steve Hamilton, and Elmore Leonard for language and dialogue (although I'll never manage to be as spare as they are). Outside the genre, Lois McMaster Bujold, Joanna Trollope, Jodi Picoult--women who create the perfect reading experience for me.

Everyone who has read All Mortal Flesh is dying to know how you'll get Clare and Russ through the situation you set up at the end of the book. Can you give us even a tiny hint of what's to come for these two?

Boy, do I wish St. Martin's had put a burst on the cover of All Mortal Flesh: NOT THE LAST BOOK! It came out last October and I'm still getting four or five emails a day asking me if this is the end of Russ and Clare. No. It's not. I'm finishing up the sixth book, (very) tentatively titled When A Stranger. (Or maybe A Stranger Wandering. Or Now the Silence. Or In Mercy Broken.) It opens a few weeks after the end of All Mortal Flesh and takes us through a whole year in Millers Kill, NY. We get to see the Van Alstyne family expanding their dairy farm (with the help of illegal migrant workers), how Clare's life and ministry are affected by her decision to join the National Guard, and we're introduced to the MKPD's first-ever female officer. And of course, there's lots more Russ and Clare, as they struggle to come back from the terrible events of All Mortal Flesh.

You've reached the stage where a lot of writers try stand-alone novels. Do you have plans for one (or more)?

Definitely. I'm committed to a seventh Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne book, and then I'd like to turn my hand to a project I've been researching on and off for a few years. In 2002, Maine closed its 178-year-old state prison in Thomaston. Secretly, over the course of a few nights, every maximum security prisoner in the state was transferred by bus to the new SuperMax facility in the neighboring town of Warren. In February. When Maine gets some of its worst winter weather. I started thinking: what if one of the terrible ice storms we sometimes see blew in suddenly? What if the roads iced over, the power lines came down, the state troopers' cars and the busses went skidding off the narrow county highway? What if the last load of men and a handful of civilian observers were trapped together in an unlit, unheated, unsecured antiquity of a prison?

I can't wait to dive into that and see what happens. I also have other ideas, including a possible series featuring a sort of "anti-Clare Fergusson"--an Episcopal priest who's so burned out by 20+ years of ministering that she retires to what she hopes will be a hermit-like existence on a Maine island. And I'd love to do something lighter and more romantic, set in Alabama, where my father's side of the family is from.

Visit Julia's web site at www.juliaspencerfleming.com.

Tied Up in Research

Darlene Ryan (Guest Blogger)

I hate research. I don't mean the kind that involves curling up with a stack of books for the afternoon. I mean the kind of research that involves me doing something. That kind of research never quite works out for me. A couple of weeks ago I was trying to solve an ongoing problem with my WIP. I had my main character tied to a chair. Would she be able to throw herself sideways? Could she do it without hitting her head? There was no way I could figure out the problem on paper. That meant.... (gag, gag) research.

"Honey, could you tie me up later?” I asked my husband.

"What will you be wearing?" Mr. Romantic asked with a leer. "Will there be whipped cream involved?"

Men.

I went out to the shed to look for rope. There was none. There were more bicycles than we have people in the house, as well as four rakes—which is very strange because there are never any rakes when it’s time to gather up the leaves every fall. Then I remembered, when I'd moved a chair for my mom I'd had to tie the trunk up with a plastic skipping rope, because we had nothing else.

So where was all the rope? There had been a length of white nylon rope hanging up by the snow scoop. Then I remembered I’d kind of set that on fire. (For future reference, it's not a good idea to try to melt the end of a fraying piece of rope if it may have been at one time tied to the handle of a gas can.)

We’d had some yellow rope. Where was that? Oh right, that had ended up all unraveled when I cut a piece to tie to the sled because I wasn't going to try that melt the end of the rope with a match trick again. No sirree.

