Leap Day Felicitations and Exaggerations

This old postcard cracked me up. Beyond Sadie Hawkins dances, the legend is that in leap years, a woman could propose to a man, and he could not refuse without offering compensation. The February 29th version of bagging your own buck. And of course, the whole plot of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance concerns an ill-fated birthday boy, bound to serve the not-quite-competent Pirate King until his 21st birthday, when he'll be in his eighties.

By contrast, the modern take on the date is way less dramatic and more sensible. Feh! The Telegraph says you might cook a seasonal vegetable or give your hair a treatment masque, though Laura will appreciate their suggestion to close your Facebook account if only for the day. Well, pardon me, but hasn't that gone a little too prosaic? Certainly, for an every four year occurrence, writers can come up with something that's got more oopmh than organizing a closet.

Today, I am helping yellow-eyed lemurs start a driving school. Tonight, I will drink champagne from a pith helmet, jitterbug with actuaries, beat Yogi Bear at arm-wrestling without wrinkling my taffeta, and stay up until 9:15!

As befits such a rare occasion, the most outrageous lies are not only encouraged, they will be believed hook, line, and sinker. So, what will you be doing?

Murder New York Style and the Agathas

By now you have all heard the wonderful news that our own Woman of Mystery, Nan Higginson has been nominated for an Agatha for her story “Casino Gamble” published in the anthology Murder New York Style.

Well, the news gets better all the time. Another story from the anthology has also been nominated. “Death Will Clean Your Closet” was written by Elizabeth Zelvin, who is a member of our NY-TriState Sisters in Crime chapter and blogs over at Poe’s Deadly Daughters.

The two Murder New York Style authors share the short story nominations with Rhys Bowen, Donna Andrews and Peter Lovesey.

Such majestic company!

Congratulations to all!

Terrie

Simple, Easy, Effective, and Free

We’ve been talking a lot about promotion lately. We’ve touched on websites, giveaways, book tours, and social networking of all kinds. But all these things involve work, and most also take money. That’s no reason to skip doing them, of course, and I highly recommend doing all of them. But there’s also a form of promotion that’s simple in format, easy to set up, extremely effective, and 100-percent free. Even better, it’s available to everyone with an email address, and it allows you to reach everyone you ever send an email to. If you belong to any discussion lists, such as Yahoo groups, that can be a lot of people.

What am I talking about? Signature lines―the running footers on emails. Called sig lines for short, they can be set up to provide anything from just your name to a full résumé of your accomplishments. Some even present elaborate pieces of “artwork.” Who hasn’t gotten an email with a three-inch-tall slash-and-caret angel at the bottom?

I use a number of sig lines, a different one for each of my email addresses, each of which serves a different purpose. For my business email, I have a block signature consisting of five lines: my full name and the name of my business, what I do (in my case, “manuscript editing and production”), my business website address, my business email address (yes, it’s up in the header, but not everyone realizes that), and my business phone number. Does that sound like a business card? You got it! Whenever I send a business email, this “electronic business card” goes with it, much the way I drop paper business cards into envelopes before sending things by snail mail. If my email is saved, my contact information is always just a mouse click away.

While I’m more modest with my personal email, I also don’t let any opportunities slip by. I don’t clutter it up with a full business card of information, but I do present my business website address and the address to reach this blog. Since the sig line can be easily edited, I can reverse the order of those two lines or delete one or both, depending on who the recipient is.

For my writing-related email, I don’t use my name at all. Instead, I have a motto: “Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.” This quote from Jules de Gaultier just struck my fancy one day. But while I love that quote and use it in other places, too, I hope I’ll be changing my writing sig line in the very near future. I’m thinking of something along the lines of:

Elaine Will Sparber
www.womenofmystery.net
SPEAKING OF MURDER, Hotsy Totsy Press (coming to bookstores tomorrow)

Sounds good to me!

Two Sentence Tuesday

So, now that My Town Mondays are underway, and what with Clare's and my looming deadlines (self-imposed, but grinding nonetheless), I thought I'd start something silly and fun: Two Sentence Tuesdays.

Every Tuesday, I am going to post two sentences I've written and two sentences I've read. I encourage you all to join in the fun. C'mon...it's just two sentences. And they don't have to be two particularly outstanding sentences, either. They can be bits you wrote for a novel, or words from an email, just plunk down something you wrote this week.

And, heck, if we get enough sentences together, we could have a story, and maybe, just maybe, we might achieve Nan's status...Agatha nomination! Yay, Nan!

In my push toward Nanliness, this week I wrote:

Even sitting on the train, however, Callie could not relax, and when a transit officer entered their car, seemingly intent on memorizing the faces of all the passengers, panic welled up in her chest. Mac had seated himself to her right so he could hide his ruined cheek by facing her, but the window behind their seats acted as a mirror--should the office glance at it, he’d notice the unmistakable scar.

This week I read:

Prepare for battle.

