Tossing Your Titles: A Timely Topic

We're closing on our new house Thursday and moving Friday. So, yay, it's been a long road.


However, this necessitates the re-evaluation and streamlining of all our possessions, and I've got, as usual, a metric ton of books. Already, I parse my 6 bookshelves a couple of times a year, making titles earn their places by memory, sentiment, inspiration, envy, association, reference value, or pure enjoyment. And still they multiply. New ones appear atop my to-be-read pile as fast as foliage on a magic beanstalk.

But I am not alone. Here's a librarian complaining about how hard it is to throw away books when civic-minded people keep returning them from the back Dumpster; and Buce from Underbelly argues with his Mrs. over whether he should be allowed to keep 2,000 books or 3,000.

I have had to get over my aversion to putting titles down the chute. My emotion's a combination of karmic distress and outright lust. Not to say the garbage is my first resort. I've just sent 40 pounds of Primo Prose overseas to people desperate for diversion. (Apparently, arguing with real estate attorneys makes me giddy for alliteration. I apologize for the splatter.) I've donated piles to libraries, hospitals, and senior centers, abandoned them in airports as my own anonymous BookCrossing. But there are some weird and awful titles I have collected that I can't imagine any reader enjoying or needing- sadly, these are often titles I receive for review. And there are others that I just don't have the time (or ebay-centric inclination) for which to find the perfect home.

When there are more books being printed than ever before, except in cases of true rarities or beauties close to my heart, I'm trying to get over the sense of their preciousness before I'm smothered. A book shouldn't represent a guilty obligation either to readership or stewardship, despite the niggling of my outmoded conscience.

I assume the authors of these unwanted tomes are just as hopeful and well-intentioned as I, but some fruits of their labors are going down, down, down, bumping down 28 floors of metal shaft to the building compactor. And I feel low, low, low about it. But way better than if I'd hauled that crap around forever.

Can you bear to throw books away?

Writers Who Blog

When we started this blog, we thought we'd link to other author blogs. It soon became evident, however, that we were going to have to do some serious thinking about how to manage the ever-growing list of author blogs. So we divided it up into a couple of categories: Writers who blog mostly about Writing/Publishing (things that might be useful to readers who write) and Writers who blog about writing...and life!

So here is the first installment. Writers on Writing. (If you're looking to find out about your favorite writer's vacation, you have to wait for the second installment.) I've made the arbitrary decision to limit this to writers of genre fiction. If anyone wants to take on the job of creating a set of writing links of other types of writers, we'd be happy to have a "guest blogger" to do the job!

Other limitations: I've spent a great deal of time through the years studying accessibility and design issues. Any site with flashing or scrolling anything, or that requires high bandwidth plug-ins didn't make the list. Any site with frames didn't make the list. Anything hard to navigate didn't make the list. You get the idea.

• A Newbie's Guide to Publishing
  J.A. Konrath's excellent blog on the trials and triumphs of being a genre fiction writer.
  
• Confessions of an Idiosycratic Mind
  Blog of Sarah Weinman, The Baltimore Sun's crime fiction columnist
• Criminal Brief
  James Lincoln Warren, Leigh Lundin, Angela Zeman, Steven Steinbock, Deborah Elliott-Upton, Robert Lopresti, and Melodie Johnson Howe chime in on a blog so much fun it's criminal
  
• Jungle Red: Writing Well Is The Best Revenge
  Blog of Rosemary Harris, Hallie Ephron, Hank Phillippi Ryan and Jan Brogan
  
• And Another Thing...
  blog of Irish thriller writer and journalist John Connolly
  
• Two Pages Away From Greatness
  Dawn Hawkins Johnson on putting words in order
  
• Inkspot
  blog of various authors with books published by Midnight Ink
  
• All The World's A Page
  group blog of authors and editors on writing and publishing
  
• Storytellers Unplugged
  30 writers, editors, booksellers and other industry pros
  
• 101 Reasons To Stop Writing
  Sean Lindsay's hilarious blog on why you shouldn't bother
  
• Crime Fiction Dossier
  Blog of crime fiction critic and journalist David J. Montgomery
  
• Janet Koch on trying to become a published mystery writer
  
• Grumpy Old Bookman
  Blog about writing and publishing by UK author Michael Allen
  
• Tess Gerritsen's blog
  
• Robert W. Walker's blog

Anthony Nominations 2007

Bouchercon World Mystery Convention is named for Anthony Boucher, writer and editor. The first Bouchercon was held in 1970 and, through the years, it has become a grand institution in the mystery community. This year's Bouchercon will be in Anchorage, Alaska, September 27 to September 30. Click here for link

The highlight of each Bouchercon is the Anthony Awards Banquet held on Saturday evening.