At one time we did actually have some “real” rope. Hemp. Cotton. Sisal. I didn't know what it had been made of. It was the kind of rope you use to practice tying knots when you’re learning about sailing, when what you’d really rather be doing is planning how you’re going to sail to the Bahamas, live on the boat and write a best-seller a year. Oh yeah. I'd used that rope to tie up a couple of boxes of books before the school yard sale last year--with perfect reef knots, by the way.

Okay, so I couldn't get tied up until I got some rope. It was off to the big-box hardware store. At the hardware store there was an entire aisle of rope and chain, all on big cardboard and metal rolls. A nice young man with a pierced lower lip was happy to cut me a length. What did I want? And how much?

What did I want? I wanted rope. Who knew there were so many kinds of rope? I looked up and down the aisle as though I were contemplating my options.

"What do you need the rope for?" Pierced-lip asked.

You see, this is why I hate research. I can’t tell Pierced-lip that I need rope because I'm planning on getting my husband to tie me up. Oh, no. First of all, I'm old enough to be Pierced-lip’s mother. Yes, I know I don’t want rope for some kind of kinky middle-aged sex thing. But he doesn’t know that. And second of all, I learned the perils of giving away too much information the time I was looking for a new toilet in the same store. When the sales guy asked me what kind of toilet I was looking for I blurted, "The one with the biggest hole." (It's not that funny. At the time I had a four-year-old who used half a roll of paper with every bathroom visit. Each flush was an adventure. And by the way plunging is great for firming up that pesky little underarm flap that keeps on waving even after you've stopped.)

So I said, "I want to tie up a rug."

"You shouldn't tie a rug with rope," he told me. "You could damage the pile, ma'am."

Great. I have to get the only keener in the entire store. However, using my quick writer-ly thinking, I said, "It's a really old rug."

"It could be an antique, ma'am," he said. "You definitely shouldn't tie that with a rope."

"No, no," I insisted. “It's only an old rug I need to get rid of. I just want to roll it up and tie it on my car."

"You have roof racks?” he asked.

Roof racks? I just wanted some rope. Why were we talking about roof racks? "No,” I said.

"You know you shouldn’t just tie things to the roof of your car," he said. "It's not really safe. And I think it's against the law anyway."

By that point all I wanted to do was tie one end of a piece of rope to that lip ring and the other to the bumper of my car and drive away very fast. I had a headache that felt like someone had just driven a spike through my left eye. “Never mind," I said, heading for the door.

"Roof racks are in aisle 14," he called after me.

When I got home, Mr. Romantic was in the kitchen practicing knots with the tie backs from the kitchen curtains. "Is the guy in your book a sailor?" he called after me as I headed down the basement stairs. "Because I think he should be." I just kept on going.

I hate research.

Darlene Ryan is the author of the novel Saving Grace and the hilarious Rules for Life.

We Are What We Write...?

Sandra Parshall

I opened the latest Writer’s Digest and saw this header on the editor’s column: You Are What You Write.

Now there’s a scary thought. Makes me very glad Thomas Harris doesn’t live next door.

But is it true? If someone writes about murder, intrigue and deceit, what does that say about him or her as a person? If you attend a mystery conference, will you find the hallways crowded with weirdos, their eyes glittering maniacally as they contemplate killing off the competition?

Sorry to disappoint you, but no. Mystery writers are some of the friendliest, most down to earth people I’ve ever met, and I wouldn’t be afraid to encounter any of them in a dark alley. The majority of authors at the conferences I’ve attended have been middle-aged (or older) women, nicely dressed, well-groomed, and resoundingly normal in their behavior. When they start talking about their work, though, you realize these aren’t ordinary folks. They can describe myriad ways to kill other human beings. They know what acid will do to your eyes and what insecticide will do to your liver. They can tell you how long it will take for rigor mortis to set in after you die, and how long it will take flies to discover your corpse. They can happily chat about such matters over soup and salad, without the slightest sign of queasiness.