The wedding guest list is often the place where all interested parties--from brides to grooms to mothers to guests to the adult spokespeople for squalling infants--first cross swords.

That's from my sister-in-law's book, Something New.

Agatha Inspirations - Sharing the Joy!

Hope this doesn't count as the sin of Blatant Self Promotion, but I've got to share the great news: my story, "Casino Gamble" is an official nominee for an Agatha in the Best Short Story Category!!! The winner will be chosen by attendees at Malice Domestic. I'll be introduced with the other award nominees during the Friday Opening Ceremony and will be on a panel discussion as well.

Yahoooey!

Please join my happy dance. I've already danced on the sofa and all through the house. If your door bell rings in the next few days it might be me, spreading my dance nationwide.

This cheer is for all the frustrated, hard-working writers out there, struggling toward becoming a published writer. If I can do it, so can you!

Write On!
Nan

KickButt Monday

Actual butt-kicking machine courtesy Dixie Dining and Heavy's BBQ in Crawfordville, GA.

Oh, I'm sneaking this one right under the daily calendar cutoff, but the lateness of the post is symptomatic of my current problems. I've been sick the last couple of weeks or so, though it sure seems like longer, and the fugue's killed my productivity, which was already a little anemic.

My butt's the one that needs kickin', because I've just got to finish the first draft of this MS in process. There are opportunities coming up in April if I have something ready to show, and I need at least to have my agent buy in on the basics and the beginning, and have the total draft in enough shape that I can answer questions about how it ends. Therefore, I'm in need of a custom and personal NaNo to finish editing the rough stuff and fleshing out what doesn't exist yet. So, I'm pledging to myself-- but in public so I feel stuck-- that I'm going to write 1000 words/day and do at least an hour of editing everyday through the end of March. Might not seem like much, but it would be enough.

Any looming deadlines or dropped resolutions nagging at you? Miserable company available.

Alex Keto Beat Me To It

Our Texas friend Travis “Hey I’m 35 now, maybe I’ll run for President” Erwin (see comment section on Alex Keto's Blog in response to the blog post: Why No One Running for President Represents Change ) has a new Monday series over at One Word, One Rung, One Day called My Town Monday. Travis has invited his many pals to give him a blog post link about their hometowns or any old place they feel like describing.

As the Queen of New York City, I offered to post my valuable insights on my beloved City for this week's Monday gabfest. Lo and Behold, citizen of the world Alex Keto beat me to it. When you are roaming around his blog, after you finish his entertaining and accurate look at the Island of Manhattan, 2008, take a peek at his blog on life in West Berlin. Yep, before they took down the Wall.

Never fear, I will just take a huge jump back in time and describe the Manhattan I really miss. I was born and raised in the Bronx, the only borough of New York City that is actually on the mainland of the United States of America. (I love throwing that into conversations, particularly with Manhattanites.) But in the good old days (please excuse my children while they roll their eyes) the entire City of New York was an adventuresome playground for kids from all five boroughs.

We ran free around the city, in the same way farm kids ran free around the farm. All we needed was fifteen cents for a subway ride, or the courage to sneak under the turnstile, (praise and thanksgiving for the statute of limitations) and we were off on any number of adventures. Before I drown us all in reminiscence, let me focus on one of my favorite places.

Just below Union Square, the center of book buying in New York City was a strip of used bookshops that lined Fourth Avenue and was know colloquially as Book Row. Many of the shops specialized: cookbooks, social science books, one kind of fiction or another. Most of the shop owners wouldn’t allow us in the store without adult supervision for fear that we were street urchins (true) who did not have a real respect for books. (Not true.) Sometimes we could get a bookseller to trust us if we asked the right questions. “Do you have any Nancy Drew books with the old blue covers?” or “Do you have any books of stories or poems that Edgar Allen Poe wrote when he lived in New York?” Then he (or she) would guide us through the store, chiding us not to touch anything. One or two owners (it was always the owners) gave us rags or tissues and cautioned us to wipe our hands before we were more than a foot or two inside the threshold.

Marvin Mondlin, estate book buyer at the Strand Bookstore (the only remnant of the Book Row of long ago) and Roy Meador, a collector have co-authored a book about the used bookstores along Fourth Avenue and the culture of book buying in the City. It's called Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade

Times change. Now when I walk into a major chain bookstore, with all their neat shelves and computerized indexes, not to mention their coffee shops, I hear the ghosts of Book Row: “You kids, watch the piles. Don’t knock the books down.” “You want the edition from before the war or the one that came out in 1947?” (This from memory, no punching in numbers and looking up.) “Don’t bring that soda bottle in here; you could spill." "Get out. Get out, you lousy kids.”

They don’t make ‘em like that any more.

