The LadyKillers

Too much information? What's that?

Over the course of a century or so, our culture has evolved from a close-lipped Victorian approach to sharing personal information to the no-holds barred style embodied in the facebook status update.

I know you've seen them:

"Just had some killer Indian food.  Hot as hell.  I'm already belching up flames and I know my guts will be paying for this tomorrow, but it was GOOD."

"Don't you wish your boyfriend was hot like mine?"  (This type is usually posted with photos of said boyfriend, briefly clad.)

"The stick turned blue!  We're pregnant!"

I'm oh-so-glad that the days are gone when women disappeared from society at the fourth month and reappeared six months later, babe in arms.  Not only are pregnant women beautiful, they're human, and forcing them to hide was cultural cruelty.  Still, I think it's a little unseemly when a celebrity invites photographers to focus on her "baby bump" (I really dislike that phrase) while she wears a dress designed specifically for this photo shoot and cradles that bump seductively in her hands.  As I think about it, my discomfort with this has nothing to do with maternity and sexuality.  It has everything to do with using those personal and sacred things to get attention and to make money.  It makes me wonder whether there are female celebrities out there who calculated the value of the media coverage of Beyonce's baby bump and then consciously set out to get some bumps for themselves.

Consider this a plaintive plea to people who assuredly don't care what I think: 

Have some dignity, please.

News and Next Week: TMI

News

• Camille Minichino will be moderating a panel at Berkeley's Center for Independent Living on Thursday, November 3, at 7 PM. Panelists include Penny Warner, Cara Black, and Sue Dunlap.

• Ann Parker, Camille Minichino, and Rita Lakin will be at the Sisters in Crime Fall Showcase, at Books, Inc., 601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, California on Saturday, November 5, at noon.
• Priscilla Royal and Ann Parker will be chatting and signing at M is for Mystery, San Mateo, California, on Sunday, November 6, 2:00 PM.

• Ann Parker's MERCURY'S RISE, the next in her Silver Rush historical mystery series, is November 1, 2011 (11/1/11). She is zipping around the internet in a blog book tour for the next two-plus weeks, and is giving away a prize to a lucky commenter at each virtual stop. This coming week, you can find her at:
  • Monday, October 31, 2011
    Patricia Stoltey http://patriciastoltey.blogspot.com/
    (Host: Patricia Stoltey)
  • Tuesday, November 1, 2011 ~~Release Day!!~~
    The Silver Rush Mysteries http://silverrushmysteries.blogspot.com/
  • Wednesday, November 2, 2011
    The Victorian West http://www.thevictorianwest.com/
    (Host: Michelle West)
  • Thursday, November 3, 2011
    The LadyKillers http://theladykillers.typepad.com
    (Right here, folks!)
  • Friday, November 4, 2011
    My Word, My World, My Work http://andidowning.wordpress.com/
    (Host: Andi Downing)
  • Saturday, November 5, 2011
    Blood Red Pencil http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/
    (Host: Dani Greer)
  • Sunday, November 6, 2011
    Type M for Murder http://typem4murder.blogspot.com/
    (Host: Donis Casey)

Next Week

There's a lot more of it, now that people share their intimate phone conversations right next to you on the train. TMI, too much information. One woman's dearth is another woman's deluge--how does TMI affect us in daily life or in the pages of a mystery? Tell me all, but don't tell me too much!

The Four Stages of Advice

Back when I was trying to write indie scripts (gay cowboy YEARS before Annie Proulx!) in a factory town (L.A.), it was the Rise of the Screenwriting Teacher: anybody with a masters degree and good stage presence was charging rubes like me hundreds or thousands of dollars for advice about how to break in to the smoking hot spec screenplay market. I moved to L.A., took the "MFA Lite" version of UCLA's film program (just the screenwriting instruction, none of the filmmaking), and attended every seminar I could afford.

I was deep into the first stage of advice, the Sponge Stage. Luckily for me, I ran across the genuine article, a real screenwriting mentor, a wonderful instructor and a truely kind person, Neil Landau. Without him I would have probably given up on every kind of writing. A maelstrom of advice flew around my head. Neil's gentle guidance served as anchor points--I could feel the truth in his observations, even if I didn't always know how to do as he suggested. It was a frustrating but also thrilling time.