The Women of Mystery extend our most joyful congratulations to the nominees.


BEST NOVEL:

Burke, Jan. KIDNAPPED, Simon & Schuster
Lippman, Laura. NO GOOD DEEDS, Harper
Mina, Denise. THE DEAD HOUR, Little Brown & Co.
Pickard, Nancy. THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS, Ballantine
Spencer-Fleming, Julia. ALL MORTAL FLESH, St. Martins

BEST FIRST NOVEL

Hart, John. THE KING OF LIES, St. Martins
Hockensmith, Steve. HOLMES ON THE RANGE, St. Martins
Penny, Louise. STILL LIFE, St. Martins
Read, Cornelia. A FIELD OF DARKNESS, Mysterious Press
Sokoloff, Alexandra. THE HARROWING, St. Martins

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

Cameron, Dana. ASHES AND BONES, Avon
Cook, Troy. 47 RULES OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE BANK ROBBERS, Capital Crime Press
Doolittle, Sean. THE CLEANUP, Dell
Fate, Robert. BABY SHARK, Capital Crime Press
Gischler, Victor. SHOTGUN OPERA, Dell
Hirahara, Naomi. SNAKESKIN SHAMISEN, Bantam Dell - Delta
Huston, Charlie. A DANGEROUS MAN, Ballantine

BEST SHORT STORY

Abbott, Megan. “Policy,” DAMN NEAR DEAD, Busted Flush Press
Cameron, Dana. “The Lords of Misrule,” SUGARPLUMS AND SCANDAL, Avon
Crider, Bill. “Cranked,” DAMN NEAR DEAD, Busted Flush Press
Kelner, Toni. “Sleeping with the Plush,” Alfred Hitchcock Mag
Viets, Elaine. “After the Fall,” Alfred Hitchcock Mag
Wood, Simon. “My Father’s Secret,” Crime Spree Magazine, Bcon Spec Issue ’06

BEST CRITICAL NONFICTION

Huang, Jim and Austin Lugar, Editors. MYSTERY MUSES, Crum Creek Press
Niebuhr, Gary Warren. READ ‘EM THEIR WRITES, Libraries Unlimited
Roerden, Chris. DON’T MURDER YOUR MYSTERY, Bella Rosa Books
Stashower, Daniel. THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL, Dutton
Wagoner, E.J., THE SCIENCE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, John Wiley & Sons

SPECIAL SERVICES AWARD

Ardai, Charles. Hard Case Crime
Easter, George. Deadly Pleasures
Huang, Jim. Crum Creek Press and The Mystery Company
Jordan, Jon and Ruth. CrimeSpree Magazine
Kaczmarek, Lynn and Chris Aldrich. Mystery News
Karim, Ali. Shots Magazine
Barbara Franchi and Sharon Wheeler. ReviewingTheEvidence.com
Van Hertbruggen, Maddy. 4 Mystery Addicts

Platform: The Professional's View

Serendipity! Jessica Faust of BookEnds has just posted about platform over at her blog.

Beware - That Jaundiced View of Life is Catching

My friends laugh whenever I respond to some deliciously provocative true-life event with “I can use that in my next mystery....” or “no problem, I’ll kill him off in the next book....”

This kind of thing occurs with surprising frequency during morning walks with two of my neighbors. Like when the driver of an SUV seemed intent on running us into a ditch. When another screamed at our inconsiderate use of the road. Whenever one of us has a problem with a spouse....

Increasingly, my friends are getting into the spirit. We walk year round. The way postal workers are supposed to, you know? This spring, fair-weather walkers emerged from the woodwork, spilling onto our remote country lane in ever-increasing numbers. The newcomers triggered a territorial response in us. We found ourselves snapping our fingers and whistling a refrain from West Side Story.

So on our walk this morning, I ended a description of a near-drowning experience with, “Ah well. It’s grist for some desperate protagonist in some future novel.” My neighbor, who had just returned from a camping trip with a group of friends, responded eagerly.

“Oh!” she said. “I meant to tell you! Your view of the world’s rubbing off. Now I’m starting to see things the way writers do.”