Terrie

Three Thousand Miles

I told my dog that we’re moving today. From New York to California. He didn’t seem to mind. Someone told me that dogs remain young because they never worry. Too bad we humans can’t be as zen, but maybe it’s because we know the stakes when we may a decision. Now it’s been made, so in one week we’re leaving the cement canyons of Manhattan for the natural ones of the San Gabriel mountains. It’s pretty there and very quiet. Everyone tells me it’s a good place to write. But when I look outside my window here in Greenwich Village, I have a hard time imagining that a better place exists.

Sure, I know that great novels have been written from all corners of the world. And not every author lives in New York. Yet, it’s all I’ve known since I started writing. What if I can’t do it anywhere else? When I was living in Boston, I was only able to write a thesis, after all, never a novel. Working in Manhattan inspired me to write my first book. What if I find Southern California completely uninspiring? Sure, there are tons of wonderful authors out there. But perhaps my muse doesn’t operate on the West Coast. Maybe it will stay behind.

That’s the gamble one takes whenever making a major decision. Is it better to stay or go? In the end, I know that you can write from anywhere. My friends say I came up with some pretty good stuff when I was living in my hometown of Patchogue, New York. And most people wouldn’t confuse Patchogue for Paris. But then, I had the advantage of youthful angst. Do I now have the advantage of learned wisdom?

I don’t know what kind of writer I will be from my house in California. What if I’m suddenly possessed to write romance over mystery? I haven’t lived in a so-called “single family” residence in almost twenty years, nor have I lived outside a city, be it Boston, London, or New York. Will I miss hearing other people’s footsteps above me? Their voices in the hallway? The blaring of horns, along with the “Hey, get outta of the f*** way!” outside my window? I don’t even know if people curse in the mountains - there are no cab drivers to yell at. So, is the city responsible for my inspiration? Yes, I know it is. I’m not the first writer to feel that way and I won’t be the last. Others will come and find their muse. I just hope mine will travel three thousand miles.

BFP: Acknowledgments and Dedications

In this case, the F is for Blatant Friend Promotion, rather than Self, dagnabbit.

The Good Liar is a recently-released international thriller of romance and espionage by a writing group buddy of mine, Laura Caldwell. (Hmmm, Laura C.'s are good omens!) In my entirely biased opinion, having been lucky enough to read/crit as she wrote it, this one's a yummy read with snappy characters in exotic locales. That said, I must admit that the writing of hers I've enjoyed most recently is in the acknowledgments.

To explain: Not long ago, while doing the weekly errands, my sister-in-law was able to pull a Laura Caldwell title off the rack of their neighborhood drugstore, and show my 8 and 6 year-old nieces my name in the front while explaining why it was there. This led my oldest niece to surprise me later by asking how many authors I've helped, and whether I can get her a publishing deal for her picture books, and whether I'll be eligible for the Caldecott. I'm afraid I had to let her down a little, but it was neat to get the stamp of legitimacy as a publishing professional, though I've never been published (yet). Even if my own name's not on TGL's spine, it's in there, and has the potential to sneak insidiously into tote bags and onto nightstands across the nation. Feel free to buy and share multiple copies to aid my subliminal infiltration campaign.

"I know I've seen that name somewhere before...Don't bother with the manuscript. Just fax over a contract. The fat one." I imagine it'll work something like that.

Yesterday, WoM's own Laura C. discussed being in the acknowledgments of her sister-in-law's non-fiction book on weddings, which led me to think more about the subject of front matter.

Acknowledgments are a tip-of-the-hat from an author, and I've been warmly flattered (buttered?) to think someone found my comments useful. Some acknowledgment sections are sprawling and widely inclusive, while some are hardly there at all. I think they have to remain somewhat fluid based on what and whom one goes through in the research and publishing. But dedications, it seems to me, get decided and stone-cut a lot earlier.

So, have you been thrilled or dismayed to find yourself in an acknowledgment or dedication? Has your credit hit the cutting room floor? Whether you're already in print or not, do you know how your next dedication will read? Confess in the comments.

Always A Bridesmaid

This week, my sister-in-law's book, Something New: Wedding Etiquette for Rule Breakers, Traditionalists, and Everyone In Between, came out. It's non-fiction, so widely--and wildly--different from my own area that discussing its genesis has been absolutely fascinating to me.

(As to the title of this post--I know plenty of people with book contracts and published books...I'm just not one yet. And on the topic of being the "bride," of having the book contract, etc, a salutary if somewhat depressing post from Kate Flora.)

Elise's book is about weddings. And in it, she answers questions I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. What to do about that guy you don't want to invite, but you know someone else is going to bring? What to do with the "threesomes" you know? How to tell your father you don't want him to walk you down the aisle? What to say when you hate your friends fiancée?

I was 39 when I married my husband, who was 42. We got married in Las Vegas because he was working there at the time. We invited...no one. Later, we had a big party. I knew I didn't want a big to do, but until I started looking into this book, I didn't realize just how many sticky situations we'd avoided doing things the way we did.

