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A blog for readers and writers of crime fiction
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We're so proud of Ann Parker and her fabulous Inez--they've won the 2012 Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery award at Left Coast Crime.
Well deserved, Ann!
Staci here, on my every other Saturday, thinking about celebrations. For me, the entire fall season feels like one long celebration. With my husband’s birthday happening a few days before Halloween and my oldest son’s birthday a few days after, that two week period is full of family dinners, parties, cakes, candy, and presents. Just when I think about relaxing, the turkeys show up at the grocery store and Thanksgiving arrives. As soon as we’ve stuffed our faces and waved goodbye to the relatives, my husband unpacks the Christmas decorations. December is a month-long celebration of carols, lights, and baking.
This Christmas Day gathering was a bit smaller than in previous years. My dad got his hip replaced in mid-December. The surgery went really well, but he’s on a strict physical therapy regimen with all sorts of rules on how to sit, stand, and walk. Since Grandpa’s lap is my kids’ favorite place to sit, we couldn’t risk injuring that new hip and decided to postpone our full family celebration with my parents until late January or early February. That whittled our guest list down to my sister and her husband. Until her husband fell ill Christmas morning. Really, is there a worse time to be sick? Okay, probably, but I can’t think of an example right now. But my sister still came over, and we followed our usual holiday traditions, only with less people.
Even though the holiday was a bit quieter and not what we were expecting, it was still nice. We enjoyed a hearty meal, shared some laughs, opened some gifts, and celebrated the day. The kids were completely pooped by the time seven o’clock rolled around and merrily went to bed without protest (thank goodness, since my own energy was depleted at one minute after seven).
Now the decorations are down, the kids are already bored with their new toys, and the house is once more back to normal – just in time to celebrate the new year. I can’t wait to blow that horn at midnight and welcome the arrival of 2012, the year my first book will be published. I’ll definitely be celebrating that!
Please join us in welcoming the last honored guests of 2011 to the LadyKillers: Bette Golden Lamb and J. J. Lamb, the co-authors of three crime novels. Their most recent book is the independently-published SISTERS IN SILENCE, a medical thriller about a fertility counselor who has gone off the deep end. Their other novels are HEIR TODAY…, a fast-paced suspense/adventure featuring a husband-wife team “reminiscent of Nick & Nora Charles;” and BONE DRY, a high-tension medical thriller described by PW as “not for the squeamish.” They combine collaboration and cohabitation in an air of creative exchange in their Northern California home.
When not writing with J. J. or on her own, Bette, unmistakably from the Bronx, can be found in her studio playing with clay. She is a professional ceramist, sculptor, and artist (www.bettegoldenlamb.com) whose creations appear in regional, national, and international exhibitions. She’s also an RN, and a devoted gardener. “As an RN, I wanted to write medical thrillers that put nurses smack in the center of a story,” she says. “Most such novels have MDs as the protagonist, when in reality doctors sort of breeze in and out of a hospital a couple of times a day, while nurses run and control the hospital environment.”
J. J. is a former newspaper reporter, Associated Press staff writer, trade press correspondent, and freelance journalist. His journalism career was interrupted early on by the U.S. Army, which provided him with a Top Secret clearance, locked room with table, chair, and typewriter, and time to write short stories. The stories evolved into an original paperback series featuring Las Vegas-based PI Zachariah Tobias Rolfe III. Then came collaboration with Bette on their current series of books. He’s also a proud and skilled jack-of-all-trades, typical of a born-and-raised Hoosier (www.jjlamb.com).
Between them, the Lambs belong to Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the same writers critique group for the past 19 years. In addition to the successful launch of their latest co-authored thriller, they are looking forward to the publication of new individual novels - an Urban Fantasy from Bette, and a new Zach Rolfe caper from J. J. And there is another medical thriller in the works.
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Don‘t know why it is, but we writers have a tendency to be a gloomy lot. Nothing ever seems to be going right, from the weather when we get up in the morning, to the number of books sold (if any) at the end of the week, month, quarter, or year.
And yet…
And yet…
Here, at the end of 2011 and the start of 2012, there is true cause for celebration.