She launched into a colorful description of a woman in their group who’d seemed way too handy with a good-sized camp knife that she wielded – with apparent deftness – while peeling endless snacks of fruits and veggies. My friend wrestled with words in an attempt to convey the nervousness the woman’s knife-handling had inspired in her as an onlooker. The wonderfully queasy impression that this person was decidedly too familiar with knives....

The what if....

I was enchanted with her tale. I sent her home with instructions to write up a scene. Because she’s the world’s worst perfectionist, I explained the importance of allowing herself a shitty first draft. I told her to let the energy from that memory propel her through writing the scene no matter how badly. Then I pushed her toward her front door.

I warn my friends, “If you don’t use this in a story, I’ve got dibs....”

Platform

In the non-fiction world, books are sold on "platform." Miss Snark defines platform as

the other-than-the-usual ways you'll be able to get visibility for the book. A syndicated newspaper column like Maureen Dowd or Dave Barry is platform plus. A radio show like Dr. Laura is platform plus plus.

Today, my sister-in-law (who, I proudly point out, was mentioned by Miss Snark as an example of "having platform" for her book on wedding etiquette) and I were discussing the concept of platform as it applies to fiction. Over and over, I've heard that platform is not necessary for fiction, and that's undoubtedly true in some cases. Where, after all, will you find readers no one else has found, what PR can you get that no other novelist can find? Let's take, for example, your average science fiction novel. Not much you can do in the way of platform unless you're L. Ron Hubbard and you start your own religion.

Celebrities have "celebrity," which is different from platform--if you're Dr. Phil, you don't need platform to sell a novel--but other cases are not so clear. What if you're the creator of an internet dating site and you write a romance? Will you bring readers from your website, or are those two things too separate?

This subject is on my mind today because I returned from a show in my "day job" as a maker of glass beads to find a copy of a forthcoming magazine with an article I wrote in it. This is the second time my work has been shown in trade magazines. The first was last summer, when the woman who designed the cover piece for a magazine used my beads in her project.

Even without the article having come out yet, this weekend's expo was good for me. I sold a lot. In fact, I sold so much that I really shouldn't be here typing, I should be in the basement with the glass, as I have a show in two weeks and the biggest show of the year (for me) three weeks after that.

But I've had platform on the brain. My customers don't make the kind of beads I do, but when I mentioned that the article was coming out, they were all excited to buy it. I can't imagine they'd feel any differently if I wrote a novel. (Heck, with the price of magazines these days, the novel wouldn't be much more expensive.) Likewise, my fellow vendors buy each other's magazines, and some promoters make a point of mentioning their vendors' articles.

So is this "platform?" Is it worth mentioning? I travel up and down the east coast doing bead shows, but I've never tracked how many distinct customers (as opposed to returning buyers) I have at a show, and I didn't bother to count how many people--customers and vendors--expressed interest in the magazine article. And, naturally, I have no way of knowing how many of them actually will buy the issue, though history shows they follow their favorite artists quite devotedly.

The huge number of "niche" books, particularly in the area of traditional mystery series, seems to indicate that having platform in some niche market or other would be a good thing. If you have a cooking show, even an obscure one, you have a place to tout your cooking mystery. If you own a knitting store, you can sell your books there, or at least keep a copy to tempt your customers into searching it out at their local bookstores. Goodness knows, a vet could sell thousands of cat-based murder mysteries right out of his office if they were halfway decent.

So does my experience as a beadmaker and published writer in my field translate into platform? And does it even matter whether it does? Will any agent or editor care whether dedicated beaders will recognize my name and rush out to buy my murderous beady mystery?

As I sit here attempting to compose a cover letter, I certainly hope so.

Short Shorts, Part Two

In the comments section of my previous post, "Who Writes Short Shorts?" Crabby McSlacker wonders if anyone remembers the old Nair commercial that used the song 'Who Wears Short Shorts?"

I'm old enough to remember when the original song came out. I had it at the late fifties and it turns out I'm right. The Royal Teens released the song "Who Wears Short Shorts?" in 1958.

Because I am a quick study and because our Lois Karlin is a great teacher, I searched the song and came up with this You Tube video of the song.

So, Crabby, this one's for you!

Terrie

Who Writes Short Shorts?

Over at Criminal Brief, some of the best short story writers of our time are talking about the craft of writing short mystery fiction.