Of course, being a mystery writer, the information in this book (inevitably) inspired murderous thoughts. My goodness, I begin to understand why so many cozy mystery series revolve around wedding planners, etc. Mothers of the groom who wear wedding dresses to the wedding, the "dry" family vs. the "drinking" family, cash games at weddings (and showers), mislaid invitations, "destination" weddings...so many potential causes of felonious activity!

This book also includes a very nice acknowledgment from my sister-in-law, who appears to feel she owes me thanks for listening to her "electronic rants." If that's true, the acknowledgment section of my own book is going to be long, indeed. In fact, it will probably have to include every regular reader of this blog!

Elise's website is still in development, so there's not much there yet. She maintains a blog at IndieBride, where she posts about the life and times of an urban mom.

The Turtle and the Writer

Photo by Chris Brown, courtesy of the Western Ecological Research Center, San Diego Field Station website

"Behold the turtle: He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."
―James B. Conant, American educator and scientist, 1893–1978

I discovered the above quote yesterday morning. I joined a Yahoo Group for turtle owners, and this quote is what the list owner uses as a footer on all her messages. In a literal sense, it’s accurate. My two red-eared sliders, Nick and Nora, get things done only when they stick their necks out and extend their heads. When they “hide,” they’re just two big green lumps in the tank.

When people keep their heads pulled in, so to speak, we don’t make any progress either. How can we? Like turtles, we’re hiding from life in that pose. We’re protecting ourselves. We’re cowering. It’s only when we extend our necks and expose our faces that we can move forward. Our eyes, instead of seeing just the inside of our collars, can see everything that’s around us. Our noses can smell the air. Our senses can register not only the dangers that might be lurking, but also the possibilities. Moving forward takes bravery, experimentation. It takes testing of different options, possibly failing and regrouping, learning from our failures as well as our successes, and moving forward to a new batch of options.

As writers, we stick our necks out every time we slap words down on paper. If they’re not the right words, we delete them and start over with new words. Once we’ve slapped down enough words to get to the end of our story, we go back to the beginning and fine-tune our word choices to create just the right images. If we don’t stick our necks out, we never get those words down. Some people don’t even get the first word down. They’re the ones who aren’t brave enough to take even one little peek out over their collars.

Nick and Nora joined my family about seven years ago, when my older son was 17 and his friend, the turtles’ original human, was leaving for Air Force boot camp. I wasn’t a turtle fan back then, but Nick and Nora have grown on me. Yesterday, I began looking at them with new eyes.

I also moved my son’s little plastic bobble-headed turtle from the kitchen windowsill to my office, where it’s now sitting on top of my printer’s paper tray. Funny, but every time I slapped words into my WIP and printed them out yesterday, that little turtle’s head bobbled up and down. I think he was cheering me on. I guess I’ll brave my fears and slap down some more words today.

Short Stuff Sticker Shock

Allow me to hie to my fainting couch like Madame Recamier.

If hardcover prices don't already make you a little woozy in your weejuns, here's the latest wrinkle in softies, courtesy of my local drug store.

As I'm enviously prone to do, I was browsing the widely available, ergo widely read, book and magazine titles at a major chain. I spied a new (to me) title by a bestselling author of whom I am a sincere admirer, if less ardent in recent years. I noticed it wasn't very thick when I picked it up, but I don't always mind a quick read. I browsed the back cover. Still fine. I flipped inside for a peek at a random page in the thick of things (my preference over first or last pages). The text was HUGE, relatively speaking. It was at least 12 point font, but I'm betting more like 13 or 14. For weak-eyed readers, this will be welcome, but it wasn't stickered as one of those easy-to-read versions. Given the thickness of the book, I found myself curious, and started counting rows and words.

Keeping in mind that standard manuscript format is 250 words/page and that's how we typically estimate finished lengths in pages for agents and editors, etc, here's what I found in my admittedly non-comprehensive riffling and counting:

This title's pages were 25 lines long. Pretty standard, check.
The lengths of margin-to-margin lines ranged from 6 words to just one I counted with 11, and the majority come in at more like 7 words.
This got me to a generous average of 175 words/page on full pages.
There were 275 numbered pages.
This calculates to slightly over 48,000 words.

Now, that's an unrealistic maximum, because this book has LOTS of shorter pages due to pithy chunks of dialogue and the half-page chapter beginnings and partial-page chapter endings. As I recall it now (and forgot to note specifically, drat!), there were more than twenty chapters and some almost blank and numbered back pages. I think it's no grinchiness to say the book is, in fact, much closer to 40,000 words, about half of what I expect in a small paperback, and is still priced at the standard $6.99 mass market price.

I've since checked online, and the hardcover of this comes in at 176 pages, so the word/page count in that edition probably comes closer to the standard 250/page, but what do you think about buying a non-illustrated, series hardcover of that length for the $17.95 list?

I believe readers can and will judge whether they think it's worth it. I'm not calling anyone out, but let no one tell you the long-form short story or novella's a dead form. You just can't call it that openly, and you need a reader base so hungry for content that they won't squeal at half-servings.