That’s right, celebration!
For all of us.
The struggle to get paid for what one writes, and the even greater struggle to make a living from writing, particularly in fiction, has been going on for a long, long time.
Until 1825, most American authors had to pay printers to publish their work, long before there was a thriving “vanity press.”
At the time, this reportedly wasn’t a problem for people of means, such as Washington Irving, or the New York Knickerbockers group, or a group of Connecticut poets known as the Hartford Wits. Benjamin Franklin, a printer by trade, could publish his own writings. While Walt Whitman set type for a printer so Leaves of Grass could see the light of day.
No surprise then that from the earliest days, trying to write fiction for a living and living in poverty were almost synonymous. Charles Brockden Brown, generally regarded as the most ambitious and accomplished American novelist prior to James Fenimore Cooper, was also the first to attempt to live from his writing. But in his 39th year, he died broke. Sort of a prequel to Edgar Allan Poe, who was also impoverished when he died at the age of 40.
But wait! We’re supposed to be talking about having cause to celebrate in this, the early years of the 21st Century.
While we’re living in a time of great consternation and transformation, for both writers and publishers, it’s also a time when we writers have been given the ability and means to control the publication and distribution of our works…through e-books and print-on-demand editions.
At very little expense and with a minimum of effort, a writer can now type “The End” on the last page of a manuscript and within a month or less, have it available to the reading public -- worldwide. Further, the price can be set at whatever the writer wants it to be.
No more waiting weeks or months for an agent to reply to a query. No more waiting months or years to find an interested publisher. No more waiting a year or more for a book to hit bookstore shelves after being accepted for publication.
The agent-editor-publisher course of action continues to be available, and there no doubt will be times when we might prefer to follow this (tortuous) route to publication.
Regardless, what’s happening today is simply amazing! The entire paradigm has shifted.
(We caution, though, that those who think giving away their writing has a certain fly-in-the-the-sugar romance about it should re-read our earlier comments about the fates of Mr. Brown and Mr. Poe.)
This thing of writers being able to be their own publisher and distributor isn’t all champagne and caviar, and maybe it never will be. Ah, but our fates are now more in our own hands than they’ve ever been.
And don’t think that agents, editors, and publishers -- the middlemen -- are not paying attention to all of this. A lot of attention. Close attention.
After a lengthy and non-productive period of pooh-poohing electronic publishing, there is now a virtual stampede by these doubting-Thomas agents/editors/publishers to offer formatting and placement “services” to current and potential clients (that’s us, the writers). It appears that once a middleman, always a middleman. But there is a price to be paid because there is no true altruism.
Are there legitimate concerns about the e-publishing phenomenon? Of course.
There is a flood of new and reissued e-books popping up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere. And currently, there are no gate-keepers, those who would attempt to point out to readers the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But we would say, without fear of contradiction, that the agents, editors, and publishers didn’t always do a really good job with those things either. (And have you noticed the increased number of typos and grammatical errors appearing in new hardbacks of late?)
Along with our new-found freedom, we need to accept the responsibility of putting out the best book possible in terms of story, language use, punctuation, and spelling…like having someone other than us do the proof reading.
So, unless you still write with pen/pencil on paper or with a manual/electric typewriter, the future is here. Otherwise, the catch-up period for joining the publishing revolution may take quite a bit longer.
'Tis the season when much media (and personal) energy seems to be focused on producing the "picture perfect" holiday. Entire family assembled in harmonious cheerfulness beside the appropriate holiday symbol. Beautifully-set holiday table with mouth-watering perfectly cooked/crafted courses and perfectly attuned dinner partners (who would never rant about politics, religion, etc. etc.). New car in the driveway with a big red bow on it. Early admissions acceptance of genius child to Stanford...
Well, you get the picture.
If nearly 60 years on this planet has taught me anything, it's that getting everyone to sing in perfect harmony around the tree turns out to be a whole lot harder (= impossible) than shoving characters around in a fictional world of one's creation. I know this to be true, intellectually speaking, yet I'm still learning and backsliding on occasion. So, when I find I'm trying to "push the river" and getting all stressed out as a result, I try to take a step back, take a deep breath, and focus on celebrating the really big and the really little things.