In a post last spring, James Lincoln Warren points out “Thinking in word lengths is one of the most difficult things for a writer to learn, but it’s also one of the most basic.” Hmmm, not something novelists have to worry about, at least not until they are somewhere past eighty thousand words, then “Whoa, Nellie” might kick in, but mostly novelists just write until they’re done. Short story writers have to tell the whole story in a proscribed word length: two thousand words for one venue, ten thousand for another. There’s always a limit.

Right now this is of interest to me because my first short story will be published in an anthology by the end of the year. My second short story is out for submission. My first novel is making the agent query rounds. My second and third novels are under construction, and I should be working on them, but I keep thinking I should be churning out more short stories. Not that I have a story tumbling around my head, begging for release. Not that I have a call for submission with a deadline drawing near. It’s just a feeling. So, I’ve been spending a lot of time at Criminal Brief.

Stop on by, there’s always great conversation, and the site offers an opportunity to add to the blog's instant review page, which has reader reviews of stories from 1940 right along side recent Amazon shorts.

Potter Mania in Mid West

As I write this, my grown son is out frolicking in the streets of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, playing his part as a member of the House of HufflePuff, in the town's on-going Harry Potter celebration. Magicians and performers are adding their own creativity to the moment, but I'm most taken in by the whole city's celebration of a book's arrival on the scene.

Magic is happening in Oshkosh tonight - and it continues for the weekend. Folks are roaming the streets in curious costumes. Two blocks worth of Main Street have been cordoned off and proclaimed and renamed Diagon Alley. No cars allowed. No mention of whether flying brooms are permitted, however.

Shops have putting up new signs, transforming themselves into places invented by a most entertaining female writer. The local book store is now tagged as Flourish & Blotts. The mayor has become a Minister of Magic and proclaimed such festivities would surround the arrival of the last installment of JK Rowling's sensational series. He reportedly will be appearing in two different places at the same time, thanks to his wizardly time turner.

No funeral procession here over the end of the series - nothing but supreme celebration of the magic in BOOKS! What a phenomenal place Oshkosh is! I want to be there now. I'm feeling like Harry when he was stuck living in the room beneath the stairs!

And, their celebration began two months ago, thanks to the Oshkosh Library. Folks there arranged for three "Knight buses" to bring in kids and families from 3 outlying towns for this culminating weekend. During the ride games will be played and activities done that Harry the P would enjoy.

As I write, I'm referring to my copy of The Oshkosh DAILY PROPHET newspaper. Eight inventive pages of delight. It was handed out during the Fourth of July parade in Oshkosh, where my son now lives, lucky stiff! I half expect to see the people in the photos wave and smile in my direction, as they do in the real DAILY PROPHET. The newspaper mentions a Marauding Scavenger Hunt, offers up a dining-out option with or without a side of horcrux. I have yet to read the article on "Quiddich for non-flyers." You'd love their personal ads!

Ah, I could go on longer, but it's time for me to go get on line at my local bookstore. It's getting close to midnight, and I wouldn't want to miss this moment of magic!

May magic fill your days and your writings, too!
Write On!
Nan

Mining YouTube for Scene Details

It's not news to you all, I'm well aware. But the internet is a goddess-send for writers, and I intend to do a bit of genuflecting here.

Take yesterday. I was halfway through my novel's third revision when suddenly it hit me that I needed to insert a brand new scene that takes place in a hospital's psychiatric ward. I won't say I've never had occasion to visit one, but it's been awhile. So I googled 'video, lock down psychiatric unit' and found a number of clips.

There is nothing like video at your fingertips for capturing details...in this case, the mannerisms of patients and attitude of attendants.

And have you tried YouTube for accents? Voice?

My protagonist's a Kiwi expatriate and while she's mostly American at this point, her spitfire sister newly arrived in the States is not. My visit to New Zealand was a year and a half ago. I'm losing the Kiwi cadence, inflection, pronunciation, and modulation. To say nothing of the attitude. So I googled 'video, kiwi personalities' and, after wading through all the YouTube hits for the current #1 animation about the flightless bird (called Kiwi! but a warning is called for - it's a tad heart wrenching) I came up with the sensational Squeegee Bandit and a number of others including a Burger King commercial bordering on soft porn and a discussion of the differences between Kiwi vs Canadian use of the expression 'eh' at the end of sentences.

Need a scene landing a helicopter? Firemen coping with a bomb in a building? Cleaning staff in a hospital? A heart transplant? With more than 300 websites offering free video footage, there's very little not available at the stroke of a few keys. And don't forget news clips. I'm sure we're all grateful to MSNBC for providing a link to a 26-minute long video on building a vest-bomb. I'm dead serious, folks. (Well, maybe the thriller writers among us....)