Does this fascination with murder mean the writer is capable of committing the acts she allows her characters to perform? In my own case, at least, the answer is no. I’m such a wimp that I would probably have trouble acting in self-defense, and I can’t imagine killing another person for any reason. I’m basically a pacifist, and I’m always shocked when someone chooses murder over divorce or a lawsuit. I find it mind-boggling that anybody could kill a neighbor over a property line dispute or an estranged spouse over a financial disagreement. I write crime fiction precisely because those extreme actions baffle me. I want to understand the emotions and thoughts of people who overstep the boundaries of accepted behavior even though their problems appear fixable to onlookers. And I like knowing that in the end, whatever the killer’s motive, I can decide what the punishment will be.

Maybe all that sounds too high-minded. Maybe it doesn’t explain how I can become immersed in a book or article about the different ways a human body decomposes under various conditions. Not all mystery writers can stomach the graphic stuff, and when they write about corpses they use vague, general terms that won’t turn anybody’s stomach, including their own. Many writers are aiming for an audience that enjoys the puzzle but doesn’t want to dwell on the physical act of killing and its aftermath. To me, though, murder is a serious business, and I want the reader to feel the reality of it, to see the victim as an individual whose life has been wrongly taken. Sometimes that requires describing the sights and smells of death.

I do have a morbid side -- my friend Alex Sokoloff flattered me by calling it my “simmering dark streak” -- and that side is reflected in my writing. But a writer’s nature, like anyone else’s, has many facets. I would describe myself, first of all, as someone who loves nature and animals, so I do have that much in common with one of my characters, veterinarian Rachel Goddard. My life isn't filled with high drama and intrigue, however, and I don't want it to be. I would have been happy living in a forest with only animals around me. But as it turned out, I’ve spent my life primarily in the company of humans, and I’ve chosen to write about the worst acts humans can commit. That isn’t me, though. I am not what I write.

Reading as a Writer

Leslie Budewitz

At Left Coast Crime in Seattle two weeks ago, a woman asked me what I liked to read. Her question, and three days of hanging out with readers, only some of whom are also writers, prompted a realization. Or maybe it’s a confession:

I am not a normal reader.

And I’m kind of sorry about that.

Writers are readers, too, of course, but some conferences – and LCC Seattle was one of them – are programmed with a focus on the readers who aren’t writers. Writers adore these readers. Readers admire writers, ask about their days, their process, when the next novel or story is being published. Even where they get their ideas, a question that the much-published often scorn but that I’m still new enough to enjoy answering.

Readers who go to cons aren’t just potential buyers. They’re the heart of the writing world, the people we do this for. The people we want to satisfy most, after ourselves. They’re the people we once were.

They can sit for hours in front of the fire with a good book, and sometimes even a bad one, only getting up for more tea or a visit to the bathroom. I miss that. Me, I’m reading with a notebook nearby where I jot down an image that works or doesn’t, note an awkward sentence, question the use of point of view. I read wondering if some detail is going to play out later in the story the way I think it is, or if it’s a red herring. Or worse, a bit of sloppy writing that diverts me for no good reason. I’m reading with one eye on the magician’s hands and the other on the curtain, asking How did she do that?

Readers don’t feel compelled to finish a book just to see if the writer can pull it off.

Readers keep reading a series they enjoy without feeling like they can’t spend the time on a book they’re not likely to learn new tricks from, or that they should be reading the new hot thing.

Readers choose a book because it looks good, not because they want to know why it made the NY Times Bestseller list despite lousy reviews, or why it got great reviews but tanked.

Last weekend, Judy Clemens wrote here about discovering mysteries. And what she described started with her love of the genre, how she couldn’t wait to find out what Lord Peter said to Harriet Vane next, how she scoured bookstores in unfamiliar towns for new discoveries. Only later did she realize she could try writing the kinds of books she loved to read.