Is this a trend? Do you know others besides the title I saw?

Happy Presidents Day

Here we are--the third Monday of February and the entire population of the United States of America is celebrating Presidents Day by shopping 'til we drop. The bigger the ticket, the hotter the item; car dealerships and electronic stores are salivating.

But I am not a shopper. I am a writer. I shop for ways to string words together to make them meaningful and memorable. Hey! I sound like a Presidential candidate.

Who is more quotable than Presidents? Molly McCall of the buzz log tracked the on-line demand for Presidential quotes. Click here Molly provides a list of the ten most widely searched presidents. Calvin Coolidge? Neither Molly nor I understand how a man nicknamed "Silent Cal" slid in at number nine.

My very favorite president is the much maligned and misunderstood, John Adams, who said: "The history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod - and thenceforward these two conducted all the policies, negotiations, legislatures, and war."

I am sure he wasn't the only signer of the Declaration of Independence to feel that way; he was just the only one to say it.

Which President spoke to the writers among us? Theodore Roosevelt, although he probably didn't mean this only for us: "It is always better to be an original than an imitation."

In the spirit of the day, celebrate with words, not sales.

Terrie

Phyllis A. Whitney - Our Loss

Phyllis A. Whitney's first book appeared in print in 1941 when she was 38 years old. Her last was published when she was 94. In those forty-six years, she wrote lots of short stories, 39 adult suspense novels, 14 novels for young adults, 20 children’s mysteries, and several books about writing.

She died at age 104, on February 8, 2008. For a good obituary, check out this one in the New York Times.

In between her birth as a writer and her final demise, in 1985 to be exact, I won the Phyllis A. Whitney Writer's Award for my essay on writing. I received $500. which made me feel like I'd won the Triple Crown. Best of all, Phyllis A. Whitney herself - in person! - read my essay to the assembled. She read it with exactly the right pitc, pace, and tone. She laughed when I prayed she would laugh. In her ending comments, she cheered my ability to arouse varied emotional responses in the course of a few hundred words. She gave me the confident nod that I needed.

Phyllis A. Whitney will be mourned by millions. I will forever celebrate her life and her life's work - especially how she encouraged writers to keep writing. What a gift she was to the world. What an example for us to follow!

Thinking Inside The Box

In the comments section of a recent post, we began a discussion that bears bringing to the foreground, the question of what kinds of promotional items readers might find desirable (other than copies of your book, of course).

Terrie mentions giving away Yankees items because her short story in Murder New York Style has a large "Yankees" component. Clare mentions that many authors are auctioning off the ability to name characters, etc, in forthcoming books.

The picture here is of a new item I have in my store. (For detailed pictures of the parts of the set, see the product description.) I sell a lot of floral beads. I mean a LOT. And trying to find a fresh, new idea in floral beads is a challenge. But I love Kate Collins' frothy flowershop mysteries, and they seemed a natural match to my flower beads. Luckily, Kate agreed and signed six books for me to use in the project. But a book-bead combination seemed incomplete, so I added some matching silk ribbon along with "findings" for making a pendant, a bookmark, whatever. UPDATE: This sold within 24 hours to a woman who hangs out on the jewelry boards to which I belong. She's never bought anything from me before, nor has she read Kate's books, so with luck she'll like both our work!

Because regardless of what anyone in the publishing industry may think, I know that beaders are readers. And I'm looking to capitalize on the fact that they're looking for something new, both in beads and in books.

But I know my audience. I know I have to keep my price down a bit. Why? Because the people who buy this set will likely add their own talent, make some fabulous piece of jewelry, and then sell the jewelry with the book, and they have to be able to make a profit on that.

So, with luck, I hope several people will benefit from this venture: I hope to attract new customers and keep my customers who are looking for something new coming back for more, I hope to garner Kate a few new readers, I hope some jewelry artisans will be able to create unique items for their customers, and that, in the end, six people will end up with truly unique presents they buy for themselves or receive from others.

So I've been thinking about cross-promotion, and what unusual audiences a writer might find for her work. What's "inside the box" of your book? When you think about marketing, can you think of a group that might not normally be tapped who might be interested in your work? How can you get your novel into their hands, your name on their lips? (But keep this post from Heather Webber in mind: just because there's gardening in your book doesn't mean gardening clubs are your audience!)

"Niche" or "hobby" books, particularly cozies, have more obvious markets. But with work, I figure there has to be a way to find "different" markets for other kinds of books, too. So how about it, folks? Think inside your book...Where would you put your book that's not the standard bookstore aisle?

Dripping Red Valentines for You

I hope you like it...I can't return it. Image via the creatures in Andrew Bell's head.


Just in case you're feeling thematic and have the time to read (I will), here's a delicious sampler:

CLASSIC
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. A meaty short story, but the rest of any good collection will fill out this spooky meal.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The story of colonialism and good and evil in nineteenth century Africa where a steamboat pilot navigates wild country to deliver an ivory-trading agent and his inventory.

