The LadyKillers

Welcome Guest Blogger, Lise McClendon

The LadyKillers are delighted to welcome Lise McClendon on her blog tour. Lise is the author (as Rory Tate) of JUMP CUT, a new thriller set in Seattle. Under her real name she has written seven mystery novels including Blackbird Fly, The Bluejay Shaman, and One O’clock Jump. She teaches at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference each summer and is part of the Thalia Press Authors Co-op with seven other writers. Her website is www.lisemcclendon.com. She lives in the wilds of Montana. Thank you for joining us, Lise!

Not that question again.

 It’s an old chestnut: the audience asks, where do you get your ideas? Writers hear it often, and often have a canned response. From the news, from my interests, from my secret criminal contacts, from deep in my amazing imagination, or from the air around me.

But where do you really get your ideas? Sometimes, as a writer, you don’t know. They come to you while you’re washing the dishes, or brushing your cat, or falling asleep. With my new novel, Jump Cut, I had this idea to have a reporter fake a news story, and get caught. How to make her a sympathetic character was another challenge. (You’ll have to read it to see how I handled it!) So where did that idea come from?

Like my character, Mimi Raynard, I went to journalism school. An interesting class was Communications Law where we studied not only shield laws that protect reporters from having to name their sources for stories, but also some rather sensational cases of fraud.

The case that stuck in my mind happened after I graduated from college. Janet Cooke was a young reporter at The Washington Post when she wrote about an eight-year-old heroin addict named ‘Jimmy.’ The report caught the attention of Mayor Marian Barry and the police chief who sent people to try to find and help Jimmy. But no Jimmy could be found. Bob Woodward submitted Cooke’s story for a Pulitzer Prize which it won in 1981. Within days, after investigation of her falsified college degrees, Cooke admitted she had made up Jimmy. She resigned and returned the Pulitzer. And hasn’t worked in journalism since.

Ms. Cooke is often raised as a cautionary tale to budding reporters. However difficult your job is, it isn’t worth making up sources. You will get caught. In my novel Mimi Raynard is desperate for a new job so she dresses up as a Russian Mafia Madam in a resume tape that she doesn’t send out. But still the tape gets her into all kinds of trouble.

Your characters have to get in trouble. But the balance between your character’s flaws and their triumphs is a delicate one. The redemption of the character’s honor can be most satisfying. I love to pull the rug out from under my characters and see what they’re made of. It appears Mimi Raynard rose to the challenge. But you’ll be the judge of that.

Jump Cut is now available.

What's in a Name?

I once read a study showing that teachers had lower expectations and called less on kids with "funny" names. Oscar, Agnes, Abner and Moonbeam started out with a nominative handicap. Tom, Mary, Jennifer and Bill got more of a teacher's attention. Unfair? Of course, and most teachers were totally unaware that they were doing this. But if this happens in the classroom, it's a good bet that it carries through in the rest of life. Many people overcome this with the force to their personalities or talent. Look at our current president. But, do you really want your characters to have to fight for attention before the reader gets to know them?

I took a chance naming my male protagonist Edgar. It's a family name and I like it, but I know that "Duncan" for instance, has a stronger sound. Catherine is a good, solid name that has been popular for centuries. I don't know if the first mystery would have sold if I had named her "Pagana" or "Hodierna", both popular medieval names for women. And I would have been ousted from the Medieval Academy if I had called her "Chelsea" or "Jennifer".

As Priscilla mentioned, writing historical novels adds another challenge to naming. The author not only has to use names that fit the period, she also has to deal with the names of real people who might wander in and out of the book. In my case, the European nobility were stuck in a rut of Matildas and Williams. One thing I and other writers, like Sharon Kay Penman do, is to use various forms of the names: Maud and Mahaut for Matilda, Guillaume and Wilhelmus for William. This only works when the person is not terribly well known. William the Conqueror was probably never called William by his friends. But that's how we know him and "Guillelmus the Conqueror" just doesn't have the same ring.

But, if you are fond of a strange name, you could make it a part of the character. Say, opening with: "Being named Aethelflaed had cursed her life." and carrying on from there. I'm not sure I'm that brave, but you might have a best seller.

And, Happy Thanksgiving to all in the US and Happy next Thursday to everyone else.

Is Virtual Touring the Answer? by Jean Henry Mead

Please welcome our honored guest today, author Jean Henry Mead. Jean is the author of 15 books, half of them novels. She’s also an award-winning photojournalist who served as a news, magazine and small press editor. Her Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series consists of A Village Shattered, Diary of Murder and Murder on the Interstate. Her juvenile series, the Hamilton Kids’ mysteries, are Mystery of Spider Mountain and Ghost of Crimson Dawn. She also writes historicals, her first in the series, Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, to be followed by No Escape: The Sweetwater Tragedy. Her books, regardless of genre, are all laced with humor and light romance.