I am convinced that when I started writing fiction, my work took the shape of a mystery because that’s what I’d been reading and listening to. I’d been working several days a week in a city 45 miles from home, a city whose library held an excellent audio collection. Many of those tapes – and they were tapes, back then – were mysteries: Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Tony Hillerman, Ellis Peters, Elizabeth Peters. What I loved to read became what I needed to write.

Writers, remember that connection that first brought you to the page. Remember the joy. Your readers want that experience, too; honor their passion. Take time to relive that experience yourself. Pick up a book you last read ten years ago – or one you’ve been saving for a snowy day – and read it again for sheer fun. Leave your review notebook by your desk, and keep your bottom in your reading chair. Stay up too late reading just because it’s fun.

The more you do that, the more that joy will dust your own manuscripts.

In the spirit of remembering the books that brought us here, let me paraphrase Jane Eyre: Reader, I thank you.


Leslie Budewitz is a published short story writer with novels in progress. She provides legal research for writers through Law & Fiction, www.lawandfiction.com.

My Love Affair with Mysteries

Judy Clemens (Guest Blogger)

Growing up, I was not a kid who sat down and read through every Nancy Drew book. In fact, I don’t think I read even one. I had a couple of Trixie Belden books, although I can’t find them anymore. And I do remember reading some Agatha Christie. Some Encyclopedia Brown. But my reading consisted of a wide variety of things: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Black Stallion books (I have them displayed today in my office), Little House on the Prairie, All Creatures Great and Small, and Katie John. My love affair with mysteries didn’t happen until I was in college.

As a member of a college touring choir, I had the opportunity to travel all over the United States, as well as in Europe. During one of those trips, driving across our country’s western states, I was in desperate need of something to read. At our next stop I found a bookstore, browsed the fiction section, and picked up Have His Carcase, by Dorothy L. Sayers. I had never heard of her before, let alone read any of her books, but something about it attracted me.

I adored it.

From then on during the choir trip, whenever we stopped at the next city I ran to the closest bookstore and picked up one or two more of Sayers’s books. I took the time to write the date on each one, and the entire series of purchases ranges from May of 1989 through 1990. (No, the trip didn’t last that long – I just couldn’t finish the entire series in less than two weeks.) I now have the series displayed in my office, right alongside those Black Stallion books.

I entered the mystery genre as a fan by finding new series and reading everything in them: P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh books, Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax, Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael…the list goes on. Since I hadn’t spent much of my life reading mysteries up to that point, I had everything out there to enjoy and inhale. It was exhilarating.

As a writer, it wasn’t until that point that I realized what exactly I wanted to write. In college I took every writing course I could, and learned about writing non-fiction, short stories, and plays. My first published piece was actually a one-act. But finally, in the year after I graduated, I sat down to write my first mystery novel. And I did it. I finished it, re-wrote it, and started that journey of sending it out to agents. It wasn’t until years later, after writing a partial sequel and the first of my Stella Crown books, that I realized how bad that first book really was!

But I refuse to be ashamed of it. That’s how we learn, right? I’m not saying I’d every show it to anybody (other than those people tortured with it when I first wrote it), but I treasure that book as my first glimpse of the “real” writing life. I put my heart into it, and I learned an immense amount.

My hope as a writer is that I continue to learn. That each book I write takes me further along the road to perfecting my craft (knowing full well that journey will never end). That each book helps me to learn something about myself and the world around me. I just finished the first draft of a book that is not a Stella book. It was completely different, from the viewpoint, to the format of the book, to the gender of the protagonist. It was a challenge. It was a learning experience. It was a joy.

That’s a lot of what I hope to gain as a reader, as well. That each book I read brings me closer to my fellow humans, teaches me something about myself, and brings me a taste of something previously unknown. It happens. Often.

So here’s to reading. Here’s to writing.

Here’s to great books, whatever genre they may be.

Note: Judy Clemens is the author of the Agatha-nominated Till the Cows Come Home and two more mysteries in the series about dairy farmer and biker Stella Crown.