Alas, I was not meant to live in Los Angeles, and ran scuttling home after having won some minor awards but without ever having anything sold or produced. But I didn't stop reading all the advice I could get my hands on, even as I turned away from scripts and toward novels and short stories. Eventually, I realized that much of the advice out there was contradictory. So many theories--3 acts, no, there's 5, or 7. Or, there's only 3 plots in the universe, no 7, no 23 (23?)...it couldn't all be true. Kind of like growing up without any religion--how could I possibly pick one?

This was the beginning of stage two, the Bitter Kitten stage. Often accompanied by a resurgence in whatever bad habits haunt your life (in my case, Snack Cakes and Too Much Television), Bitter Kitten stage often involves ceremonial discarding of advice books, tapes, and whatever projects you've been working on. Take it from me, toss out the books and tapes, but keep your rough drafts.

At this point you might find yourself obsessed by a Holy Grail of writing--for me it was voice. What is voice? When will I know I've got mine?

I felt lost and alone in this stage, abandoned by my early studies, but without a theory of my own. However, if you can stand the discomfort of muddling through this stage, which by my observation is unavoidable unless you are smart enough to never have sought advice in the first place, better days wait for you. Once you start writing every day instead of reading advice all the time, the most lovely thing happens.

You start to pick and choose among the things you've read. Maybe you'll decide that McKee knows nothing about act structure, but is pretty sharp about characterization. You might decide that it doesn't matter how many beats are in a scene, or scenes in a sequence, or sequences in an act, or acts in a novel. You content yourself with noticing when you've created a successful one of any of those things. Maybe you half-remember something you read in Egri's book (you have read Egri, haven't you?), you might mangle it until it makes sense to you.

This is the third stage, Chrysalis. The shell of your daily writing practice protects you while you spin your own theories--at first out of the pieces you've broken off of others, but as you pick up speed, read a lot more, and try to apply your theories to new works or your own works, you begin to build your very own theory and beliefs about what makes a good story, why some characters leap off the page at you, where things need to speed up or slow down in your stories. It was somewhere in this stage that I realized both Egri and Aristotle were probably wrong--neither plot nor character were more important than the other. Rather, they were two aspects of the same thing, like matter and energy. Each affects the other, and a flaw in one becomes a flaw in both. But I'm still working on that theory!

And then, one lovely day, one of my critique partners said, "The voice in this story is perfect." That's when I tumbled into the fourth and final stage of advice, the Poetics stage. Like Aristotle before me, I'd hit upon a set of theories, suspicions, beliefs, and guiding principles that worked for me. I was ready to hear other theories, weigh them against my own beliefs, and refine my poetics as I learn from other peers and the great writers of the ages. Reading became a sort of virtual salon.

Or, at writing conferences, in the bar, especially late at night, an actual salon. If you can get people to stop talking about ebooks and Amazon long enough to get a real conversation going, that is...

No one theory out there can possibly tell you how to write the stories that only you can tell. Voice isn't so much the result of things you do, as it is the absence of all the junk you know enough to discard--what's left is your voice, and it was there the whole time. You just couldn't hear it for the noise.

No matter which stage you are at in your writing adventure, Sponge, Bitter Kitten, Chrysalis, or full-grown Poetics, never forget. Theories and advice should never rule you. Take what you need and leave the rest. And if you see me in the bar, the next one's on me!

The Secret to Being a Real Writer

By Margaret Lucke

During the lunch break at a writing workshop, I overheard two of my fellow students talking. "This class is just like all the others," one of them griped. "They never tell you the secret."

"Yeah," her companion muttered. "The problem is, successful writers don’t want you to succeed too. They don’t want outsiders in their little club."

Like too many new and would-be writers, this pair was convinced that out there somewhere was one bit of perfect, painless writing advice -- the pearl of wisdom that, if only someone would reveal it to them, would admit them to the circle of Real Writers.