I don't recommend videos as a replacement for all your research. The details we write shouldn't be entirely visual and auditory. What about the grit in your character's eyes and teeth and the wind in her hair? To say nothing of that sulfur stench emitting from an aging camry while it tackles a climb up Mt. Peter....

My problem? I return to the manuscript only at gunpoint. So what's your favorite video research story?

- Lois

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone

The past couple of books I've written -- one I shopped, one I am revising in order to shop -- have been traditional mysteries. What some people call "cozies." I enjoy the puzzle aspect of traditional mysteries, love the whole placement of clues, creation of interesting characters who have the specific expertise necessary to figure out what those clues mean.

But recently, I decided to try something a little different. I had an idea for a romantic suspense novel. Sure,that's a more marketable genre than traditional mystery, but if the characters hadn't knocked and said "hey, we have a story," I wouldn't have started working on it.

But here's the problem: I can't write sex scenes. I tend to skim them when I come across them while reading. But romance is getting sexier and more explicit, and if I want to tell the story of these two characters, I can't avoid the sex scenes. A couple of friends have offered to help me out, writing the sex scenes for me, but I'm a bit of a control freak and while I may have to resort to that, I'm trying to learn.


So I bought a couple of romances and read every word of the sex scenes. (Which, by the way, embarrassed the heck out of me--not the scenes themselves, but the covers of the books. Yikes!) And then, while I was in Borders perusing their writing section, I saw The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance. Now, I don't want to write erotic romance, not by a long shot, but I figured if I had some guidance in that direction, I could go a little further than I have been in my own writing.

I haven't gotten to the section on how to write sex scenes yet. The book is longer than one might thing, some 300 pages. (Ironic, as the romances I've seen by the Idiot's Guide's author are short!) But some of the advice is interesting. For example, Ms. Kent recommends figuring out why the characters think about sex the way they do. That is, while creating your characters' backstory, which one has to do in any novel, consider their sexual histories. I hope I'd have done that anyway, but seeing it there on the page made me focus on it.

All in all, the whole process has been interesting thus far. A friend of mine who reads considerably more in the romance genre than I do is trying to help me along. I do read romantic suspense, but not nearly at the level (both of quantity and of explicit content) as she does, so her comments on my rough manuscript have been fascinating.

And something else odd is going on. In a mere few weeks, I've written more than 20,000 words of the rough. That almost never happens to me. Is it avoidance of the inevitable necessary edit of the mystery? Is it the fact that I don't have to work so hard on the puzzle aspect? Is it that the book is in limited third person rather than in first, so I can poke around in alternating people's heads? (Not "head hopping" within a scene, but one scene in one person's POV, the next in another's, which seems fairly common for the genre.) Is it that I don't consider myself a "romantic suspense writer" so the work doesn't have the same kind of significance? Who knows? But writing outside my own genre, even outside my comfort zone, has proven to be an interesting--and, I suspect, valuable--experience.

Of course, I haven't gotten to the sex scenes yet.

Hispaniola in the Rainy Season

From the Wiki, this is Howard Pyle's very stylized painting of Captain Kidd, who appeared more like a bewigged Founding Father in life.

It's Friday the 13th, which I only note because I'm a fan, even if its significance and character are largely augmented by 20th century hype like another big favorite of mine, Halloween.

This is only a vaguely writerly post, though I'm sure I'll get ideas and settings I can use, and hope to come away with some actual prose written. Several months ago, a dear friend of my husband was golfing at a charity event and won one of the putting contests. This entitled him to a week-long stay at a villa on a beach resort's golf course in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. With five empty bedrooms, he asked us and some other folks if we wanted to go along. Sure! We leave Sunday.

I've been to the capital city of Santo Domingo once before but on a day trip. Had a fine time, rode horses, saw paintings of watermelons, bought a colorful wooden bird, drank cool things and sweated. Further north, and on the Atlantic coast, Punta Cana is defamed by travel writers as being less "authentic" because it has such a high number of glossy new private resorts and communities staking out gated chunks of beach and inland. You may also read, as my husband unfortunately did on CNN's front page yesterday, that part of the reason for this vigilance is because the bright, sandy coasts are still bait for modern-day pirates, primarily those smuggling drugs from Columbia through Venezuela into the D.R. and then to Puerto Rico. Final stop, Anytown USA.