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene. WWII British assistant police commissioner Henry Scobie is stationed in a West African town where he struggles with his desires and duties.

THRILLER
Bleeding Hearts: A Novel by Ian Rankin. First published under the name Jack Harvey, this early novel includes a tweaky British assassin being hunted around the UK and United States by an American P.I.

Runaway Heart: A Novel by Stephen J. Cannell. Futuristic tale about disabled LAPD cop Jack Wirta who's hired to help the founder of the Institute for Planetary Justice uncover the corrupt corporations and and government figures involved in a dangerous genetic engineering scheme.

HISTORICAL
Heart of Ice by Alys Clare. In 1194, the body of a traveler coming to Hawkenlye Abbey to take the Holy Water ends up found in a ditch with French papers and possibly the plague.

Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence. Midwife Hannah Trevor investigates the death of girl found strangled on Valentine's Day, 1786, in Revolutionary War Maine.

TRADITIONAL
Bleeding Hearts by Susan Wittig Albert. A China Bayles mystery about the herbalist and former lawyer in Pecan Springs, Texas, where the high school football coach is implicated in nefarious improprieties.

Cactus Heart by Jon Talton. 50 years after a cattle baron's twin grandsons disappeared, Arizona Deputy Sheriff David Mapstone finds a pair of small skeletons in a abandoned warehouse and uses his background as a history professor to uncover the long-buried truth.

NOIR-ISH
Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin. Coming of age tale in rough corner of Brooklyn with loads of realistic local flavor.

The Girl with the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block. Caper with two long-con artists and the millionaire target of their real estate swindle.


I haven't read all of these titles. Think of them more as springboards than comprehensive endorsements. However, I would read any of them based on the back-cover blurbage and will probably get to a few more. Categories above are loose, too. Just pointers, not pigeonholes. If you've read any of these or other books that fit today's bill, please share your views in the comments. You have our heartfelt appreciation.

For Writers with Nothing to Write

Like Laura, although I’m a geek from way back, I have no desire to join most of the social networking websites currently popular. I know My Space and Facebook are very good at what they do, but at the moment, I already have more friends than I have time to hang with.

Crimespace is a different story. I’ve been wanting to join for a while now, and I will join. The only thing holding me back is that I haven’t had the time to spend on setting up my personal page. I’d also need to upload a photo, and I don’t have any at the moment that I’m happy with.

A site I do belong to, and one I highly recommend to anyone interested in writing, is Writing.com. Called WDC (writing dot com) by its members, it includes both published and unpublished writers. It also has readers—people who love reading but don’t write themselves. This works out great because the writers write and the readers read it and many also critique it. The genres include everything from mystery, fantasy, and romance to sports, holidays, and home/garden (there are 90 in all), so it’s rare for people to have trouble finding something they’re interested in.

For writers, WDC is a goldmine if you want to write but don’t know what to write about. You can always find writing prompts to get your imagination in gear and contests to give you a goal. If you’re looking for quick feedback or in-depth critiques, you can find those, too. At the same time, WDC allows you to just display your writing without getting feedback. It also functions as a safe place to store all your hard work off your computer.

Writing.com has six levels of membership, each offering progressively more portfolio space and other benefits, such as keeping a blog, creating your own webpage, and uploading audio files. All allow you to keep your portfolio of writing completely private, restricted to registered users, or open to the public. Some members supply their portfolio addresses to agents, editors, and other people interested in seeing work samples.

I don’t work for Writing.com. However, I’ve been a member for several years now. I let my paid membership lapse a while ago, but I just renewed it, and I’m amazed at the improvements. I recommend checking it out.

Anti-Social Networking

Network By Design
Most of you have probably gleaned from my various posts that I am not a big fan of "social networking" in the mode of MySpace or Facebook, especially not for authors who are trying to sell their books. I was, therefore, fascinated by this article in the Register, and this one on Creative Capital, both based on the same set of numbers, which indicate that the biggies in the social networking arena are growing slowly in the areas in which they are not actively shrinking. From Creative Capital:

Since December 2006, when MySpace engagement peaked at about 234 minutes spent per visitor, time spent on the site has dropped consistently throughout the year. In December, time spent per visitor saw its biggest month-to-month drop, of about 8.5%, to 179 minutes per visitor per month, down from 196 minutes in November. That equates to a 24% year-over-year drop.

Both MySpace and FaceBook are non-targeted networks. That is, people join them for general stuff. Members may self-select into groups based on hobbies, favorite activities, whatever, but the larger "network" is general.

Then there are the targeted networks. Daniel Hatadi created the targeted social network CrimeSpace on the general social networking site Ning. Crimespace is for those who like to read--and write--crime fiction. It has 1233 members, all of whom, presumably, are interested in the kinds of things we Women of Mystery like, too.