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The ebook revolution has dramatically changed the face of publishing. With the advent of lower-priced Kindles and Nooks, ebook sales have soared, with thousands of aspiring authors now independently publishing and competing with veteran writers. So, unless your name is a household word, how do you rise above the pack? Some experienced writers have joined the indie ranks and reduced their books to 99 cents, or offered them free to entice new readers. Writers such as Joe Konrath and L.J. Sellers have done quite well, but the price lowering tactic hasn’t worked for everyone, and some of us are resorting to other promotional methods,

Virtual book touring isn’t a new concept but it continues to grow in practice. I’m about to embark on my fourth Internet tour, my second with a group of other mystery writers. The two-week “Mystery We Write” Holiday Tour will begin the day after Thanksgiving and end on December 9, with 15 mystery writers participating. That’s 15 blog tours going on at the same time, with the writers hosting each another, a blog a day on a rotating basis. We’ve been planning the tour since August, and writing all those blog articles or answering interview questions.

The schedule alone could present problems, if not for Anne K. Albert, our fearless leader who coordinated the tour. Anne headed up the last tour consisting of 12 mystery writers over a 12-week period during early summer. We had a few problems with dropouts, who were unprepared, but that taught us to choose our tour mates carefully. So, if you’re planning to coordinate a multiple author tour, here a few tips to make it run as smoothly as possible:

1.     Choose tour mates carefully. Make sure everyone’s compatible and responsible.

2.     Plan well ahead so that everyone has time to prepare for the tour. Six months isn’t unreasonable.

3.     Promote your tour. Guest blog as often as possible.

4.     Stay in close touch with your tour mates during the planning stage to avoid misunderstandings.

5.     Prepare your articles and answer interview questions well in advance so that you can relax and enjoy the tour.

If you’re going it alone, here are a few tips for the uninitiated:

1.     Visit popular blog sites for at least two months to leave comments so that the host and followers will get to know you (before you ask to be hosted).

2.     Vary your articles, interview answers and book excerpts so that tour followers won’t get bored.

3.     Check with your blog hosts a week in advance to make sure you’re still on their schedules.

4.     Send your articles, etc. early to eliminate angst.

5.     Check in several times a day at each blog site to respond to comments.

6.     Thank each tour host before you leave.

Book giveaways are a good promotional device to draw visitors to your tour sites. We’re collectively giving away more than 60 mystery novels, each writer donating a print book and/or ebooks from his or her own site.

I’m personally giving away 14 ebooks, one each day in a drawing to a blog visitor who leaves a comment and screen name. At the conclusion of the tour, I’ll also draw three names from all the comments to award print copies of my mystery novels.

I plan to enjoy the tour, now that the writing is completed and my blog site is up with my tour schedule: http://jeansblogtour.blogspot.com/2011/09/mystery-we-write-christmas-blog-tour.html I hope you’ll all take time to stop in at as many tour sites as possible. We all wish you the happiest of holidays!

Camille Hit During Reading Incident

 

With only a little bit of a leap this topic brings up a recent reading incident, which was a lot more like a traffic incident than you'd think. Or like the time a cormorant flew into my windshield and shattered it.

Both times, I yelled NO-O-O-O-O!

I've told you about the cormorant incident; here's the reading incident.

I always read the author bio before starting a book, and sometimes even refer to it while reading. For example, if the author describes the Grand Canyon in great detail, I might want to know if she lives near it. Or in it.

I picked up an Edgar-winning novel recently, read that the author lives with his wife, let's call her Mary Jones, an award-winning poet.

No problem.

I'm reading along, liking the book a lot—a wise-cracking, self-effacing journalist tries to solve a wave of arson crimes in his town. The setting, Rhode Island, is close enough to Boston to hold my interest, also.

I'm INTO the book, I like the characters, the story, the sharp writing that most journalists bring to fiction.

Then, at about the half way mark, the main guy walks into a bar. He meets a woman who reads poetry. He's trying to impress her so he lets her tell him about it. He gives in and reads a poem, and aha! he loves it. He might even read more poetry by this author.

That's not the bad part. The bad part is that the poem, which he prints in full, is by Mary Jones, his wife. I check the author bio to see if I'm mistaken. Nope, the author has used his wife's name and occupation, as is, in a work of fiction.