Since childhood, I've been a fan of pirate lore, reading a fair number of whaling and explorer stories, too. I can't explain why these tales of the grimy desperadoes of the high seas captivated me, but they did and do. The Dominican Republic shares 2/3 (including the east side) of the Antilles' island of Hispaniola with the smaller nation of Haiti. Both these spots have their beauties as well as their horrors, though the DR's in better governmental shape. But seeing their shapes on old maps still excites me. Hispaniola's many tucked-away anchorages and climate has made it desirable for use by legit and not-so entities since the Colonial era.

In fact, Captain Kidd's last crew turned on him with predictably consistent disloyalty and was rumored to have divided and buried the vast treasure of the Quedagh Merchant (scroll down) along Hispaniola's eastern coast. This while Kidd, whose identity as pirate or privateer is still hotly debated, was sailing north to his eventual capture, extradition, and hanging in England. I do believe that today's smugglers have more congenial places to land on the 800 miles of coastline than in the middle of a knot of folding chairs and beach bars, so I'm not too concerned about that, but even I can't reason away bad weather.

So far, every forecast we've looked at calls for thunderstorms and/or showers every day. My husband has three tee times in jeopardy. Storms only threaten my beach time, and I'm more of a veranda-sitter anyway. I've self-tanned a bit, just to avoid any reflective blaze that might disrupt the International Space Station. Truly, lightless aquatic species whose underbellies have never seen the topside of the Marianas Trench look swarthy by comparison. Anyway, compared to spending days in a swimsuit, I'm much less averse to tromping through nature preserves or anywhere else in the rain. I know what you may be thinking, wicked things, but I don't melt in it.

Sure, the rainy season is a good time for the resort to use up some otherwise vacant space for a good cause and good publicity. Or it may be that like Florida and Hawaii, it rains a bit every day and is done. Can't tell yet and I don't care. My blessedly-indoor spa appointments are made, both sunscreen and umbrella are packed, I've got my laptop, favorite pirate stories, a sketchbook and camera to get myself into trouble. I'd love to come back as relaxed as Ramen, but I hereby declare myself ready for an adventure, and half-hope not to get too much of one.

What adventures (anticipated or dreaded) will you be dredging for inspiration?

Potter's Magic Rewriting

Just back from a month-long absence from the internet and I take the time to go to the movies !?! Where are my priorities?

Well, I'm stuck on the Harry Potter juggernaut. A willing passenger. After all, J K Rowling is a writer, and the movies do work off her books. I considered it reasonable research.

In preparation for the movie I reread the book. Needed to refresh my memory and prepare to identify characters and translate Hogwarts-speak into Muggle-speak for my hubby. The book is complexly written - and, yes, somewhat poorly written by comparison to the literary standard bearers. But it has complex characters and deals with the stressful realities and emotional confusion involved in a coming-of-age novel. The characters are practically members of our family - the good characters, of course. AND, I love the on-going story.

While feeling like I'm Mrs. Weasley, I'm watching the movie leave out events and sub plots. Conversations are swallowed up and bits of them are spit out by other characters in another scene. Losing those bits and pieces of the book feels like losing family treasures.

Yet, the movie would have gone on way beyond all reason if the book had been followed exactly. (Bladders need consideration!) The director/screen writers clearly had to condense and consolidate. And that's exactly what I must do to my own manuscripts; get them to zip along and keep my readers involved. Hey, I'm no J K Rowling! I can't afford to present an over-stuffed manuscript to an agent or an editor. This movie helped me see the value of tightening as you rewrite.

And, the climax in the movie blew me away - far better than the already action-packed book. Wow. The rewriting streamlined the story and ended it with a stronger bang. "Rewriting" is no longer a dirty word.

Are you a Potter fan? Does this strike you as an accurate assessment of the on-screen revisions? What do you think?

Write On!
Nan

Stud Fiction. Never Touch the Stuff.

On a flight, Gloria Steinem overheard a passenger claim that he never watched chick flicks. I’m weighing in on her proposal that we label his kind of films “prick flicks." Her discerning post is at once a defense of chick flicks and chick lit, and an effort to challenge the labels.