Targeted even more specifically are sites like Redroom, where in order to get your page "activated", you have to be a published author. Anyone can sign up for an account, though, so I suppose the "social network" aspect could be for readers as well, though I can't see how it would have a lot of appeal.

Network As Side-Benefit
For myself, I infinitely prefer sites where "social networking" takes place as a by-product. That is, the site is designed for some other purpose. For example, I belong to a number of forums for my day job like the Creative Wire Jewelry forum on Delphi. Long before the age of the "social networking site," there were bulletin board services, and these forums are holdovers from that style of communication. These are social networking at their most basic because they were really designed to be "social," not to help people "network."

You can't put your "author page" on a forum site the way you can on a social network site, but you don't need to. Why not? Because on a forum site, people know you by what you post. They learn who you are slowly. There's no Blatant Self-Promotion allowed, and although we all show our work and buy from each other, that's a side benefit of the forum, not its focus.

I also belong to LibraryThing. LibraryThing allows you to catalog your books online (and call your library from your cell phone in order to see whether you have already read that book you're pretty sure is a re-release....). You can rate books, review them, and--important to me--tag them. You can also subscribe to tag feeds. So whenever someone tags a book in their library as "cozy," my RSS reader lets me know, so I can see whether I've read it, might want to read it, whatever.

LibraryThing does have a section of forums, where people discuss all kinds of things. And you can search for people who have similar libraries to yours, make them your friends, etc. But mostly, it's about the books. The social network aspect is a sideline, so, no, it's not where you could put your author page. (Though if you are an author, you should become a "LibraryThing author" and tag your books so you know that geeks like me, who are getting the feeds, will be sure to know about your books! Since this takes all of two minutes--or five if you have a whole lot of books to pimp promote--you won't have put out a lot of effort for no measurable reward even if it doesn't sell a single book for you.)

And, of course, there's this blog. I didn't start blogging for promotion--I have nothing to promote--but it's certainly social, and we've created, I hope, a network. But a blog isn't a homepage, either. It's not enough for an author just to have a blog, s/he has to have a web page as well.

Home Salty Home
Why might you want to put your author page on a site like CrimeSpace, rather than just creating it out in the middle of the Web on its own? I'm probably the wrong person to ask. The idea is that if you put it up somewhere people are already going, they're more apt to see it. If they're already hanging out looking at author profiles, they'll be more receptive to yours.

Well, okay. That certainly worked for Wendy's, whose startup marketing strategy was to place a Wendy's near every McDonald's on the theory that if people wanted fast food, they wanted fast food.

Unfortunately, as every strip mall in existence illustrates, where there's a Wendy's and a McDonald's, there's also a Burger King, a Taco Bell.... The "noise" can become a bit overwhelming. How do you make yourself heard over the din, especially since most social networking sites strictly limit the alterations you can make on your page? The sites want a uniform look, like a housing development, in order to give visitors a sense of "place". Cruise around Redroom for a while. You may not know the author whose page you find yourself on, but you'll know you haven't left Redroom's site.

For many, many surfers, that sense of place is an important one. The question is, are your readers that kind of surfer? Are readers, in general, different from surfers of other types?

I think they probably are. I'm not at all sure how they differ, but I am pretty sure they do. Even genre-to-genre, I am willing to bet you'd find differences in the Internet habits of readers.

But as I struggle to figure out what to do for my own author page, I am more than willing to be educated--have you found success in formal social networking sites? What did it cost in terms of time, energy, upkeep? What do you like or dislike about your own site? I'd love to be proven wrong about social networking...there's an attractive aspect to the ease with which one can set up a page on those sites.

Sometimes a Picture Does-

(He can turn away, but it's all his fault. You'll see.)

- Represent a thousand words, or at least a hundred. This one to the right is of the singular Leigh Lundin, and if you follow the link to Criminal Brief, you'll see how he was inspired (is that the right word, Terrie?) by some of the photos and personalities here. Yikes! And can I have a gun or samurai sword next time? He's started a thread for flash fiction to accompany the photo I originally posted here. I've already added my lame contribution. So jump in, the pixels are warm!

It's 10pm, Have You Backed Up Your Computer Today?

I've been mostly absent for a while due to a set of circumstances comprised of health, family and technology. Which reminded me to post, while I am thinking about it, a comment about backing up.

Do you back up? How often? Surveys say that something like 75% of computer users don't, or don't do it often enough to be effective. Me, I'm a geek. I back up to a separate drive at home, I synchronize my address book and calendar to a file on an online server, and I back up my writing to a thumb drive like the one pictured here, which I keep on my keychain so that when I am done with a writing session at Starbucks or Borders, I can put my work on the drive before I shut down the computer...just in case it won't start up again when I get home!

I use a Mac, so I don't worry much about viruses, though I'll scan things I download, particularly if they're Microsoft documents, as virus-writers love to hack MS products.