I was tempted to jump into their conversation. You see, I know that secret. But I held my tongue. I had a feeling they really didn’t want to hear it. They were looking for some sort of eye-of-newt formula or abracadabra incantation that -- poof! -- would make their words flow without effort and have editors begging to publish the results.

Actually I want that too. The secret, though simple, does not necessarily make writing easier.

The secret is this:  Apply seat of pants.

I learned it long ago in a seminar led by screenwriter Larry Menkin, whose credits and accomplishments included creating Captain Video and His Video Rangers, TV's first science fiction program. He was fond of the phrase and repeated it often.

Larry was telling us neophytes an important truth:  the only way we could become Real Writers was to apply the seat of our pants to the seat of our chair, and write. Write a lot. Write regularly. Write prose that’s good and prose that’s terrible (what’s terrible can be revised later.) But write.

Woody Allen said, “Ninety percent of success is just showing up.” A writer succeeds by showing up at his or her desk and applying seat of pants.

Confession time: This is advice I should follow more often. As you may have noticed, life gets in the way of writing. Other priorities, other projects, other people demand and deserve our attention, and unless we're diligent, the writing time just slides away. To be truthful, I'm not always diligent. But that doesn't make the secret any less true.

You may be saying, "There’s a lot more to writing than that." You're right. Anyone who's serious about writing needs to understand the craft of storytelling and the effective use of language. It's helpful to learn about other writers' processes and techniques so we can try them out and discover the ones that work for us. Books and classes and conversations with other writers can be sources of great advice along those lines.

But none of that will matter if we don’t show up at our desk or computer, if we don't apply the seat of our pants to the seat of the chair. And write.

Write What You (Don't) Know!

"Write what you know!" It's probably the most common hunk of writing advice ever given/received/remembered/acted upon and rejected. Because let's face it, if it were true, every one of us Ladykillers would be dispensing our wisdom from lock down (me, most likely, from the criminal psychiatric ward). I haven't run amok with a team of salivating fallen angels or vampires and last I checked, it was pretty unanimously agreed that the dead generally stay dead. Or close to it. But we still hear it at every writing seminar and in every book that promises to make you an overnight best seller.

So here's what I know.

1. I'm kind of an aficionado on Target stores. I can locate the Dollar Spot and cat litter at any Target, anywhere, in thirty seconds flat. Perhaps my next novel will be Terror at Target. (Catchy, no?)

2. I know that Halloween candy still has calories, and even if you eat it in costume, they still can find you. Hence my next novel, Mrs. Gianthighs and the Snickers Sneaker.

3. I know that if I wear a white blouse out to dinner, I'll inevitably order something multicolored and then get to wear a Jackson Pollock-does-spaghetti sauce ensemble home. Sauce Killed My Shirt, anyone?

I know a plethora of other dull, uninteresting things but my imagination tends to smother them and horrible, vampiric things tend to bleed out, doused with murder, mayhem, and the occasional townhouse blown to bits. So, until the reading trend leans toward the Target, I'll stick with writing things I think, not know. Although I could write a mean mystery on tomato growing...

The Best Writing Advice I Ever Heard

When I teach creative writing classes, one of my first handouts is "Writing Advice" to help inspire the students. Here are some of my favorites, that have inspired me over the years:

 There's nothing to writing. 
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
  ~ Walter Wellesley Smith

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. 
~Elmore Leonard

If there's a book you really want to read,
but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. 
~Toni Morrison

Writing became such a process of discovery
that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: 
I wanted to know what I was going to say. 
~Sharon O'Brien

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion,
some place, in the air.  All I must do is find it, and copy it. 
~Jules Renard

I love being a writer. 
What I can't stand is the paperwork. 
~Peter De Vries

What no partner of a writer can ever understand is that
 a writer is working when she's staring out of the window. 
~Burton Rascoe

You can't wait for inspiration.
You have to go after it with a club.
~Jack London

Writing advice for the day

Now, there’s a big topic. LadyKillers is all about writing advice one way or another, much of it garnered from each writer’s painful learning process. My fellow bloggers may riff on the topic in other ways, but I think I’ll try a partial answer to where you’ll get good writing advice.