“Think about it: If Anna K arenina had been written by Leah Tolstoy, or The Scarlet Letter by Nancy Hawthorne, or Madame Bovary by Greta Flaubert, or A Doll's House by Henrietta Ibsen, or The Glass Menagerie by (a female) Tennessee Williams, would they have been hailed as universal? Suppose Shakespeare had really been The Dark Lady some people supposed. I bet most of her plays and all of her sonnets would have been dismissed as some Elizabethan version of ye olde "chick lit," only to be resurrected centuries later by stubborn feminist scholars."

At Time Goes By, you can read a discussion of matron lit, hen lit, and lady lit for 49 to 69 year old women readers presumably fascinated by hot flashes, aging parents, and widowhood. Along with “granny lit,” what’s next? “Roaster lit?” The terms are increasingly degrading. Steinem’s solution? We need labels for everything that’s not women’s fiction or film.

The time I was shot down by a publisher to whom I’d tossed a just-for-practice pitch of my not-ready-for-prime-time novel, my writing group gleefully coined a phrase for the high stakes novels he preferred: “Stud Lit.” Then a friend came up with “dick flicks.” Now Steinem’s proposing “prick flicks.”

And the point? Folks, it’s a really important one, and Steinem makes it well:

"Just as there are ‘novelists’ and then ‘women novelists,’ there are ‘movies’and then chick flicks.’ Whoever is in power takes over the noun – and the norm – while the less powerful get an adjective. Thus, we read about ‘African American doctors’ but not ‘European American doctors,’ ‘Hispanic leaders’ but not ‘Anglo leaders,’ ‘gay soldiers’ but not ‘heterosexual soldiers,’ and so on.”

Steinem reminds us that if the chick flick label helps men know what to avoid, why is there no label to guide women to the ones we’d like to avoid? Furthermore, we don’t want viewers of glory-war and chainsaw-sadism and pain-seeking-babes feeling short changed. These folks need a label so they can locate their preferred flicks in reviews and catalogs.

As a writing-group buddy points out, writers of “women’s fiction” can’t find a graceful way to include the phrase in a query. It’s not a noun, so “...my 80,000-word women’s fiction...” doesn’t work, and making it an adjective as in “...my 80,000-word women’s fiction novel...” isn’t as elegant as “...my 80,000-word novel” or even“...my 80,000-word traditional mystery....”

Anybody out there have clout in the publishing industry? If so, while we’re at it, could we convince folks to ditch the word “cozy?”

– Lois

Covers

Recently, Agent Kristin had a post about cover art and what not to do when you see yours for the first time and freak out about how awful/inappropriate/whatever it is.

Which reminded me to post these two covers. Someone should have asked the artist whether he'd ever done the exact same cover in the past.

Completion Anxiety

I just finished a short story.

Sure. No big deal for many writers, but when your output is as limited as mine is and as slow in coming, this constitutes a rare occasion for celebration.

My husband, a professional magazine editor, my first reader and best friend, read my completed draft last night and made some suggestions. Today, I finished it. I think.

No only has Larry been waiting a long time to read it, I have also received frequent reminders from numerous friends, Larry's agent, a mystery magazine editor, and assorted colleagues. So, it feels like there's a lot riding on it.

Now it's time to send it out. But is it ready? Should I put it away for a week and then look at it again? Should I ask some fellow writers to read it and comment? Should I just keep working on it -- going over it again and again, adding, deleting, changing a word here, restoring a deleted sentence there?

Or should I bite the bullet and put it in the mail? Case closed. End of story, as it were.

Damn it. I'll celebrate. Open the champagne. Toast the completion of a project that took a little longer than it probably should have.

There's only one problem. Now, what stands between me and finishing that novel on my desk? Nothing.

Reading Aloud

Next week I have to read my work in public. It's a project from my writing class, and my teacher has insisted that we invite our friends and family. The invitation, believe it or not, says:

These readings are always among the most fun of the readings I curate all year long--my students work hard and really come up with brilliant, gorgeous stuff: writing that I am deeply proud of and very excited to share with you!

Here's the thing: I don't write briliant, gorgeous prose. And here's my dirty secret: I don't even really aspire to writing brilliant, gorgeous prose. I've written things in class and in exercises that might qualify for lovely, and I even have a few nice paragraphs in my fiction. But none of them are going to allow me to read for three to five minutes.

So I have a couple of choices. The first is to write something entirely new or expand one of my in-class exercises. Neither of those particularly appeals to me, however, because I took the class so I could work on skills that would help me in my career. Since I write genre fiction, that means I want to write genre fiction. But I am insecure enough to worry that if everyone else in the class is reading this fabulous stream-of-consciousness stuff, I'm not going to come off well in comparison.