The really big things:
HEALTH: We are all basically healthy.
TOGETHERNESS, LOVE, RESPECT: We are together this season; we love and respect each other (in our own, imperfect, idiosyncratic ways).
WATER, FOOD, SHELTER: We are blessed with all the basics. We have clean water to drink and cook with (right out of a tap!), enough food (plenty! plenty!), and a roof over our heads.
Right there, plenty of reasons enough to celebrate and sing for joy (even if we are not all in tune).
And then, there are the little things to celebrate (i.e., "little" in the bigger scope of things...):
My fourth book is out. "Mercury's Rise" was published in November. Yay! And nice reviews are out and about as well. (Thanks, Liz, for pointing this one out on Buried Under Books.) Being a fiction author was never part of my "life plan," and I am thankful for this surprising turn of events...
A cup of coffee with eggnog, in a holiday mug, accompanied by a cheerful bowl of homemade turkey soup and some candles. (Candles not lit in this photo, because it's lunchtime. I'm looking forward to sunset and dinner, though!)
A book I've been awaiting (for research purposes) arrives in the mail! "Someday All This Will Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age," by Henrik Hartog. Can't wait to dive in.
Last but hardly least..... Tree lights and a 2-lb box of See's dark chocolate candy!
Sure, some of my list items are serious and some are frivolous (See's chocolate = frivolous?? Never!! ;-) )... but I enjoy exploring the opposite ends of the spectrum.
What about you? Care to share some of the "big and little" things that you are celebrating this season?
Camille is celebrating, all right — barely cleaned up after a Christmas party and ready for New Year's Eve. I know that Bethlehem is in desert country and all, but this season just cries out for winter! White puffy paint in the corners of the window panes doesn't cut it. No real snow, no sleigh; no sleigh, no Santa; no Santa, no presents. It's that simple.
So we use technology to help us celebrate in our (too) sunny California house:
Here's my favorite card of the season -- I won't tell you who sent it, lest you pester her for a card next year.
My second favorite was a picture of Santa and sleigh landing on the moon, cursing his GPS.
And, finally, my new favorite New Year's Eve cartoon:
To all my LK bloggers and our readers—a very happy 2012!
It’s that time again. The old year is retiring, and the new is itching for promotion. Since we don’t know what 2012 has planned, the final days of the one we do are a good time for contemplation.
I could argue the half-full or half-empty thing, but I spend most mornings in high rant over some news item or other. This seems like a good time just to celebrate. After all, haven’t we survived whatever was slung in our direction?
The year has been good creatively. I finished A Killing Season, saw it draped with a cover I liked, and I am working on the ninth in the series. We won’t discuss the newest because books in the birth process are tender things. With luck, it will get its moment of celebration next year. Doing blogs here has been a treat. A few of my efforts weren’t bad, and the rest haven’t embarrassed me too much in retrospect. For the latter, I thank the kindness of LadyKillers and those who read us.
In March, I went to Left Coast Crime in Santa Fe, a place I last visited over fifty years ago and even stayed at the same hotel. Despite the altitude and being less limber than I was at twelve, I saw places I had long wanted to visit and revisited others. In several sessions, I learned more about the craft I love, met some writers I had never read, and enjoyed mingling with the Canadians. Despite my decades of living in the US, the accent did briefly come back. But the highpoint was having breakfast with many of the LadyKillers! Good company is always something to celebrate.
June was the Historical Novel Society Conference in San Diego. The panel subjects were varied and intriguing. Thanks to my co-sleuth, Brother Thomas, I was on one that dealt with gay characters, but the panel on Jewish Historical Fiction was my favorite, although my credit card might not be so happy about the exercise it got. I also did my first and only stint at moderating the group discussing how to keep a series fresh. We all survived my effort, and I learned much from the panel.
Now we are into our usual season of cool temperatures and Pacific storms. The cats are grateful the roof doesn’t leak and that they have a bed cave to hide in when the wind is high. Yes, there is lots of joy to savor from the comfort of friendship to soothing chocolate on a cold night. Celebration of the happy times is good for the spirit, even if it only happens at the end of the year.