Unfortunately, this particular technological issue caught me off guard. The CD/DVD drive in my computer went bad, not bad enough to stop working, but just bad enough to corrupt everything I installed from it to some extent, including the operating system. Corruption I dutifully backed up.

Ooops.

This means my documents are just fine, thank goodness, (though once I reinstalled the word processing software, my formatting went seriously wonky) but I am going to be missing bits and pieces of stuff for a long time. My applications don't work right, so I have to dig up serial numbers (which is one thing I am really bad about keeping track of) so that I can download new copies of the apps and reinstall them. And I don't know what doesn't work until I need it, try it, and find out it's toast.

Ah, the joys of life in the techie age.

The Murky Demimonde

The title belongs to Slate. The image to Tairan Zhang.

Can't remember if I ever posted this, but it's an interesting article by Garth Risk Hallberg on Amazon's top reviewers, including the speed-reading and plot-summarizing icon Harriet Klausner.

Do Editors Still Edit?

Later this month, the guest speaker at my local Sisters in Crime chapter meeting will be an editor from Simon and Schuster. Among the things he’ll discuss will be, “Do editors edit anymore?” How do I know? Because that’s what the announcement postcard says in boldfaced, italicized, and slightly larger type.

The Sisters in Crime general discussion list recently inaugurated an offering called Mentor Monday. A wonderful idea, it features a different publishing professional (published author, editor, agent, librarian) answering list members’ questions every Monday. This week's guest, an author, was asked, “We keep hearing that editors don’t edit anymore. What has been your experience?”

Whether or not editors still edit has become a hot question the past several years. The problem is, the people posed the question usually aren’t the best ones to answer it. Writers generally go by their personal experience, which is usually with the same editor for a number of years, and editors tend to go by what they themselves do. The best person to ask would be someone who deals with a variety of editors from a variety of publishing houses.

As a freelance copyeditor, I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the answer to whether or not editors still edit is an unequivocal, um, yes and no. The fact is, some editors edit and some don’t. Some publishers require their editors to edit and others don’t. And among the editors who edit and the houses that encourage it, the amount of editing that’s done varies.

First let’s clarify the type of editing we’re discussing. Editors such as the guest speaker at my upcoming chapter meeting do developmental editing. Here, the editor helps the writer produce the final draft of a manuscript. The editor will point out problems with the plot and pacing and characters. He or she will recommend where material should be added to fill out descriptions or improve explanations, where text could be deleted to tighten things up, how paragraphs or sections could be shifted to increase tension or flow. These editors almost always work in-house.

Copyeditors do everything else, including copy (mechanical) editing and line (stylistic) editing. Some also do substantive (structural) editing. (For descriptions, click here.) These editors generally work on a freelance or contract basis.

Over the years, I’ve worked for every type of publisher in terms of the amount of editing expected. One full-time employer felt that once it acquired a manuscript, it had the right to totally rework it, no matter what the author wanted or how much the author objected. Another felt the writer’s words were sacred and didn’t even allow commas to be inserted without the author’s approval. Most fell in between these two extremes.

As a freelance copyeditor, I do work for a number of different publishers, a few on a regular basis. Some of these clients want me to plow in and fix everything necessary, while others want me to merely point out the problems and recommend the corrections. Again, most fall in between, but they still vary in how heavily they want me to edit and in the amount of leeway they give me.

I’ve also noticed that the quality of the manuscripts from one publisher can vary depending on who the in-house editor is. At one company, some of the editors can be superb, obviously working closely with their authors to craft near-to-perfect final drafts, while other editors there seem to barely look at their manuscripts. Needless to say, I lunge for manuscripts edited by the first kind of editor and sometimes find my schedule suddenly packed when offered a project handled by the second kind. I’ve had some manuscripts from editors like the latter that I pretty much ended up having to rewrite.

But if my experience doesn’t convince you, bring up the subject at the next gathering of published authors you attend. Guaranteed, some will complain of too much editor intrusion, others will lament the lack of editing they've received, and others will say their experiences have been just fine.

Another Link

For Clare's Super Linky Tuesday (below). I've just added a link to Lee Lofland's new blog to our Research Sites for Writers. Lee's blog, which he calls a "guide to all things cops and robbers," is chock full of good information for the criminally minded! Not to mention pictures. I chose a relatively innocuous one for this post, but today he has a lovely picture of a gunshot wound, for those who aren't faint of heart or queasy of stomach.

Super Linky Tuesday

No doubt about it. Those Martians have a sense of humor. c. Barcroft Media. Don't sue, please.


You may be celebrating the NY Football Giants victory (some of us are in mourning), or following the bucks and throws of the political rodeo, or indulging in some Fat Tuesday gluttony, and here we have the perfect accompaniment of smokin' hot links:

1) Great, more competition. Striking screenwriters go back to their novels.

2) Not NaNoWriMo. Work-for-sale. Jeff Vandermeer explains how he wrote