I think this must be the feeling some people have when they're reading bodice-ripping romances in public. They like what they're reading, but they're also a bit ashamed of liking it. (Not that all romance readers are like this, but I've talked to several over the years who feel this way.)

Indecision isn't new to me, but this is the first time it's taken such a public form. I think I am going to stick to my guns. I've written a draft of something that will probably take three minutes to read and be relatively complete. It's far from brilliant or gorgeous, but it could easily be the first scene of a book. Now I have a week to revise it. I will post the first little bit of it here. If you want to see the whole three minutes worth, you can check it out here. (Link opens in new window.)

But if you don't, here's the snippet.

Tara Jean Dobbs was not cut out to be a cult member. She didn't know whether the plants in the field were herbs or weeds, so she couldn't be trusted to maintain the crops. She had no communications skills, so she couldn't be sent out to recruit new members. Her kindergarten teacher had remarked that she didn't play well with others, and her first grade teacher had said she wasn't good at sharing, neither of which had changed much in the twenty-odd years since.

And she flat out hated to follow orders.

Paying Attention

Happy Fourth, y'all!

Last Saturday I was up in Sullivan County for the Dylan concert at Bethel Woods. (Awesome new rendition of All Along the Watchtower, in case you’re interested in the tour.) Because it was a gorgeous day, my husband and I went hiking in the Shawangunks at Sam’s Point – up and into the ice caves – for the sake of a scene in my story. The place was once a commercial operation, but it’s now a preserve managed by the Nature Conservancy.

Eric’s a professor of botany and plant ecology. He knows his plants, plus he’s an avid – and speedy – reader of mystery and sci-fi. As a resource for flora, he comes in handy. But as for the reader bit...sadly, he has confessed to occasionally skipping descriptions of setting.

Since I find setting just about as juicy in a novel as story, this habit of his bothers me. It offends me almost as much as the fact that he feels free to skip ahead just to see if an unpromising book is worth his while. So as we climbed along the old coach road to the dwarf pitch pine forest for the sake of my novel’s botanical and geological accuracy, I asked why he skips setting descriptions. I wanted to know if he finds description boring in general...or only when an author gets the landscape wrong. Do writers mix up the details in such a way that it offends his botanical sensibilities?

I asked because on this hike I realized I’d guessed wrong about a particularly important detail of the caves. In my story I’d described echoes. Echoes, in fact, played a large role in the scene, so I was pretty disappointed when that afternoon I failed to raise a single non-human response to my shouts. A reader who knew the geology of the place might have noticed.

He said that an occasional incongruity doesn’t bother him as much as a sense that the writer isn’t paying attention. “I don’t skip description when it matters to the story, or when an author gets it right. But to some writers, all this is one big green blur.” He swept an arm to indicate the hay-scented fern and mountain laurel along the road. “And a blur is how it comes across in their books.”

There you have it. To capture the reader's attention with setting details, as writers we need to pay attention.

The advice applies equally well to indoor settings. As in the child steering a toy armored humvee with flare launchers across his mother’s painted toes. Or a cleaning lady pushing a Hoover around slippery stacks of Good Housekeeping magazines.

Setting details, when applied like spice, work well when they’re combined with a character’s actions. Better when they reveal character. Best when they contribute to a story’s mood or theme.

Open The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel at any page, you’ll pull out a plum:

“And now, in California, the rock that had sat on a glass coffee table in several states in several years was going to be ‘planted’ beside slabs of granite, lichen-covered granite hauled down from the Sierras, and all of it bordered by white sweet alyssum. The Tom-rock would be as much a marker as a headstone. And hadn’t I nearly died to get it, holding my breath for so long, and those eels?” (From “Tom-Rock Through the Eels,” page 181.)

It’s not as easy as Hempel makes it sound. I’m working on it. Meanwhile, I’m aiming for accuracy. I don’t want my husband skipping ahead in my book.

–Lois

Why Aren't We Rated "R"?

I ran Women of Mystery through the blog rater I found on Crabby McSlacker’s blog Cranky Fitness. We are rated PG-13.

What a disappointment. I was hoping for an R. We're mystery writers. I thought we’d be loaded with blood and guts, but apparently we are very genteel when we talk about what we write. We earned our rating by using the words "murder" 4 times, "dead" 3 times and "hell" once.

I guess it proves the old adage: it's not what you say; it's how you say it.