I'm sure his in-laws were thrilled, but I was not. I was yanked out of the story, into the realization that I was not in Rhode Island trying to find an arsonist; I was reading a story by a guy whose wife is a poet.

I'm sure many authors use names of real people. I don't care, as long as I don't know the people. It's impossible for me to "lose myself" in a novel if the real world keeps intruding on the pages. It may be fun to use friends' names for characters, or to give your wife's work a plug, but if you do, please put a warning label on the wrapper.

What do you think? Are you stronger than I am, able to hold up under that crushing blow?

Character Names

Characters may be fictional but they do bear some resemblance to flesh and blood children. For one thing, we get to name them, although the in-laws (AKA your editor) may get involved here. 

If you plan a series, you will have to live with your various major and minor characters for a while. If you don’t like their names, you’re in for (may your series thrive!) years of annoyance. Of course, you are limited by the names available in your era. 

The current century allows much latitude in spelling and names. If you are crazy enough to write about thirteenth century England, however, you’re in for a whole lot of trouble. Admittedly, I love the period, but, as we all know, love is irrational. 

First of all, I have no clue how to pronounce Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse names, although the more recent version is usually recognizable in the original. Eadgyth is Edith and Hrolfr became Rolf. Either I mumble, if I have to read the passage with the more era-correct spelling, or I don’t read. The latter is the preferred choice for more reasons than fear of mispronunciation... 

The next problem is with Norman names. If you have read historical fiction of the era, you know that every Christian man (and his cousin) was named Richard, Henry, William or John. Thank heavens for Henry III who finally threw in an Edward. Women weren’t much better. We have three Queen Eleanors in almost as many kings. (Despite his many flaws, King John kindly married an Isabelle.) Some other common names were Matilda, Agnes and Joan (frequently spelled Jhone). If my Prioress Eleanor ever does meet Edward’s wife, Eleanor, I’m in deep trouble.

At the time, there was a solution to avoid confusion. We have Eleanor of Aquitaine (Henry II), Eleanor of Provence (Henry III), and Eleanor of Castile (Edward I). Place of origin was a common descriptive term. Secular rank was as well (William Marshall) or bishopric for the religious (Henry of Winchester). Early in my series, Prioress Eleanor was known as Eleanor of Wynethorpe, her father’s main castle, but now is more commonly referred to as Eleanor of Tyndal, her priory. 

In any case, names have to match their era and place. Brittany screams late 20^th century America. Georgiana did not see the light of day in England before the Hanoverians arrived. My own name was kindly dropped after the Romans until the Puritans resuscitated it. Their other fine inventions included Freegrace and Freelove, my favorite. Until a friend kindly alerted me to the problem, I almost used Athelstan for a character, a name not used in Britain after the Conquest. 

Does all this matter to readers? If you are writing historicals, it does. Readers like to see the period spelling and don’t want to be pulled out a tale with a glaringly inappropriate name. If you want a good source for period names, try finding E.G Withycombe’s The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names. (It does include some Jewish.)

From Mary Anna--Naming names

You can’t get very far in writing a book without giving names to the people in it.  People ask me how I name my characters, and I often answer them with an impressive and intelligent-sounding "Huh?"

Then I shift my mental gears into reverse and remember that I did go through some mental gyrations when I named my characters.  It's just that I promptly forgot those gyrations once each character was duly named.  If you have children, think back to the other names you considered when you were naming them.  It's entirely possible that I could be the mother of three children named Daniel, Rebecca, and Susannah, but the prospect just seems...wrong.  Once you hang a name on that delightful bundle of sweet baby flesh, it's over.  The human mind meshes the sound of the name with the reality of the person, and any other name just feels like a masquerade.

So where did Faye Longchamp get her name?  Well, I wanted something slightly uncommon, but not quirky.  I had it in my mind that some of Faye's European distant ancestors hailed from France, and I wanted a French name that could be Anglicized into something that Americans could spell and pronounce.  So Faye pronounces her last name like it looks (and like a Southerner):  "LAWNG-champ."  In the fifth book, FLOODGATES, she meets a distant cousin from a rather snooty branch of the family that has not Anglicized the pronunciation of their last name.  She spends several minutes chatting with Bobby "Lawnshaw," before she realizes that his last name is spelled exactly like her own.

Faye's first name is just a little bit old-fashioned, and it's a name that I've encountered in several women of both European and African descent who were born in the South in the mid-20th-century.  It seemed to fit my biracial and very Southern protagonist.  I like its soft and feminine sound because, beneath her tough, scientific exterior, Faye is all girl.