First, we are beyond lucky to live in the Internet age when it comes to searching out help for our fiction projects. There were always sources in the form of books, writers’ conferences and the like. But today, there must be thousands of lively blog sites where authors muse about what works for them. (Full disclosure: I post my own every Friday – see the sidebar for my web/blog URL.) I sometimes think we writers spend as much time writing about how we write as we do actually working on our novels and short stories. There’s a fine beginning list of writers’ blogs posted here at LadyKillers. You can create your own customized set of blog resources so easily. Whenever you read a book that you admire especially, Google the author and see if she or he has a site – sometimes their blog site may not be the same as their web site, but there will be a link – and bookmark it. If you have the patience, subscribe to the best and they’ll show up in your email box whenever a new entry is posted. But beware, too many RSS feeds and your email cup floweth over.

Second, go back to the cloth and paper books on writing by authors who have challenged and encouraged writers in equal measure. For me, Patricia Highsmith, James N. Frey, and Gillian Roberts (aka Judy Greber) are among the best writers’ friends. David Corbett recommends Robert McKee. Hallie Ephron has a highly practical, approachable book I also like, complete with worksheets to guide you. There are others. These might get you started. Go to the library and ask the reference librarians, long may they thrive.

Third, treat yourself to a writers’ workshop, class, seminar, club, critique group, or other group activity. Not only will you hear many of the same pieces of advice (you can’t hear them too often), but you’ll pick up the energy and shared ambition of other participants, which for most of us is critically important. I’m in awe of writers who hole up in mountain cabins to write 100,000-word novels, but I’d probably just eat all the popcorn I brought with me in a week and slink back down with nothing to show for it but a few extra pounds.

Last, read. There is nothing – nothing – more essential to becoming a good writer than to be a voracious, discriminating, conscious, daily reader. It’s where you’ll get your vocabulary, context, history, style, plot inspirations, ear for usage, eye for dialogue on the page, understanding of how humor or pathos works, feel for structure, etc., etc. Television’s fine, movies help, all the rest is good. But I never met or heard of a fine writer who wasn’t also an avid, curious, hungry reader of everything from newspapers and magazines to classics, poetry and/or best sellers.

Oh, I forgot the best bit of writing advice: If you love it, never give up!

 

 

 

Guest Blogger: John Desjarlais

The LadyKillers are proud to welcome guest John Desjarlais on his whistle-stop blog tour. John is author of VIPER, featuring former DEA agent Selena De La Cruz. A former producer with Wisconsin Public Radio, John teaches journalism and English at Kishwaukee College in northern Illinois. His first novel, The Throne of Tara (Crossway 1990, re-released 2000), was a Christianity Today Readers Choice Award nominee, and his medieval thriller, Relics (Thomas Nelson 1993, re-released 2009) was a Doubleday Book Club Selection. BLEEDER and his new release, VIPER (Sophia Institute Press, 2009 and 2011 respectively) are the first two entries in a contemporary mystery series. Welcome John!

Since John has radio experience, we decided to interview him for this stop on his blog tour.

LK: Your main character, Selena, is very different from you: she's a woman, a Latina, and she worked for the DEA. Why did you choose her as your point-of-view character, and what was the hardest part about writing her?
 
Selena is a minor character in BLEEDER, the first mystery. I wanted a local insurance agent to assist protagonist Reed Stubblefield who was wounded in a school shooting and who had insurance/disability issues to resolve. Since the book also touched upon immigration issues and the struggle of a small rural town dealing with an influx of poor illegals, I wanted a positive portrayal of a Latin character and decided it would be the insurance agent. I wondered if making the character female might possibly introduce some romantic tension, too. When Selena walked on the stage in those cherry heels, with that attitude and driving that fast car, I knew she had a story of her own.
 
In casting about for a story idea for the sequel, I came upon the Catholic practice of placing a 'Book of the Dead' in parish churches around All Souls' Day where people wrote in names of deceased relatives so they could be remembered and respected. A premise came to mind: what if there were names in the Book of the Dead of people not dead yet? What if they were getting killed in the order they were listed? Whose names would be on such a list and why would they be getting killed and by whom? Then I learned that Mexicans have a holiday called 'The Day of the Dead' that is celebrated at about the same time. It became obvious to me that Selena's name would be on that list and this would be her story.
 