December 26 is such an interesting day. It feels so...quiet. Many people have to go back to work right after Christmas, which somehow feels wrong, but many people are able to take vacation time, so office-type workplaces can feel as quiet as post-holiday homes do this time of year. (This is emphatically not true for those who work in retail.)
Post-holiday blues often kick in, but I'm more likely to feel that way before or during the hubbub. For me, December 26 makes me feels sated by the Christmas hoopla and ready to curl up for a quiet contemplative winter day. It's less of a holiday kind of feeling and more of a solstice mood. The nights are as long as they're going to be, but they're getting shorter. The darkness is lifting, imperceptibly. "Winter" as experienced by Floridians, is hit-or-miss. We had temperatures in the seventies yesterday, but it looks like the beginning of winter out there. The leaves are falling and the humidity is so much lower than summer's steamy norm that the air is visibly clearer.
I need to go out and exchange a gift (note to self: check with ex-husband before buying daughter an iPad) but today feels like a day to brood happily over a new book. It feels like a day to take a walk on a warm winter day. It feels like a day to be grateful for my comfortable home and my loving family, spread all across the country.
Ann Parker's latest Silver Rush series book, MERCURY'S RISE, is now out on Kindle! So if you received a Kindle for a holiday gift and are looking for good reads to upload... (hint hint hint). For more Kindle/eBook reads, please read on...
The wonderful Poisoned Pen Press has temporarily discounted the ebook editions of all of Mary Anna Evans' Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries www.poisonedpenpress.com, www.bn.com, and www.amazon.com. ARTIFACTS is 99 cents, and all five of the other books are at $4.99, reduced from $6.95.
Mary Anna's Christmas giveaway on Facebook ends on December 26. Just like her Facebook author page and your name will go in the hat for your choice of a free Kindle or a $100 gift certificate to an independent bookstore, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Mary Anna is also offering her Christmas short story, "A Singularly Unsuitable Word," as a free Kindle download on Amazon through December 27. For those without Kindles (like her), it can be read on a computer, as well.
I'm forever trying to figure out what things really mean. How things really work. That's why I took a radio clock apart before I was old enough to read. That's why I was always in trouble for asking rude questions. Also why I studied linguistics and became a technical writer (until just recently, when I got kicked upstairs to fancy-dancy "Content Strategist." Now there's no living with me!).
I have to say, Genesis leaves out a lot more than it includes.
The King James bible is frustratingly moot on the question of how, or what raw materials might have been at hand, and super oh so amazingly silent on "how come?"
Most origin myths are.
Humans find it incredibly difficult to imagine a world without humans, so the why of it all never gets mentioned. Please don't be cross with me for calling Genesis an origin myth. It fits the pattern, and it was written by man, and there have probably been a few errors, poetic rewordings, and reorderings-for-a-more-pleasing-read between the original events and now. For example, saying the stars were created after the earth. Some editor probably thought it flowed better that way. We know that's not literally what happened, right?
The thing is, that editor was correct. I don't know a better opening than "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."And the rest of it wouldn't flow as well without playing around with what happened when.
I like this first line, too: "I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte." (Red Harvest by Dash Hammett)
And: "Elmer Gantry was drunk." (Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry)
And: "They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did." (Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea)
And: "Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up." (The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor)
The only thing that keeps me from burning every piece of paper in my house and pitching my computer into the street one story below, to shatter and spew its bits and bytes all over the tarmac, is the prayerful hope that these writers didn't find their first lines at the beginning of their journey, but toward the end. Because if you're supposed to be able to write like that during a novel's genesis, I'm afraid I'm much more of a typist than a writer.
Oh goodness, we can't end on that note. So what if it took me two years to find an opening line that would past muster? I'm pretty sure there's at least ten good sentences in the novel. At least ;)
Wait, that's not any more cheerful, is it? Perhaps dear reader, you can cheer me up--tell me about something that you knew was just right, right at its genesis? For example, the day I got off BART for the first time and breathed the air in San Francisco, ditching high school in Livermore for the day, I knew it was the city where I most belonged. And when I met my little brother's wife, it was clear that they were meant for each other, and that I would love her to pieces for the rest of my life.