I chose Joe's first name because it is simple and masculine.  It is common enough that he needed an interesting surname.  I wanted it to be somewhat Native American in sound.  I remembered Randolph Mantooth from the show Emergency! in the 1970s, and that sounded about right.  I also went to school with a girl who had that name, so I knew it wasn't incredibly rare.  I felt that Joe also needed a middle name with character, and I decided on Wolf.  "Joe Wolf Mantooth" suits him very well, I think.

Faye's plantation house, handed down through her family for years, needed a name as well.  I remembered a book I had enjoyed called The River Road by Frances Parkinson Keyes that featured houses like Faye's.  A secondary character was named Joyeuse, and I thought that was a beautiful name for a house.  It speaks of joy.  And it makes the suffering in the house that came with slavery so poignant. 

People always want to know how to pronounce Joyeuse.  I tell them that Faye's as Southern as I am, so she garbles it a bit, but we pronounce it, "Zhwah-YOOSE."  My French-speaking editor pronounces it more like "Zhwah-yuhz."

The most important thing about my characters, though, is that they come when I call them.

 

News and Next Week: Character Names

News

Hannah Schwartz's new book, Under Attack, is now available!  

Ann Parker continues her tour for Mercury Rises:

In Colorado:

• Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
  Old Firehouse Books
  232 Walnut Street
  Fort Collins, Colorado
  … With Beth Groundwater 
• Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 7 p.m.
  Highlands Ranch Library
  9292 Ridgeline Blvd.
  Highlands Ranch, Colorado
  … With Beth Groundwater 
• Thursday, November 17, 2011, 7 p.m.
  High Crimes
  927 Main Street
  The Oriental and Navajo Rug Gallery
  Longmont, Colorado
  … With Beth Groundwater and Michelle Black

 

In Leadville! Home of the Silver Rush series!

• Friday, November 18, 2011, 2 p.m.
  Lake County Public Library
  1115 Harrison Avenue
  Leadville, Colorado
  … With Beth Groundwater 
• Friday, November 18, 2011, 5 p.m.
  The Book Mine
  522 Harrison Avenue
  Leadville, Colorado
  … With Beth Groundwater

 

Back to California:

Saturday, November 19, 6-ish p.m.
Towne Center Books
555 Main Street
Pleasanton, California
… Come join other authors at Towne Center and celebrate Pleasanton Downtown’s “Magical Holiday Evening”

 

Next Week

Character names. Can you love a character with a name like Nasty McGee? Can you hate one named Colette? How much do they matter, where do you find them, how do you keep them straight? Next week, the LadyKillers tell all.

This graphic comes from The WritingFix: Teachers Sharing Writing Lessons. It looks like a labor of love, so I wanted to give them credit! I bookmarked their page of prompts.

Retrospective?

I'll be right up front here. "Retrospective" means nothing to me.

I do not come from people who look back. We're a restless tribe, always moving forward. But lately I've been wondering if a little looking back and assessing could possibly make the next phase of life with my husband less crazy.

You see, we're in the process of buying a house. If you have steady employment, a 10% down payment, and not too much other debt, this is as easy as falling off a log in the current economic climate.

Except in San Francisco, which is the city I have my heart set on. And especially not if you are desperate for a single family residence, not a condo, TIC, or other exotic shared living arrangement. Here, the inventory is low, prices have risen about 10% in the last year or two, and prices are high. Not to mention coping with the intricacies of tenant's rights, the block-to-block changes within a single neighborhood that take you from posh to trash in no time at all.

I don't know how many of you have been through the process, but we're finding that the pressure of making our mutual dreams fit with the low-inventory, high-cost reality is causing us to look back a lot, trying to answer questions that didn't really matter until it was time to pony up most of my pay for the next 30 years. What do we really value? What's more important, space or location? What if we can't afford anyplace that isn't too big a compromise? And lately, who knew we both were dying to live in a home built well before 1950? These are not the kinds of questions you can anwer until you are put into the pressure cooker that is tryng to find houses for sale in San Francisco.

If you made a retrospective of our past decisions, you might wonder how in the world a woman who moved religiously every 18 months for 20 years ever got hooked up with a guy who lived in the same place for 20 years. If you made a retrospective of our past mistakes, you might wonder where we got the hubris to imagine we could afford a mortgage. We live for the thrill of the experience, not the steady and comforting acquisition of assets or other things. And yet, here we are, trying to locate in a single place all that we want for the rest of our lives.

Given that past behavior is one of the best predictors of future performance, and given that the retrospective of our lives would indicate not the slightest skill or aptitude for home ownership, you might well ask, "What are we thinking?"