The hardest part about writing her was making sure all the cultural material was accurate and respectful. I did a great deal of research about Mexican-American families, customs, holidays, the works. I subscribed to Latina magazine, interviewed Latinas, browsed Latina blogs and so on. I needed to learn what it means to be bicultural, living in two worlds at once, navigating the New World with Old World expectations. The Latinas who read the work-in-progress told me I was getting it right - down to the high heels.

LK: Your book uses a number of classic noir devices: a race against time, flashbacks, and a setting that is very dark. Typically noir books are nihilistic, yet yours has a redemptive arc and an a point of view that shows religion integrated into daily life. What made you choose mystery in general, and a noirish structure in particular, to tell this kind of story?
 
I always read and admired mysteries and hoped I might write them someday. Beside liking the genre for entertainment, I see its potential for thoughtfully exploring 'higher mysteries.' One must be careful not to preach, of course. But mysteries, dealing so openly with death, have an opportunity to make meaning out of the frightfully short dash between our birthdate and departure date on our tombstones. That's what all literature does, anyway. Mysteries in particular connect with something deep inside us. They are the modern form of the medieval morality play, where the sleuth is Everyman who works against time, big money, a determined antagonist, daunting odds and his own flaws to expose evil and to restore the balance of justice. The noir element reminds us that the world is dark. But I believe John 1:5.

LK: You frequently present images of the Virgen de Guadalupe and Xochitetzal in comparison or juxtaposition, structurally and literally. Can you tell us more about this?
 
Our Lady of Guadalupe is an immensely important figure in Mexican culture, the Virgin Mother of Christ who appeared dressed in the robes of a pregnant Aztec princess to a poor peasant in 1541. Her image, preserved in Juan Diego's cape, is still on display in Mexico City. She figures in the book when a young local visionary claims that a 'Blue Lady' appears to her to announce the next killing on the list. Some in the Mexican community believe it is Our Lady calling her people to repentance and renewal, while others believe it is the Aztec goddess of death coming to claim another soul. There are more than one female Aztec deities of death; Xochitetzal is one of them and her star-spangled mantle looks a lot like Our Lady of Guadalupe's. Coatlicue is another, the 'mother of gods' pictured with a skirt of rattlers who birthed the sun god to whom the Aztecs sacrificed millions of beating human hearts. Once the Aztecs embraced the Catholic faith as a result of the Marian apparitions, the horror of human sacrifices stopped. There are some Mexicans today who are trying to revive a devotion to Aztec deities as a way of reclaiming an authentic Mexican identity. The killer in the story is one of them.

LK: How does the dark tale of VIPER inspire its readers?
 
I think Selena is inspiring in the way she negotiates her bicultural identity, living in two worlds at once and, in addition, making her way as an independent, intelligent woman in a man's world. There is also a darkness in herself that she overcomes.

LK: I must confess ignorance, the last writer who was famous for being Catholic that I've read is Flannery O'Connor. Can you tell us more about the new surge in Catholic literary creativity?
 
Pope John Paul II was a playwright and poet, and his "Letter to Artists" inspired many writers to recover a rich tradition of Catholic Arts and Letters. There are some fine writers today producing work across many genres, including mystery (Terrence Faherty, Ann Margaret Lewis) , thriller (Piers Paul Read), YA (Regina Doman), science fiction (Karina Fabian), women's fiction (Michelle Buckman) and 'literary' fiction (Andrew McNabb, Michael O'Brian, Ron Hanson - clearly I'm just naming a few here). Like O'Connor, they have a 'sacramental' view of life, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. The work is smart and stylish. Interested readers might want to visit the Catholic Writers Guild online to learn more.

LK: VIPER is delightfully free of dogmatic discussions of religion or faith--it tells a ripping good story, and the point of view is in the theme, the imagery and word choice, like any literary mystery. Is it hard to sell a story with a well-integrated religious theme to a mainstream audience?
 