How about you? What did you know was absolutely right from the genesis?
One of my favorite quotes about writing came from novelist, essayist, and playwright Robert Paul Smith, who wrote, among other works, The Tender Trap and Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing. He said:
"A writer, at least this writer, writes not because he has something to say, but because he has something he wants to find out."
I like Smith's comment because it reminds me that writing a story is a process of exploration. The genesis of a story is that moment when an idea comes along and beckons you to follow it, and you go, not knowing what the destination will be. Most writers will agree that no matter how carefully you outline a story in advance, and certainly if don't outline but jump in and start writing, the story you have at the end is never quite the one you were expecting when you began. The idea will lead you down unexpected side roads, through swamps and dark forests and bramble patches—and you go willingly because you know you’ll discover something interesting along the way.
The novelist Margaret Atwood once said, "I think a lot of novels begin as questions." As an example she cited her novel The Handmaid's Tale, whose genesis was her wondering, "If you were going to take over the United States, how would you do it?" Then she began to speculate about how women would fit into the society that the new masters created.
But you don't have to think on the scale of world conquest. A short basic question or two is often enough to start a story rolling:
Who?Who, of course, refers to your characters, especially the protagonist. Who is this person who has wandered into your mind and pitched a tent there?
What? There are lots of what questions. What does the person want to acquire or achieve? What are the stakes for her; that is, what consequences will come if she succeeds in getting what she wants, and what consequences will come if she fails? What does she do to try to reach her goal? What gets in her way? What happens to get the events of the story rolling? What happens next?
When? And where? The answers to these questions provide the setting of the story or of particular scenes. They shape the physical and emotional environment in which the characters operate. Where and when can have a profound impact on their beliefs and understandings and also on the options that are available to them.
Why? To me, why is one of the most intriguing questions. It’s the one that really propels me forward as I chase the story through the wilderness. Why is this happening? Why do my characters want what they want? Why would they make the choices they do? Why do people behave like that? Why is about motivation and all of the fascinating secrets of the human psyche.
Any one of these questions—who, what, when, where, why—can be the genesis of a story, setting you off on your exploration. Add the next question, and the next, and you'll be well along the forest path. There is no predicting what the answers will be, but what you find out is sure to be interesting.
Story ideas have never been an issue for me. I'm the girl whose house burned down four days before Christmas, whose (sealed) juvenile record includes a trespassing charge for stalking the New Kids on the Block, who has a cat that has learned how to set off the alarm clock, consistently, at 6am. The ideas are always there, even if you've never been pulled into a jazzy rendition of "When You're Smiling" by a tux-wearing homeless man north of Market -- you just have to keep your eyes open. And possibly one ear for police sirens, if you're into stalking boy bands.
But the real genesis of a book isn't the idea -- it's the first line. "One upon a time," is an oldie, but when it comes to"I spent the Christmas after the house fire clutching what remained -- a sequined halter top and a left shoe that I wasn't totally sure was my own," it's not exactly a goodie.
So how do you start? What words do you string together to usher in your own crazy story or sidewalk sing-a-longs (I really do miss living in the heart of San Francisco)? The best advice I've ever gotten? Jump in with both feet. The fact that I used a half-bottle of Aqua Net and an entire one of spray glitter before the New Kids concert isn't half as interesting as the cold click of cuffs around my wrists as I watched my teenage dream -- Donnie Wahlberg -- getting smaller and smaller as an SJPD officer escorted me off the premesis. It doesn't matter that that my cat is the sweetest, blue-eyed, most snuggly thing in the world if you don't know her (or have no intention of sleeping past 6am); it's the action.
Start your book like you start your day: jump in with both feet, eyes wide open -- and keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Penny Warner's THE HAUNTED LIGHTHOUSE: The Code Busters Club #2 wins the 2012 Agatha Award for the Best Children's/Young Adult Mystery. Way to go, Penny!!