Maybe it's as simple as this. After long and wandering journeys, we finally know, deep in our hearts, that we're home whenever we're together. And we just want a safe and warm place to park all that delightful affection and trust, before they repeal rent control. With the kind help of our patient real estate agent, Michelle Bouchet, we just might find it.

As men and women gather in this country's large cities and camp out to protest the out-of-control spiral of greed and acquisition that gripped the financial and housing sectors, it feels selfish to be fighting so hard for an old-fashioned American dream, home ownership. Please forgive us, and wish us luck. If I stay in one place for long enough, I may finally learn how to look over my shoulder, and learn from the past.

If all of this is too esoteric, let me say one simple thing. My favorite film retrospective is the yearly film noir festival at the Castro in San Francisco in late January. Check it out!

Now and Then

By Margaret Lucke

This week’s theme, Retrospective, is a timely one for me. Last month my husband Charlie was busy reviewing several decades' worth of his photographs. He was making decisions about which ones, out of the 40,000 or so possibilities in his files, he was going to include in a solo exhibit of his work called "Now and Then." His choices are on display until November 20 at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda, California.

I wasn’t involved in the selection process, and I appear in only one photo in the show. In fact, some that made the cut were pictures I'd never seen before. But many of them bring back memories. They chart my life as well as his, reminding me of where I was and what I was doing, even what I was thinking and feeling, at a particular time.

In a review written for the Alameda Sun, critic Karen Malpas commented that the "images reflect a Lucke world of far-reaching curiosity, beauty and fulfillment" (yes, I’m indulging in a bit of bragging here on Charlie's behalf).

Then she observed, "A retrospective show like this lets a prolific artist examine his creative output, to see where he has been and who he has become as a result of his unique life experiences ... He can see the recurring themes that have pulled at him and can connect the dots of his vision because, as Steve Jobs observed of his own career, 'You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking back.' "

I don't count myself as a prolific artist, and at this point I'm more comfortable looking forward than looking back. But I can say for sure that one of the recurring themes of my life is writing--both the process of putting words on the page myself and the work done by all of the authors whose books I take such pleasure in reading. I've been a writer and a reader ever since I can remember.

So here’s a brief retrospective of my writing career:

Budding Author

By the time I was six I had written a book (a very short one), several stories, and lots of poems as I practiced for my future career.

Aspiring Writer

My jobs after college all involved working with words. The marketing documents I wrote were fiction of a sort, but short stories was more fun. I piled up unpublished manuscripts. Heap, the Tibetan terrier, chaired my fan club.

Published Novelist

Of course I’m smiling here. My first novel, A Relative Stranger, is about to be published by St. Martin’s Press. This picture graced the book jacket.

And what about now? Look to the left and you’ll see me as I look today. Well, not quite. My hair is shorter at the moment. But I’m definitely looking forward as I write my next book and plan for the one after that.

The Influence of Books - A Retrospective

By Penny Warner

Looking back on my reading life, I find it interesting to recall the books that influenced me as I grew into a writer. It’s an eclectic collection, seemingly random, but the stories share one thing in common—"What’s going to happen next?"

While reading Nancy Drew mysteries goes without saying, I’ve listed some of the other books that offered valuable tips on writing. Here are just a few...

 
Eloise by Kay Thompson was one of the few books that featured girls as the protagonists. Girls who get into trouble, do mischief, and solve their own problems. That led me to write about girls as  lead characters who solve their own mysteries.

Freddy the Detective by Walter Brooks. Freddy was the book that got me excited about solving mysteries at a very young age. I figured if a pig could be sleuth, maybe anyone could solve a mystery. . . even moi?

To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss, not only taught me that playing with words was just plain fun, it also taught me spelling was important. I had to memorize how to spell Seuss (instead of Suess) in order to find his books at the library.

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson showed me how much imagination played a part in creating a story. With my own purple crayon, I could “draw” a story about anything.

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White reminded me how important relationships are in developing a story with depth. The friendship between the two main characters made the story real, even though it was heartbreaking!

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, had a huge influence on my love of vicarious adventure. What would I do if I were stranded on an island for years and years? Would I be as resourceful and perseverant as Friday’s boss? Defoe made that island come alive for me.

James Bond by Ian Fleming taught me that a protagonist could survive all kinds of dangers and still live to have another martini.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank showed me how personal, revealing, and tender a story could be, even when written by such a young writer.

Finally, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger taught me to search for my own voice, write a realistic, not cardboard, character, and to be subversive.

I'd love to know what books influenced your writing over the years. I'll be there are many I've forgotten over time.