Not really. "The DaVinci Code" proved that, although its spurious premise and superficial research did a serious disservice to readers. I prefer the smart writing of Susan Howatch, Frederick Buechner, Kathleen Norris and older writers like GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, Morris West, William Barrett and Grahame Greene. These writers bring a deep religious sensibility to their fiction in ways that are subtle and moving.

LK: What is your next project, and when and where will we be able to buy it? Do you think the Sophia Institute Press will start publishing eBooks soon?
 
I'm researching the third mystery in the series. It is turning into a political thriller connected to the assassination of Cardinal Posadas of Guadalajara in 1993. The Vatican just re-opened the case. They're not convinced the Cardinal simply got caught in the cross-fire of a drug deal gone bad. Selena will figure this out and resolve a mystery in her own life, her father's sudden flight from Mexico, leaving behind an executive position at PEMEX for the Mexican consulate job in Chicago when she was a kid.
 
As for eBooks -- BLEEDER is available on Kindle; VIPER will be at some point. I don't know what their plans are otherwise. I'll probably self-publish a literary short story collection via Kindle Direct this year. I have some mystery short stories in mind, too, that I might publish as an eBook.
 
Thanks for the opportunity to meet your readers!

You can find out more about John Desjarlais and his mysteries at http://www.johndesjarlais.com.

NEWS and Writing Advice

NEWS FLASHES!!!

• Special honored guest John Desjarlais is interviewed this Monday on The LadyKillers as part of his virtual tour for his new mystery book VIPER. Please drop in and read what our guest has to say!
• Sharan Newman will be at Magna Cum Murder in Muncie, Indiana, October 28-30,2011. 
• Penny Warner will be at the Danville Women's Club in Danville, California, on Monday, October 24, at 11:00 a.m.
• Penny will be at the Seven Hills School in Walnut Creek, California, on Wednesday, October 26.

The Advisor Is In

 Upcoming week's topic: WRITING ADVICE. Let's see what the LadyKillers have to say. From the administrator (who isn't blogging this week), three simple words:

"Just Do It!"

Favorite First Line? Turns Out I Don’t Have One

As a writer, I labor over that opening sentence, changing words here, moving phrases there, trying to hit the perfect tone. But when I try to think of other writers’ opening remarks, I can’t. The only two I remember are “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” and “Call me Ishmael,” mainly because those show up on Jeopardy from time to time. I decide which books to read mainly through skimming the back covers or getting recommendations from friends. Once I actually open a book to that first page, I’m already committed to reading it and jump right in, reading nonstop without pausing to admire, or even critique, that first sentence.

Since I don’t have any favorite first lines, I decided to create a sampling from my bookcase. I pulled an armful of books, most of which I haven’t read, and studied the first sentences. Some were okay, some had potential but needed the help of the second sentence, and some really grabbed my attention. If I were selecting which books to read based solely on their opening lines, these three would be with me at the checkout line:

I scream, You Scream

“From the day I could hold a crayon in my chubby little hands, I have colored inside the lines.”

That one simple sentence says so much about the main character. She’s the type who has spent her life following the rules, and I have to wonder what problem she’ll encounter that will challenge that. It’s also clear from the tone that this book will be light and funny.

Buzz Off

“If I hadn’t been drinking champagne at noon on Friday, I would have been over at the honey house with Manny Chapman, my beekeeping mentor and owner of Queen Bee Honey, and possibly, just possibly, I might have saved him from what must have been a very painful death.”

Okay, so this sentence is a bit long, which makes it possible to squeeze in a lot of information, but all that information leads to a slew of questions that I want answered. Why was she drinking champagne, a rather unusual drink, especially at noon? What sort of painful death did Manny suffer? Was he stung to death, murdered, or both? Would the protagonist have been a potential victim if she’d been with Manny rather than sipping that champagne?

The Maze Runner

“He began his new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air.”

Again, this opening sentence begs to be questioned. If the main character is standing, then his new life must begin as someone older than a newborn. But why does his new life begin in such hostile surroundings? Has he been kidnapped? Does he remember his old life at all? How did he end up here?

For me, the best openers create questions that I want to know the answers to. And a good book is one that answers those questions and entertains me along the way.